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"People who love to eat are always the best people."
One of my favourite Youtube channel is Cooking with the Dog. It is a cooking show with a Japanese lady and his dog. They make pretty delicious food. The dog doesn't do any cooking though... One of the recipes that I learned from Cooking with the Dog is the rare tofu cheesecake. I have made no bake cheesecake a few times, but usually the cream cheese is too overpowering for me. I always like the lighter favour that came with the tofu cheesecake. However, do note that sometimes if you have a lot of water in the tofu... it can soak the cake crust and the whole thing would just fall apart (true story). It has happened to me before. If you don't have a digital kitchen scale like me, you can just eyeball the ingredients. A does not like the fact that I am not accurate with regards to measuring my ingredients. I claim that I like to experiment.
1. Start by greasing the cheesecake tin with some butter so that it is easier to pull out the cheesecake later. 2. Microwave your butter to melt it while you crumble the crackers. You can put the crackers in the plastic bag to smash it up. A doesn't like it so I did it slowly via a large spatula. 3. Mix the melted butter with the crumbled crackers. It should be kind of a slightly moist consistency. Too much butter will make the crumbs wet and that is no bueno in terms of the taste of the cake crust. Dump the mixture into the cake tin and press it down with a spoon to squeeze out the air. Make sure the layer is pressed down evenly. Pop this bad boy into the fridge. Give yourself a break for like 10 minutes for constructing the cheesecake bottom. 4. If you have a blender, use a blender to mix whipping cream, yogurt, tofu, cream cheese, sugar, and lemon juice together. If you don't have one, get ready for an arm workout. Usually the cream cheese is super thick. I would suggest that you microwave it to soften it and then break it into pieces and slowly add the pieces into the mixture while you whip. Whip it until the consistency of the mixture is uniform. 5. While you continue your arm workout, you should heat up 2 cups of water (multitasking).
6. In a separate measuring cup, measure out 50ml of hot water and add in the gelatin powder slowly while mixing it with a fork. The solution should now turn slightly cloudy and smell like fish food. I don't know why... I always think gelatin smells like fish food. 7. Once the gelatin solution is ready, dump it into the cream cheese mixture and whip it. I would say that you should give it a good whip for like 3 minutes. If you arm is tired at this point, switch to your non-dominant arm and whip it for like 5 minutes. 8. Take out the cheesecake tin from the fridge (should be like 20 minutes now) and just pour all the cream cheese + tofu and yummy goodness into the tin. You can tap the tin lightly to get rid of air bubbles (mainly a cosmetic kind of thing). Pop this bad boy back into the fridge for 2-3 hours. I usually check it at about 1 hour to see whether the cheesecake is still jiggling around. Even if it is still jiggling around...there is nothing you can do until it firms up. 9. Now it is the hardest part... taking the cheesecake out of the tin. Cooking with the dog used a can and placed the cheesecake tin on top of the can to slowly get rid of the tin. I am more barbaric. I use two plates and try to flip it backwards and then flip it right side up. WARNING: There is a chance that the cheesecake will just fall onto the ground with your plate. Therefore, it is always good to make 2 cheesecakes. 10. Add whatever garnish you want. I don't have a microplane so I used a cheese grater to give my cheesecake a bit of a zest. You can add berry compote or whatever your heart desires.
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So I am back to the land where Whole Foods stores are plenty again! Pretty excited about using the organic ingredients to make homemade food. This is a lunch that I packed for A. Spicy Minced Beef NoodlesThese are handmade noodles from Kiki, which is a Taiwanese restaurant chain. You can actually get these in Singapore, but it is definitely more expensive. They are like instant noodles but with handmade noodles texture. Perfect for a quick lunch or some lazy dinner. The instruction is in Chinese so I am going to translate it in case anyone wants to try them out. Essentially 1. Wait for the pot of water to boil 2. Put the noodles in for 3-5 minutes depending on how you like it 3. Take the noodles out and run it through a sieve 4. Put the sauce pack over the noodles 5. Enjoy! I actually did it a bit differently 1. Wait for the pot of water to boil 2. Put the noodles in for 5 minutes 3. Use the sauce pack + Kiki spicy sauce to cook minced beef in a separate pan and stir fry with finely chopped garlic 4. Take the noodles out, place them into a sieve, and run filtered water over the noodles to cool them off 5. Pour the stir fried minced beef over the noodles 6. Lightly drizzle olive oil to prevent the noodles from sticking together. Crispy Kale ChipsA helped me with the kale chips. We bought like 3 bundles of kale for $5 from Whole Foods and it was way too much kale for us to eat so we decided to make some kale chips. It is surprisingly easy to make these (sorry, no pictures because it was pretty late at night when we decided to make these). Instructions 1. Line the baking pan with aluminum foil 2. Pick large kale leaves and space them out on the baking pan (pat them dry with a paper towel if you need do, we used a salad spinner so they were pretty dry). *The kale will shrink in the oven after baking. 3. Preheat the oven to 250 F 4. Sprinkle some Himalayan salts over the kale 5. Drizzle some olive oil over the kale 6. Pop these bad babies (kale) in the oven x 20 minutes 7. You can check whether it is ready by tasting it. If it is crispy then it is ready. Be careful not to burn it. I crumbled some kale chips over the beef noodles and top off the lunch with baby carrots (should have bought those rainbow color baby carrots lol for insta factor). Easy-peasy lunch to go in a glass jar. If you are using a glass jar like me, remember to leave it open to cool first after you put in some hot food otherwise it is impossible to open the lid later. What to buy in terms of organic food?Check out EWG's 2017 Dirty Dozen and Clean 15 to figure out where to save costs.
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