Angry Apron

This post was suppose to be earlier, but Mother, after I explicitly told her NOT to, took my boba and cooked it in the rice cooker. I don’t know why?! but that’s what she did. It turned out into one big boba. It was, needless to say, mildly upsetting.

But with nothing to do on a Saturday night, I bought another bag of boba. Well I wanted to see 9 but someone didn’t want to go. Anyho, I decided to experiment by making the quintessential Taiwanese drink: Boba.

After having this delicious, chewy potato starch all through grade school, high school, keeping my sanity in college and helping me reminisce in grad school, I just had to take a stab at making it.

Ingredients:

• Potato starch balls, I used 大統珍珠粉圓 (Datong Zhenzhu Fenyuan)
• Water
• Dark brown sugar or molasses or some type of yummy dark sugar**
• Time
• Patience
• And more time
• And more patience

**I actually wanted to try with Winter melon Tea Sugar 冬瓜露 (donggua lu) but I forgot to buy it, so instead I used dark brown sugar

To start testing your patience and potentially making deliciousness,

1. Add some sugar (molasses, dark brown sugar, honey, your choice sweetener) into the water and boil. Take a large stock pot, and start boiling water the syrup mixture (maybe add a cup or two of sugar for a large stock pot, you don’t want it too sweet because we will be making a syrup for the boba later). The sugar will help prevent the boba from sticking to each other.

For a whole bag, I would suggest using 1 part boba to 7 parts water. But as a general rule, make sure that the boba has room to swim. They can’t be too crowded, repeat, they CANNOT be too crowded, or else the boba will begin to stick together and become one big lump of boba. Don’t forget to give the water a pinch or two of salt.

2. Once the water has come to boil, dump in the boba and begin stirring. Seriously, start stirring because if you don’t the boba WILL stick together.

3. Let it boil for 20-30 minutes and stir frequently to prevent the boba from sticking to each other. The boba will start out as a light brown color, but once it touches the water it’ll turn a delicious onyx black.

4. Meanwhile, as your preparing the boba, start making the simple syrup to soak the finished boba.

5. For the syrup, in a small or medium sauce pan, heat up equal part of sugar and water. Let the mixture come to a boil. Let it simmer. Cool. Done.

Easy peasy, I know.

I actually did it slightly different (and probably wrong) but I browned my dark brown sugar first, so it melted and caramelized into deliciousness. I slowly added an equal part of HOT water. The sugar still crystallized, but melted back into the syrup and gave the syrup a slightly less sweet, but smokey flavor. It was pretty delish, but most likely cancerous. Eh.

6. Back to the boba. As the boba is still boiling, after the 20-30 minutes, you’ll want to start to simmer them for another 20-30 minutes with the lid on. Make sure you stir occasionally and check on the boba to make sure they aren’t sticking together. They should be okay, but it’s still good to check. Ideally you’ll have a glass lid so it’ll be easier to see.

7. Periodically check to see if the boba is done. The above time I stated WILL vary from batch to batch. You know they’re done when the outside is a beautiful onyx and chewy, but the inside is almost like an al dente pasta. It should give, but not too easily. It also shouldn’t taste too mushy.

If you think it’s done, then quickly rinse the boba under cool water to stop the cooking process.

But the finished boba in a metal bowl on top of some cold water to further cool the boba.

8. Add your syrup

9. Enjoy! You can put it in milk tea to make Boba milk tea 波霸奶茶 boba naicha or with green bean soup 綠豆湯 lvdou tang or on top of shaved ice 刨冰 baobing.

Unfortunately, my batch came out not good. After all that work and time it was a big fail. My boba was all sorts of off. Some were cooked perfectly, some were undercooked, some where mushy. It was very upsetting. My caramelized syrup was delicious, but that’s besides the point.

I suspect it has something to do with the brand that I bought or perhaps I just cooked it wrong. OH NOES! Then that MAKES ME ANGER!

But seriously, if anyone as any suggestions to help to make it better (or maybe I really am cooking it wrong) let me know!

AngryAprong ANGER! Eat you laters!

A couple weeks ago, I was bringing home some Target bags the other day. Once I came in, I was verbally attacked by my mother.

“What is that?! What did you buy?! No! Please don’t bake anything any more! I’m getting too fat! Please don’t bake anything! Please please please!”

It’s nice to know that you get passive aggressive support from your own parents.

From that day forward, I decided to make her as fat as I could.

The evil plan begins.

After scouring yahoo! Taiwan and other sources for deliciousness, I stumbled upon hungerhunger’s delicious black pepper sauce recipe. I made some adjustments, but all in all, it was to DIE for.

Ingredients:

• 2 shallots, finely chopped
• 3-5 cloves of garlic (not shown in the picture cause it was in the pan already)
• A couple tablespoons of course ground black pepper (adjust to your pepper taste levels, I liked mine extra peppery so I put in 4 tablespoons)
• 1/2 teaspoons of garlic power
• 1/2 cup to 1 cup heavy cream (depends on how creamy you want your sauce to be)
• 1/4 cup Brandy
• 1 cup stock (your choice of animal)*

*I used chicken bouillon and water because I don’t eat beef and I was pairing my sauce with chicken, but you can use whatever stock you find liking to your yummy.

If you cook the sauce after browning your meat, it’ll bring out the extra deliciousness in the sauce, but it’s not required. So here’s how you do it:

First, use the fat left over from your cooking (or butter your sauce pan). Scrap off the browned bits of deliciousness that’s left over from your previous cooking. Yes, it’s cancerous, but it adds so much delicious favor. It’s all the caramelized goodness that’s fallen off and crystallized into awesomeness that’ll make your sauce taste that much tastier.

On a low flame, saute the shallots until they are soft and clear. After add the black pepper and fry it for a couple of seconds to bring out the flavor. Be careful not to burn the pepper or else your sauce will taste like burning.

Increase the fire to low-medium to medium and add the alcohol.

Second, when the alcohol boils, add the cream, garlic powder and stock.

Let the mixture boil for about 7-10 minutes or at least until the mixture becomes thick. The sauce should be reducing now, so it shouldn’t take too long for the sauce to thicken.

If you want the sauce to be darker, then throw in some browning sauce or dark soy sauce. Not more than half a teaspoon; however if you do decide to put soy sauce in it, you might want to skip salting your sauce (cause there’s already salt in the soy sauce).

Lastly, put it on steaks of all sorts (beef, chicken and porkchops) to give it a Hong Kong styled Western food twist. I think it’d go great over roasted potatoes and a substitute for gravy.

I put mine over a grilled deboned chicken leg…and maybe on an Asian pear when I was feeling super piggy (stop judging me).

YUM. ME!

Anyho, AngryApron ANGER! Eat you laters!

I’m starting this post because I apparently bake and cook a lot. Enough to drive my family in fear (and hopefully pleasant surprise) about what I may or may not make. From a failed chocolate raisin bread to an obscene amount of sour cream blueberry pound cake, it’s been an eating adventure at the AngryApron kitchen.

But what really pushed this blog was the sad discovery that a Taiwanese restaurant that I’ve been going to as a kid (even had a meltdown in there) is now defunct and isn’t open anywhere! You shall be missed Happy Time Deli (好年冬). Perhaps it’s the changing demographic in the San Gabriel Valley from Taiwanese/Cantonese to mostly mainland China who don’t seem to appreciate the deliciousness of Taiwanese food or maybe it’s the economic climate, but whatever the case I couldn’t find a good website that showed case delicious Taiwanese food.

So as a challenge to myself to translate recipes from Chinese to English and to explore more of the region’s food, I’m going to try to cook, the best I can, some de-lish Taiwanese fare (while maybe doing other stuff too).

Thanks for reading and I’ll try to post as often as time permits!

Anyho, enough of this.

AngryApron ANGER!

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