Savory Pie hmm hmm hmm

Today Paul and I made Pie yayy!! My only verdict for making things are only to use up dying food. It was my first real food that I've eaten since school started. School is quite hectic and I barely have any time for anything.

We used a vegweb recipe for the pie crust I found it really oil though. When Paul made the pie crust it pooled on the bottom of the pan.

Recipe
1 Baked pie Crust from Vegweb
1 Medium Onion
1 Shallot
2 Cloves Garlic
1 Bunch of Watercress
1 Bunch of Spinach
A handful of Amaranth Leaves ( Yeen Choy)
Tofu
2 1/2 + 1 1/2 Tbsp Vegan Oyster Sauce
10 oz Froze Firm Tofu, Thawed
1/2 Tsp Garlic Powder
Salt for taste
Oil for sauteing

• Rough chop and wash the watercress, spinach and amaranth leaves. If you don't have amaranth leaves just substitute with spinach.
• Slice the onions, shallots and garlic.
• Squeeze out the excess water from the tofu and crumble them into a separate bowl and mix in the 1 1/2 Tbsp of Vegan oyster sauce, garlic powder and salt for tasting.
  
• Preheat the oven to 450 F.
  
• Pour some oil onto a pan and heat it up on high heat. Add the onions and lower the heat to medium and saute the onion for two minutes, a little before the onions are cooked thoroughly. Then add in the shallots and garlic and saute for another minute.
  
• Add in the leafy green mixture and saute them until they start to wilt. Then add in the 2 1/2 Tbsp of vegan oyster sauce and enough salt to taste.
• Add in the tofu mixture into the pan. It should absorb all the excess water from the leafy greens.
  
• Continue to saute the food until all the water is absorbed by the tofu and remove from heat.
• Pour the mixture into the baked crust and placed the pie into the oven and bake it for 20-25 minutes. We made some decoration for the top of the pie so we baked until the extra pie crust on top turned golden.
  

3rd Attempt in Making Mooncake

I've used Lily's Wai Sek Hong's recipe for the Golden syrup since I was not able to find it in my local Asian market and I used Do What I Like's Mooncake Skin.

My first two attempt in making the mooncake skin was a failure. The consistency was crucial. It was something I could not get right due to the golden syrup. It would've been better if I had the golden syrup. The reason for all the failed attempt in making the mooncake skin was because of the golden syrup. I followed the instruction and boiled the sugar mixture until it was golden brown and when the syrup cooled down, it was really thick and hard like carmel so it made the skin way too hard and unmaleable. What I found out by the 3rd attemp was to boil it until it's slightly golden. A little lighter than vegetable oil. The texture of the mooncake skin dough is suppose to be very soft and maleable like bread dough except not gluteny. If the dough is breaking apart and crumbling, DON'T ADD MORE FLOUR!! Only add more flour if the mixture is still too sticky.



With all the failed attempts with the mooncake skin, I made them into cookies yay!! They were pretty good except for the cookies from the first failed attempt since I burnt them!!



Another unpredictable mistake that I had was the filling. I bought premade red bean paste, sesame paste and lotus paste in a can. The red bean and sesame paste were way too soft to roll the filling into balls. It just made a sticky mess on my hand. I tried freezing it, it helped but it made my mooncake skin cold and it tore easily. I mixed the sesame paste with peanut butter a 2 to 1 ratio but it was still too soft. It was much harder than the red bean paste.

The star had the lotus filling which had the correct consistency. The pig had the sesame and peanut butter paste. The cow had the red bean paste. You can tell in the pictures that as the consistency got softer, there were more breakage in the pastry skin. By the time I got to the red bean paste mooncakes the skin was blotched in red.




During the baking process the gravity pulled both the sesame & peanut butter mooncake and the red bean mooncake down so it looked as if it melted. I recommend to make your own paste if you were to make mooncake with filling other than lotus paste. If you decide to use canned red bean paste and black bean paste just reduce it on low-medium heat until it's thick enough for you to roll into a ball with your hands.