Three Asian flavors for Italian Easter rice pies

The bunny and the bells wish you a Merry Easter, even you don’t believe in chocolate eggs.
Well, that’s a personal version of the Italian Easter pies filled with rice and ricotta. This one is simplified and plant-based.

I’ve added flavoring to cooked rice, let it overnight to soak the liquid.

That’s the Asian touch. Lots of zests of yuzu, mikan (mandarin orange) and kumquat, and some juice. I also mixed it a good amount of firm tofu, after squeezing water out of it and crumbling it. Then some coconut yogurt.

Filled pies (the crust is simply flour, olive oil, water sugar, yuzu zest).

Decorate them. That doesn’t cost more and that’s so much prettier.

Bake about one hour at moderate heat.

Let them cool. Ideally wait till the next day so the flavors have the time to develop fully.

Yummm… I love Easter sweets.

Le nouveau gâteau truffe au chocolat , with soy yogurt

Not your grandma’s usual yogurt, not her salon de thé ‘s truffe au chocolat. I had no intention to remake them. The cake ended up similar just like that as I was improvising. Lucky !

Freshly made soy yogurt

It’s the greatest soy yogurt for me. Commercial soy yogurt are always on the runny side of creamy, or on the jello side. And the Japanese soy yogurt, oh my, I’d never eat that, it’s over-sweetened and flavored with with stevia that I loath.
This one has a texture of… yogurt. And a taste of soy. It’s perfect.
Don’t skip the sugar, it helps maturation and the result is not sweet at all.

Easy recipe :
-make one liter of thick tonyu soy milk (tutorial)
-in a small cup mix 1 tbs of potato starch, 1/4 of agar, 1/2 cup of soy milk. Cook a few seconds in the micro-wave till its thickens. You get a mess.
-in the blender, mix the warmed soy milk, the cup of starch, 1 tbs of sugar, 2 tbs of store bough soy yogurt
-let overnight in a yogurt maker

Tip : you can take a thermos/thick pot with a lid, place glass bin in the middle, very hot water around…and you have a yogurt maker. I do that for smaller batches.

Freshly made soy ‘Greek’ yogurt.
Drained in a cheese cloth (from the pharmacy), let overnight in the fridge. Drink the whey or use it for cooking, it’s full of healthy probiotics.

Other dairy-like ideas : my diary-free diary.

Now, let’s make the cake : I whip all that to make a chocolate mousse.

A nutty biscuit base (just blend all together).

Composition : the base, a layer of mousse, slices of kumquat, more mousse, cocoa.
The result is really bluffing. That’s not exactly looking like those from the pâtissier‘s, but that’s as close as you dream of getting for some sweet you make like that in 10 minutes. Taste is divine…

These kinkan (kumquats) are still in season and visible in the streets.

Bounty scones

If you were stranded on a dessert island, you’d have these scones. With coconut and a cup of Java.

Cane sugar. Replace butter and milk by coconut cream and milk (from a can). Add dry coconut powder. For the rest, the recipe is like basic scones.

They didn’t rise much, but they expanded on all sides.
The inside is very soft, not mushy and grainy as the coconut bits didn’t “melt” into the flour.

I simply ate them with more coconut powder and raw kinkan (kumquats) that grow locally and are in full season.

Basic Scones (a.k.a. Basic Biscuits) Source Audax Artiflex’s recipe. Daring Baker’s Challenge.

Servings: about eight 2-inch (5 cm) scones or five 3-inch (7½ cm) scones
Can be doubled
Ingredients
1 cup (240 ml) (140 gm/5 oz) plain (all-purpose) flour
2 teaspoons (10 ml) (10 gm) (1/3 oz) fresh baking powder
¼ teaspoon (1¼ ml) (1½ gm) salt
2 tablespoons (30 gm/1 oz) frozen grated butter (or a combination of lard and butter)
Approximately ½ cup (120 ml) cold milk
Optional 1 tablespoon milk, for glazing the tops of the scones
Directions:
1. Preheat oven to very hot 475°F/240°C/gas mark 9.
2. Triple sift the dry ingredients into a large bowl. (If your room temperature is very hot refrigerate the sifted ingredients until cold.)
3. Rub the frozen grated butter (or combination of fats) into the dry ingredients until it resembles very coarse bread crumbs with some pea-sized pieces if you want flaky scones or until it resembles coarse beach sand if you want tender scones.
4. Add nearly all of the liquid at once into the rubbed-in flour/fat mixture and mix until it just forms a sticky dough (add the remaining liquid if needed). The wetter the dough the lighter the scones (biscuits) will be!
5. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured board, lightly flour the top of the dough. To achieve an even homogeneous crumb to your scones knead very gently about 4 or 5 times (do not press too firmly) the dough until it is smooth. To achieve a layered effect in your scones knead very gently once (do not press too firmly) then fold and turn the kneaded dough about 3 or 4 times until the dough has formed a smooth texture. (Use a floured plastic scraper to help you knead and/or fold and turn the dough if you wish.)
6. Pat or roll out the dough into a 6 inch by 4 inch rectangle by about ¾ inch thick (15¼ cm by 10 cm by 2 cm thick). Using a well-floured 2-inch (5 cm) scone cutter (biscuit cutter), stamp out without twisting six 2-inch (5 cm) rounds, gently reform the scraps into another ¾ inch (2 cm) layer and cut two more scones (these two scones will not raise as well as the others since the extra handling will slightly toughen the dough). Or use a well-floured sharp knife to form squares or wedges as you desire.
7. Place the rounds just touching on a baking dish if you wish to have soft-sided scones or place the rounds spaced widely apart on the baking dish if you wish to have crisp-sided scones. Glaze the tops with milk if you want a golden colour on your scones or lightly flour if you want a more traditional look to your scones.
8. Bake in the preheated very hot oven for about 10 minutes (check at 8 minutes since home ovens at these high temperatures are very unreliable) until the scones are well risen and are lightly coloured on the tops. The scones are ready when the sides are set.
9. Immediately place onto cooling rack to stop the cooking process, serve while still warm.

The Seven Treasures * Les Sept Mendiants

Eating my daily vitamins…
These are food I have nearly everyday, for their healthy property… and well, they taste good too.
Do you believe in SuperFood ? It’s not really scientific, but if you believe those are good, they will be… they can’t hurt, in small amounts. They are all full of fibers.

Natsume or Jujube. The Chinese date.

Kuko or Goji berries.
The Chinese medicine claims that 3 jujubes and 10 goji berries a day would keep you young forever.

3 jujubes : about 20 cal
10 gojis : about 20 cal

Other dry fruits. Here raisins, apricots, currents. Wild blueberries and cranberries are nice too. They bring iron and anti-oxidants. And I rarely have those fruits fresh. They don’t grow here (the berries), or they are weird and suspect (the grapes that “you shouldn’t eat their skin”, the watery supermarket “blueberries” that taste like cucumber) or… I don’t why we don’t get them more easily (Nagano produces lots of apricot, and they keep them there).

10 raisins : about 15 cal
1 apricot : about 16 cal

Chili pepper. The red one. I think that helps you fight the little Winter miseries like colds and flues, and that makes you stronger to face Summer humidity and heat.

Walnuts or flax seeds. They bring the good fat, the rare omegas.
In addition, I eat other nuts like almonds, cashews, macadamia, pistacchio… more rarely peanuts in their shells.
2 walnuts (8g)
Cal 48 F4.6g C0.8g P1.9g

Cocoa. Here chips of cocoa paste (or cocoa mass). Unsweetened cocoa powder is good too.
To get the mood and health benefits of chocolate, without the sugar and excess of fat.
3 chips weight 5 g :
Cal 32 F2.7g C1.4g P0.7g

Citrus. Here a kumquat. I try to get the local and season ones. Mikan (mandarine oranges), yuzu, kabosu lemon, sudachi lemon… or grapefruit, ugly, orange, etc.

A kumquat 13 cal

I often eat those food as snack (except the chili) or I use them as ingredient.

So a set makes :
20 + 20 + 15 + 48 + 32 + 13 = 188 calories
It’s better to have that than a mini junk-food treat.