I love making baked goods that use sour cream, because I always have trouble finishing a tub of sour cream. It also happens to give cake a great moist texture. I made this sour cream chocolate chip coffee cake for co-workers and the flavour and texture received great reviews. For those of you who aren’t familiar with coffee cake, coffee cake doesn’t necessarily contain coffee. It is often simply served with a cup of coffee.
I don’t actually like broccoli, but I really like this salad. Everyone that has ever tried it has loved it. In fact, I made it for my dad’s packed lunch recently, and he said that it was the best salad he has ever had. It’s perfect for bbqs, pot lucks, and picnics, because you can make it in advance.
Chinese (Cantonese) egg tarts are subtly sweet snacks/desserts that consist of a egg custard filling (notpudding-y) that is baked in pastry shells that are either flaky puff pastry or soft, shortcrust pastry. Eventually, I will make the pastry from scratch, but for now, the store bought puff pastry tart shells work beautifully and make these egg tarts one of the quickest and easiest desserts to put together. My family thought that these were even better than the ones that we buy from Chinese bakeries. Now that I know how easy they are to make, I’ll never buy them again.
Cooking with Alison’s Mom (Part 1)
I have always wanted to learn how to make traditional Chinese soups and health drinks. So this chicken and rice wine health drink/soup is the first of my new recipe series, Cooking with Alison’s Mom. (Be sure to check out the Cooking with Alison’s Grandma recipe series.)
This Chinese soup is often served to women who have just given birth as it is supposed to be nourishing and warming. I particularly like drinking this healthy soup in the winter. It’s also a great way to enjoy/use up homemade glutinous rice wine. This soup could be made using only 2 ingredients – chicken and glutinous rice wine, but my mom likes to add a few more ingredients to enhance the health benefits and flavour.
Chinese hot chili oil is versatile, delicious, and cheap and easy to make. Use this as a condiment (e.g. for dumplings), use it in sauces (see bang bang chicken recipe here), soups (hot and sour soup recipe here, Chinese borscht (lor sung tong) recipe here), add this to a noodle dish (even instant noodles), or use it as a substitute for cooking oil to add heat to any dish.
Normally, this is made using whole, dried red chilies, which gives the hot chili oil a red colour. However, I happened to have a lot of red chili flakes on hand, so I used that instead.
I lived in Kingston, Ontario for 9 years. I moved back to Toronto in January 2012, but I still visit Kingston frequently. Although I’m loving rediscovering Toronto’s restaurants and food festivals, I still miss my favourite restaurants in Kingston. Here’s a list of where I love to eat in Kingston. I’ve also included a list of things to do in case you’re planning a trip to Canada’s former capital city. Read the rest of this entry »
Ed, Krystal, and I attended the second annual Great Canadian Cheese Festival on June 2, 2012. It was held in Picton, Ontario. We enjoyed the Artisan Cheese and Fine Food Fair, where vendors had samples for tasting and products for purchase, and the Food Network celebrity chef Bob Blumer’s how to grill pizza demonstration. (It’s too bad that I wasn’t able to see the other celebrity guest – Kris Holden-Ried from the tv show, Lost Girl.) We tried more cheese than we could remember. Other available products included chutneys, condiments, gourmet olive oils, cookies, and sausages, etc. We had a great time at the Great Canadian Cheese Festival and I discovered several new favourite products (see below for the list).
Shanghai noodles are thick and chewy. At Chinese restaurants, they are usually darkly coloured and stir fried with thin strips of pork and cabbage. Since the noodles are so thick, they don’t tend to be as flavourful as they appear. That’s why I like eating this dish with Chinese red vinegar. I don’t know if anyone else does this, but I find that the red vinegar adds flavour, helps to cut the oil, and makes the dish feel less heavy. Try serving these noodles alongside sticky rice rolls (recipe here).
Sticky rice rolls make delicious breakfasts and snacks. They are easy to make, can be filled with any flavourful toppings that you like, and can be eaten on the go. These originated in Shanghai but personally, I prefer the fillings that are more commonly used in Hong Kong. Strongly flavoured fillings work best in these glutinous rice rolls. Some common fillings include pork floss, preserved vegetables, and Chinese deep fried dough stick, etc.
I love the crunchy, torched sugar topping of crème brûlée. Although crème brûlée is one of my favourite desserts, I only eat the custard part because I don’t want to feel guilty about wasting food. I used to order crème brûlée more often than any other dessert at restaurants, but that changed when I discovered this recipe. My family and I love this recipe, even though we don’t normally like custardy desserts. The texture of the custard is just right, in my opinion; it’s creamy without being heavy or too rich, and it’s soft and jiggly without being runny or too pudding-y.
I made these in disposable aluminum tart pans for my sister to take to work for her lunch club. One of her friends liked it so much that she used her finger to get the remaining custard out of the pan. This dessert is classy enough to serve at any occasion and it can be made a day or two in advance.
Wild blueberries will forever remind me of the trip that my sister and I took to New England (East coast of Canada and USA). (See my New England clam chowder recipe and review here and my review of a New England restaurant that Barack Obama ate at here.) I was feeling nostalgic when I discovered that President’s Choice sells frozen Canadian wild blueberries, so I purchased a very large bag and have been making this simple wild blueberry sauce ever since. (On a side note, I’m hoping to come up with a recipe that uses frozen blueberries to make a good wild blueberry pie. I’ve had a failed attempt so far. I’ll keep you posted.) I have made this sauce for family, friends, and Ed, and everyone has loved it. It’s subtly sweet and natural tasting and is versatile for a range of simple and delicious desserts. For example, you could serve it warm over ice cream (photo below) or a slice of pound cake (recipe here) with a dollop of whipped cream. (If you have leftover whipped cream, you can freeze it (see here for instructions)!) I’ve also used this sauce (cooled) in trifles (photo above) and danishes (recipe here). I don’t recommend making this sauce with regular blueberries, because they’re not as flavourful, they’re more tart, and they don’t hold their shape as well as wild blueberries.
Cooking with Alison’s Grandma (Part 3 of 4)
During my last visit with my grandma, she showed me how easy it is to make your own Chinese salted eggs! Chinese salted eggs are simple, delicious, cost-efficient side dishes. Personally, I find them addictive. They can be enjoyed as a side dish to compliment a plain bowl of white rice or congee, or they can be used to flavour many different Asian dishes; just to name a few: steamed egg dish, claypot rice, steamed minced pork, rice dumpling (joong/zhong zi), etc. You can even add salted eggs to simple Chinese vegetable soups. This recipe makes a very large amount, which is perfect for making a large batch of Chinese rice dumplings (joong / zhong zi). Feel free to scale it down if you’re not making rice dumplings. My family never has trouble finishing a batch.
Cooking with Alison 