Tomato Sorbet

Ever tried tomato sorbet? We know it may sound a little bit weird, just like when we first heard we were going to make tomato sorbet at the school our reaction was also HUH? But It was certainly a pleasant surprise that it turned out refreshing and special, without the overly-veggie taste we had been worried about. 

Who would've expected that tomatoes blended with water, sugar and a pinch of salt would become a healthy dessert! So we made it again at home, using our trusty Philips blender & Cuisinart ICE-100 gelato machine =)

We encourage all to give this a try, just remember to use cherry tomatoes which are sweeter! 

Gelato, Ice Cream, Sherbet, Sorbet???

I once asked a friend who self-proclaims to be an ice-cream lover, do you know what's the difference between ice-cream vs sorbet vs gelato? She just replied err no I simply judge a good ice dessert by texture and flavor, if both factors are great then it's a good 'ice-cream'!

But for the health-conscious or simply for general knowledge, we should be educated on the differences between our favorite ice desserts. They are definitely not just fanciful names given for the sake of it, there are in fact very specific scientific definitions to their composition.

Below table shows the key differences amongst them.

	Sorbet	Sherbet	Gelato	Ice Cream
Main Component	>70% Water	35% Water, 35% Dairy	>70% Dairy	>70% Dairy
Fat Content	0%	2 – 8%	5 – 10%	>10.8%

As you can see the composition is a key factor to the texture of the dessert, which is why most people like ice cream because it's creamy and smooth - a result of the fat content from dairy. 

So for the health-conscious, you can go for the sorbet or sherbet for a less sinful dessert option. There's also another element to the gelato vs ice cream difference, during the churn process more air is incorporated into ice-cream so it's fluffier compared to gelato which is denser. Last difference is storage temperature, gelato is stored at a slightly higher temperature than ice-cream.

Of course with the home machine, like our Cuisinart ICE-100 although it comes with a gelato and a ice-cream blade you will still have to vary the components of the dessert before being able to churn out what we call ice-cream or gelato. It doesn't happen simply just by switching the blades. 

Hopefully now we all understand the differences and we'll be able to make an informed decision of our dessert choice in the future!

Blueberry Smoothie!

Chillin boy loves blueberries. I mean what's not to love above them? High anti-oxidant, good for brain health and skin! So when we saw some great looking blueberries at Cold Storage, we can't resist buying them. But as that day we planned to make tomato gelato, blueberries had to be consumed some other way. So smoothie it shall be!

Recipe:

1 cup blueberries

2 cups milk

1 tablespoon honey

You can also replace 2 cups milk with 1 cup plain yogurt and 1 cup milk instead. Actually that's the more ideal combination, but unfortunately we didn't have yogurt at home.

Here's the lovely blueberries =)

Smoothie success with our trusty Philips blender. Easy and healthy option, you can make your own smoothie at home too!

Our Indulgences in Taiwan - Kao Hsiung highlights

This will conclude our Taiwan travel series, a post on our adventures in Kao Hsiung. We spent 4 days 3 nights in the city, the second most populated city in Taiwan after Taipei. Once we touched down in Taoyuan International aiport, we took a short bus ride of about 15 minutes to the High Speed Rail station. Do not be misled by the signs in the airport, the rail station is actually quite far away and not walk-able at all. Once we reached the station, we bought a train ticket which departs in about 30 minutes time. The journey is about 90 minutes, only made possible by the HSR and not the normal train.

We would say try not to have high expectations of the city, it is in fact very different from Taipei. It is much less developed, less crowded and things seem to move at a rather slow pace. You may come across many night market recommendations online but we think only Rui Feng Night Market 瑞豐夜市 is worth exploring.

Some quick bites: Stinky Tofu, Fried Squid, Mutton skewers and Ice-cream

Drinks to flush it down, white bittergourd juice with honey is an interesting and healthy drink to try!

We did some sightseeing, firstly at FoGuangShan Monastery. Most tourists who visit Kao Hsiung are likely to make their way here because this is a key scenic place with the largest Buddha statue in Asia.

Moving onto Cijin island, this is a near by island accessible by car or ferry. It has a very rustic old-school feel, with a beach view, if you get to the top of the hill you'll enjoy a great view and explore the lighthouse.

Tianhou Temple is an old temple we found on our way down to the market area, many people still come here to worship the goddess for blessings.

Once we left Cijin island and back to main land, we took a train to Sizhwan station where the Takao Railway museum is. It is an old railway station with some well-preserved old trains.

Along the way, we also saw some old sugar cane warehouses now converted to venues for art exhibitions.

The biggest mall in Kao Hsiung - Dream Mall. You might have heard or seen this mall in some Taiwanese dramas and how romantic it is to take a ride on that ferris wheel on the roof of the mall. Well, the mall is huge but honestly nothing fantastic in terms of what it offers in retail. It might just be worth a look on the roof top, take some pictures of the ferris wheel and enjoy the burst of colors. Basically, that's about all we did at the mall and made our way back cos it was kind of boring.

Lastly, we took a walk along Love River. Although it has been portrayed as a scenic walk in most travel guides, actually it is just an old drain cleaned up and repackaged. Photos may be deceiving, just like the one we took!

Kao Hsiung was a city we chose to add on to the itinerary cos we have been to Taipei a few times, and thought it might be a good idea exploring somewhere else. Perhaps there are hidden gems in Kao Hsiung that we didn't manage to explore, but generally we still prefer the vibrancy and glorious food offered in Taipei!

We are back with Dragon Fruit Sorbet!

Bing Chillin is back with another successful recipe - Dragon Fruit Sorbet.

If you've been following us, we actually did a dragon fruit ice cream version before - reference here Dragon Fruit Ice Cream. But that time we felt the outcome was overly milky and perhaps dragon fruit flavor is better off as a sorbet (without milk or cream). Hence when we got some fresh dragon fruits from our Desaru fruit farm trip, we couldn't wait to experiment.

Sidetrack a little, here's the 7am fantastic view on our way to Desaru...

Here's what we got from the farm, amidst durians and mangoes...

 After washing the fruit, next steps:

*note that sugar syrup is a mixture of water and sugar

Again featuring our trusty Cuisinart ICE-100 ice cream maker, it's time to do some work again! 

The final product! Chillin boy and I both felt the sorbet version tastes much better than the ice cream version. It's less 'jelat' and tastes more refreshingly healthy. Considering the fruit wasn't that sweet by itself, we got the sweetness level quite balanced. The texture wasn't icy too, despite the absence of fats from milk/cream. In summary, this was a great experiment and dragon fruit sorbet is an absolutely fabulous dessert without any sinfulness!

Off to Hong Kong!

The Chillin team is off to Hong Kong for 4 days, we hope to bring back more insights of great food and shopping to share. We'll also be attending a coffee knowledge class, really excited about that! I hope to be able to master some basic coffee art as well, wish me success =)

Till we're back, cheers!

Milk Tea Gelato

Taking a break from our Taiwan posts, we'll still be writing maybe one or two more on Kao Hsiung once we are done editing the photos.

For now, back to ice-cream making...we've just experimented with Milk tea gelato yesterday! We are both regular tea drinkers, hence decided why not try something using our 3-in-1 milk tea sachets at home.

Here's the recipe:
Milk - 150g
Cream - 100g
Sugar - 100g
Water - 150g
Milk tea powder - 1 sachet of Old Town White Milk Tea 40g

First, mix the milk tea power with water just like how you will usually make milk tea. Then stir in the milk, heat the mixture slowly. Pour in the sugar while stirring continuously, bring temperature to 87 degrees. After that, cool down the mixture in a cold bath, then add the cream. Once it's cooled down, move it to the fridge. At this point in time, the mixture is like 'Teh Gao Gao'.

Usually we'll  leave it overnight and churn in the gelato maker the next day, with our trusty Cuisinart ICE-100.

The Process:

The Outcome:

The texture and sweetness turned out pretty ok, with very minor ice crystals but the disappointment was that the tea taste and smell did not come out strong enough. That sets us on a pursuit to look for a stronger tea flavour, definitely an improved version will be on the way!

To our readers: whoever knows where to get quality milk tea or tea flavours, do drop us a note. Will be greatly appreciated!

Our Indulgences in Taiwan - Part 6 Shifen-Jiufen-Keelung

From some other blog sources, we learnt about the basic travel options to Shifen-Jiufen-Keelung and decided to plan the most optimal way to go about this day trip. From our hotel, we took the MRT from Ximen station to Taipei Main Station and found our way to the ticketing counter. The counter will display all the train timings, look for the train that goes to Ruifang (瑞芳車站). Usually there will be a few train companies that operate the route, you can choose Tze Jiang or C.K. Express (莒光號) depending on which timing suits best. We took the 9.15am train and the journey is about one hour to reach Ruifang station.

At Ruifang station, approach the ticketing counter which is at the platform itself (do not go downstairs) to buy the Pingxi line ticket. This Pingxi ticket is a one-day ticket that gives you unlimited rides along the Pingxi line. For us our main objective was to get to Shifen to experience the railway tracks, how the train passes through the old shophouses and the sky lantern so we did not explore the other train stops. Note that once you miss the train, the next one will only arrive in 30-40 minutes so it's good to plan your stops and the time you spend sightseeing in advance.

Here's how the tickets look:

The Pingxi railway line is one of the 3 historical lines built by the Japanese and it will pass through some nice scenery including a waterfall before it reaches Shifen. 十分老街 is actually an old street started with just 10 families living here and subsequently made famous by the movie "那些年，我們一起追的女孩 (You are the apple of my eye)" simply because the couple in the show let off a sky lantern (天燈) here in one of the scenes. 

So be warned that this place has now become a bit commercialised as there are lots of tourists and also shops that set up meaning to earn tourist $ from the sky lanterns. We observed some Hong Kong tourists avidly setting off lanterns at one of the shops and decided not to release one ourselves, because the lanterns though made of semi-paper material eventually seem to end up in the mountains contributing to nothing but rubbish in the environment. Worse still if they end up in the river or sea and choke some fishes, and trust me the wishes are not going to reach the deities by any chance. 

Hence what we did was just buy some little souvenirs back i.e. mini lanterns that glow in the dark =)

After walking the stretch for about half an hour, we decided to sit down and eat lunch at this small shop near the train platform. We ordered beef noodles and beancurd which tasted surprisingly great!

After lunch as we had some time to burn before taking the train back to Ruifang, we went around walking on the railway tracks and took some pictures. Just remember to shove off the tracks when the train comes! And random cute cat and kitten spotted along the way...no Chillin boy is not attempting to step on kitty, he just wants to show the size comparison against his shoes.

We took the train back to Ruifang to head to our next stop Jiu Fen and it was about 3pm already, we spent about maybe 2 to 3 hours at Shifen and honestly that's more than enough. Unless you are game to take a 45 minutes walk to the waterfall, then allocate more time for Shifen. From Ruifang train station, exit to the main road and you will see a bus stop on the side of the train station but do not take the bus from here. Cross the road to the opposite side, there's no proper bus stop but just a flag pole that shows the bus numbers. Any bus that goes to Jing Gua Shi will pass by Jiu Fen, that includes 1062, 1063 and 788. The bus will go uphill and takes about 30-40 minutes.

Key highlights of Jiu Fen - Taro balls sweet soup and Ice-Cream popiah! Absolutely loved the ice-cream popiah packed with crunchy peanuts.

Jiu Fen is just one street to explore so we allocated just 1 hour+ here, before heading off to our final stop for the day Kee Lung. Find the bus stop near the end of the Jiu Fen street, take bus 788 which should be heading downhill. We left at about 5pm and took about 50mins to reach Kee Lung, alight at Yi Ren Er Lu. If in doubt, just double check with the bus driver they are always friendly enough to help.

So here we are at Kee Lung (基隆), once you alight on the right side of the road walk straight and cross to the centre you will see this large neon sign of KEELUNG in the far view (like a cheap replica of the HOLLYWOOD sign). And from there look to the left and there's the start of the famous Kee Lung night market. A lot of people seem to rave about this night market, even the Taiwanese who live in Taipei like to travel slightly out to this night market for some good food and apparently the famous dish here is the crab soup.

There are many stalls selling seafood and crab soup, we didn't know which are supposedly good so we just settled for one of them along the way. The crab soup wasn't fantastic but good enough. We ate some other snacks like the fried dumplings, sweet potato balls and the prawn balls. But we would advice against buying the prawn balls, they look good on the outside but is really more flour than prawn and they are not cheap. At 150NT, I'd rather save the money and stomach space for something else.

We took a train from Kee Lung train station straight back to Taipei Main Station before 10pm (about 45 mins) and that concludes our day trip out of Taipei. Overall, we were immensely happy with our exploration of Shifen and Jiu Fen as we discovered interesting sights and food. Kee Lung was slightly disappointing (maybe we didn't pick the right things to eat) but nevertheless was good to experience another night market out of Taipei. Hopefully this itinerary will be helpful to our readers, if you follow this and keep time along the way Shifen-Jiufen-Keelung is definitely accomplish-able in one day. Happy exploring!

Our Indulgences in Taiwan - Part 5 Ximending and Dan Shui

These are probably more commonly known places in Taipei - Ximending (西門町) and Dan Shui (淡水). Ximending was actually where our hotel was, we stayed at Westgate hotel which is fairly new and just 5 minutes from the Ximen MRT station. Although it's less than 6 months old, we were slightly disappointed that despite clean rooms and good service the dining area was infested with mozzies. That was quite a spoiler. But anyway let's focus more on the good food we found around the area instead.

Firstly, of course the famous Ah Zhong Mian Xian / Mee Sua. The queue nowadays seem much more manageable, we were there at about 3pm and got our big bowl of meesua pretty quickly. Still a favourite, remember to add more vinegar and chilli!

Then, along some of the main streets within Ximending you will find some peddling hawkers (unknown whether they are legal or not) but this friendly uncle was selling Cong Jua Bing (葱抓餅). It's like a roti prata with spring onions but you can choose what you want to be wrapped inside the 'prata skin'. We chose to have pork floss, and it was pretty yummy!

On one of the days where we got sick of the hotel breakfast, we decided to venture out into the vicinity and found this little local stall which sells a variety of dan bing (蛋餅). This is a typical local breakfast dish, again something similar to roti prata but the skin is thinner and has egg mixed into it. They also add on a sweet-savory sauce on top making it a great tasting combination.

A good way to end any day is pop into one of the many convenience stores and grab some Taiwan beer. These are a few we bought, personal favourite is the Grape flavour in the middle. Tastes like a fizzy grape juice!

Moving on to Dan Shui (淡水), we didn't eat much in the area because honestly there's nothing much to eat. We found the old street over rated, not sure is it because we were there on a Monday and it was drizzling so many stalls were not opened. The only snack we got was a taro biscuit, essentially 2 pieces of butter biscuit with taro paste in between. Not bad tasting but was kind of grossed out by the black oil it was being fried in. But for that moment we just decided to adopt the mentality of dirty-eat-dirty-grow-up, literally.

After that we took a walk to the Fisherman's Wharf (漁人碼頭), but along the way we saw 2 boars being chained to the outside of a stall selling betel nuts. Here's one of them, the other one is further in the background if you can spot it.

May look a bit fierce, but rather I found them quite poor thing. Have no idea why would anyone want to keep them chained up like that.

And the finale for the evening, great scenery at Fisherman's Wharf. Although it's not as vibrant as I last remembered it to be many years back where there were some musicians peddling their songs and so on, it was still a great place for some nice pictures.

Here concludes our experiences at Ximending and Dan Shui, we'll be sharing our one-day itinerary to Shifen-Jiufen-Keelung in the next post.

Our Indulgences in Taiwan - Part 4 Shida Night Market

We visited Shida night market after some sight seeing at Sun Yat Sen memorial hall, so the convenient station for us was to drop at Guting so we only needed to change line once. However, from Guting it will take about 15-20 minutes walk to reach the night market. For a shorter walking distance, we will advice to change to the green line and alight at Taipower Building station instead, from there take exit 3 and it's about 10 minutes walk.

Shida night market (師大夜市) is actually located just beside the National Taiwan Normal University so you would expect to see a lot of students hanging out and some shops selling hostel necessities. Do take note that due to some resident complaints, the shops abide to a curfew so they will start closing by 11pm which was a bit disappointing cos we would have appreciated more time to shop and eat. Besides having found some good food here, there are also many boutiques selling clothes and accessories which you can bargain and get some good buys. Best night market so far for shopping!

Back to food, we found our favourite smelly beancurd and pig intestine mee sua here from the same stall. This stall is situated near the back gate of the university hostel. As Chillin Boy doesn't fancy oysters, we stayed clear from oyster mee sua so this is a good find as a substitute - pig intestine mee sua. The pig intestines were chewy and had no overwhelming piggy smell, the best part is the thick soup was a perfect combination of savoury and sweetness.

From the same stall, we ordered the smelly tofu and we must say this is the best we've had so far. It is fried till crisp but not dry, the inside is still moist and the sauce that came with it was a good mixture which is tasty with a slight tinge of spiciness.

After the meal, we walked down the street and bought the pig blood glutinous rice cake (豬血糕). Interesting how they make this snack, coated with peanut powder. The glutinous rice really filled us up to the brim, was too full to eat anything else.

But on our way back to the mrt station, we passed by a bakery and cannot resist buying some mochi back as dessert. Purple rice mochi, something new and seems like a healthy option. Tasted great as well, very Q-chewy and the rice exudes a strong fragrant smell. 

Shida night market is a great place to hang out, both for food and shopping. Even after the shops close, you can still buy a drink and sit at some nearby garden benches to chill out amongst many of the university students. A great way to kinda relive our university days =)

Our Indulgences in Taiwan - Part 3 Ningxia Night Market

Ningxia night market (寧夏夜市) is one of the lesser known night markets amongst tourists, but it has the best food amongst all the Taipei night markets we've been to (no kidding). It is located in the old city called Datong and along Ningxia road. We dropped off at Taipei Main MRT station and took about 15-20 minutes to walk there, along the way 2 local girls even asked us for directions how to get to the night market. Luckily we have a data sim card so the GPS is always at hand.

This night market is all hustle and bustle, crowded and long queues at many of the popular stalls. The first snack we had was a chicken sausage cos we were very hungry and wanted to grab something quick, it turned out quite nice actually!

We read that the famous food here are the braised pork rice, muachi dessert + peanut soup and the taro balls. But as the taro ball stall queue was really horrendous, unfortunately we didn't have a chance to savour that.

Here's the braised pork chop rice we had, together with the egg seafood soup from the same stall. It's very interesting how they keep the half-cooked egg afloat on the soup, and it tastes yummy too! Pork chop rice was great, well-marinated but pity we didn't try the braised pork leg cos that looked tasty as well. This stall is  highly popular so be prepared to wait awhile for tables.

After this we had some dumplings at a nearby stall down the street, not the best cos I felt the dumpling skin left a bit of bitter after taste. Suggest to give this a miss and move on to better choices.

And of cos the famous muachi dessert! This stall has long queues as well but we were lucky to squeeze ourselves a table somewhere. You can either choose to have hot muachi served with peanut/black sesame powder or cold muachi which is buried within ice shavings, also topped with peanut/black sesame powder. We chose the latter and added a bowl of peanut soup which they are also famous for. The stall owner is a very zealous and nice auntie, to anyone who orders the hot muachi she will teach them how to cut it with chopsticks in a criss-cross manner which is supposed to be the correct and most efficient way to eat it.

Here's our peanut soup, in the background you'll see the floating muachi balls in the big pot.

And our yummy ice muachi dessert, we bought 2 balls so got the choice to mix both black sesame and peanut powder but of cos we ended up absolutely stuffed after this.

And the muachi dessert concludes one of our favourite night markets for food, next up - Shida night market.