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!!!
