Cheese | Wok With Me, Baby

Posts Tagged ‘Cheese’

Spicy, buttery rearranged cheese biscuits

November 23, 2012 by MaryAnne

Apparently I’ve been on hiatus.

I popped by here yesterday to update my plug-ins and noticed I hadn’t done anything in two whole months. You’d think I was starving to death or something.

Which I was, for a while.

After we came back from a gluttonous week in Hong Kong in early October, I sentenced myself to a 30 day detox, cutting out everything that was fun in the universe: no grains, no dairy, no sweeteners (not even honey), no starchy veggies, no nothing. I lived on veggies… and veggies and tuna and coffee and grilled chicken enlivened by the spice rub I brought back from Morocco.

Somehow I survived.

I didn’t do much inspired cooking though. Certainly nothing worth noting here.

Oh, hey, look, it’s another freaking tuna salad! I can’t wait to document it for posterity!

Oh, no, wait. Never mind.

Anyway, I’m back. I’ve dusted off the oven and prepped myself mentally to regain the 6 or 7 kilos I lost over the past 2 months. After all, it’s winter now and I need to be ready for the long, unpleasant season of hibernation. Shanghai is bad at winter.

See?

Today’s forecast: dire, with a chance of grim extending to the weekend. Highs of meh, with a projected low of get me the hell out of here.

(more…)

Category Baked Things, Milky Cheesy Things, Uncategorized | Tags: butter,Cheese,OMFG Yum,quick bread,spicy,Toaster Oven | 4 Comments
Soft Cheese; Hard Wok: Experimenting with Fromage

March 1, 2012 by MaryAnne

I’ve made cheese here before. You may recall my happy forays into mascarpone and ricotta a few months back. As well, over on my other blog, the non-foodie one, I delved briefly into goat milk paneer when I went home last summer. It was creamy and gorgeous and fantastically goaty.

Alas, I have no access to goats here. Also, one of the key ingredients that I had been using for all my previous soft cheeses- lemon juice- seems to be out of season right now in Shanghai. There are a few over priced limes in a few shops but no lemons. I wanted to make paneer again, just to see if it could be done in a wok with irradiated, non-organic, non-goaty Chinese milk and rice wine vinegar.

It can.

I’m starting to wonder if there’s anything that can’t be done with a wok and rice wine vinegar. Seriously. I think I may need to include them in my Take Over The World tool kit. And maybe a goat, too. To make a nice wheel of herbed chèvre to spread on crackers when I’m taking a break from ruling said world.

Help! Help! I'm being kidnapped! Geddit? KID napped! I'm a goat! Hahaha!

Anyway. (more…)

Category Improbable Things, Milky Cheesy Things, Uncategorized | Tags: Cheese,Indian,Toaster Oven,wok | 11 Comments
Gnocchi with Pesto Cream Sauce à la Wok

October 12, 2011 by MaryAnne

I’m in the middle of a personal dilemma of sorts this week. I’ve been feeling extraordinarily exhausted and unmotivated, craving hibernation and inactivity and solitude as much as possible. However, my inner cheerleader (damn her!) has been trying her best to get me out of bed, out of the flat, doing something, anything.

I kind of hate her.

One of the results of this has been an awful lot of cooking going on. Elaborate, multi-part recipes that take up most of the afternoon. Heavy, fragrant autumnal dishes that leave me feeling even more lazy and tired and unmotivated after eating them.

But so very, very yummy.

I’ll be extraordinarily fat by the time winter rolls around, at this rate.

This morning Doug asked me if we could do pesto pasta with chicken for dinner. I said sure. No problem.

Now, if I was sane I’d probably pop down to the import shop and buy a little jar of pesto and a box of pasta and a packet of chicken bosoms. Prep time would be, um, maybe twenty minutes, including the time it takes to bring the water to a boil.

Did I do that?

No.

Let me show you what I did, and after you see what I did, I want you to imagine how insanely tired I feel now. (more…)

Category Improbable Things, Pasta Things, Uncategorized | Tags: Cheese,Gnocchi,OMFG Yum,Pesto,wok | 7 Comments
Welsh Rarebit à la Chinoise

September 7, 2011 by MaryAnne

I’ll admit now that I’d never actually ever made Welsh Rarebit (or Rabbit or Bunny or whatever) before I was subtly dared to do so the other day on Facebook and so it’s a bit absurd that I’m now taking on the challenge of adapting it for a Chinese kitchen.

My usual lazy Google search for a recipe gave me Food Network USA ,Wikipedia and New York Times pages, followed up by Pioneer Woman. Not one Welsh face in the crowd, as you can see, though the generically British Jamie Oliver did make an appearance on page 2. Rather discouraging, really. (more…)

Category Improbable Things, Milky Cheesy Things, Uncategorized | Tags: Cheese,Cheese Sauce,OMFG Yum,Toast,wok | 8 Comments
Ricotta Ravioli with Chinese Characteristics

September 3, 2011 by MaryAnne

Let’s start with the ricotta.

Estimated prep time: However long it takes you to juice a lemon, pour 4 cups of milk into a saucepan and heat it a bit, pour in the lemon juice, wait 5 minutes, pour the lemony milk into strainer and then wait 1-2 hours for it to drain. So let’s say a total of 2 hours and ten minutes, with about 15 minutes being active. The rest is low-key coffee drinking time.

In Shanghai, it is actually possible to buy cheese. Not everywhere, mind you, and with very variable options. In most shops in non-laowai neighbourhoods, you’ll generally just find the Chinese equivalent of Kraft Singles. At City Shop, a Hong Kong based grocery chain where the foreigners push their trolleys down aisles full of expensive, imported non-melamine dairy products, German muesli, Mexican salsa and French chocolate, a tiny, tiny 150g pot of dubious ricotta (when in stock, which it wasn’t) costs about 50 rmb (about US$8), which is totally absurd. So I decided to make my own. (more…)

Category Milky Cheesy Things, Pasta Things, Uncategorized | Tags: Cheese,OMFG Yum,Pasta,Ravioli,Ricotta,wok | 8 Comments