Monthly Archives: December 2009

News and links

Posted on by bruleeblog

Have you recovered from Christmas yet? Ready for New Year’s? I’ve had a pretty good holiday so far. Lots of eating, lots of visiting with family and friends, lots of sleeping. And I got some great food books too, which I’m looking forward to reading through.

Mascarpone Stuffed Dates

Posted on by bruleeblog

This is an easy and tasty recipe for entertaining and potlucks. The sweetness of the dish makes it a great finger food dessert, or a sweet appetizer. Key to this recipe is the use of Medjool dates, which are plump and meaty. I experimented with mixing the cinnamon into the mascarpone, but the cinnamon flavour wouldn’t come through unless I placed it on top of each date.

Mascarpone stuffed dates

Mascarpone stuffed dates

Mascarpone Stuffed Dates

Ingredients
Medjool dates
mascarpone cheese
pecans or walnuts
cinnamon

Directions
With a sharp knife, make a small slit lengthwise across the top of each Medjool date. Do not cut all the way through the date! Carefully pull out the seed.

Take a small spoon (or use a filled piping bag) and place a small dollop of mascarpone inside the opening of each date.

Push a nut into the mascarpone. I used pecans but you can easily use walnuts. Dust a sprinkle of cinnamon over each filled date.

Shopping for Asian goodies: tamago kani

Posted on by bruleeblog

Sometimes I amuse myself by picking up random things from Chinese grocery store shelves. There are some odd sounding things out there – some of which I grew up with, and some of which are relatively new to me. I’ve freaked out friends with dried squid (or as a friend who actually likes it calls it – squid jerky). I’ve sampled many varieties of Pocky. But there is always something new from Taiwan or Japan on the shelves, or even something old that just wasn’t available here before.

On one shopping trip to T & T Supermarket, I grabbed a bag of tamago kani (direct translation is “egg crabs” but they probably mean “baby crabs”). These are dried (possibly roasted or fried, I couldn’t tell) and seasoned mini-crabs.

tamago kani

tamago kani

Cute, but at the same time slightly horrifying to think about putting into your mouth, right?

I’m used to eating odd (well, at least to Western standards) Asian food, so I wasn’t too horrified. I mean, it’s just like eating soft-shell crab or some particularly deep fried shrimp that is so crispy that you can eat the tails. Each piece of tamago kani was very crunchy, slightly sweet, and incredibly salty. Way, way too salty for my taste. And no wonder – just take a look at the ingredients:

tamago kani ingredients

tamago kani ingredients

Crab, of course. Sugar – ah so that’s where the sweetness is from. Starch, ok. Soy sauce, sure. And wait, MSG too?? Oh those crazy Japanese. Soy sauce and MSG? That’s just way too much salt for me. This is a fun item to try (and would make a good Fear Factor-type food challenge), but I wouldn’t recommend it for constant snacking unless you want your sodium levels to shoot through the roof.