Zoe demonstrated how to make Vietnamese Shrimp Roll in the Caring Place Community Kitchen. This is a good demonstration as everyone get hands on making the rolls.

Vietnamese Spring Roll is a very healthy dish as it is made from fresh ingredients and no frying or what so ever.

Ingredients

• Rice paper
• Oriental style rice noodle (rice vermicelli)
• Shrimp
• Romaine hearts
• Lemon/Lime
• Fish sauce
• Sugar
• Sweet chili sauce

Click on the link below for the instructions.

continue reading "Vietnamese Shrimp Roll"

Minoo made this Cheesy Shrimp Dish to be eaten with rice. You may substitute the shrimp with other meat like cooked chicken or ham. This is kind of one pan dish. It’s complete with protein, fiber, vitamins and carbohydrate.

Ingredients

• 2 cups of cooked rice
• 3 tablespoons oil
• 1 cup cooked shrimp or chicken or ham
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 red sweet pepper, chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• 2 large tomatoes, diced
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup grated cheddar cheese
• 2 teaspoons tamari
• salt and pepper to taste

Click on the link below for the instructions.

continue reading "Cheesy Shrimp Dish"

I was not able to attend the South Arm community kitchen due to other personal commitment. Tony helped me to take the photos for this session. Thank you Tony.

For this session. Vanessa made Fish Paste Stuffed Vegetables and Hong Kong Style Fried Rice.

Fish Paste Stuffed Vegetables is my late-mom’s specialty. She made the fish paste herself. Her fish paste is very springy and tasty. Our family loves this dish a lot. She usually made it with eggplant, tofu, bitter gourd, tofu puff, bean curd skin and chili. I missed this dish a lot. Whenever she made this dish, she also made fish ball soup using the bones and the skins of the dish. The soup is absolutely delicious too.

Vanessa used a store bought fish paste for her dish. Vanessa seasoned the fish paste with white pepper powder. The vegetables which Vanessa used for stuffing includes the three different colour sweet peppers and eggplant.

Vanessa pan-fried the stuffed vegetables with some oil until golden brown in batches. Remove the fried vegetables and set aside.

After frying all the vegetables, she then made a sauce with soy sauce, oyster sauce, sugar and water. I remembered my mom made the sauce with salted soy bean and minced garlic . Once the sauce came to a boil, return the fried vegetables to simmer for while to absorb the flavour of the sauce. You may thicken the sauce with some corn starch solution if you preferred.

Vanessa, thank you for sharing this dish which brings back so much memories to me.

Tanni and Grace paired up to present two dishes in the Gilmore Park Church Community Kitchen. The first dish is made by Tanni which is Currry Seafood Pumpkin Pot. This is an innovative dish where the seafood curry is stored in a cooked pumpkin where you can also eat the pulp of the pumpkin as well.

Tanni served the Curry Seafood with some spaghetti flavoured with pesto. I’m sure this curry dish is good with steamed rice too.

Ingredients

• 1 small pumpkin
• Seafood medley eg. salmon, scallop, prawn, etc
• 1 onion, chopped to bite-size
• 3 cloves shallots, finely chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 1/4 cup flour
• 1/2 teaspoon curry powder (more if you preferred)
• 1/2 teaspoon tumeric powder
• 1 cup coconut milk
• 3/4 cup evaporated milk
• 1 cup water
• 1 to 2 teaspoons chicken powder

Click on the link below for the instructions.

continue reading "Curry Seafood Pumpkin Pot"

Minnie demonstrated two Korean dishes in the Caring Place Community Kitchen. Minnie has been very active in the two community kitchens she attended and she has been sharing her Korean inheritage in both the kitchens. She is certainly a great addition to the community kitchen.

The first dish Minnie shared with us is a Korean Seafood Rice. She told us that this dish is her specialty. The Seafood Rice is served with blanched soy bean sprouts and seasoned with a home-made sauce.

I noticed that Minnie always brings her Korean pressure rice cooker to cook rice. The pressure rice cooker is not the regular rice cooker which most of us are familiar with. The Korean style pressure rice cooker gelatinize the rice starches more completely than other style cookers, resulting a more glutinous and marginally more nutritious cooked rice. In South Korea Cuckoo is the top-selling brand of rice cooker.

Ingredients

• Oysters, clam, mussels, salmon, fish roe (egg), shrimps, squid, crab meat and any other shell fish
• Soy bean sprouts
• Sesame oil, salt & pepper

Sauce:

• Soy sauce, sesame oil, toasted sesame seeds, minced garlic, finely chopped onion or green onion, sugar, Korean red pepper powder (optional)

Minnie used the oysters from a tub and not those with the shell on. The tub below costs $7 plus.

continue reading "Korean Seafood Rice"

Once again, Julie shared in the South Arm Community Kitchen. Julie told us that when Vanessa called her on Monday for her help, she could’nt sleep that night as she was worrying of what to demonstrate in the cooking club. She is such a good friend to Vanessa that she would not say no to her.

As she was doing her rounds for the ingredients for her demonstration, she met a friend who works in a fish processing factory. This friend of her offered her some salmon fillets from her work place. That’s when Julie got her inspiration of her dish, which is Fried Salmon Fillet.

The Salmon Fillet is crisp and goes great with the home made salad dressing. The salad dressing is made with egg yolk, sugar, vinegar and olive oil.

Julie marinated the salmon fillet with salt, pepper, sugar, sesame seeds, garlic, ginger and rice wine for three hours. The last three ingredients help to get rid of the fishy smell from the fish.

Before frying, Julie coated the marinated salmon fillet with bread crumbs.

Julie used the Asian style bread crumbs which is more coarser than the Canadian bread crumbs. They are more like coconut flakes.

The salmon fillet is deep fried until golden brown in medium heat.

Julie served served her Fried Salmon Fillet with some slice tomatoes which has been sprinkled with plum powder. The plum powder adds some sweetness and a hint of sourness to the tomatoes, very tasty indeed. I seldom eat tomatoes just as it is but I ate a lot that day.

We had a few oyster shells left over, twelve in fact. I know that the all-you-can-eact sushi places reuses the shells from the oyster motoyaki to serve what they call the Seafood Motoyaki which is basically motoyaki with salmon. This is Suanne’s version of the Salmon Motoyaki.

The salmon are first diced into small enough chunks.

The basic ingredients are the same with what was used for the oyster motoyaki — Japanese Moyannaise, diced onions and some fresh ground pepper.

Suanne sauteed the diced onions for a change. This will bring up the sweetness of the onions and give the same consistent texture with the salmon.

She also sauteed the salmon to lightly cook them. This is because the grilling will not really cook the salmon enough.

The end result — a balanced mix of onions and salmon.

Place the salmon-onion mix into the oyster shell and season it with freshly ground pepper …

… squeeze mayo on it … pop it into a pre-heated oven and just broil for 2-3 minutes until the moya is browned.

I tried the one below with a slight twist by adding some parmesan cheese. It gives a better crisp on the top and a slight cheesy flavour. This one surely tastes much better than the “Seafood Motoyaki” that we had in restaurants.

You know, I think Suanne had good fun cooking this but I sure enjoyed eating the motoyaki’s. It’s a very easy thing to try at home if you can set your mind off the mound of mayonnaise used.

Rasa Malaysia and Mama Bok commented yesterday that they love oysters but the problem is that they do not know how to shuck them. Well, I am no expert myself having done this for the first time. Although the shell looks impossible to pry open, it is much easier than I originally thought.

It is better and safer to use a Oyster Knife. I got mine from the dollar store for, well, just a dollar.

A oyster knife have a little shield to protect your fingers when you apply force. Also, the blade is thick and sturdy with a pointed tip.

You want to protect yourself and use a piece of cloth to hold down the oyster. The oyster have one side that is flatter than the other — place the rounded side at the bottom. This way the liquid in the oyster will not spill out.

You start with the pointed end of the oyster where the hinge is. Rock and pierce into the oyster and work your way around until the shell opens up.

It’s kind of hard explaining it but here is a good video on shucking oyster I found on Tauton’s Fine Cooking in Real Player here.

We decided that we should blog on Oyster Motoyaki. It is because we find that we have quite a bit of hits from Google where people were looking for “oyster motoyaki recipes” and landed on our site. In fact, Suanne had never blogged on any Motoyaki recipes at all. Google just picked these words from our All-You-Can-Eat Sushi entries and indexed us. Suanne loves Oyster Motoyaki and makes it a point to order a lot when we have Sushi.

We went to the Real Canadian Superstore to buy some fresh oysters. We bought the larger ones. They come in a bag of six and costs $5.99. Oysters can be eaten in many ways, including raw!

Oysters must be alive before you eat it. It is important to check this. The easiest way to determine if it is still alive is when they are tightly closed because opened ones could already been dead. Try knocking on the shell if the oyster is opened, if it is still alive, it will close when you knock it.

It is not easy to open oysters. Use a short strong knife if you don’t have a shucking knife. Start from the back of the shell and cut the muscle that holds the shell shut. Be careful in applying excessive force because the knife could slip and cut your fingers. Use a wet towel to hold the oyster firmly in place.

The oysters we got were really large, way much larger than the ones we had at sushi restaurants. Oh yes, when you open the shells, keep the shell level. This is because you want keep the “juice” — just don’t discard the juice.

The key ingredient is mayonnaise — not just any mayonnaise but Japanese mayonnaise. Unlike the regular mayo, the Japanese mayo is made with rice vinegar and is yellowish. It comes in soft plastic bottles. Kewpie is the most popular brand … get this one.

Suanne did not have the recipe and so she made it up herself. She added some freshly ground pepper for the extra tinge of spice …

… and added chopped onions for the extra bit of crunch …

… and squeezed the mayo covering the entire oyster …

… and broil it until the top of the mayonnaise is browned. Suanne decided to let it brown lesser than what we normally had. Added some green onions for garnishing.

Not bad for the first attempt. This was delicious and miles better than the ones we had in restaurants. It is soft and fleshy. The mayonnaise does not taste as rich because of the added onions.

Suanne will definitely make it again. This is her own recipe but she is pretty sure that there are other ways or ingredients required. Anyone know and care to share?

Minoo started the cooking class in Caring Place for year 2007 with a popular soup, Clam Chowder. Minoo’s recipe is a simplified version which uses Cream of Mushroom Soup to gives the Clam Chowder its creaminess.

Minoo’s recipe is perfect at this time of the year. Vancouver had been unseasonably cold these days with quite a few days of snow storms and sub-zero temperatures. What is better than a hot bowl of soup in this cold winter?

Ingredients

• 3 tablespoons oil
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 4 medium potatoes, peeled and cubed
• 1 can whole baby clams
• 2 cans cream of mushroom soup, low sodium preferred
• 2 teaspoons Mrs. Dash seasoning (optional)
• 1 teaspoon dried parleys or you may use some fresh chopped parsleys
• a pinch of dried thyme
• a pinch of dried marjarom
• salt and pepper to taste

Click on the link below for the instructions.

continue reading "Clam Chowder"