Sunday, February 28, 2010

Nikuman! (Without the Niku!)


After I told my friend Edie about making these, she kindly reminded me that Niku means meat in Japanese. Since I made them without meat, I don't know what to call them. Steambuns? Doesn't sound as impressive as Nikuman.
I went crazy for the youtube cooking show 'Cooking With Dog' a couple of weeks ago, and vowed to myself to test out one of the recipes on the show.

I made the steambuns with a filling of green onion, tvp, shiitake mushrooms, and zucchini flavoured with hoisin sauce, soy and mirin. The results were delicious, but the recipe took the better part of a day! I had to proof the buns twice to get them to rise. I think they're not as beautiful as the ones on the internet video, but I might make these again someday...if I become a housewife and have endless hours to kill :)

Homemade Pasta 2 - ENTER THE MACHINE


Finally broke down and bought a pasta machine. Turning into a proper nonna over here! I love fresh pasta, but rolling and cutting it by hand can be a pain, and I wanted that fresh taste with a little less work.
Unfortunately, no pictures of the machine in action (hey, I needed both hands to wrangle the noo
dles!) but some of the process steps are below. I plan to make spinach or tomato noodles next!
This dough wasn't vegan, but the next will be. For the first try, I stuck with a basic recipe of 2 eggs to 2 cup
s of flour, mixed gently with a fork, kneaded for 10 minutes and then allowed it to rest covered in plastic wrap. I rolled it out into sheets using successively smaller settings on the pasta machine's flat roller, and then dusted the sheets with a little flour before running them through the fettuccine-type setting. I tossed them in flour and allowed them to dry for a few hours (well, I cooked up a bunch before that happened, with a little pesto and some tofu steaks. YUM!)