A Mid-Autumn night & the Tofu Burger

How did everyone celebrated Mid-Autumn Festival yesterday? I am sure we all had been eating or still gorging ourselves silly with mooncakes, different different types of mooncakes. I like this photo very much, which I took of my snowskin mooncakes. Anyway I spent the evening with my family, and I cooked dinner for them.

I wanted to make burgers for dinner with my own special minced pork patties, but alas, my sis and bro in law were on a meatless diet yesterday. So that was when I came up with the idea of making my own Tofu patty for the Burger as well. I did not exactly follow any recipe, I just came up with the ingredients I wanted to use, or rather, test out. I decided to use beancurd tofu (tau kwa), shitake mushroom, carrots, a spoonful of oatmeal, big onions, and minced garlic. With all the ingredients chopped and mixed, I added a beaten egg, a pinch of salt, little sesame oil, one TBS light soya sauce, black pepper, little seasoning powder, corn flour. I scooped with a big spoon, ball by ball a big chunk of the tofu mix and fry it in the wok till it becomes golden brown and a little crispy looking. The tofu mix was so soft and will turn watery fast, so must ensure the tofu patty is fried fast with little oil and medium-low fire.

Tadah! This was my Tofu Patty. It was still quite soft on the inside and would break easily. I left it to cool when I prepare the rest. I tasted the tofu patty and it was delicious! It was juicy in a fluffy sense with the flavours of all the different ingredients and condiments all blended in well. So excited!

For the rest of us, I prepared my special Minced Pork Patty mix, which I am very confident of. Ingredients used are minced pork (chopped finely into a paste), chopped big onions and spring onions. Condiments used: One beaten egg, little sesame oil, one TBS light soya sauce, black pepper, little seasoning powder, and corn flour.

And these are my Minced Pork patties all fried till golden brown. At this time, they smell very fragrant and nice.

Next, these are the items which I intend to use inside my burger or as a side dish. I love avocado, cut into thin slices. Cherry tomatoes, lettuce, and alfafa sprouts plus mayonnaise.

I wanted to grill potatoes and the cherry tomatoes, so I wrapped each potato separately in aluminium foil and wrapped all tomatoes up into a bag of aluminium foil, coated with oil, black pepper and chopped garlic. Grill potatoes for 45 minutes, and tomatoes for 20 minutes. Next I lay my pork patties and tofu patties on the foil and top each with mozarella cheese! You only need to grill the patties for 5 minutes as they are already cooked. Finally I sauteed mushroom with chopped garlic and mushroom vegetarian oyster sauce. Yums!

This is my Tofu Burger, with lettuce, sauteed mushroom (and dribbled with a little of its sauce), alfafa and some mayonnaise. I topped the piping hot grilled potato with a little butter and watch it melt into the potato immediately. The Tofu patty was so juicy and tasty that it could easily substitute the pork patty, in my opinion.

This is my Minced Pork Burger. Without ketchup or chilli sauce, it tasted very juicy and tender on its own, cooked till perfection. With just a little mayonnaise, it brought out a wholesome burger experience, with the crunchiness of the lettuce and alfafa, as well as the delish mushroom.

Another look at the whole Burger meal on a platter. I added a side of salad which was lettuce, grilled tomatoes and sauteed mushroom. It was a very filling dinner indeed. It was only after dinner that I realised that I have totally forgotten about the avocado! I had also wanted to put some potato chips as a side (to entice the kids), but that too, I totally forgot about it. Dang. Nonetheless, my family said the patties were delicious.

For dessert, of course we had to have mooncakes. The traditional Lotus Skin mooncake with single yoke was from Goodwood Park Hotel. I think it was well done although I am not an expert on mooncakes. The 9 snowskin mooncakes were from Kia Hiang Chinese Restaurant.

My parents still prefer the traditional mooncakes with Lotus Skin. It is sweet and the paste was smooth. For the previous years, we could not finish the whole box of 4 mooncakes and they had turned mouldy afterwards. Hence this year we just bought 2 pieces.

The kids prefer the Snowskin mooncakes which when taken out from the freezer, are like ice cream. The 3 flavours are Green Tea, Choc Rum & Raisins and Durian. Not bad at all.

We were stuffed. Sis also made some Lychee Konnyaku Jelly. Even more stuffed.

Ironically, the only thing which I did not have this year was the Piglet in a basket. This is usually my favourite for this festival. It is like a chewy cookie with nothing inside, so it is not too sweet. Previous years I would buy many of these piggies to munch. Oh well.

Hope you had a meaningful Mid-Autumn Festival too.

P.S. You may be interested in my previous post of my Mat Salleh Burger too.