Tempura refers to Japanese classic deep fried batter dipped seafood or vegetables. Common vegetables used are bell peppers, sweet potato, okra, carrot, eggplant, potato, lotus root, cucumber, mushroom, bamboo shoot, zucchini, etc.

Cora made pumpkin tempura in this week’s cooking class. She got some mini pumpkins which is very sweet, almost like sweet potato.

The pumpkin tempura was awesome and they just disappeared as fast as they came out from the wok.

Ingredients

• 1 mini pumpkin, cut into thin slices
• Tempura mix
• ice cold water

Click link below for cooking instructions.

continue reading "Pumpkin Tempura"

Cora’s second dish is Sesame Ball (Zeen Duy). Sesame balls can be found in many Chinese bakeries. Chinese believe if you eat sesame balls, your fortunes will expand like the dough expands when it fries.

I like Zeen Duy a lot and remember the days in Malaysia where I always stop and buy some when I see it. In Malaysia, they are usually sold at roadside stores. The ones in Malaysia were huge — like 3 inches in diameter. I miss those stuff a lot. As a matter of fact, this is the first time I have tasted sesame seed balls in Canada, although they are served in some dim sum restaurants.

The Sesame Ball is very light and is practically filled with air on the insides. This is a plain sesame ball but it is also common to have a little bit of fillings of stuff like red bean paste. Anyhow, the plain ones is just as nice because the main flavor of sesame seed is in the crunchiness of the fried sesame seed.

Ingredients

• 1 package of glutinous rice flour (227g)
• 2 slabs of brown sugar (peen tong)
• 1 - 1.5 cups of hot water
• White sesame seeds for coating
• 1 to 2 tablespoons of sake (Japanese wine); optional

continue reading "Sesame Ball (Zeen Duy)"

A pearl is worthless as long as it is in its shell.
~ Native American Proverb

Here is the other dish tha Winnie showed us how to make in our cooking class this week. She called it the Pearl Ball, which is basically meat ball wrapped in glutinous rice. The dish derives it’s name from the translucent appearance of the glutinous rice in a ball shape.

Ingredients

• 1 lb ground pork
• 1/2 lb fish paste
• 2 tablespoons dry shrimp, soaked and chopped
• 2 tablespoons finely diced carrot
• 2 tablespoons chopped shiitake mushroom
• 1 tablespoon chopped parsley
• 1 tablespoon chopped scallion
• 1 teaspoon chopped ginger
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon cornstarch
• 1 egg
• 1 cup glutinous rice, soaked in cold water for at least an hour

Instructions

First, the ground pork has to be moistened with 2 tablespoons of water. Then rest of the ingredients except the glutinous rice are added into the pork mixture and mixed well. The mixture will be very sticky.

This is a very simple dish to make and you can get your kids to help out rolling the meat balls in the glutinous rice. I will surely make this at home. Thank you again Winnie for your recipe.

A good breakfast cannot take the place of the evening meal.
~ Chinese Proverb

This week, Nanzaro wanted to make something for his brother’s birthday party and decided to make Rice Krispies Squares for him. We bought some “Christmas Special” package of Rice Krispies which comes with red and green rice krispies last Christmas and did not use it until now. Anyway, it makes very pretty Rice Krispies Squares, much better than the single brownish rice krispies.

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup margarine or butter
• 1 250g package regular marshmallows
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract (optional)
• 6 cups Rice Krispies cereal

Instructions

First of all Nanzaro melt the butter in the microwave for 30-60 seconds until the butter is melted. Nanzaro then added the marshmallows, and tossing it with a wooden spoon to coat the marshmallows with the melted butter. He returned the bowl to the microwave to melt the marshmallows for another 1-1.5 minutes. You know it’s ready when the mixture is smooth when stirred.

Nanzaro then stirred in the vanilla extract for added flavour.

Next, Nanzaro quickly added in the Rice Krispies cereals and stirred until they were all coated with the marshmallow mixture.The marshmallow will bind the Rice Krispies together. Nanzaro then poured the Rice Krispies mixture into a 13″ x 9″ buttered pan. He used a lightly buttered spatula to press the Rice Krispies firmly into the pan. The pan is then set aside to cool.

Once it’s cooled, I helped Marcus to cut the Rice Krispies into squares for serving.Allie and Helen said that they tastes wonderful … the kids just ate them and said nothing!

Man is like pepper — you only know him when you’ve ground him.
~ Nigerian Proverb

I’ve never paid much attention to Mexican food. Maybe it’s because the names are so hard to remember and pronounce — or maybe there are too many syllables to those Mexican names! Maybe too, it’s because that I don’t really care much about dishes with beans. Beans makes the guys at home fart a lot!

I learn a little bit about Mexican food the past week when the Richmond Cooking Club featured simple Mexican food — salsa, guacomole, tortilla, enchiladas and nachos. This piqued my interests now on Mexican food and will try to learn more about it.

Today, I am going to blog on a very simple snack which I believe is a favourite with almost everyone. Nanchos in its simplest form is tortilla chips covered in melted cheese. You can add additional toppings such as salsa, sour cream, olives, jalapeno and what nots.

Here is an interesting story I found out about Nachos in Wikipedia:

Nachos were created in Coahuila, Mexico by Ignacio “Nacho” Anaya in 1943. The story goes that the wives of American airmen came to his restaurant after the kitchen had closed. Anaya quickly prepared the dish and later added it to his menu. The term “nachos” came from Anaya’s original name for the dish, which was “Nacho’s Especiales,” or “Nacho’s Special Dish.” Nacho Anaya’s original nachos consisted of fried tortilla chips covered with melted cheese and jalapeño peppers.

Ingredients

• A bag of Tostitos tortilla chips
• Shredded cheese
• A bottle of salsa, we prefer the hot and chunky type
• Pickle pepper, optional

Instructions

Line a baking pan with parchment paper for easy clean up. This is to prevent the melted cheese and salsa from sticking to the bottom of the pan. Then layer the baking pan with tortilla chips and sprinkle the salsa on top of the chips.

On top of that, sprinkle generous amount of shredded cheese. You should use a mix of cheddar, mozzarella and Monterey Jack cheeses.

For additional kick, you can add on some pickled peppers or jalapeno peppers.

Preheat a toaster oven to 250 Celcius. You may use the regular oven but for such a small snack dish, I prefer to use the toaster oven which requires less time to preheat and it generates less heat in the kitchen. The nachos has to be baked for 15 minutes or until the cheese melted.

Simple and quick.  Arkensen has been eating a lot of these the past few days!

The harvest of a whole year depends on what you sow in the springtime.
~ Chinese Proverb

The main dish we did for last week’s Cooking Club was spring rolls. Winnie, who taught us how to make the glutinous rice balls earlier, also led in this dish.

I have never considered making spring rolls and have always ate them in restaurants. Gosh! I am so shocked as to the amount of work and ingredients that goes into this. Everyone made the same remarks too. We had twelve people during this session and we took over 2 hours in all. That shows how much work is involved. For sure, it’s quite impossible to make it alone. However, the end results were great and delicious.

Winnie showed us two different types of spring rolls: the first was the fried version (see picture above) and the second was the ready-to-eat wrapped version (details below). Both versions uses the same type of fillings but different types of skins.
Ingredients

• 1 lb ham
• 4 oz shrimp
• 1/2 lb fish cake
• 1 tbsp chopped garlic
• 1 tbsp chopped onion
• 1 lb cabbage
• 1 lb bean sprouts
• 1 lb sui choy
• 1 lb carrot
• 1 lb water chestnuts
• 340g dried spiced bean curd
• 1/2 tsp salt (to marinate shrimp)
• 1 tsp cornstarch
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp five spice powder
• 1 tbsp seasoning soy sauce
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp oyster sauce
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• 5 tbsps oil
• 40 pcs spring rolls skin (choose the type depending on whether you’re frying the rolls or just wrappng it)
• 1/2 lb peanut sugar (optional)

Grated carrot	Shredded cabbage	Dried spiced beancurd
Ground pork	Bean sprout	Grated water chestnut
Chopped shrimp	Sliced fish cake	Shredded ham

Instructions

PREPARATION:

Marinate the pork with soy sauce, five-spice powder and cornstarch. In another bowl, marinate the shrimp with salt and cornstarch. Shred cabbage, dried bean curd and carrot into string shapes about 1.5″ long.

COOKING THE FILLINGS:

Heat 5 tbsp oil in frying pan, stir fry the pork about 2 minutes, add oyster sauce, drain and put it aside. Use the same pan to fry shrimp until well done. Add to the bowl of fried pork. Then fry dried bean curd and add to the bowl of fried pork. Stir fry the shredded carrot, cabbage, sui choy and bean sprout until soft and add fish cakes, soy sauce, salt, seasoning soy sauce and sesame oil. Return the pork, shrimp, bean curd and water chestnut and stir fry all together for a few minutes.

Frying the ingredients

The filling for the spring roll

READY-TO-EAT WRAP VERSION:

Place 2 tbsp filling on the spring roll skin, about 1″ from the edge that is toward you, roll once or twice, then fold right side toward center, then left side toward center. Continue rolling into a tight roll. Note that there for the wrapped version, you need to get the softer spring roll skins. Winnie said that she had to pre-order these type of skins from the bakery. I think this type does not last long and therefore the stores will normally not carry it.

This is the type of skin you should use for the ready-to-eat wrapped spring roll.

How it looks like wrapped tightly.

Looks yummy, right? We ate quite a few of these before we started working on the fried spring rolls!!

FRIED SPRING ROLLS:

Place 2 tbsp filling on the spring roll skin, about 1″ from the edge that is toward you, roll once or twice, then fold right side toward center, then left side toward center. Continue rolling into a tight roll. Stick outer edge of skin to roll with flour paste. Place the sticking side face down to hold tightly and to keep it’s shape until time for frying.

Heat oil in pan. Deep fry the spring rolls in low heat until golden brown and crisp.

The skin for the fried version. You will know that this is the right on by the picture on the wrapping. You can get this from any Asian grocery store.

Frying takes just a few minutes until the skin is golden brown. Remember that the filling is already cooked and you just need to fry the rolls to your liking.

So, will you make it? Personally, I don’t mind making it again just for the fun of it if a few of the ladies in Richmond don’t mind coming by to make it together. Let me know …

;-)

The only unsinkable ship is friendship.
~ Jeff Sczpanski

Polly came over and helped me make Lo Bak Go. I am glad she came over because it’s a lot of work making this. I learned this from a previous Community Kitchen class.

Lo bak go (蘿蔔糕 lo bak go, 萝卜糕 luóbogāo) are savory cakes are made from grated daikon radishes. The daikons are mixed with bits of dried shrimp and chinese sausages that are steamed and then cut into slices and pan-fried. Chinese people normally make Lo Bak Go in the Chinese New Year.

As the name implies, the main ingredient is the daikon radish, which is also known as chinese turnip (or lo bak). The rice flour and corn starch is used to hold the cake together. The other ingredients such as chinese sausage, mushrooms, shallots and dried shrimp are used for flavouring.

Here is how Polly and I make the dish:

We started off grating the daikon. It was easy with the food processor.

We then cooked the daikon with some water for 20 minutes. This will soften the daikon.

While waiting for the Daikon to cook, we chopped the flavouring ingredients into small pieces. This is really hard work. I am not sure if I should use the food processor for this because the ingredients are pretty hard.

We then fried the ingredients at the same time until they are fragrant. We forgot to add in the seasonings, like salt, pepper and sugar!!

We mixed the corn starch and rice flour in water before we pour it over the fried ingredients together with the cooked daikon.

We need to stir the mixture until it turns into paste. This is a difficult part because we need a lot of arm strength to stir through the thick mixture. After this, we steamed the mixture for one hour.

The lo bak go could be served warm or if you chose to freeze it, you need to fry it before serving. It is best eaten with sweet chilli sauce (lat jiu jeong) or sweet sauce (tim jeong).

We are bringing this dish to our little Chinese New Year gathering this weekend at Sabrina and Eric’s new house. Thanks Polly for coming over today. Let me know how your kids like it.

Qn: What is the only food that does not spoil?
An: Honey

Hello all. After eating out the past week, we’re blogging again about food at home. This is my (Suanne’s) creation — I call this PBPB, the Peanut Butter Pita Bread. I am preparing this as a snack for Ben’s flight to Atlanta today.

The PBPB is a very simple snack, filling and easy to carry (i.e. it does not get squished like sandwiches does). I made this for all the guys at home. All of them like it very much. We buy the Pita Pockets from the Superstore about once every two weeks. Each pack comes with 18 pita pockets and costs $4.19. About 23 cents each … it is cheap.

The main ingredients are peanut butter and frosted cornflakes.

I normally microwave the pita for 10 seconds to soften it up. That makes it easier to open up the pocket as they tend to stick together on the insides. Here I have cut the pita in half and is opening up the pocket.

I then spread a generous helping of peanut butter. Ben likes it with a lot of peanut butter. Arkensen and Nanzaro likes it with Nutella spread. You can experiment with all kinds of spread but then you cannot call it a PBPB anymore, right? The frosted cornflakes goes in next.

Here it is … the Peanut Butter Pita Bread, PBPB. If you try it out at home, let me know how the people at home likes it.