Viet World Kitchen

Honey Lime Tofu Cheesecake Recipe

 

I haven’t baked a cheesecake in years because I couldn’t commit to our family of two eating up an entire one. Traditional cheesecakes tend to be heavy, prepared with a lot of cream cheese, and are not easy for me to digest (I’m not great with big doses of dairy). Tofu cheesecakes are a relative novelty in Asia too, which is why I didn't include a recipe in the Asian Tofu cookbook. 

But while working on the Paula Wolfert biography-cookbook, I learned about Italian ricotta cheesecake from one of her recipes that we included in the book. It was super simple to make in the processor and baked up light tasting. I thought of making it with tofu since ricotta and I are not good friends, and I’ve successfully made lasagna with tofu as a ricotta substitute. The textures are similar if you use a medium-firm tofu. Based on past experiences, I figured a “ricotta” tofu cheesecake would work. I put the idea on the back burner until my schedule freed up a bit.

In the new issue of Milk Street magazine that arrived last week, Chris Kimball spotlights the beauty of ricotta cheesecake and has a recipe that he promises to be somewhat fluffy. That reminded me to experiment with making a “ricotta” tofu cheesecake. I wanted a little crust on the bottom of mine. Both Paula’s and Chris’s ricotta cheesecake recipes were crustless, typical of that many Italian cheesecakes. But I love how the graham cracker crust contrasts with the creamy filling in color, texture, and flavor.

I looked in a favorite cookbook, Sweet Times by Dorie Greenspan, published in 1991. She had a honey ricotta almond cheesecake with a graham cracker crust! Dorie’ s use of ground almonds in the filling lent body and perhaps prevented the cheesecake filling from cracking. A cracked cheesecake is a cosmetic issue more than a flavor issue, in my opinion. I was intrigued by aspects of all three of those recipes by Paula, Chris, and Dorie. They informed me in different ways and in the end, I borrowed a bit from each to come up with my own recipe for a tofu cheesecake.

French-Vietnamese Spice Cake Recipe (Pain d'Epice)

Today was a double win in the kitchen. It’s my husband’s last day of teaching for the year and I wanted to bake him a celebratory sweet treat. I was also wanting to experiment with a holiday cake that would keep well as a gift to my family and friends. My family is partial to fruitcake and yule logs (buche de Noel). We’ve made many of them and I’ve posted recipes here and here.

As these things simmered in the back of my mind, fate intervened (as it often does) via an email. Christopher Kimball sent out his Milk Street magazine e-newsletter, which opened with notes from his recent Thailand trip and included a recipe for pain d’épice, a French spice cake. I looked at the recipe for the cake-cum-bread (think a forceful but not overly sweet gingerbread) and realized that if the Europeans had not ventured to Asia, they would not have obtained peppercorns, mace, nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, and the like. The classic French cake benefited big time from the spice route.

Peach-Lemongrass Granita Recipe

I am currently in possession of a very large quantity of the most perfect peaches and nectarines. They are sweet-tangy and so juicy that we often eat them standing over the kitchen sink. The peaches and nectarines were grown by the Masumoto family in Del Rey, located near Fresno, California. Mas Masumoto is renowned for his natural growing methods and champions varieties that are out of fashion. That’s to say, he wants to grow fruit with flavor. They are fragile and inconsistent in size but are full of the essence of summer. They are not fruit that you’ll find at the supermarket because they’re best eaten soon after they’re picked.

Mas, his wife Darcy, and daughter Nikiko work the farm. Romantic as small scale, family farming may sound, it’s not a glamorous life because Fresno is hot, the fruits have minds of their own, and the organic soil is so powdery at times that everything seems coated in a fine layer of dust. What’s glamorous and elegant is the fruit of the labors. Masumoto peaches and nectarines are legendary, prized by high-end restaurants and chefs, as well as home cooks who appreciate good fruit.

Revolutionary Blueberry Cherry Muffins Recipe

July is a month that marks revolutions and independence movements. I woke up on July 4^th wanting to break away from my usual breakfast of muesli. Lazy but desiring a little something baked and beautiful, I decided to make muffins. They’re easy. They are a quick bread! I had blueberries and cherries in the fridge, some toasted hazelnuts on the counter and the rest were staples in the pantry.

The problem was in getting the muffin pan from the garage. It was stuffed into a storage tub and we had to back out the car to retrieve it. I don’t often bake muffins and my beat-up Ecko pan was about twenty years old. No need to scrub it clean. Muffin cups found in the deep recesses of my pantry/closet came to the rescue!

Easy Apple and Walnut Coffee Cake Recipe

I haven’t baked a coffee cake in years but over the past four days, I’ve baked this apple and walnut coffee cake twice. I was inspired by my mom’s steal on a bunch of black walnuts and the need for something sweet as I push through the pho cookbook copyediting process. She found them in the bargain area of her supermarket, marked down to a ridiculously low price. Black walnuts are relatively hard to find, probably because they have very hard shells that make them tough nuts to crack (ha!). Compared to regular English walnuts, black walnuts have a winey, big flavor. In raw and cooked state, they exude a remarkable fragrance. Mom gave me several bags of her black walnuts because at 55 cents each, she bought all that the store had. I keep them in the freezer.

Last Sunday, I woke up wanting an easy old fashioned coffee cake for breakfast. I found a recipe in a 1994 Sunset magazine cookbook called “Breads” – the kind of cookbook you’d pickup at a grocery store. I loved the older one from 1966 because it was no nonsense and the recipe taught me a lot about American break baking. This one was somewhat of an updated version; I keep it in my collection for when I’m NOT in the mood for fancy, rustic loaves.