Exploring the Ballad of Mulan through cooking

This year Miss K is using Reading Rewards, Level 3 . Last week's Literature Unit was centered around the retelling of Ancient poem The Ballad of Mulan* by Author Song Nan Zhang. As well as the activities in the lesson plan we decided to try and cook something that went with our theme.

Miss K asked to try Crab Ragoons. While not traditional Chinese cuisine that are on the Menu at many Asian style Restaurants. Piwi Daddy  had just watched an America's Test Kitchen episode about deep frying and decided to give it a go.

I made the filling and assembled the ragoons and then handed them over to be fried...
If you want to make this as an additional to your China Unit study then this is what you will need...

Ingredients:

• 20 wonton wrappers
• 1 brick of cream cheese (we used reduced fat)
• 1 teaspoon brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon onion powder
• Pinch of black pepper
• 4oz Flaked 'Krab'
• A cup of water for 'sealing the wrappers'
• Canola oil for deep frying

Add the cream cheese, Krab, sugar, onion powder, black pepper to a bowl and mix to combine.
Place a teaspoon of the mixture in the middle of each wonton wrapper. I made purse shaped Ragoons but you could make triangle shapes if you prefer. Either way just seal the edges by brushing a little water on the edges of the wrapper before folding it around the filling.

I wish I had a great tutorial for the frying part. I asked my husband how he did it and he said 'Keep the oil at 350 degrees and cook them until they turn golden, about 2 minutes'. If that makes as much sense to you as it did to me, I would suggest visiting a link at Americas' test Kitchen that explains how to deep fry a similar snack.

They turned out looking like 'real ones'. More Miss K and Piwi Daddy were pretty happy with the results.

* The Disney Movie 'Mulan' was loosely based on the Ancient Poem of Mulan by an unknown Author. We found several other books that had more information about Mulan.

Miss K makes Tablea (for Filipino Hot Chocolate)

 

During Miss K's Philippines Cacao history project we learnt about Tablea tsokalate. This is a traditional Filipino chocolate drink made by dissolving tablets made from roasted cacao beans in hot water or milk.

In the USA, chocolate manufacturers process the imported Cacao beans so we usually we only come across the byproducts of the cacao bean. Cocoa powder we use in baking and cocoa butter is in the bars of chocolate we love. Tablea is made by grounding down roasted whole beans in their entirety. Traditionally it is made by hand and produces what remains is a rich thick oily paste. The concept is similar to grinding down peanuts to make peanut butter. The product is shaped into tablets or balls and dried.

It occurred to me that if we could buy cacao beans we could try to make tablea. I wasn’t too sure our food processor would work like a grinder but it’s not the strangest thing I have tried to make in a food processor*. If it didn’t work,  it would still be a teachable moment. I could still demonstrate how hard it must be to make it by hand (if even a food processor can’t do it!).

In the US, fermented cacao beans can be purchased as nibs. The nibs are beans which have already been roasted, peeled and crushed in to smaller pieces.  I fully expected to need to have multiple attempts at this but it worked on our first try.

Here's what we did to make our own version of Tablea:

½ cup of nibs went into the food processor. We added 3 tablespoons of sugar. I hoped it would act as an abrasive and help the grinding process.

After 15 pulses the nibs had begun to break down but it was still very gritty. We let it run for another minute and noticed a layer of cocoa butter forming as the processor was warming.

Here is one of the pieces of cocoa butter we scraped out to try –it was very strong but yummy.

I scaped the edges and bottom of the bowl and let it run for a bit more until it was all sticking together and very few grainy pieces were left. 

Miss K molded the cocoa ‘dough’ into tablet and they dried hard in an hour.

They looked and tasted good but we still wanted to see if they could make tablea tskolate.

We tried it in two kinds of milk –almond for me and regular for everyone else.

The tablet dissolved (with a lot of whisking) into the milk. We added vanilla and sugar. It was really good! I can only imagine how good the really thing must be!

Apparently Cacoa nibs are full of antioxidants too! They are also totally plant based/vegan. Milk is added when they manufacture chocolate candy to make it creamier. So there we have it -a successful project and a new way for me to make my own vegan 'chocolate'!

*the strangest thing I made in a food processor was paper pulp for a High school science project. Sorry Mum for chopping up newspaper in your kitchen appliances! 

The history of the Philippines (with Chocolate)

Last week we began a unit about Chocolate. We took the road less traveled and used it as an opportunity to learn about Cacao farming and it’s place in Philippines history. For those new to our blog: you can read about our family's heritage here.

Our inspiration was a bar of Askinosie chocolate. On the front of this uniquely package chocolate is big text stating that it was sourced from Davao, Philippines. At the time I wasn’t aware that Chocolate was one of the country's exports.  After a quick web search I learnt that the Davao region grew 70-80% of the 10,000 Tons of cacao the Philippines produced last year (source).

 

It took a bit of research but it evolved into a  perfect opportunity for Miss K to learn about the history of the Philippines. I wrote out the key events in the Country's history, and the history of Cacao. There was also a lot of information on recent initiatives to increase production of Cacao beans and support of Davao farmers. Miss K cut out all the events and ordered them by date. What started out as a two foot long time line, end up measuring nearly 8 feet!  

We learnt a lot and Piwi Daddy was surprised at how much Miss K had absorbed about the same same subject that he had been bored by in school. To be honest I, too, would have a better grasp on world history if the subject of chocolate had been involved. 

As we were reading about the processing of cacao beans we came across tablea tsokalate. This is a traditional chocolate drink made by dissolving tablets made from ground cacao beans in water or milk. There are people all over the web raving about this rich foamy drink!
Our favorite was this virtual Experience making tablea in Palo 

Apparently Askinosie chocolate imports handmade Tablea, as a way of raising money for it's Davao charities. Now Miss K wants to try Tablea and learn more about the Farms in Davao....

Update!
Here is our attempt at grinding down cacoa beans to make our own Tablea

Books we used for this project:

12 popular posts for 2012

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Piwi Explorers 'visit' China

Piwi Explorers: China

Our first country in Asia to explore was China. It was a busy week packed with also sorts of topics in the history and geography of this huge country. We made art projects, studied the Giant Panda and visited a Chinese restaurant to wrap up the unit.

Coloring the flag are researching the meanings of the stars and colors

Map of China and geographical statistics,

Making a Chinese New year dragon from teacher file box

Postcard from Ancient China from Teacher file box

Practising calligraphy, Mini books on growing rice and food in china

Chinese inventions and types of houses in China. Miss K used google (with supervision) to research these topics.

Giant Panda conservation and adaptations

Giant panda animal report

Shared With:

Piwi Explorers: Asia

This year we are using Galloping the Globe as a framework for Geography and History. It is a unit study

approach which is organized by continent. We are taking between 1-2 weeks to go through the activities for each country. I have a plan laid out for a week, but if Miss K takes extra interest in an area of study then we will take extra time to learn more. For example she really loved researching the early exploration timelines so instead of just the planned explorer timeline I also helped her find the images to create one of what early maps looked like through the centuries.

Our first continent is Asia. We began with a Map of Asia which can be colored as we 'visit' each country.

Map is from Galloping the globe text

and a map showing different animals in each region. Mini Piwi also insisted on completing the booklet of Asian Animals....

These pages are from teacher file box.com

Our first stop in our exploration of Asia is China.....