Curry fish balls are a Very popular street food in Hong Kong that are usually served on wooden skewers. This is a mild, yellow curry. At dim sum, you can get curried squid or baby octopus.
Dim sum refers to various types of small dishes that are served with tea during the meal, yum cha (“drinking tea time”), which starts early in the morning and ends between noon and 3 pm, depending on the restaurant. (Check out the other dim sum recipes that I have posted in the Asian – Dim Sum category.)
I love Pho Tai – Vietnamese rare beef and noodles in soup. But I’m too often disappointed by the unauthentic, MSG and chicken broth, cheap imitations that most restaurants serve. So I finally decided to try making it myself. I can’t even describe how excited I was when I tried the Pho recipe from the cookbook, Into the Vietnamese Kitchen by Andrea Nguyen. I could tell from the smell of the broth, even before I tasted it, that I had found the perfect recipe. This is an authentic, delicious, and easy to make broth that is so good, that I’ll never be compelled to order Pho from a restaurant again. If you have leftover daikon radish, see here for a list of other recipes.
Potato pancakes (also called potato latkes) can be made bite sized for hors d’oeuvres or medium to large for appetizers. I like topping these with caviar for hors d’oeuvres or with smoked salmon for appetizers, served with sour cream and garnished with chives.
Ed used to order chicken parmigiana in restaurants all the time. He hasn’t ordered it since I started making it at home a few years ago. If you want a healthier version, coat the chicken breasts with just one layer of bread crumbs and simply bake the breaded chicken in the oven first. Be sure not to overcook it. Then add the sauce and cheese and throw it back into the oven until the cheese melts.
I love eating eggs for dinner and Chinese people have several simple egg dishes that are served with rice alongside other dishes for dinner.
Picture below from top moving clockwise: tomato eggs, shrimp and garlic shoots stir fry, hot and sour soup, mongolian beef. See the Asian category for the rest of the recipes.
Udon noodles: This was my first time making any sort of pasta from scratch and it was surprisingly easy. Since Japanese udon noodles are supposed to be thick (4 – 8 mm) and chewy, no machinery was required to make this. I plan to eventually buy the pasta making attachments for my stand mixer, so one day I’ll make italian pasta from scratch too.
Udon broth: My favourite way to eat udon noodles is in Japanese broth. However, I am often disappointed with the unauthentic broth variations served at most restaurants and I don’t like using powdered soup mixes because of the MSG, excess sodium and preservatives. So I was Very excited to see an authentic dashi recipe on the Rasa Malaysia food blog provided by a Japanese guest writer. Dashi is a type of Japanese stock that is usually seafood based, using ingredients such as shaved bonito (a type of fish) flakes and kombu (kelp). Unlike chicken or beef stocks, dashi takes only minutes to make. It is a basic soup recipe to which you can add whatever ingredients you like (see variation suggestions in the recipe below).
I caught 4 fish ice fishing at the 2010 Winterlude Festival in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. They were all brook trout weighing between 1/2 to 1 lb each. I steamed the largest fish whole (link to recipe here), pan fried the smallest one until the skin was crispy, and baked the last two small fish in parchment. Baking fish en papillote steams the fish in its own juices along with vegetables in a parchment paper envelope. This is also called fish al cartoccio. The best part about this cooking method is the easy clean up. It’s quick, easy, and very healthy. The fish comes out very moist and sometimes I use this method just to cook my vegetables alone. This is great for entertaining too.
I was invited to a friend’s house for a spontaneous weeknight dinner with very short notice. So the challenge was to use ingredients that I already had to make dessert in under an hour. Luckily I had a bag of Kraft Jet Puffed marshmallows leftover from making fondant (recipe here) and I almost always have a box of Kellogg’s Rice Krispies cereal because I love Rice Krispies squares so much. Whenever I make them, I eat them until my mouth hurts…. and then I eat some more.
Hot and sour soup originated in Szechuan, a region in China. It’s one of my sister’s favourite foods and unfortunately, it’s incredibly difficult to find a restaurant that serves a truly authentic (and delicious) hot and sour soup. Luckily, it’s very easy to make at home. My family loves it when I make this soup and they can’t get enough of it. 🙂 You could easily make this a vegetarian or vegan soup by omitting the pork and egg, and by using vegetable broth instead of chicken broth.
Thai red curry is spicier than yellow curry but milder than the green (link to my green curry recipe here). These are incredibly easy to make and like Chinese stir fries, you can pretty much throw in any meat and/or vegetables that you happen to have around. I like to make these with chicken and at least 2 types of differently coloured vegetables. Personally, my favourite thing to put into a thai red curry is fresh Japanese enoki mushrooms. This curry is great when made to be vegetarian/vegan too.
A very nice coworker of mine gave me her pizza stone. It totally made my week 🙂 So for my first time using a pizza stone, I decided to make a “gourmet” pizza. If you don’t have a pizza stone, see the post here for baking instructions using metal pizza pans (link here).
I received a comment asking for pictures of my steaming equipment and technique. So here I show you how I steam food, I discuss other methods of steaming, and I go into detail about the steaming equipment that you’ll need for each method.
Steaming food is very commonly done in Chinese cooking. It’s a very healthy way of cooking as it maintains a lot of the nutrients in vegetables and reduces the amount of oil that you use. It results in tender veggies and moist and juicy meats. I steam cook vegetables, dumplings, whole chickens and fish, pork spareribs, a specific Chinese egg dish, etc. (You can do a search for some of these recipes on my website.)
Cooking with Alison 