Soy Milk and tofu from scratch

Today was another holiday in France.  So I wanted to make tofu for the first the time.  My mom used to make soy milk but we never did tofu.  Couple of weeks ago, I have bought the most tasteful tofu from an organic store. They sell nagari and soy grains as well, so there was my chance to make my own tofu.  The whole process was fastidious, but the taste was worth it.

Nigari and organic soy beans

 

Soak the beans in water overnight

 

Wash the beans.  Blend the beans with water.

 

Use a cloth and a  strainer, squeak the milk.

 

Boil the soy milk

 

Pour 1 liter of soy milk in a bowl, add the nigari that was previously dissolved in water.

Waite for 15 min.

 

 You can see the tofu is forming in a cheesecloth.

 

Tofu

The remain soy milk.  I added sugar while it was boiling.

Asian Feast

Since I live in France, I do less and less asian cooking.  I get frustated for not finding all the ingredients I want.  I live more than 45 min away from Lille, and that is pretty much the only place I can purchase asian products.  Also, asian cooking takes a lot of time.  Chop chop chop, mix mix grind grind grind...My mom usually cooks meals 1 hour ahead.  My French MIL, would take less than 15 minutes to make a savory meal.  I would even get stressed out for her, for not starting making dinner at 6:45pm.  So from then on, I've decided not to spend so much time cooking.

Yesterday I was in Lille, so I got my ingredients to make an Asian feast! lol

I just made fried dumplings.

For my filling, I just put whatever vegetables I have on hands: shitake mushrooms, cabbage, leeks, shallots and onions.  

Then I chopped all the vegetables in the mixer.  I have cooked the vegetables and let it cool first before adding 500g of ground beef.  I made the dumplings with some store bought sheets.

When you are done with all the wrapping, you fry them.

I like some vegetables to go with the dumplings.  I boiled some bokchoys.

There you go, the finished result.  We had sake to wash them down.

I also made dessert: this is tapioca pudding with bananas.  Ingredients: tapioca pearls, one can of coconut milk, sugar to taste and 3 bananas.

Have a nice Sunday.

If you want a more authentic dumpling recipe, here's a link to one of my favorite food goddess:

http://userealbutter.com/2007/10/04/chinese-dumplings-and-potstickers-recipe/