Swiss Pork Chop and Pancakes

Tanni was the demonstrator in this week’s cooking club at Gilmore Park Church. She made a fabulous Swiss Pork Chop and 2 different types of pancakes.

Regretfully, I did not have my camera with me as Ben brought it to work today. I managed to borrow a point and shoot digital camera from a good friend of mine, Rachel for the cooking class. Unfortunately, being unfamiliar with the camera, most of the photos did not turn out ok. So, I’ll try my best to illustrate today’s recipes with the few photos that I had.

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Ingredients for the Swiss Pork Chop

  • Centre cut boneless pork chop, butterfly and pound thin with a tenderizer hammer
  • Ham slices
  • Cheese slices
  • Salt
  • Pepper
  • Flour
  • Eggs
  • Breadcrumbs

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Instructions for the Swiss Pork Chop

  • Marinate the pork chop with salt and pepper for 30 minutes
  • Place cheese and ham slice in between the pork

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  • Coat the pork chop with flour, dip in beaten eggs and coat with bread crumbs

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  • Deep fry the pork chop in shallow oil for 3 minutes on each side until cooked.

This is a great recipe that kids would love. The melted cheese oozes out from the pork chop and the pork chop tasted really good. We all love this dish. (more…)

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Blueberry Muffin

Minoo’s second recipe is a healthy Blueberry Muffin made with whole wheat flour and honey. Minoo uses frozen blueberry because blueberry season is over. The frozen blueberry is as good as the fresh one.

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Ingredients

  • 1 cup whole wheat flour
  • 1 cup unbleached white flour
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • a pinch of salt
  • 1 cup milk or buttermilk
  • 2 eggs, beaten
  • 4 tablespoons salted butter, melted
  • 3 tablespoon maple syrup or honey
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 1 cup blueberries

I will not blog in details of the process of making the blueberry muffin as I had blogged about a Banana Blueberry Muffin earlier. The steps will be similar.

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Pacific Salmon Loaf

For this fall session, I’ll try to attend another community kitchen so that I can learn more variety of recipes from a different group. I’ll be going to Minoo’s group at Caring Place on Thursday morning every other week.

Minoo shared two recipes this week. The recipes are Pacific Salmon Loaf and Blueberry Muffins. The Pacific Salmon Loaf in this recipe uses can salmon but you may use any left over baked salmon or even can tuna. The Salmon Loaf is served with a cucumber sauce.

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Ingredients

  • 2 (220g) cans salmon, drained and flaked
  • 1/2 cup (125ml) dry bread crumbs
  • 1/2 cup (125ml) chopped onion
  • 1/3 cup (75ml) chopped green peppers (or any other color peppers)
  • 1/3 cup (75ml) chopped celery
  • 1/2 cup (125ml) mayonnaise
  • 1 large egg

Ingredients for the cucumber sauce

  • 1/2 cup mayonnaise
  • 1/2 cup dairy sour cream or yogurt
  • 1/2 cup finely chopped cucumber
  • 2 tablespoons chopped onion
  • 3/4 teaspoon dried dill

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Click on the link for the instructions.

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Red Cooked Lion’s Head (Braised Giant Meatball)

Julie Chung started off the South Arm Community Center fall cooking session this week. Julie showed us how to make Giant Meatballs simmered with Suey Choy (Chinese cabbage). This dish is called “Hung Siew Si Ji Tao” in cantonese which literary means red cook lion’s head. The name of this dish came from the giant meatball which can be as big as a fist.

Julie served the Red Cooked Lion’s Head with some handmade noodles. The Chinese cabbages were very soft and flavourful and the giant meatball is very filing, not to mention.

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Ingredients

  • 1.5 to 2 lbs lean ground pork
  • 2 tablespoons chopped ginger
  • 2 tablespoons chopped green onion
  • 1/2 lb (about 8 pieces) water chestnuts, chopped
  • 1 head of suey choy

Marinates

  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 2 tablespoons soy sauce
  • 1 teaspoon rice wine
  • 1 egg
  • sugar and white pepper to taste

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Click on the link below for the instructions.

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Sour Cream Biscuit

The Richmond Community Kitchen resumed this week for the fall 2006 session. The Gilmore Park Church Community Kitchen had it’s first meeting on Wednesday.

Jean who is the leader of the Gilmore Park Church Community Kitchen has the honour to be the first to share her recipes. She shared her Sour Cream Biscuit and Apple Cabbage Coleslaw with us.

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The Sour Cream Biscuit is a very simple and quick recipe to prepare. All the ingredients are easily available in our pantry or refrigerator. It took less than 30 minutes from start to end to make it.

Ingredients

  • 2 cups flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 3 tablespoons baking powder
  • 1 1/2 cups sour cream
  • 1 teaspoon milk
  • 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
  • 1 cup raisins (if desired)

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Click on the link below for the instructions.

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Empire Seafood Restaurant

The Gilmore Church Community Kitchen decided to have a break on the last session of this season before the break for summer holiday. Instead of the regular cooking class, the group went for dim sum at Empire Seafood Restaurant.

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Empire Seafood Restaurant is located next to London Drugs on No. 3 Rd and Westminster Highway. This restaurant offers 20% discount if you place your order before 11:00 am. There are daily specials on discounted price. The restaurant has a menu of 82 items and the price ranges from $2.45 on daily specials to $7.85 per dish. I must say that it is not cheap.

Here are some of the dishes we ordered.

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This is Empire’s specialty dish; baked BBQ pork buns. Regular price is $3.95 but it’s on special today @ $2.45.

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U-Pick Strawberries

June is the season for strawberries in Vancouver. Nothing beats freshly picked strawberries from the farm. Arkensen loves strawberries and who can resist such sweet and juicy berries.

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Strawberry is small plant of the rose family. Strawberries are not really “berries” or fruit in the botanical sense. The real fruit of the strawberry is the strawberry seeds on the outside of the strawberry or properly called “achenes”. The berry is actually the enlarged receptacle and is not reproductive material. That’s why strawberry has to be picked at full ripeness because they cant ripen once picked.

We live very near to some farm lands and the sign for U-Pick Strawberries was up last week.

Here is a list of U-Pick Strawberries farms in Richmond and other parts of Lower Mainland:

Farm Address Phone Notes
G.J. Farms 11300 No.4 Road 604-272-4033
Bob Featherstone Farm #4 Road south of Steveston Hwy 604-594-9518
W&A Farms 17771 Westminster Hwy 604-278-5667 www.wafarms.ca
Birak Berry Farm 4200 No. 6 Road 604-339-9335 bcstrawberries.com
Krause Berry Farm 6179 248 St. Langley 604-856-5757 http://krauseberryfarms.com
Fraser Valley Strawberry Growers Association www.bcstrawberries.com

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Shao-Zi Noodles

Shao-Zi Noodles is the second dish which Julie showed us in last week’s cooking club meeting. Julie prepared the dough ahead for making the noodles. She told us she used 4 cups of flour with 1.5 cups of water and some salt (probably 1 teaspoon) to make the dough for the noodle.

The star of this dish is the meat sauce. Julie told us that the meat sauce can be made in big batch and store in the refrigerator for a few days. The noodle dish can be prepared easily using the prepared meat sauce.

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Ingredients

  • 1 lb Lean ground pork
  • 1 lb spiced bean curd, diced in small pieces.
  • sweet bean sauce
  • soybean paste
  • hot bean paste
  • soy sauce
  • salt
  • sugar
  • corn starch
  • for decoration, thinly sliced carrot, cucumber or celery

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Click on the link below for the instructions.

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