Part of my cooking mantra is that food should not only taste good but look good. I guess I grew up eating food that most of the time - just tasted good. It was as if knowing whether it was good or not would be more like the surprise factor to the whole meal.
Had to post this slice of Red Velvet Cake from friend Jeffy who has apparently been reading my blog and has been complaining on the lack of entries for over a month already. He sent over something sweet to give me that needed sugar boost to get me out of my slump! Thanks Jeffy!!!
Having tasted my han yu lao shi's (chinese language teacher) home made dumplings during one of my classes at her home, I liked the taste so much that she so generously shared me some dumplings to take home plus her authentic beijing recipe which I the chaotic one lost even before I got to try it. Luckily she was patient enough to dictate it again to me over the phone one Sunday before I headed off to the wet market to buy the ingredients I needed to make her dumplings. My only apprehension from the very start was the dumpling skin which I had never ever made before. In my mind I knew what i had to do, knew the whole concept & theory behind it, but there are times that theory & the actual part don't gel at all. So I was keeping my fingers crossed that I would recall all those lessons at CCAC and be able to apply everything Mr. Lu had taught us about making the perfect dumpling. Another thing that I was afraid of was the recipe itself since teacher Mary did not have actual quantities & measurements. It was all "guesstimation" which for me, having a bakers background, we are so used to exact measurements that getting recipes like these can be unnerving. But being the determined cook that I was, I pushed all negativity aside & went for it. Part of the reason I was making these dumplings was because my aunt B had given me like half a kilo of garlic chives, which is the key ingredient in making dumplings. After mixing up all the ingredients for the filling, I cooked up a teaspoonful of it just to see if I got the taste & seasonings right. I then proceeded to combine the flour & water to make my dough. This step was easy eough, then came the hard part which was the stuffing & wrapping of the dumpling. After a few failed attempts, I finally got the hang ot it after maybe the 15th dumpling, by the 30th dumpling I was finally enlightened on the "secret" of wrapping the dumpling. It was getting easy peasy after this. As you can see I didn't do so bad for a first timer although some of he dumplings did have some holes - tiny one lah!!!
I finally found the perfect piece of meat for my first attempt at making this classic chinese dish that is Molded Pork. It's been more than 6 months since I saw this recipe in one of mother earths Pei Mei cookbooks, and as soon as I saw it I knew I wanted to cook this dish one day. But my earliest fascination came about maybe 10 years ago while watching Taiwanese director Ang Lees movie Eat, Drink, Man, Woman wherein the opening sequence showed the lead character who played a famous master chef whip up numerous chinese dishes for his daughters, and one of the dishes he cooked was this. I will never forget the moment he plunged the deep fried meat in a bowl filled with ice cubes and I do believe you could even hear the sizzle. Up to this day I still don't know the idea behind this plunging in cold water, I know it's to wrinkle up the skin & make it soft, but honestly though would it matter if the pork skin was wrinkled or not? But hey, I did follow the recipe to a "T", and I must say was mighty proud of the end result. It not only looked delicious, it really really tasted damn good!!!!!
My latest sojourn to Singapore last month proved to be the ultimate food fest/ gluttony parade in all my years of visiting this island nation. After 4 days and 3 nights of non-stop eating I do believe that my system had Singapore food overload, I was actually ready to come home, or at least my stomach was. Travelling with 4 or 5 foodies like me to Singapore meant that we were able to order a lot of different stuff at one go, unlike before when it was just me & Sg friends SL or LW, I would feel quite frustrated that I couldn't order everything that i wanted to try. After a delay with our flight we got to Singapore ready to chow down, we got directions from the hotel concierge on the whereabouts of the nearest good hawker place and he recommended one near the Esplanade. We decided to do a leisurely walk towards the area since it was still quite early for dinner, we hadn't even walked 5 mins. yet when we saw the tempting oily delights of Old Chang Kee, a food stall chain found all over Singapore that sells fried snacks ranging from meat pies, fried seafood balls, fried sotong (squid) etc. Let's just say we were there awhile, we tried almost everything on display. And yet we did not stuff ourselves silly, we controlled the urge since we knew we had to be ready for the main event. Good thing though that the hawker place was a bit hard to find, we got lost a bit so by the time we found the place we were quite famished already. Needless to say the above photo is everything we ordered. To think this was just Day 1!!!
On my drive back from chinese class I suddenly had this craving for something sweet & cakey that just would not go away. I had to go through my brain rolodex to see what places would still be serving dessert at 9pm near our area. The easiest haunt would have been at Mickey D's for some hot fudge sundae or apple pie, but my craving was really for cake. I ended up at our friendly neighborhood Starbucks which I knew would have the answer to my hearts desire. I actually ended up with more calories than what was deemed legal when it came to after dinner snacks, I could not resist the Sausage Roll which is my ultimate SB favorite, imagine a lovely pork sausage slathered with some mustard then wrapped in a super flaky & buttery puff pastry - it was heavenly! Then for "dessert" I ordered the chocolate cake which was disappointing, I've had it before and I don't recall it being this sweet and it was a tad bit dry already - sadly it was not worth the calories. I'm now lying in bed feeling like such a glutton, I need to have more will power!!!
Today mother-earth decided to host a mahjong game for a good friend of ours visiting from Hawaii. So since I had to man the kitchen I decided that chawanmushi or steamed egg would be the perfect dish to serve for dinner, the rest of the dishes (pork barbeque, spinach soup) I would just buy at a favorite restaurant near our store. For this chawanmushi, I got the recipe only recently from my cousin B who took the Beginner's cooking course at CCAC, she was totally raving about how easy & delicious it was, so I really had to try it out. Having made steamed egg before I changed my method a bit when I was advised by our Hawaiian friend to lower the flame when steaming this dish, he said it will result in a more smoother texture & he was right! Although cooking time was extended for 10 more mins. It was sooo smooth & silky. Plus I added some chopped salted duck egg on top for added flavor. The entire dish was devoured by one & all.
This plate of Pancit Luglug was one of the dishes we had ordered on our day trip to Anvaya Cove. It was middle of last year that I first tried out the offerings of this resort and unfortunately I was not impressed at all. Food service was slow and when it finally came it was sooo disappointing. But I tried to be understanding as they were still in the early stages of their soft opening. So on this latest trip, almost a year later I was expecting to see more of an improvement from them. Food definitely was better but not yet in the category of good, it's more in the so-so stage considering that they are a first class resort. Service was decidedly slow when you take into account that it was 2pm already and there was no lunch crowd since it was a weekday. I guess I have to anticipate my next trip and hopefully by then I can expect the good unexpected.
Since mother-earth has been back from her trip, yours truly has had no more serious kitchen duty to perform except as sous chef to the queen bee. I can honestly say that those 10 days she was away were an eye opener, I really take my hat off to all the moms/wives out there - it is really hard work!!! As a way to relax, I have been having this after dinner drink during my down time infront of the TV. I discovered this instant Milk tea drink made by Lipton as I was making my supermarket rounds. I have been a big fan of sweetened milky tea for awhile now so I was soo excited to see that it is now super easy to enjoy it without having to deal with the tea bag, then adding milk & sugar, it's now all in one small packet, you just add hot water!! The taste is just perfect, it's how I would have prepared it if I had done it myself.
We enjoyed this lovely mango dessert from Dulcelin brought over by pal Jack for T & G's birthday party. I've had this torte many times before and for some reason I never really thought it was fantastic or even yummy for that matter. Sure it was pretty to look at with all the luscious vibrant looking mango balls, but for some reason I always felt that the mangoes were tasteless. It was only now that I realized (due to the lack of a freezer at the venue) that this dessert was not to be eaten in a semi-frozen state as suggested, but was best when it has all but defrosted already. Only then can you truly taste the decadent combination of mangoes & cream & the nutty caramely crust. Arrgh calories calories!!!!
Our backyard plantain banana (saba) produced a bountiful harvest this week, some were already rotting that I had to quickly start giving them away. I decided then that this would be the perfect time to try to make Caramelized Bananas since I had loads of them to experiment with. I sliced the bananas in half then placed them on a pan and sprinkled them with brown sugar, then I dotted some butter all over. I baked it in the oven till the bananas turned nice & golden, by this time the sugar had already melted with the butter. It was quite yummy & super easy to make, although not too pretty to look at. I'm thinking I can do it a la Mode next time.
For mother-earths welcome home dinner I decided to cook her a fish dish which I again saw in Yummy magazine. I think there must've been an error in their recipe because the dish certainly lacked in saltiness, and the one big boo boo I did was I didn't taste the sauce before adding it to the fish. I normally do do a final taste test but I don't know why I completely forgot it this time. Plus the fish was a tad bit overcooked by maybe 2 minutes. Recipe said 10-15 minutes steaming and I only did 10 mins. can you imagine if I did it for 15 mins.? It would have been as tough as pork. The only saving grace is that the finished dish looked so lovely.
I was quite impressed with myself tonight. Looking at the above photo of our dinner made me realize that I cooked everything from scratch all in an hour, including prep time!! Father-earth was quite happy with our meal as it's been awhile since mother-earth cooked any broccoli (she actually doesn't like it which is why she won't cook it). I followed Master Lu's method of cooking the broccoli which came out to be a vibrant green color after parboiling. I then sauteed the broccoli with some garlic & a little bit of oyster sauce for flavor. The next dish continues my Shanghainese trend for the week, I saw it in one of Mother-earths Pei Mei's cookbooks and it seemed simple enough. Sliced Pork in Yu-Xiang sauce. Yuxiang translates literally as "the flavor of fish. Now why this name was even used is odd since the sauce has no fish nor does it taste like fish. However, the spices and seasonings in yuxiang sauce were apparently used originally to flavor fish dishes, hence the meaning. I had to revise the recipe a little since I wasn't able to find the clouds ear mushroom at the nearby supermart & I thought mother-earth still had some water chestnuts in the fridge but it turns out that she had bamboo shoots. So I decided that I had to make do with what was on hand & ended up using the bamboo shoots which I sliced into thin strips & then parboiled to get rid of the unpleasant smell. The meat was then marinated before it was cooked in the spicy Yu_xiang sauce.
I used to be intimidated by the term Bechamel sauce, I guess it sounds so fancy & so French that I automatically assumed that it was too complicated to make. Bechamel is one of five mother sauces in French cooking and is also used as a a base for many other sauces, think of it like a jumpstart sauce. So today I decided that it's about time for me to try my hand at making Bechamel also known as white sauce with this Easy Salmon Bake recipe I saw in Yummy magazine. The recipe for the white sauce called for melting 1/4 cup butter then adding in the 3 tablespoons flour combining it very well, cook for 3 minutes then whisk in the 1 1/2 cups milk & cook till sauce thickens, it was soooo easy and the sauce came out so smooth and light. From my research I found that this method I did was called the quick method, apparentlly, classic Bechamel sauce can take over an hour to make what with having to make clarified butter, scalding the milk etc. But I was already happy with the results of my sauce traditional method or not.
It's been awhile since mother-earth made Braised Lion's Head, a dish that evokes memories of my childhood growing up with my sister on D. T. Street. Having decided that I would make this for our dinner tonight, I went online to see if I could find the origins of this classic family favorite of ours. I was really surprised to find that this was a dish that traced it's roots to Shanghai, I always assumed that with it's popularity, it would be a dish from Fujian province where my grandparents are from. Now I'm really curious as to how my grandmother and the other chinese families here in The Pines got introduced to this dish because I can remember eating this since I was but a wee little sprite which was some 30 odd years ago (scary thought!), a time when the internet was non existent. I have been a fan of cookbook author Eileen Yin Fei Lo for quite sometime now, she does things old school, meaning she still uses mainly traditional chinese ingredients in her cooking & she doesn't do short-cuts, (buddha jumps over the wall soup takes 3 days), you can tell that she "honors" those classic chinese dishes that have been around for generations. Her version of this dish was quite simple enough and I had all the ingredients on-hand which was the key thing. The secret to the success of this dish is that the ground meat has to be marinated first before they are formed into huge baseball sized patties, then pan fried till its gets a nice golden brown crust. I did this first step yesterday and placed the patties in the fridge, then after coming home from work I continued on to the next step which is to place some chinese cabbage in claypot with some stock then put in the patties & let it braise for an hour or so till done.
A recent discovery or should I say discovered by someone else but was brought to my attention, was the Lemon Chicken at this local greek restaurant chain named Cyma. I had been hearing raves about this place for sometime and when I finally did try it out last year I was so disappointed by the lamb that I ordered, I had to send it back to the kitchen because the meat was so tough. I went back again early this year with much hesitation, but my aunt who was with me was a big fan of the place & encouraged me to try out this chicken dish of theirs which she really loved. Lo and behold I was totally blown away, the chicken was falling off the bone tender (which is how I like my roast chicken), you could taste the lemon & rosemary in every bite, the sauce was tangy yet sweet yet not overtly so, plus I loved the addition of feta cheese as a topping. Price wise it was around P350 (US$9) which is pretty reasonable considering how good it was. So today since father-earth wasn't going to be around for lunch ,me & Xtiane indulged ourselves in this heavenly greek fare and stuffed ourselves silly. Just stay away from the lamb though.
Here is a first glimpse of cousin T & M's new bundle of joy. I can already tell she is gonna be a looker!!
What happens when a crab-lover like me has to cook Crab Foo Yong for a crab-hater like father-earth? Simple. Just replace the crab with shrimps, which is exactly what I did for our dinner tonight. Saw the recipe in Yummy magazines Jan '08 issue and just couldn't resist trying it out since crab/shrimp foo yong has been one of my all time favorite dishes to order whenever we go out for chinese. I was tempted to try out this particular version because of the fact that tau miao (pea sprouts) was used instead of the usual bean sprouts and it really gave this dish a whole new dimension in terms of flavor. After peeling the shrimp (250g), I deveined it and washed it in some rock salt & water, after draining the shrimp I marinated them in a generous amount of ginger juice, (a staple in our kitchen) for a few mins. While waiting, I combined the sauce ingredients which consisted of oyster sauce, rice wine, stock, sesame oil, sugar, pepper & salt in a saucepan and let it cook till it came to a boil. I then set aside the sauce & returned my attention back to the marinated shrimp which I then strained of the ginger juice. The shrimps were now ready to be added to my 5 beaten eggs. For this dish I felt that a non-stick pan was the best thing to use especially since I was dealing with eggs, I wouldn't want to deal with eggs getting stuck to the wok scraper-rama!! So first I sauteed the garlic, onions & leeks till tender then added the tau miao & carrots, at this point it's best to turn down the heat of the pan to low before pouring in the shrimp/egg mixture. Continuously move the eggs & shrimp all over pan and cook till just set & not dry. Now you can add some cornstarch water into the sauce mixture then cook till thick. Pour this on top of the omelet. This dish is best served while piping hot.
With mother-earth out & about traveling to the Land of our Forefathers, I have been whipping up dishes that I know she doesn't like but which I and father-earth like a lot. One of them is the dish that I cooked for dinner tonight San Bei Ji which literally means 3 Cups Chicken. The name stems from the original recipe which calls for 1 cup Sesame Oil (que horror!), 1 cup Soy Sauce and 1 cup rice wine as the main sauce ingredients that is then cooked with the chicken. This dish is quite popular in Taiwan but traces it's origins to Jiangxi province in southern China. I had to research quite a bit online as there were numerous recipe versions to choose from. The one I finally decided on used only 1/3 cup each of sesame oil, rice wine & soy sauce, which to me sounded like a reasonable portion of ingredients. Cooking this dish was quite easy, I just sauteed the garlic, ginger & chilis in the sesame oil then added the chicken pieces & poured in the sauce mix of rice wine, soy sauce & sugar then let it simmer for 30 mins. I then added the basil leaves & scallions at the very end before serving. That was it, easy peasy and super yummy!!! Go on and try lah!
It's been AWHILE since I updated my blog, sorry to my loyal readers for abandoning you. Now that life has somewhat settled down to normalcy, I think I should jumpstart my blog again but this time I am changing the format a bit and will be focusing mainly on my foodie creations & travels & experiences with food. I know I know there are so many blogs out there talking about food, but what's life without food, food makes life interesting & fun. Food makes the world go round in my book! To start off my blogging with a a bang, I am featuring my first ever crab dish that I cooked on Sunday for lunch. Mamasan brought me home a lovely live crab from the wet market and I was (as brutal as it may sound) quite excited with the prospect of killing my first crab. I tried to remember all Master Lu's lessons in my head with regards to killing & cleaning crabs & was quite surprised to see that it wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be. I even remembered to remove the sac located near the crabs eyes to remove the bitter taste. Guess I've seen Master Lu do it so many times that I just sorta remembered it by default. I decided to make Crab with steamed egg since the recipe looked easy & I luckily had all the ingredients on hand. Crab with steamed egg is kind of like eating Chawanmushi with a whole crab cooked in it, and believe me, the steamed egg tasted heavenly since the combination of the crabs natural juices mixed with the egg made it extra flavorful. It was cooked perfectly if I may so!
