All Entries in the "Gatherings & Potluck" Category
Dim Sum at HKYK Seafood Hotpot Restaurant in Richmond
The Richmond Community Kitchen gathered for a Chinese New Year celebration at HKYK Seafood Hotpot Restaurant which serves dim sum in the morning.
One of the reason we picked HKYK is it’s wheel chair. There is a parking lot adjacent to this building and there are lots allocated for HKYK but you must register your license plate number in a register book at the reception.
There were fourteen members (old and new) from various kitchens who attended this event.
Another reason we picked HKYK is their prices are really cheap; $1.99 for most of the regular dim sum items. Click on the order sheets above for the enlarge view. HKYK uses a computerized order sheet where you shade the required quantity. It reminds of the multiple choices test in schools.
HKYK has been in Richmond for a long time. I remembered we had dim sum here way back in 2002. It is a big restaurant with many seating. I’ve seen reviews that service is not that good here but for the price that you pay, you cant expect much. We are quite ok with the slow service as that gives us more time to chit chat and catch up with one another.
We ordered a total of 21 different items to try. The Steamed Glutinous Rice Wrapped in Lotus Leaf was the only Special item we ordered. This huge dumpling costs $5.50. It came with sugar and soy sauce for dipping.
Other than the above special, we ordered pretty regular dim sum items for those who are not familiar with this Cantonese cuisine to be on the safe side. Moreover, we do have one member who is gluten intolerant.
Pork Dumplings, Shrimp Dumplings, Steamed Dumpling Chiu Chou Style and Steamed BBQ Buns are very common items in dim sum place.
Wonton in Chili Oil and Peanut Sauce, Steamed Pork Ribs in Black Bean Sauce, Steamed Beef Ribs in Black Pepper Sauce and Steamed Pork Liver Rice Rolls with Ginger are more for the … More on following page. Click here to continue reading
Richmond Community Kitchens Potluck 2009
Several of the Richmond Community Kitchens gather to celebrate the end of the 2009 session. We had a lot of food from the participants as usual.
We had a good spread of food from noodles, soup, salad, finger foods and lots of desserts.
It took us a while to get the group photo taken as more people arrived after the initial group photo.
Here are the food in detail. Minoo made an Indian sweets called Burfi. It is made with sweetened condensed milk, non-sweetened grated coconut, chopped Pistachio and cardamom. The ingredients are mix together and cook on the stove on low heat for 10 minutes and roll into balls. The Burfi is then coated in grated coconut.
Lorna made a big platter of salad of potatoes, hardboiled eggs, apple, pear, seedless grapes, artificial crab meat and water melon seeds. The salad is seasoned with miracle whip. Lorna decorated the platter with some beautifully crafted cucumber blossoms.
Tanni made some crispy baked tofu puff at the kitchen. This is so simple to make. Just bake the tofu puff on a greased baking sheet at a 450F preheated oven for 10 minutes turning once.
I made Lychee jelly.
More on following page. Click here to continue reading
Journey Through Eight Great Traditions of Chinese Cuisine
Hi All:
Suanne and I wants to embark on an exploration in learning about the Eight Great Traditions of Chinese Cuisine. We are just intrigued by the differences between these distinct regional cuisines — we want do a series on them over a period of time.
Song Dynasty Party | Credit: wikipedia.org
The Eight Great Traditions of Chinese Cuisine are defined as follows (with the 4 major ones marked with ***):
- Anhui
- Cantonese ***
- Fujian
- Hunan
- Jiangsu (Huaiyang) ***
- Shandong ***
- Sichuan ***
- Zhejiang
We would love to engage chowtimes readers in this journey with us. As you know, the traditional way to enjoy Chinese food is to have it banquet style. We are thinking of organizing something along these lines:
- We meet once a month on a Saturday. Each month, we will focus on one of the eight regional cuisine
- I will organize a table or two (ten to a table) with a multi-course dinner
- I (or a volunteer) will research about the cuisine and share with everyone.
- We will learn about the region, the ingredients, the cooking techniques, famous dishes, the people, etc.
After all, I am of the opinion that Vancouver is home to the best authentic Chinese restaurants in North America. I think we can even go as far as saying Vancouver is home to the best authentic Chinese restaurants outside of China.
It will be a great time to learn, meet fellow foodies and most important of all, enjoy the best each of the regional cuisines has to offer. Depending on the responses, I am already thinking of going on to another series on “ancient cuisines” — but that’s for another time. One step at a time.
Is there anyone who will be interested to join Suanne and I?
If you are, just send me an email (ben@chowtimes.com) and we will take it from there.
Ben
Office Potluck — October 2009
At work we have a social committee which is pretty active. They organizes various events to build relationships at work. Some of the events that they organizes very well is the hockey pool and the office potluck.
We do this once every quarter and it is always a success no matter how many times we do it. This is one event that has the most participation of all events.
The way we do it is to randomly split the office into two groups. Each of the two groups will be contributing to one potluck. So there are two potlucks held on different dates and everyone contributes on one of the potluck but gets to eat on both potlucks.
Everyone can contribute to the potluck by bringing a homemade dish. For anyone who doesn’t want to bring a homemade dish, they can buy them or pay $20 so that the committee can use the money to buy on their part.
At the end of the potluck, the Social Committee will put up an online poll to gather votes for the best of categories.
My contribution this time is Baked Char Siu Bau. Actually, it was Suanne who made it. You guys know I don’t cook. Suanne makes really moist Char Siu Bau and am glad to say it was one of the favourites. This is not gonna win any prizes this time — that much I can tell you though.
If you want the recipe to this, you can find it here:
After the buns are made, let rest for 30 minutes and brush with beaten egg (egg wash).ย Bake in a preheated 325F oven for 12 to 15 minutes until golden brown.
This dish above looks set to be the winner this time. This is called Russian Sushi!
I don’t know if this is a made-up name or what. But it sure looked the prettiest.
This is another pretty unique dish. I wanted so much to try it but when it got to my turn, they were all gone. This is … More on following page. Click here to continue reading
Chowtimes Readers Dinner: Anyone Interested?
You know what Suanne and I would like to do?
We would like to organize a dinner among Chow Times readers again.ย The last (and only) time we organized one was back in January 2008 when we managed to fill a table of 10.ย We went to the Tong Kung Chiu Chow Restaurant in Richmond to try Chiu Chow cuisine (that restaurant had since closed, sad to say).ย Suanne and I had a great time — we were so glad to get to know real names and faces behind commenter handles.
Since that dinner in Tong Kung, there are a lot more people who had been following Chow Times.ย For some of you, I felt like I know you already — but not quite.ย However, all of us have one in common.ย We are foodies.ย Foodies do one thing — we seek out good food.ย What better way to enjoy food than to mix good food with good company.
So, can Suanne and I have the honour of your company for dinner?ย I have an idea in mind and I think it will be a culinary experience, not too expensive (like less than $30) and will be wmewhere you probably had not been to before.ย I will see if I could work out a deal (using the good name of Chow Times, he he he).ย That much I can tell you … just a teaser!ย LOL!
Suanne and I are thinking of doing it on a Saturday for dinner sometime in mid-June (13th or 20th).ย If you are interested, just shoot me an email at ben@chowtimes.com.ย We really look forward to meeting all of you who had been following Chow Times.
Foodies Unite!
Ben and Suanne
South Arm Cooking Club for Seniors Celebrates Chinese New Year
The South Arm Cooking Club for Seniors celebrates Chinese New Year by cooking some Chinese dishes for this meet. Cooking Chinese food is new to some of the members and they enjoyed it very much.
We had a little game with chopsticks during lunch. The game is to see who can pick up the most marble using chopsticks. First, it’s a couple who has the least experience using chopsticks to compete. I can only remember Karen (sitting, middle) won the competition. We were amazed how a person who does not use chopsticks can do so well with the chopsticks. On the other hand, those regular users of chopsticks failed in this competition. That include me who only managed to pick up on marble, :-(.
Stella decorated the dining table with Chinese New Year goodies like red packets, mandarin oranges and Chinese New Year cookies. Stella also explained to the group that the red packet is to be distributed from married people who are more senior in status to people who are younger and more junior in status who are not marry yet, even you are 40s, 50s or 60s. In Cantonese tradition, the red packets are distributed in pair, especially from parents or close relatives.
Gilmore Park Church Community Kitchen Christmas Potluck 2008
The Gilmore Park Church Community Kitchen celebrated Christmas with a potluck as previous year.
We are glad to have Lorna (standing 3rd from left) to join us again. Lorna gave us a very priceless gift from her late husband. It is an art collection of Lorna’s husband arts with the title “Fascinating Mind of Nigel Tam”. Nigel (1937-2008) was born and raised in an artistic family in Shanghai, China. Nigel graduated from TaiNan Polytechnic and Taiwan Normal University with honour in Fine Arts.
Nigel was married to Lorna in 1971 and had two daughters. In 1992, Nigel and family moved to Canada and established the “Tam’s Studio”, teaching art. Nigel managed to publish his art works in the book “Fascinating Mind of Nigel Tam” just before he passed away. This book contains art work from oil painting, ink painting and digital art work. Lorna, thank you so much for sharing Nigel’s dream with us.
Besides sharing food, Karen made everyone a cute little ornament bell to be hang on our Christmas tree. Karen, thank you for the crafted gift. Frank also gave everyone some Japanese cookies and beautifully written Christmas cards.
Back to food, Heidi made this very fragrant 5 spice duck. She told us she marinated the duck with 4 tablespoons of salt and 4 teaspoons of five-spice powder for 48 hours, wrapped with layers of paper towel to absorb all the moisture. She then use some Shioxing wine to rinse the inside of the duck before steaming the duck for 40 minutes. This 5-spice duck is her husband’s favourite.
Lorna made this dessert soup which is supposed to have healing effect for cough. According to Chinese medicinal point of view, this dessert soup warms your lungs. This soup has papaya, red dates, fig, white fungus (or snow ear fungus), north and south almond and sweetened with rock sugar. According to Lorna, the dry white fungus has to be soaked and blanched to remove the sulfuric taste in it.
Click on Read More for more food.
