Stacey Makes It

My mom and I decided to try and make water chestnut pudding.  I really didn't do much thinking and was really just helping do grunt work.  My favorite part about making this recipe with my mom was learning about how her mom's water chestnut pudding was the best, and that she was sad that she never learned her mom's recipe.  I think she also got her love of cooking / baking / entertaining with food from her mom.  Sadly, I never got to know my grandmother on my mom's side because she died before I was born. All these years, my mom's been trying to make water chestnut puddings and it took me 31 years to figure out why.  We used this recipe: http://cheateat.typepad.com/blog/2005/08/water_chestnut_.html And we used fresh water chestnuts.  My mom's notes, in the margin: 8.8 oz water chestnut flour (this is the box size, so no measuring here) 33.5 oz water 10.6 oz fresh water chestnuts 7.7 oz sugar 4 tbs vegetable oil First she had me peel the water...

Every Chinese New Year, my mom and I do some Chinese cooking together.  What a great opportunity for my new blog, I thought. :)  Most of my friends know that I'm just starting my foray into the savory and it's not second nature to me like baking has become (try to ignore my high-altitude and mis-cake chocolate cake posts for now). Usually my mom makes nine-layer pudding (gow chong go), New Year's muffins (fat tay), and New Year's pudding (neen go), and then we make Su Mai dumplings together.  This year my mom still made the nine-layer pudding and the New Year's pudding, but we didn't have time for the Su Mai or muffins.  We talked about how only she and I like eating the muffins so it would probably be a waste, but she said, "I really only want to make them to see if they burst." I thought that was cute.  Bursting fat tay is supposed to signal good luck for the New Year. My mom went to epicurious.com to find our turnip cake recipe. I found this...