I've always been equipped with a fairly small appetite. As the years go on, the capacity has diminished further, with difficulty consuming liquids and solids at once without feelings of discomfort. Hence, the traditional breakfast layouts have always perplexed me: a platter of eggs, bacon or sausage, toast, fruit, and coffee is an extravagant North American take often viewed as the equivalent of two meals.
1) Marbled and Jacked-Up Banana Bread
Both loaves were savoured with glee and shared with those in proximity. About four slices of each were then frozen for later enjoyment.
The impromptu encounter with Bao House's Red Bean Buns had my mind whirring. In short, I hadn't been pleased with their $3.99 trio. For an establishment priding themselves in Chinese baos, the order had drawn disgrace; the buns could have been fluffier, but the filling was, without a doubt, the worst part of it all. And perhaps the average person would have sampled the texture-less monstrosity, reviewed the associated the price tag, and deemed it passable. Well, suffice to say, I cannot classify as "average" in my quest for good food.
Diving in head first, I'd skim Just One Cookbook's advertisement-laden recipe page instead of reading the manual. She would categorize red bean paste into two categories: tsubu-an and koshi-an, respectively referring to chunky and smooth variations as well as their applications. My heart yearned for a textured rendition, thus I adhered to the formula for tsubu-an.
The pressure cooker edition specified the following:
- 300 g azuki
- 5 cups/1200 ml water (bean-to-water ratio of 1:4)
- 300 g cups sugar (bean-to-sugar ratio of 1:1 - equal weight)
- pinch of salt
My attempt would involve 325 g of red beans instead, for I had been keen to empty the second-last container in my inventory. Other ingredient amounts of scaled up accordingly. It wasn't until that the unwashed beans and water had been inserted and locked within the Instant Pot that I realized the omission of dried tangerine peel, 陳皮. It was a pivotal ingredient in accentuating the profile of Chinese Red Bean Soup (紅豆沙) that I wished not to exclude. Consequently, I'd run the Instant Pot on the Bean/Chili setting for an additional fifteen minutes after the prescribed twenty-five minute first round.