Beaver Tail

I had a chance to try eating beaver tail. Curtis brought them over and prepared them.

 First this how amazing beaver tails look like from close.

 First you have to roast them over open flame

As the scales/skin bubbles up as it gets burnt you scrape it off.

The scrapped off parts are white because the flesh underneath is sort of like gristle fat

This one is ready.

Random Photos May 2nd

More examples of security hardware as you see it on top of walls around houses.
The old and the new: the spikes and the electric lines. The electric line not only will give you an choke but will also trip the alarm system if touched.

Different wall with also the old and the new, but there you can see the electric line better.
I take photos of those because in a way, regardless of what they stand for, their form as a certain beauty I find.

Today was laundry day. I went to the laundromat. There isn't an awful lot of white woman there and the friendly woman who works there recognized me from 2 years ago. I always thought that I would like to take her picture and today I asked her. I love the scarf and her perfect profile. 

When I go to the laundromat I always go downstairs to the grocery store which is pretty good.
I love the colourful rows of canned cheap meats.

The very South African Lucky Star  canned fish.... a South African quintessential.

The canned veggies.

And the chakalaka, a mixture of veggies in hot sauce reputed to have started in the gold mines of Johannesburg.

Random dog lying in the sun

Recipes from "China Modern"

It is my first time borrowing this book from the library but it looks great. It is "China Modern" by Ching-He Huang.

Again here is the list of ingredients from some recipes I haven't tried yet but want to remember.





 

Taiwanese-style Pepper Steak and Egg on Steamed Rice (page 64)
- steak
marinade: - light soya sauce
               - chinese five-spice powder
               - brown sugar
               - black pepper
- vegetable oil to fry the eggs
- eggs
- steamed rice
Put rice on plate, put steak on top, than the eggs!!!!

Ground Lamb  Eggplant and Chili Stuffed Roast Red Pepper (page 82)
- vegetable oiil
- chopped garlic
- grated ginger
- ground lamb
- eggplant chopped in small pieces
- rice wine or dry cherry
- garlic chili sauce
- light soya sauce
- black pepper
- red peppers cut top off and deseeded

Once all is done put in the oven at 200C (or 400F) for 20 minutes

Roasted Green Chiles at the Local Grocery Store

Today I bought roasted green chiles at the local supermarket. I think they are chiles and not green peppers because they were a bit spicy, not a lot but enough to put them out on "green peppers" in my book.
They come in a plastic bag and honestly do not look super appetizing.

They look a bit better out of the bag but not a lot more.

But they are delicious!

I was looking at them not sure what to do and decided not to get any. Then a saw a young woman buying some so I asked her how to eat them. She obviously uses them a lot because she immediately came up with a long list of dishes, none of which I knew.
I thought I would keep it simple, especially since I am in the camper and I had mine in a tortilla with avocado, cheese and some crushed corn tortilla (to add some crunchiness), and it was super nice.

Green Tea and Black Sesame Ice Cream

I am obvious looking for recipes using ground green tea.

I found something in "lemon Grass and Ginger Cookbook - vibrant Asian recipes" by Leemei Tan.

Here is my SERIOUSLY modified and SERIOUSLY simplified version:


1. Get some good quality vanilla icecream.
2. Let is soften enough to be able to mix stuff into it.
3. Add powered green tea and gound toasted black sesame seeds and mix.


I have not made it but I would like to try it. This post is only here for me to remember it.

Top of my head I would say that replacing the black sesame seeds with nigella seeds* (also ground) or chili pepper flakes might also be quite nice. But if you use chilies I would think that you would have to be careful not to ground them and not break them up when mixing them into the icecream. They may overpower everything else otherwise.



 * "nigelle seeds" : as I have already explain in previous recipes nigella seeds are NOT the same than black sesame although they are often confused one for the other. They have very different tastes.

Panch Phora (Five Seeds)

This post is for me so I can remember the 5 seeds, and also as an idea when I wonder what to eat.

Panch Phora has nothing to do with the Chinese five-spice powder. It is reputed to be of Bengali origin and anyway it is not a powder.
The idea is to balance "sweet, pungent, tangy, hot and amalgamating" (from an article on Phang Phora on Gourmet Traveller of March 1999). I would not myself qualify "amalgamating" as flavour, but here you are.

Here is one recipe:
- Brown mustard seeds (the heat of mustard comes over time after the seeds comes in contact with water)
- Nigella seeds (not to be confused with black cumin, the sometimes are called onion seeds or kolonji) for "tangy"
- Cumin
- Fenugreek (listed as "hot" ????)
- Fennel

A very simple dish where you can use phang phora is diced and pan-fried potatoes.

Chinese Restaurant Menu

I love China, and I love Chinese food. I always wish I could eat more than 2 or 3 meals a day when I am in China so I could try more dishes.
I normally eat in small "hole-in-the-wall" restaurant and try to stick to one or two of them so I can work my way through the menu.
This is the menu from the restaurant just around the corner from my hotel in Kunming and where I tried to have my meals.

Here is a close up of the end of the menu just so you can see how many item there are on the menu.

 .....Yes indeed 129 items. Even eating 2 different items per day you would have to be in Kunming for just over 2 months to try them all, and if you repeat an order because you really like the dish you could easily spend 3 months just trying to finish the entire menu. And you can also see some of the prices, though in the second column of the menu some items were up to 10 RMB......still very cheap. Just the same I don't want to waste food and order more dishes that I can eat so there are only so many I can try.
Everything I tried was great! (sorry no photos of the meals)

"Cocoa" or "Cacao"?

Early I posted about my new vice: eating "100% cocoa" and then today I noticed that the product I eat is labeled "cacao"!
I always thought that in English it was "cocoa" and in French "cacao", which of course I thought was quite funny, but now I am not sure....Well I am sure it is funny to me but I am not sure that in English it is truly "cocoa".
I had to go and check to see if these were actually two different things and it turns out that they are.
"cacao" is the evergreen tree which produce cocoa fruits and seeds (note they are not beans).
Whereas "cocoa" is either the fruit, the powder from the roasted, husked and grounded seeds of the cacao, or the drink made from the powder.
Or at least this is the way this online dictionary defines it.

So to following this the label my post was right to read "cocoa" instead of "cacao" regardless of what the product is labeled since this is not 100% of the tree and even though it is 100% of the seeds they are processed, they are not just seeds sitting there .....

The Concise Oxford Dictionary says:
"cacao": seeds of tropical tree, giving cocoa and chocolate; the tree.
"cocoa": Powder made from crushed cacao seeds often with other ingredients; drink made from this or from the seeds.

At the end I still don't know if I am eating cacao or cocoa!!!
Anyway enjoy your end of year festive chocolates, that at least is clearly called chocolate.

De Villiers Chocolate (which does not produce what I am eating these days) has an interesting post on their website about the how cacao is processed. What I get is from Willie's cacao and they also have a great site explaining how they do it.
Turns out that in a very similar fashion than coffee the cacao seeds are roasted and the husks are removed. After this the grinding, refining, conching and tempering are of course not like coffee anymore since one of the particularity of cacao is that about 50% of the cacao seeds is cocoa butter. (notice how you go "cacao seed" to "cocoa butter"!! interesting!!!). I have to admit that the process seems quite tricking but then again we all know that chocolate can take that weird texture when heated if it is not done carefully.

100% Cocoa, My New Bad Habit

Here in South Africa you can get 100% cocoa. Because I cannot eat sugar once as a treat I bought myself some. Now I am in trouble. I like it, though I realize that it may be an acquired taste. I already know that I do not care for the Indonesian cocoa as much as the others. So far I find cocoa from both Madagascar and Venezuela quite nice. I think Venezuelan cocoa may be a little easier to like, smoother while the Madagascar cocoa has more punch....And there are more to try!
I should say that without any sugar cocoa is bitter, since I started eating this 100% cocoa stuff I once had a "nice" chocolate with 85% cocoa and I thought the sugar was ruining it. I am in deep trouble. Where am I  going to find single provenance 100% cocoa when I am not in South Africa!!!!