India field trip: Navratra Festival

This was a field trip that didn't involve leaving home, but rather bringing people to us!  

Navratra is a Hindu festival in honor of the goddesses Durga (power), Lakshmi (wealth), and Saraswati (knowledge).  Navratra means "nine nights" in Sanskrit and is celebrated for nine days, once in the spring and once in the fall.  On the eighth day in the fall, young girls are worshiped as goddesses.  In India, girls go from house to house and collect blessings and small gifts. 

We wanted to share the festival with our friends so we invited some of our neighbors over to celebrate with us.  And we wanted to be equal opportunity, so we invited the boys and the girls.

the kids listen to The Whirl Girl's grandfather tell them about the festival

each kid gets his/her feet washed

then they get a red "tikka" - a powdered dot in between the eyebrows

a nirvan (red ceremonial thread) is tied on the wrist of each of the kids

Then each of the kids received a small gift as a blessing. 

Finally it was time to eat!  There are foods traditionally made for the festival: puri (fried bread), kala channa (black chickpeas) and halwa (a sweet dish made from semolina).  It was a feast for the kids and their parents!  The recipe for halwa follows. 

 

Sooji (Semolina) Halwa
from the kitchen of The Whirl Girl's grandmother

Ingredients
200 g ghee
250 g sooji (semolina flour)
3 green cardamom pods, discard the pod and grind the seeds
3/4 cup sugar
2 cups water
slivered almonds for garnish

Directions
Heat the ghee in a skillet.  Once its hot, add the sooji and cardamom.  Then simmer on slow heat until brown, about 20-25 minutes.  Keep stirring. 

Add the sugar and mix in.  Add 2 cups water and stir until water is absorped.  Add more water if necessary.  Taste for sugar. 

Garnish with almonds.  Serve warm. 

China cooking: Mooncakes

Mooncakes are the food at the heart of the Mid-Autumn Festival.  They are gifted between friends, families and colleagues. There are huge installations set up in the malls with restaurants, bakeries and hotels selling their own versions.  Haagen-Dazs even makes there own ice cream mooncake.

There are snowskin mooncakes, which have aren't cooked and have a "shell" made of glutinous flour.  They are filled with a wide variety of different flavors, including durian, green tea, and champagne truffle. 

photo from sgdesserts.com

The traditional mooncake is filled with lotus paste, with an optional single or double salted duck egg yolk.  Different auspicious characters are imprinted, or the name of the store that made it.  Here's what it looks like:

photo from Wikipedia

We opted to make the baked version and here's what our homemade version looked like:

To make the imprint and shape, you need a mold, which we found at Singaporean baking shop. (I have no idea what it says!).  Once the mooncake dough and filling are assembled, you put it inside, press it down and then bang it as hard as you can to get the mooncake out.  This may scare small children, as it did The Whirl Girl.  You don't have to have one for the recipe we used.  And as you can see, there wasn't much of an imprint or shape once ours came out of the oven.  Still, I'm glad we did used it.  It's what made it a mooncake, and not a cookie.

WARNING: this is a project and a half.  We spent most of our Saturday morning making and baking them.  The good part was there were lots of things The Whirl Girl could help with - mixing, measuring, and playing with ingredients. I initially thought about halving the recipe because it made 20 large mooncakes, but after all of the effort we put in, I was glad we had some to share with friends.  The recipe we used is more cookie-like than traditional mooncakes, but it used more familiar ingredients and I knew it would be a bigger hit in our house.

We adapted a recipe from one of my favorite resources of the month - a book called Moonbeams, Dumplings & Dragons: A Treasury of Chinese Holiday Tales, Activities & Recipes.  Its authors are from the Children's Museum in Boston and it is a treasury indeed!  Lots of crafts and cooking projects, with associated stories and cultural backgrounds.  If only there was a book like this for every country!  The recipe follows.

mixing the filling

post-imprint pounding, pre-baking

our very own mooncakes

Mooncakes

Ingredients
for crust:
4 cups flour
3/4 cup dried milk powder
1 TBS baking powder
1 tsp salt
3 eggs
1 1/4 cups sugar
3/4 cup unsalted butter, melted and cooled to room temperature
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract (oops! we didn't have any, so we omitted)


for filling:
1 12-oz jar apricot jam
1 cup chopped dried pineapple
1 cup shredded coconut
1/4 cup raisins


for glaze:
1 egg, lightly beaten
2 TBS water

Directions
Make the crust.  Sift together flour, milk powder, baking powder, and salt.  In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and add the sugar.  Beat with an electric beater until the mixture "ribbons" off the beaters, about five minutes.  Add butter and vanilla extract.  Then fold in dry ingredients.  Mix into a rough dough and put on a lightly floured surface.  Cut it into 20 pieces.

Make the filling.  Mix all of the ingredients together.  Divide into 20 pieces.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Lightly grease two baking sheets.  Using your fingers, press each dough piece into a three-inch circle.  Put a filling piece in the center and wrap the dough edges around the filling.  Roll the cake into a ball and flatten to a three-inch round.  Press into a lightly-floured moon cake mold or carve a design into the top.  (If using a mold, unmold each cake - ie bang it on the counter - and arrange the cakes design side up on a cookie sheet.  Chill for one to two hours to set design).

Arrange the cakes about one inch apart on lightly greased baking sheet.  Brush the surface of the cake with the glaze.  Bake until golden brown, about 20 minutes. Cool on rack.

Especially yummy with tea or milk!

Peru cooking: Potato cups

Remember potatoes originally come from Peru? We'd done potato stamping but no potato cooking! We have two fun cookbooks for kids that we pulled off the shelf for ideas. The first - The Kids' Multicultural Cookbook - is organized by country and was the first source that taught us that potatoes came from Peru. The second - Cook it in a Cup: Quick Meals and Treats Kids Can Cook in Silicone Cups - provided the recipe. The Whirl Girl is very excited to have and use cookbooks of her own sitting next to her Mama's on the shelf.

The recipe is very easy. All you need are some shredded potatoes (I used the food processor). I did a mix of white potatoes and sweet potatoes.

Mix them with some olive oil (about 1 TBS) and 1/2 tsp salt. We sprinkled some cumin on for more flavor.

Pile them on the silicone cups on a baking sheet. You could also just sprinkle them on a baking sheet (our cups didn't really stay as cups anyway and were pretty much a pile of shredded potatoes).

Cook for 15-20 minutes in a 425 oven until crispy. Let cool for 10 minutes and remove from silicone cups.

Eat! (I swear she liked them).

Peru crafts: Festival masks

For this activity, we invited some of our amigos to join us for three times the fun! And lucky for us, one of my amigas comes from Peru. She suggested this activity and nourished us with a unique Peruvian dessert made with lucuma.

We made festival masks, especially prominent in festivals celebrated in the Andes like The Festival of the Virgin of Carmen. We took a cue from this article in one of my favorite new resources InCultureParent, a magazine for raising little global citizens.

And the kids took inspiration from this youtube video, filled with festival and mask photos. They loved watching it after they finished their masks.

Supplies:

• white stiff felt
• paints
• decorations: pipe cleaners, bells, ribbons, fabric scraps, colored cotton balls
• craft glue
• string for tie
  

Step One: Cut out mask. I just used a random shape and checked to see where The Whirl Girl's eyes would fall. Then I used a whole punch to make small holes for the kids to thread pipe cleaners and ribbons through. (I did it before we started).

Step Two: Paint the masks.

Step Three: Decorate the masks. The kids picked from the basket and we helped a bit with the glue.

The Whirl Girl's mask

We worked up an appetite with all this crafting. Our friend brought a Peruvian specialty: lucuma (pronounced loo-coo-ma) mousse. Lucuma is a tropical, yellow-orange fruit found in the Andes. It's a popular flavoring for ice cream and has a butterscotch-like flavor. Just like its Andean-friend quinoa, it has become popular among raw foodies.

lucuma mousse

YUM!

Here's the recipe, in case you come across some lucuma and don't know what to do with it.

Ingredients:

• 1 can evaporated milk
• 8 yolks
• 2 egg whites
• 4 tablespoons of brown sugar
• 2 medium lucumas, peeled and blended (or the equivalente in dehydrated lucuma)
• 1/2 cup of port wine
• 1 1/2 cups of sugar (for the syrup)
• Powdered cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla

Preparation:

If you’re using dehydrated lucuma, prepare it according to the equivalence.

Beat the yolks until they get creamy and have a clear yellow. Keep back.

Pour the condensed millk with the sugar in a medium pot and cook, stiring constantly until it gets thick. Add the lucuma and continue stiring until you can see the pot’s bottom. Remove from the flame and add the beaten yolks, stiring fastly. Return to cook on a low flame for 5 minutes more and add the vanilla. This mix must not boil.

Pour in a glass.

Let’s do the syrup: Put the sugar for the syrup and the port wine in a pot. Boil.

Beat the whites to form peaks. While you’re beating, pour the syrup to the whites. Beat until the meringue gets tupid.

Using a spoon and a fork, put the meringue covering the lucuma cream. Sprinkle the powdered cinnamon over the meringue.

Peru cooking: Quinoa salad

Quinoa (pronounced keen-oo-ah) is a grain grown high up in the Andes. It's a great substitute for rice or couscous. As a bonus, unlike other grains, it has has protein in it. I was especially excited for our cooking project this month because it's something healthy that The Whirl Girl eats and it's yummy! It's not the easiest thing to find in Singapore, so it's not something that we eat often here. But we tracked it down and cooked it up.

We made a quinoa salad with veggies and chicken/black beans - one vegetarian, one not for differing tastes in our home. The recipe follows. I chopped all of the ingredients before hand. The Whirl Girl helped by pouring the quinoa and water into the rice cooker, so she could see quinoa before and after. And then she helped mix all of the chopped ingredients together. We also added guacamole to the meal and she's an avocado-scooping and -mashing pro , not counting the chunks that end up on the floor.

After our quinoa dinner, we read Up and Down the Andes, one of our Peru books, at sleepytime. A perfect pair.

measuring the quinoa for the rice cooker

chopped veggies

pouring and mixing

avocado scooping

And best of all, eating!

Quinoa Salad with Black Beans/Chicken and Veggies

Ingredients
2 cups quinoa, dry

1 red bell pepper, diced
1 yellow bell pepper, diced
3 green onions, sliced
1/3 cup chopped fresh cilantro
3 small sweet potatoes, slivered and roasted
2 cobs of corn, roasted (grilled or boiled would be okay too)

1 can black beans and/or 2 cooked chicken breasts (I poached the chicken with water, cumin, chili powder, salt and pepper)

for dressing:
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup lemon/lime juice
2 tsp cumin
1 tsp salt

Directions

Cook the quinoa. We used a rice cooker (2 cups of water to 1 cup of quinoa).

Mix vegetables, quinoa, and beans and/or chicken.

Mix dressing ingredients. Add to salad. Toss. Season with salt and pepper.


I served it with fresh salsa to kick it up a notch and some guacamole.

Malaysia cooking: Pandan Chiffon Cupcakes

Pandan is a common ingredient found in this part of the world. It's used in both sweet and savory dishes. Since The Whirl Girl loves to bake (well, she loves to mix), we decided some cake was in order.

Here's what pandan looks like:

While it's pretty non-descript looking, it has a very distinctive fragrance. It smells a little bit sweet and floral and coconut-y. If you don't live in these parts, you can probably find it at an Asian store, or at the very least, you can likely find pandan paste or flavor there.

There are TONS of recipes for Pandan Chiffon Cakes, a popular way to use pandan leaves. I opted for the following one from a blog, because it had American measurements and the author had converted the recipe to cupcakes which I also needed to do since I don't have a tube pan. It follows at the end of this post.

We could have opted to use the pandan paste instead of making our own pandan juice. But I thought if the whole point was for The Whirl Girl to learn something about Malaysia, then it was a good idea for her to actually see, smell, and touch the ingredient that made the cake Malaysian.

We blended the leaves in the food processor (about 15 leaves) with about 6 TBS of water. Then we pressed the juice out of the paste using a strainer.

It yielded a bright green juice that made The Whirl Girl very excited about making green cupcakes. It turned the batter a color green that reminded me of St. Patrick's Day.

Unfortunately when they came out of the oven, they didn't look very green...

...until we broke them open and found the slight greenish hue.

More importantly, they tasted great and were a big hit here. And with our neighbors too, because as delicious and light as they were, there is no way we could polish off 30 on our own.

Pandan Chiffon Cake (or Cupcakes)

Ingredients
(A)
1 3/4 cup all-purpose flour, sifted
1 Tbp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1/2 cup sugar

(B)
1/2 cup vegetable or canola oil
6 egg yolks
3/4 cup coconut milk
1 tsp. pandan paste (I used 1 1/2 tsp of pandan juice that we made from the leaves and 1/2 tsp of pandan paste from the jar)

(C)
6 egg whites
1/2 tsp. cream of tartar
3/4 cup sugar

Directions
Preheat oven to 350'F (175'C).

Combine (A) in a bowl. Stir well to blend. Add (B). Beat with an electric mixer until smooth.

Beat (C) (egg whites and cream of tartar) in a separate bowl until moist peaks formed. Gradually add 3/4 cup sugar, beating until stiff and shiny peaks are formed. Fold 1/3 of the egg whites into the egg yolks mixture, fold to mix and then add the rest of the egg whites. Fold gently but thoroughly, so no white streaks remain. Turn batter into ungreased 10" tube pan (OR into cupcake tins).

Bake for 60 mins (OR 20 minutes for cupcakes) or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Invert cake and cool completely in pan. Make sure oven has reached 350 F before putting cake in oven. When cool, loosen the edges and shake pan to remove.

It made about 30 cupcakes.

Kenya cooking: Pancakes

One of our books for this month was Mama Panya's Pancakes: A Village Tale from Kenya. It's a sweet story about a boy who invites his friends in the village to come to his home for a pancake dinner. His mother is upset because she is worried that they won't have enough food. But in the end (spoiler alert!), each of the friends brings something to share and they have more than enough. I was surprised how quickly The Whirl Girl picked up on the heart of the story. It was one of her favorite books of the month. So naturally she was excited to make some pancakes of our own - just like Mama Panya and her son Adika!

The book includes a recipe for pancakes. But the recipe is a simple one, using mostly flour and water, and I wasn't sure how they would turn out. So we reverted to a favorite pancake recipe of our own and called them Mama Panya's pancakes, and talked about the book as we cooked and ate.

The Whirl Girl mixes

cooking cakes

our own plate of Mama Panya's pancakes

and the best part... eating!

Our (not-quite-authentic) Mama Panya's Pancakes recipe
adapted from McCanns Oatmeal

Ingredients
1 1/4 cups of oatmeal
1 cup plain yogurt
1 cup milk (low fat/skim)
1 tsp honey or sugar
1/4 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cardamom powder
1/4 tsp ginger powder
2 large eggs, beaten
1/4 cup chopped walnuts

In a large bowl, combine oats, yogurt, milk and honey. Stir in flours, baking soda, salt and spices. Add beaten eggs and mix well. Add walnuts. Batter will be thick.

Heat a large non-stick skillet or griddle over medium heat. Spoon about 1/4 cup batter onto hot griddle for each pancake. Cook until bottoms are browned and bubbles on top start to pop, about 3 minutes. Flip and cook until other sides are browned, about 2 minutes. Repeat with remaining batter.

Kenya cooking: Peanut soup and ugali

All this crafting was making us hungry! Time to cook up some Kenyan food.

We made Peanut Soup and Ugali, a cornbread porridge. Both turned out great and were gobbled up by The Whirl Girl, who can be a picky eater. We also made Cornbread Muffins, which were a good alternative to the ugali, though not quite as authentic. We invited some friends over to join us - just like in our book Mama Panya's Pancakes. It could be an easy weeknight meal and it keeps well for leftovers too.

The goal was to get The Whirl Girl involved in the cooking. She loves to mix and measure, so the cornbread muffins were the easiest for her participation. She also helped mix the cornmeal and water to make the ugali before I heated it. For the soup, she helped by piling the vegetables in a bowl after I cut them and then I took over the cooking. She also really liked saying ugali (who doesn't?).

Recipes for all three follow. Enjoy!

a measuring pro

mixing cornmeal with water for the ugali

a bowl of peanut soup

a kid's bowl of peanut soup and ugali (they paired well together, though an even heartier stew would be great with the ugali)

cornbread muffins

Ugali (Cornmeal Porridge)

(from Kenya Travel Ideas)

Ingredients:
1 cup cold water
1 cup yellow cornmeal (the Mexican flour ‘Mozerapa’ is a close substitute to the Kenyan flour)
1 teaspoon salt (optional)
3 cups boiling water

Serves 4 to 6

Put cold water in a medium-size saucepan, add cornmeal and salt, mixing continually. Bring to a boil over high heat, gradually stirring and slowly add 3 cups of boiling water to prevent lumps.
Reduce to simmer, cover and cook for about 8 minutes, mixing frequently to prevent sticking.
The ugali will be done when it pulls from the sides of the pan easily and does not stick. It should look like stiff grits.

You can serve ugali with everything from meat stew to sugar and cream. Your choice!

Peanut Soup

(adapted from All Recipes - I added more veggies, some authentically Kenyan and some not, and a little extra spice)

Ingredients:
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 medium onions, chopped (I pureed in food processor)
2 large red bell peppers, chopped (I pureed in food processor)
2 carrots, sliced
2 celery stalks, sliced
2 sweet potatoes, cut in 1" cubes
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 (28 ounce) can crushed tomatoes, with liquid
8 cups vegetable broth or stock
1 teaspoon pepper
1/4 teaspoon chili powder (optional - I didn't use since I was cooking for kids)
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2/3 cup peanut butter (I used natural creamy)
1/2 cup uncooked brown rice

Heat oil in a large stock pot over medium high heat. Cook onions and bell peppers until lightly browned and tender, stirring in garlic when almost done to prevent burning. Stir in tomatoes, vegetable stock, pepper, and chili powder. Reduce heat to low and simmer, uncovered, for 30 minutes.

Stir in rice, cover, and simmer another fifteen minutes or until rice is tender. Stir in peanut butter until well blended, and serve.

Sweet Cornbread Muffins

(from my mom's recipe book)

Ingredients:
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup oil
2 eggs, beaten
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
3 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups yellow corn meal
1 cup milk

Blend sugar and oil. Mix in eggs.

In separate bowl, mix flour with baking powder and salt. Add corn meal.

Blend dry ingredients with the creamed mixture alternately with milk.

Pour into a greased, floured 9" square pan or into muffin tins. Bake for 30 minutes in a 400 F oven (less for muffins - check after 20 minutes). If golden on top and toothpick cones out clean, they are ready.