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Recipe: almond jello dessert

There is snow out there. Oh yes, there is. I can find snow any time of year if I’m willing to climb high enough to get to it. Right now, you don’t have to go very far, but it helps to hop on a bike as some (not all) of the roads leading to the backcountry are clear (but not open to cars yet or ever). It’s the season for the bike-ski or bike-hike or bike-bike and I’m getting better at not crashing into things which is always a desirable skill.

lock (the bikes) and go (hiking)

marsh marigolds coming up streamside

plenty of snow and lots of windfall

I’m spending considerably more time on my bikes of late – both my mountain bike and my indoor trainer (also mountain bike – my engagement mountain bike). With local trails clearing up, we’re trail running in the mornings or evenings when it is a comfortable 45°F. It’s a matter of weeks before the high country trails clear out for hiking and backpacking. It must be spring! Of course it is. The Ass Reduction Plan (ARP) is in full speed. That’s one of the reasons we’ve been consuming fruit like nobody’s business. Well, that and the fact that I just got a Vitamix blender a few weeks ago. While I love my daily smoothie (strawberries, mango, orange, apple, blueberries, grapes, kale, and a little Good Belly and almond milk) I still thoroughly enjoy chewing actual fruit.

lychees, raspberries, oranges, kiwis, pears, grapes

When I was a kid, my dad would make the occasional Chinese dessert. I think my favorite was almond jello, which everyone served cubed with canned fruit cocktail and canned mandarin oranges. I’ve made almond jello from the packets you can purchase at Asian grocery stores, but like almost everything else you can buy in a convenient package, it’s pretty straightforward to make your own from scratch.

almond extract, sugar, agar agar, almond milk

stir agar agar into boiling water until dissolved

stir in sugar until dissolved

You can make almond jello with gelatin or agar agar (particularly if you are vegan). Gelatin gives an elastic result – like the jello with which most people are familiar. I found powdered agar agar at my local Whole Foods in the bulk section and the resulting jello was more brittle in that it yields more easily to the teeth and breaks apart with less effort. Agar agar is derived from red algae and commonly used in Asian desserts. My first introduction to it was a refreshing lemony version chilled on ice that my aunt served to me on a sweltering summer day in Pennsylvania.

add almond milk or regular milk

pour in the almond extract

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Recipe: hunan tofu

At the beginning of the week you’re tip-toeing across frozen goose poop-laden grasses an hour before sunrise and by the end of the week you’re dodging fancy cocktails and flame throwers on a packed second floor of the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art. Oh wait, that’s me. I was shooting the Boulder’s Best Mixologist competition on Sunday. Quite a change of scenery.

one of the sponsors

hapa sushi’s station was hopping

the gals from the kitchen were shaking things up

oak was on fire

No matter if I’m on the road in Middle-of-Nowhere or navigating the great eateries in Boulder, it doesn’t take long before I miss a home-cooked meal. That’s partly because I am a homebody and partly because I know how to cook. I hear of people getting bored with the same five meals each week and wonder to myself when was the last time I repeated a recipe at home? It seems there are always new recipes to discover and try.

ingredients: green onions, tofu, garlic, thai bird chiles, country ham

shaoxing cooking wine, dark soy sauce, sesame oil, black bean sauce, cornstarch, chicken broth

I have been on the lookout for a tofu recipe for several years. My grandma always ordered it when we went to dinner at Chef Chu’s in Palo Alto: tender tofu slices fried then simmered in a sauce with some salty country ham, a little heat, some black beans, garlic, and green onions. They called it Hunan Tofu. I scoured my recipe books, looked online, and chatted with Grandma on more than one occasion about what we thought might be the recipe, but nothing seemed to match.

helps to wear disposable gloves when handling the chiles

sliced and julienned

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Recipe: chinese xo sauce

I sometimes forget that I’m Chinese. It sounds crazy, but it is true. I don’t look in the mirror often (this you can probably tell if you have ever encountered me in real life), there aren’t many pictures of me since I’m usually the one behind the camera, and I live with a white guy and a black dog in Colorado. So it startles me at times when I do take a picture of myself and I think, “Oh yeah… I’m Chinese.”

after a happy day of skiing

And then there are times when I really feel it.

There is a young woman, Janet Liang, who was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia at the age of 22 in 2009. She underwent some nasty chemotherapy treatments and was declared in full remission in 2010. Except she relapsed at the end of 2011. She’s undergoing more chemo now, but her best chance to beat this cancer is to find a bone marrow match and the chances for finding a match are higher within her own ethnic group. She has until April of 2012 to find the perfect match, so time is short. And you know, there are a lot of people out there waiting for a bone marrow match. If we all registered, we might save that many more lives. I tweeted and Facebooked the link to spread the word, and then I went to register online.

I know that fear of wondering if cancer will snuff you out. I knew it at age 36 and it scared the shit out of me. Janet is only 25 years old. She is so young. I was a complete moron at age 25, I can’t even imagine how I would have felt or reacted. I knew the chances of me being a match were slim, but I hoped I could help. When I read the instructions on how to join the bone marrow registry, my heart sank. My history of cancer precludes me from being a donor. I read the guidelines over and over again and the tears spilled down my face. Damn cancer. But my pity party was only a few seconds. If I couldn’t register, I would at least let everyone in my circles know and perhaps get a fraction of them to register. It’s so simple, and yet it’s huge. It is life. Not just for Janet, for many others.

If you feel so inclined, please consider registering through Helping Janet which has links on how to join a bone marrow registry. She’s got just over a month and registration takes a little while, so time is of the essence. And if you could spread the word, that would be aces. Thank you so much. xo

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I think it is very Chinese to be skeptical of Chinese food you aren’t familiar with. Take XO sauce, for instance. This is a spicy condiment chock full of seafood that we usually eat with dim sum, on noodles, on rice, on vegetables, on tofu – pretty much with anything. I grew up knowing it as a true sauce with bright orange oil, colored from the chile. I found a recipe while flipping through my Momofuku cookbook and was pretty jazzed. Homemade XO sauce, at last!

grapeseed oil, garlic, ginger, country ham, chile pepper, dried shrimp, dried scallop

For the uninitiated, there are some items that may be hard to find. Mainly the dried scallops and the dried shrimp. The dried scallops are expensive, but a little goes a long way. When I told my mom I needed to find dried scallops she nearly screamed, “I have some in the refrigerator in our Boulder condo! Use them!” These were whole scallops, which cost more. I said I might use them if I couldn’t find any at Pacific Ocean Market. The scallops are typically found at the front of the Asian grocery store where they sell medicinal items, teas, and ginseng. I had never shopped for them before, but as soon as Mom described where they would be, suddenly the “front counter” of every Asian market I’d ever seen flashed through my brain. Pieces are the cheapest, then they become progressively more expensive for small, medium, large, and extra large.

the array of scallops

whole and pieces

I decided to buy pieces as they were cheaper and I didn’t want to use up Mom’s scallops. I’m still unclear as to why you would buy whole ones anyway because when you rehydrate them, they fall apart. Can anyone enlighten me on that? Oh, and the dried shrimp will likely be in the refrigerated section (in the main part of the store) where they have fresh noodles and pickled vegetables. I was quite pleased to find this kind with no food coloring because all of the ones with food coloring scare me.

small or medium? who knows – i never claim to understand chinese labeling

soak the scallops and shrimp overnight in water (do this first!)

**Jump for more butter**