PULL UP YOUR SLACKS!

A record of 12 days since I last blogged! Guilty as charged! So many things coming at one time, I feel like a cheerleader in a locker room. Here’s a quick summary of what’s happened in the last 2 weeks.

In the perfect world, everyone would be tolerant and graceful towards cultural differences and take up any opportunity to embrace the rich diversity so prevalent in our Australian community. Well, not the readers of this blog! My tofu blog was abused, spat upon, smashed to a pulp, splattered against the wall and finally reduced to a mangled mess of ugly words by the insightful critics of this blog. These same critics must have forgotten I was the one who introduced them to the delightfully piquant sweet and sour fish, the tender and succulent beef in black bean sauce, the crispy and aromatic salt and pepper calamari and the savoury fragrance that is Malaysian styled long beans. Racists…….

Chinese New Year was on Sunday and on Saturday night, went out for dinner with the gang consisting of 2 Aussies, 2 Singaporeans and 1 Somalian. It was like a reunion dinner of sorts, and the restaurant was so crowded, even though it was 8:30 by the time we started, there were still heaps of people waiting outside for a table. Helps when you can speak a little Cantonese, make queue jumping legitimate. There was this Chinese guy who had not come across the concept of waiting in line and headed straight for an empty table to “reserve” it. Lady Boss screamed at the top of her voice in Mandarin “THIS IS NOT HOW IT WORKS HERE! GET OUT HERE AND QUEUE UP!”. Glad to know that the “Rude Service at Chinese Restaurants” policy applies to all races and creeds.

Mardi Gras is in 2 weekends’ time! Still heaps of things to be done, but it always works out fine at the last minute every year. Being a dress up party this year, I had to source around for slightly more feminine clothes. Mama Seh Learn promptly came to my rescue, and brought me down to Grand Mama’s house to pick a suitable outfit (or four) for the grand event. When I arrived, it’s like I’ve received a rainbow ticket to visit Grand Mama and the Costume Factory. Rows after rows of dresses ranging from elegant to slutty, shoes rivaling Imelda Marcos’ and glittery shiny shimmery accessories that could blind you in an instant! I have truly found my fairy godmother, all I have to do is to bring her a pumpkin next time I get down.

Most of you should have received your invites by now. If not, give me a call and I should be able to book you in for the 2012 season.

Ohhh…I have exciting news. If you’ve read from my earlier entry, Sharon is frightful of Chinese food because she thinks the Chinese only eat deep fried cockroaches and chicken feet. After weeks and weeks of cajoling and mental manipulation, she has finally decided to let me buy her a Chinese dinner!!! (rub hands in glee…..revenge is imminent…..). This is an exclusive deal with Sharon for you readers of the blog. I will be documenting the process as well as filming the proceedings. Do check back soon to experience her joy (or misery) as she puts a Chinese sausage in her mouth for the first time!

See yas soon…..

NOTHING WRONG WITH TOFU!

That's right, nothing wrong with it!

This blog came about because of a "terrible" incident I had last year when we were visiting some friends up in Wollongong and I made the grave mistake of ordering a stirfried tofu dish in a Chinese restaurant. When the dish came, lets just say the rest of the table weren't impressed. True enough, the dish didn't look the best. In fact, the dish bore a faint resemblance to stirfried vegetables with pieces of washing sponge dropped in accidentally by the washing lady. That incident has haunted me ever since. How could I have single handed destroyed the reputation of one of classic Chinese ingredients that fed billions of Chinese people from Emperors right down the simple pheasants???!!! I shall now attempt to salvage the bad rapt that this humble food has copped.

Let's start with the origin of tofu. It was believed that tofu, like gravity, was accidentally discovered when some genius accidentally knocked some salt over into a pot of warm soybean milk. Because the salts contained calcium and magnesium salts, it caused the milk to coagulate into a firm gel like material, thus its other name, beancurd. The Western world has cheese, the Chinese have their tofu.

The inventive Chinese (after all, we invented spaghetti and built the only structure that could be seen from space) took this strange concoction and decided it was too good to just eat it as it is. They experimented cooking it with lots of different ingredients. At last count, a google search yielded 800 websites devoted entirely to cooking tofu. Of course, the Japanese had their hand in it too, but I'm not going do an Asian overload today.

Tofu contains high quality plant protein, and is especially important for people like me who are trying to dumb down and become muscleheads. It is also high in calcium, which great for your bones and low in saturated fat. All these explains why tofu is such a hit with lesbians. And it is cheap too! This is always a plus point for people who love indulging in cheap red wine from a cask.

Well, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I have presented my findings for the much maligned ingredient. Its now up to you to pass judgment on it. I know how daunting it is to consume something so foreign looking, but I assure you the benefits will definitely outweigh the fear. If I manage to convince Keith that a yum cha restaurant is NOT a live abbatoir cluttered with caged chickens and screeching pigs, I'm sure I can make you believe that tofu is one of the greatest food ever invented by the human race.

As a famous (and dorky) Chinese chef from America, Martin Yan once said, "If you get bored in the kitchen, take a wok in the park!"

Here's how you cook it! (Its not me, so don't get too excited!)