I checked Dr. Weil’s site and did not find much except in relation to bursitis — which fortunately my hubby is suffering from right now — so I’m putting the information away in my mental file cabinet. However, that does not help me. I certainly don’t have turmeric pills in the house… Since turmeric is related to ginger perhaps I can just make some ginger tea? I’d take a cup of my favorite green tea but that has caffeine which is of course a migraine precursor.

Another website mentions oolong tea as a good remedy, but I’m trying to find supporting evidence and they don’t list any. And then there’s Vemma Vemma, which promotes mangosteen… but the only mangosteen available in these here parts is the canned kind, and at 11:13 pm I highly doubt any of the Asian stores near me would open their doors just to sell me a can…. not that I’ve found much reason to believe it will truly do me any good. That website certainly promotes it as a cure-all, and I’m always suspicious when I read those claims. (HT BTW to Cure My Migraine for that one. I’d consult a good book on Ayurvedic medicine but I sold mine last month, and while it was here I admit to letting it become all dusty and unused on the shelf. Has anyone tried this? It may at least be useful for the next migraine….

I’m afraid I’ll have to turn to that Tylenol bottle after all. Goodnight.

Okay, I’m back. I found my Prescription for Nutritional Healing and among the things recommended for migraines are cayenne pepper, ginger, and gingko biloba, the last supposedly to enhance cerebral circulation.

If you suffer from migraines, here’s an agency offering help:

Headaches.org from the National Headache Foundation. I searched their site but no mention of turmeric.

I’ll go play Debussy’s Clair de Lune now and attempt to go to sleep.

Post from: Blisstree

Migraines and Asian Food

• Sinamak
• Achara
• Candied Sampaloc (tamarind) — using my aunt’s recipe; she had a candied sampaloc business back in the ’70’s
• Pastillas, but not just the milk kind, we’ll make fruity ones as well
• Ensaimadas with cheese or ube
• Tamari or wasabi flavored nuts
• Themed gift baskets for preparing an Asian meal, e.g., ingredients for Pad Thai or Sushi

What are your favorite Asian homemade food gifts?

Post from: Blisstree

Brainstorming: Asian Food Gift Ideas

Participating restaurants include Dragon Boat, Shoya, Sawasdee Thai, Le Taj Brasserie, and Omah’s. There will be cooking competitions, river cruises, and museum tours, among others.

More details here.

Lt Bourke Street
Melbourne, Victoria 3000
11am-11pm daily
September 1-30, 2007
Contact #: 0418 589 778 and individual event participants (see website for #s)
Email: affmel@bigpond.net.au

Post from: Blisstree

Melbourne’s 21st Asian Food Festival, September 1-30, 2007

There will be food from Kiasu, cooking demonstrations by celebrity chef and cookbook author Terry Tan, and of course Tiger Beer. There will also be an art gallery, martial arts, dragon dancing, and magic shows to entertain attendees.

Admission is FREE
Boiler House (Truman Breweries),
Vibe Bar and 93 Feet East, Brick Lane, E1 6QL

Post from: Blisstree

Tiger Beer Chilli Crab Singapore Festival – September 1-2, 2007

Aren’t these the cutest? I couldn’t resist. They’re the perfect little treats for not-so-perfect little girls who love hopia. Found them locally, imported from Eng Bee Tin Philippines.

I promised my 5-yo we’ll make this soon. Mooncake season is practically here — time to get out that recipe!

Mooncake molds available at the Wok Shop or at eBay. There’s a Malaysian gal there who sells mooncake molds sometimes, but as far as I know she only does it seasonally…

Post from: Blisstree

Hopia Dice from Eng Bee Tin

You cannot be Filipino and not love sinigang. For that reason alone, rasam would be tops on a Filipino’s list of favorite Indian foods. Rasam is what I make in the cold season, when I don’t have fish or meat in the freezer and yet I’m longing for something hot and sour, to sip and savor. My favorite rasam comes from Indian Home Cooking by Suvir Saran. I have varied the ingredients from time to time based on what I had, or other rasam recipes I’ve found on the ‘net. And now I have a confession to make — sometimes when I’m lazy I use Filipino sinigang broth powder in the base. Or I start out making traditional rasam, but use the sinigang mix to adjust the sourness of the broth. (Just thinking about this makes my mouth water again.) But here’s Saran’s recipe (rewritten to suit me:)), and links to other rasam you can try.

1 tablespoon coriander seeds
1 1/2 teaspoons black peppercorns
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Make the spice mixture: Grind all to a fine powder using a mortar and pestle or a small coffee grinder reserved for the purpose. (Although, I think I’ve mentioned before, it’s so much fun to make coffee and find that there’s leftover spice in the grinder that flavors it — cardamom works really well!)

1 cup yellow split peas
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
6 cups water
1 1/2 teaspoons tamarind concentrate (I sometimes double this, or use a chunk chopped off a tamarind block)
1/2 cup warm water
1 1/2 cups chopped tomatoes, divided use
2 large garlic cloves
1 organic lemon, cut in half and juiced; reserve the lemon halves
1/4 teaspoon asafetida powder
4 hot green chiles, slit in the middle but not all the way through
2 teaspoons salt or to taste

Make the broth: Combine split peas, turmeric, and water in a saucepan. Bring to a boil and skim. Reduce heat to a simmer and cook, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking, until peas are tender, half an hour or so. While the peas are cooking, dissolve the tamarind concentrate in the water. Puree 1 1/2 cups of the tomatoes, plus the garlic, in a food processor or blender. When the peas are done, strain them and reserve the peas for another use. Measure the broth and add water if necessary to make 4 cups. Return to saucepan and add lemon halves. Bring to a boil and skim. Add tamarind water, the tomato-garlic puree, the ground spice mixture, the asafetida, the chiles, and the salt. Simmer 10 minutes, then add the remaining tomatoes and cook 3 more minutes.

2 teaspoons canola oil
2 teaspoons black mustard seeds
3 whole dried red chiles
4 fresh curry leaves, torn

1/4 cup chopped cilantro

Make the tempering oil: In a small saucepan, heat the oil and mustard seeds until the seeds crackle, 1-2 minutes. Add chiles and cook, stirring, until starting to brown. Add curry leaves and stir.

Stir tempering oil into soup along with lemon juice and chopped cilantro. Serve hot.

Chandrika’s Black-Eyed Beans Rasam
Saffron has a recipe here and a really cute story about her first encounter with a “melting pot” called eeya chombu. For a discussion of eeya chombu / eeyum shombu, click here or . (Heh, just ignore the little arguments, there’s is good information there.)
Indira’s Tomato Rasam and Taro Root Rasam.
Shathabhishekam Rasam from Hemant Trivedi
a very nice rasam for when you’ve got an abundance of mint to harvest, from Priya at Sugar and Spices
Ginger Rasam from Viji at Yum Blog
Priyanka’s Mango Rasam calling for raw mango seed, which I haven’t tried before!

One of the things I love about food bloggers is how they detail instructions that you normally wouldn’t see in a cookbook, or make suggestions that you may not have thought of. One person says that rasam should never be allowed to boil. Indira says that very little oil should be used for the tempering oil. Keep those in mind when you experiment on your rasam.

Post from: Blisstree

Lemon Rasam

This was a recipe adapted from Susanna Foo’s cookbook.

It’s quite surprising, the use of thyme and tomato — ingredients you don’t usually see in Chinese cuisine. However, curiosity got the better of me and I tried it anyway. While this is a dish that’s easy enough to tackle on a hot summer evening, I would much rather have tried the soy sauce-rice wine-black vinegar of which Ms. Foo speaks in her notes. This one was just too much an amalgam of stuff that none of the individual elements stood out in the end, unlike Chinese dishes where certain things pop out at you: SWEETNESS! HEAT! Nothing like that happens here. This may be a good introductory recipe, though, for someone just beginning to cook/eat Asian food.

2 tablespoons canola oil
2 pounds country-style ribs
3 garlic cloves, crushed
1 cinnamon stick
2 tablespoons grated orange zest
1 teaspoon anise seed
1/2 cup Madeira
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar (I used black instead)
1 tomato, peeled and cubed
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 cup pork or chicken stock
kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Heat oil in a large saucepan/casserole over medium-high heat. Add ribs through anise seed. Cook a few minutes, turning, until ribs are seared. Add remaining ingredients up to thyme, plus 1/4 cup of the stock. Cover and cook, stirring occasionally, 45 minutes to an hour, or until pork is tender. Remove ribs from pan and deglaze with remaining stock, scraping up any brown bits. Boil down sauce until thick and syrupy. Strain sauce through a sieve before serving, sprinkle on salt and pepper to taste.

Post from: Blisstree

Braised Country-Style Ribs

My crisper had nothing that evening but some lettuce, avocadoes and green onions. So I thought — perfect! We’ll have a green salad! Doesn’t make for a very good picture here as you can see, but it did make for some good eating.

1/4 cup miso of your choice
2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
2 tablespoons yuzu juice
1 tablespoon soy sauce
3 tablespoons Vegenaise or mayonnaise
salt and freshly ground white pepper to taste

Salad greens and veggies of your choice

Combine everything in a bowl; whisk until smooth and creamy. Adjust seasonings with salt and pepper, then pour it on!

Post from: Blisstree

Green Salad with Miso-Yuzu Dressing

Uncle Yip’s Seafood and Dim Sum Restaurant
10736 Reading Road, Evendale
Cincinnati, OH 45241
I-75 Exit 14 (Next to Papa John’s and Tokyo Foods)
513-733-8484
open M-Th 11-10
Fri-Sat 11-11
Sun 11-9:30

Post from: Blisstree

Uncle Yip’s, Cincinnati

A fascinating and engaging look at one woman’s journey, through sushi academy and beyond. Interspersed between the paragraphs holding Kate Murray’s story are names, figures, facts. Trevor Corson covers most everything to do with sushi, and more besides: its history, techniques used, varieties of fish, etc.

Nothing is more interesting than reading about people — and Kate’s experiences and misadventures will hold your interest throughout. That one could find such a root-for character in the pages of a book that also talks about the sushi restaurant industry, its sexist leanings, the academy’s oftentimes brutal training methods and its casualties, is a delight. There are moments that disgust, and moments that make you want to clap with glee. An excerpt:

“Don’t leave your fish lying out, Katie.”
She hesitated.
“You’re not dying,” Zoran said. “I can see that. You haven’t cut a major artery, have you?”

At the end, Corson rounds it all out with “How to Eat Sushi” in the appendix, as well as a lengthy bibliography for anyone wanting to dig deeper into the world of sushi. You can read it for the story and the intrigue, you can read it to learn — or both. I have not found a more entertaining AND educational book on sushi, its far-reaching power and worldwide appeal, as The Zen of Fish, and would heartily recommend it to any sushi lover wanting to know more than just which part of sushi should be dipped in soy sauce.

Post from: Blisstree

The Zen of Fish