Chow Times » Gatherings & Potluck

Office Potluck — October 2009

Ben — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 10:30:13 +0000

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:

I used the dough recipe from here: http://chowtimes.com/2006/03/15/cinnamon-buns/

and the char siu filing from here: http://chowtimes.com/2006/03/28/char-siu-bao-part-1-of-2/

After the buns are made, let rest for 30 minutes and brush with beaten egg (egg wash).

Bake in a preheated 325F oven for 12 to 15 minutes until golden brown.

After the buns are made, let rest for 30 minutes and brush with beaten egg (egg wash). 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 after the jump. Click to read the rest of Office Potluck — October 2009 (101 words)

Chowtimes Readers Dinner: Anyone Interested?

Ben — Tue, 26 May 2009 21:00:03 +0000

You know what Suanne and I would like to do?

We would like to organize a dinner among Chow Times readers again. The last (and only) time we organized one was back in January 2008 when we managed to fill a table of 10. We went to the Tong Kung Chiu Chow Restaurant in Richmond to try Chiu Chow cuisine (that restaurant had since closed, sad to say). 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. For some of you, I felt like I know you already — but not quite. However, all of us have one in common. We are foodies. Foodies do one thing — we seek out good food. 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? 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. I will see if I could work out a deal (using the good name of Chow Times, he he he). That much I can tell you … just a teaser! LOL!

Suanne and I are thinking of doing it on a Saturday for dinner sometime in mid-June (13th or 20th). If you are interested, just shoot me an email at ben@chowtimes.com. 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

Suanne — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 15:00:40 +0000

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.

More after the jump. Click to read the rest of South Arm Cooking Club for Seniors Celebrates Chinese New Year (471 words)

Gilmore Park Church Community Kitchen Christmas Potluck 2008

Suanne — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 15:00:01 +0000

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.

More after the jump. Click to read the rest of Gilmore Park Church Community Kitchen Christmas Potluck 2008 (168 words)

Cooking Club for South Arm Seniors Christmas Celebration 2008

Suanne — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 15:00:26 +0000

It has been a fruit full year for the Seniors Cooking Club in South Arm Community Center. Without realizing the passing time, this senior cooking club has been in session for a year.

When Stella announced that there will be only one cooking session in December for the seniors in South Arm, Paul expressed his sadness as he missed his Danish way of celebrating Christmas. So, Stella and Minoo came out with a lavish Danish cooking session to celebrate Christmas with Paul (right most standing).

Stella decorated the table with red table cloth and had some festive center pieces to bring up the Christmas festivities.

It was also Minoo’s birthday on the same day and Stella presented the birthday girl with a Christmas planter and to thank her for all the hard work that she had put in for this seniors’ kitchen.

Click on Read More to view photos of the individual food.

More after the jump. Click to read the rest of Cooking Club for South Arm Seniors Christmas Celebration 2008 (92 words)

Golden Dynasty Seafood Restaurant in Richmond

Ben — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 17:00:00 +0000

This restaurant had been replaced by another new restaurant, updated 18 Oct 2008

This is about the first meal we had in 2008. It is a dim sum breakfast we had with the families of Polly & Vincent and Wai Bing and KC. This dim sum breakfast is actually the continuation of our New year Eve celebration together. The previous day we went to Wai Bing’s house to usher in the new year. We had a simple and great home cooked meal, chatted till past midnight, went home to sleep and then met up again for dim sum the next morning.

Between New Year Eve and New Year Day, gosh, we must have chatted for 14 hours in all (Wai Bing, Polly, you do the math … is that right?). I did not realize we had so much to talk about. Over bottles of Guiness Stouts, We talked about normal stuff … you know, like … what you would do if you win the Super-7 (Wai Bing would buy an entire townhouse complex and give each one of us an unit, hurray!), educating the ladies on benefits of investing on a HDTV for the house, plans for next year … and other normal stuff.

Sorry … I digressed.

The Golden Dynasty Seafood Restaurant is where we went to. Although Suanne and I know of this place, we had never been in these before. It is located on a strip mall on 8360 Granville Ave in Richmond. It is where Rogers is, if you know the neighborhood.

One thing you will undoubtedly find … parking is very limited. I guess this is what happens when a certain business (this restaurant) dominates the business on this small area. Almost all the parking lots are all marked for specific businesses. If you can’t find parking right up front, drive over to the back of the strip mall. There are plenty there.

Golden Dynasty is a one of the larger and busiest dim sum restaurants in Richmond. They are big and can cater to wedding dinners too. The place was absolutely packed when we were there but we had no problem getting a table since Wai Bing had already made the reservation before hand.

I think the popularity of this place is due to its price. Their dim sums are categorized as small, medium or big but they all costs the same, $2.30. The quality is not bad too. There are specials which costs a bit more (see menu above).

I like dim sum restaurants where they cart around the dim sum to your table for selection. It’s good to be able to see what you’re ordering, especially for us who do not read Chinese. We had two or three servings of each dim sum … below.

The Steamed Prawn Rice Rolls was very smooth. Best eaten when steamy hot.

This is some kind of Deep Fried Wonton.

Suanne called this the Char Siu So. It’s a pastry with Char Siu fillings.

This is another dim sum with char siu fillings. It’s called Charn Pau (Baked Char Siu Bun) in Cantonese.

The Sin Juk Guen (Fresh Bean Curd Rolls) — love this a lot.

Everyone should try this very chewy Braised Cow Stomach.

Then we had the steamed Squid with few small To Fu Puff thrown in it. It does not look great … looked like it was yesterday’s dim sum.

We also had Wu Gok (Deep Fried Yam Dumpling) — not my favourite but Vincent loves this. He ordered 3 plates of this.

This is a Deep Fried Dumpling … oh … with red bean fillings? *shrugs*

We came across the Pineapple Bun again. Arkensen & Nanzaro loved this. Their Pineapple Bun are the mini version of those we had in Lido.

Everyone’s favourite … Siu Mai (Pork Dumpling with Fish Roe). If you have dim sum, you must have this … and don’t ask what is in it … just eat it and I am sure you will like it.

The Har Gau (Steamed Prawn Dumpling) is another very common dim sum item. I never did like Har Gau’s a lot.

The Fung Jau is translated as the Phoenix Claws. A fancy name for chicken feet or formally known as Braised Chicken Feet in Garlic and Black Bean Sauce. I get a kick watching my non-Chinese friends eat this — most would not even touch it. But seriously, this is great!

You can’t see it from the picture above. What is submerged under the congee is century eggs (or thousand year old eggs). In Cantonese, this is called the Pei Dan Sau Yok Juk or in Suanne’s translation, the Thousand Year Old Egg and Lean Pork Porridge.

The Steamed Chicken Bun is the favourites of the kids. Pretty ho-hum. Char Siu buns are better but we did come across it when they wheeled their carts over.

And finally, the Glutinous (or Sticky) Rice Wrap.

The total bill came to $80 for 3 families of 12 people (including kids). Not bad, huh?

I’ll blog about dim sum and Ben’s version of etiquette of eating in a Cantonese (dim sum) restaurant tomorrow. How does that sound?

Gilmore Park Church Community Kitchen Potluck Party 2007

Suanne — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 09:00:00 +0000

The Gilmore Park Church community kitchen held a potluck party on the last meeting last year. It has become a tradition for the community kitchen to celebrate the last kitchen of the year with either potluck or eating out.

Jean, who is the leader of this kitchen, made a huge turkey for the potluck. She also demonstrated it in a small scale, i.e substituting the turkey with chicken. I will blog about the Roast Turkey in the next blog.

The members of this group presented a little gift to Jean as an appreciation of her good work.

Here are the food that we had during the potluck:

Jean’s Roast Turkey ….

… and the stuffing from the turkey.

Minoo made Cranberry Sauce from scratch.

Winnie made a very beautiful platter of salad of apples, potatoes, egg, carrot, celery, tomatoes, mandarin oranges, sweet corn, can tropical fruit cocktail and egg roes.

Rowena made a pasta with prawns and ham.

Florence made a prawn fried rice. I’m sure Nanzaro and Arkensen will enjoy this.

Tanni brought some phyllo quiche … bought from Costco.

Habiba brought egg rolls, one of my favourite Chinese New Year cookie, light and crumbly.

I made Cream Cheese Cup Cakes.

Rice Krispies Squares from the kitchen.

Biscotti compliment by Karen, the community kitchen chef.

Lorna brought Frozen Yogurt.

Landa brought mandarin oranges.

Last but not least, Heidi brought drinks. We had a great time and we wished everyone a joyful new year and see you ladies and gentleman in the new year.

Caring Place Potluck 2007

Suanne — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 09:00:00 +0000

The Caring Place Community Kitchen sessions for 2007 ended early this year on 15th November. This is because the kitchen is fully booked for Christmas-related events even five weeks before the Christmas. You know, I feel that Christmas starts earlier every year.

We had a potluck, as usual, to celebrate the closing of this year’s program. It is always great to enjoy each other’s food and chit chat about everything under the sky. I am going to miss meeting the ladies for the next couple of months. Anyway, here is what we had brought to share for the potluck.

Stella made some Banana Apple Walnut Muffins. The large pieces of walnuts studded from the top of the muffins make it very interesting.

Minoo made Lubria Polo which she had demonstrated in the Gilmore Park Church Community Kitchen.

I brought Steamed Rice Cakes (Pak Thong Koh).

Ada brought Mango Pudding.

Amy brought some mash potatoes.

Jean brought two items. Her Matrimonial Squares and …

… Devil Eggs.

Zoe is the best. She made four items, mini cheese tarts …

… peanut salad, …

… milk pudding, …

… and a coffee jelly to be served with coffee creamer.

Ladies (from left, Minoo, Jean, Stella, Zoe, Amy and Ada), thank you for sharing and I had a great time. Also, I had to thank Ruby for dropping by with some Chocolate Chip Cookies even though she is not able to attend the potluck.

I wish everyone a great year ahead.

OK, I am done for the next 1 month … Ben is supposed to start on his humongous New York series tomorrow. Being such a procrastinator, he had not blogged a single word yet. I know he is going to scramble to put it together tonight.

BTW, Ben changed a bit of the way the blog looked. There are some improvement but he had started to what-he-says-is-to “monetize” chowtimes. He had put up a few Google Ads for the last one week and it’s making some money! I hope the ads is not too distracting to you readers out there. Let us know if it does.

Kyung Bok Palace in Richmond

Suanne — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 17:00:00 +0000

The Caring Place Community Kitchen celebrated the end of another great session by dining out. We would love to take a break from laboring in the kitchen.

Minnie was asked to bring us to a Korean Restaurant. Minnie, thank you for being our Korean culinary guide again. She brought us to Kyung Bok Palace which located at the Lansdowne Mall in Richmond. I love this bright red signage on the dark wall of the restaurant because it stands out very clearly although I cant read the Korean language.

Kyung Bok Palace also has patio seatings and it’s just great for their all you can eat BBQ which is only served in the summer evenings.

One good thing about Kyung Bok Palace is there is a sample of the dishes served in the restaurant displayed outside the restaurant. These displays are common in the Asian countries. This is a good way to advertise and bring customers in as many will not dare to try new food which they have no idea how the food looks like. The pricing displays along with the model dishes also helps as one can expect how much the food costs.

All Korean restaurants serve side dishes like these which include soy bean sprouts, braised potatoes, kimchee and other vegetables. You can ask for refill for these side dishes.

Minnie was incharged of ordering the food for us. Due to the presents of people who cant eat spicy food, Minnie mainly ordered food that is not spicy. The first dish is ‘Galbijjim Jung Sik’ which is braised beef ribs and rice with side dishes. The beef ribs are tender and the sauce is slightly on the heavy side, goes best with the steamed rice. This dish costs $15.95.

Next came the ‘Haemul Pajeon’ which is Seafood and Green Onion Korean style Pancake. The pancake came in a sizzling hot plate. Jean and Minoo called this Korean Pizza. This dish also costs $15.95.

Minnie also ordered two ‘Haemul Kalguksu’ which is Seafood with Handmade Noodle. The noodles are really nice and chewy. One bowl costs $7.95. The bowl is huge and good for 2 to 3 people.

We also had ‘Tangsuyuk’ which is Sweet and Sour Pork. The pork is deep fried to crispy and drenched with lots of sauce, should goes well with rice too. This dish costs $17.95.

Lastly, we had ‘Japchae’ which is Stir-fried Sweet Potato Noodles with Shredded Meats and Vegetables like Spinach, Onion, Carrot and Mushrooms. I wonder if the sweet potato noodle is more healthy than the regular wheat noodle. This dish cost $15.95.

Overall, the meal is good except the pricing is slightly on the high side. This meal costs $95 including tips. I would like to mention that some of the members did not turn up and Minnie had ordered enough food for 10 people. The five of us ended up eating all the food and no dinner for me, I’m not sure about the rest of them. Nevertheless, we had a great time checking out each other’s summer plan and wishing each other a great summer. We’ll meet again in September.

© suanne for Chow Times, 2007. | Permalink | 4 comments
Post tags: Community Kitchen, Korean, Restaurant Review, Richmond

Richmond Community Based Programs’ Open House 2007

Suanne — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 09:00:00 +0000

The Richmond Community Based Programs’ held its annual open house on the 14th June 2007. This is a potluck gathering organised by the family services of Greater Vancouver as the community kitchens wind down for the summer break.

We had the mayor of Richmond, Malcolm Brodie to officiate the opening of the Open House.

Lancy (of Family Services) and Minoo (of Richmond Community Kitchens) kicked start the most anticipated potluck dinner.

This is the moment everyone is waiting for… time to eat.

There were plenty of food from the members of the community kitchens as well as some which were catered so that there will not be a shortage of food. I will only displayed some of the home-made dishes from the members of the community kitchens.

Cabbage Rolls…

… Salmon Fried Rice …

… Pig Ears Stir-fries…

… Kimbab …

… Cassava Cake…

… Chicken Wings…

… Smoked Salmon Bruschetta…

… Prawns…

… Chicken Dish…

… Shrimp, Mushroom and Peas …

I did not manage to take photos of desserts as they were served later. When the desserts were served, I did not stand a chance to take individual photos as people were lining up to fill their plates.

There were plenty of food for all and it’s certainly a successful event. Many thanks to the volunteers who helped out, the organizers, the members of the community kitchens who shared their favourite dishes and most of all to those who came to join us. We wished everyone a great summer.