The Chinese News Year 2008 and Strawberries and Silken Tofu dessert

One of the things I just love about London is the fact that one can find and even stumble upon a huge variety of cultures in one place. Generally speaking it's the city's role as a cultural meeting point and crossroad of different cultures. I was very happy to know that the city will celebrate the Chinese New Year with a large number of events and performances.
I accidentally fell upon the celebrations on Thursday, February 7, 2008, while strolling down from Covent Garden (where I heard the most beautiful and moving live street performance of Bize's Carmen Habanera by unknown but very talented singer) towards Leicester Square, when I stumbled across the red lanterns-garlanded streets. In was wondering why are there so many people, radios and TVs, as the official celebrations were set to start on Sunday, 10th of January. But I was just lucky because the people were far from the crowds on Sunday, so I managed to get close enough to take pictures of the dragons. With my phone unfortunately, I had only this with me.

There were a lot more people on Sunday.



Anyway, it was a wonderful experience and I decided to use a new ingredient for a new dessert.

In fact I used a hard silken tofu with mascarpone, strawberries and cardamom, combining a Chinese, Italian, British and Indian ingredients :) The silken tofu gives to the dessert a very smooth texture and maintains it preventing from being too liquid, while the mascarpone gives to the dessert its thickness and both combine result a velvety look.
The secret ingredient here was the cardamom, which I used to substitute the very popular vanilla and for some unexpected twist in taste.

So for two you need

about 250 gr fresh strawberries (reserve the best ones for decoration)
about 300 gr hard silken tofu
100 gr mascarpone
200 gr fine sugar
crushed seeds from 4-5 cardamom pods
Mix the strawberries and sugar well in a blender and then add the cardamom, tofu and mascarpone, blending well again.


Serve in glasses and decorate with the strawberries and grated chocolate if desired.

Enjoy.