Miso, Sesame, and Sweet Potato Dip with Tortilla Chips

I made this tasty dip, served with fresh tortilla chips from my local Mexican market, for my family’s 2016 Thanksgiving dinner. The original recipe can be found here: Miso, Sesame, and Sweet Potato Dip Recipe. The original recipe was modified to use a microwave oven to cook the sweet potatoes rather than steaming and garlic was added. Orange sweet potatoes really give this dish its color. The trick to making this dip is to add enough water to the food processor to make a smooth mixture because it’s quite stiff, but still edible, if you don’t. I also forgot to add the green onions to the dip after mixing in the food processor, but it’s included in the recipe.

Enjoy!

Technique: How to Quickly Rehydrate Dried Shiitake Mushrooms (冬菇, Dung1 Gu1)

For the last posting of the Lunar New Year, here’s a technique to quickly rehydrate dried Shiitake mushrooms. In my recipes using dried Shiitake mushrooms, the instructions usually call for soaking in water that has been boiled for at least one hour. This is usually not a problem if you’ve been planning to make a dish ahead of time, but is a problem when you decide at the last minute that you need rehydrated Shiitake mushrooms. That’s exactly what happened to me, I needed rehydrated Shiitake mushrooms at the last minute and had to figure out how to quickly do this. So the technique that I came up with is to boil the mushrooms in the microwave after pouring boiling water over them.

I found that it is important to not fill the bowl with the dried mushrooms completely with boiling water. Leave a space of about 1-inch (2.5 cm.) from the top because the water foams once it reboils in the microwave. So the timing (at least for my microwave) is to turn the microwave on high for 1 minute to reboil the liquid in the bowl, and then use 50% power for another 4 minutes to rehydrate the mushrooms. Once removed from the microwave, the bowl is refilled to the top with more water since the mushroom rehydration liquid is usually used later in the recipe needing the mushrooms. So for the time it takes to boil water plus 5 minutes (rather than one hour), the mushrooms are ready for use.

Enjoy!

Technique: Reheating a Chinese Glutinous Rice Tamale (粽, Zung3)

This posting was updated on 07 Feb 2016. The title and opening text were changed.

This is not a recipe, but a technique to reheat a Chinese glutinous rice tamale. I’ve also heard it referred to in English as a dumpling, but it’s too huge to be called a dumpling!

So what is a Chinese glutinous rice tamale? Unlike the tamale you’re probably familiar with consisting of corn husks wrapped around masa with a meat filling, the Cantonese version consists of bamboo leaves wrapped around glutinous (sticky) rice with pork belly meat, Cantonese pork sausage, and a salted duck egg yolk. In addition, you can also find mung beans, peanuts, chestnut, dried shrimp, Shiitake mushrooms, and other goodies in the tamale, depending upon the source (usually homemade). There are many other Chinese regional tamale variations, as well as sweet versions. Whether or not you’re lucky enough to know someone who makes the tamales themselves (homemade always being the best) or if you buy the tamales at an Asian market, you’ll need to reheat them. Here’s a (relatively) fast method to do so.

Enjoy!