Beef Noodle Soup 牛肉麵

Again the calf meat. This time I braised it northern Chinese style with cane sugar, star anise, Chinese cinnamon, cloves, Sichuan pepper, hot chili, dark and light soy sauce, rose liquor and water. The sauce also stands in for soup base, just add hot water and voilà soup.

New Year 'Cake' 年糕

The sticky New Year cake is quite easy to make but for some reason people would make the more difficult ones but buy this kind. Cane sugar is dissolved in hot water then poured onto a mixture of sweet rice starch and fine wheat starch. The dough is worked until firm to give it texture and then water is added to make a cake batter looking batter and steams in cake pan until set. Chewy, sticky, sweet and comforting, cold or pan fry with a little egg.

Water Chestnut 'Cake' 馬蹄糕

With all the heavy food in the Chinese New Year, there got to be something lighter. Water chestnut cake is just such thing. It is quite easy to make just chop up some fresh water chestnut, cook it briefly with rock sugar and water; dissolve some water chestnut starch in cold water and stir it into the hot liquid until it forms a light jello like mix; pour into a cake pan and steam until set firmly. Good to eat as is or pan fry till lightly brown.

Fresh Soup 筍尖香菇豆腐湯

Picked up some salted bamboo shoots from Mt. Tianmu 天目筍尖 so I made this soup with fine chicken stock, fresh shiitake, ham and tofu. Not only tasted good but felt good after eating it.

Chococookies

I made some thin almond egg white cookies and thought why not use up the Thomas Haas chocolate bits? Turned out really good.

Curry Goat

If you ask me what I think make the best curry, I would say goat. Seafood is good with some curry but not others. Beef is good with most but dry too easily. Chicken is just for the most boring of people. Lamb is sweet but does not stand up to the cooking too well. Pork, well, who make pork curry, really. The rich, sweet and creamy goat is just perfect. Goat does not have a lot of meat bu tthe meat is sweet. The bone though gives it the rich flavour. I think what makes it though are the tendons and skin--they are just creamy as can be after long cooking.
Here I marinated the goat meat with onion, garlic, ginger, fresh hot chili, thyme, salt and pepper for a few hours. A little sugar and curry powder are brown lightly in a little oil before the meat is added. After a little browning, carrots and lime leaves are added. A little water then went in with the potatoes. Cooked slowly until tender and voilà curry goat. A little freshness in winter to fight the snow outside.

Blueberry Muffins

I got this recipe from Allrecipe.com. They call it the "To die for Blueberry Muffins." I did not use the topping so I guess it is the "to live for blueberry muffins." Turns out pretty good. To have the topping would be an overkill. But then, muffins pretty much defines the excess of food now, people seems to thing too much of everything make a good muffin. Maybe I am just old fashion.

Roast Quail

I have a couple of quails I should eat so I decided to roast them. I boned the upper part of the birds, salt and peppered, and then rolled them up with slices of fresh shiitake mushrooms in them. To make it more tasty and moist, I wrapped the whole package with bacon. The bones and wings were browned and then a stock was made with some thyme and the stems of the mushrooms. The birds were roasted at convected 400℉. The pan is then deglazed with red wine and then the stock. After much reducing, I added a little balsamic vinegar, a couple twists of black pepper and a touch of butter to finish the sauce. As tasty as it looks!

Roast Beef

Since I feel like I am getting the hangs of slow roasting, I thought why no make my cold cut roast beef with some cheaper cuts than rib roast. I did a sirloin tip and it turns out well. I browned it on all sides first before roasting at 150℉ for hours and hours until the internal temperature reaches 140℉. The result is this very even medium rare roast. It is very tasty and tender for sandwiches but I will start it much earlier next time...

Baked Oyster 假禾虫

I love rice worms 禾虫 and carp guts 魚腸. Sounds gross, doesn't it? They can easily be made into something truly horrible, every sickening, literally. I do like them best, when made well, baked with egg. One way to bake in this manner is with oyster. Definitely more appetizing to most. Here I parboiled the oysters for a couple of minutes first. Chopped garlic, ginger and scallion are sautéed before aged dried orange peels, Chinese dry cured olives 欖豉 and the oysters. Mixed it all into an equal proportion egg and chicken stock mixture and into a clay pot and sliced chinese donuts 油條 is laid over the egg. The pot is then steamed covered until set. I passed it through the broiler until brown on top right before serving. So good.

Dropped Biscuit

They don't look so nice, do they. They taste good and the texture is fine, but moulding dough in the morning is not always a easy thing.

Multilevel Steaming

Cantonese love salted fish. While many European like their salted fish, they tend to reconstitute theirs before cooking. We like them salty and dry. In the drying/curing process, the fish's flavour changes and becomes a different thing. We don't reconstitute ham so why reconstitute fish? My parents would even buy salted cod to cook dry when good chinese kinds are not available. This is a piece of salted yellow croaker 黃花. Half of the meat is chopped up and mixed into the hand chopped (a little double cleaver action) pork with a little sugar, soy sauce and cornstarch. a little shredded ginger on top and it is steamed with the other half of the fish. It is the old home standby to go with the rice. Used to be a cheap dish but like in Europe, salted fish has really gotten expansive.

The great thing about steamers is you can just stack them up and cook many dishes all at once. Here is have some Japanese eggplants with garlic, salt and chili oil, steamed and then a little soy sauce is added. Easy as can be.

More Bitter Melon

I still have a bitter melon left so I have do a different dish with it. I blanched the melon pieces in boiling water briefly. Ground beef was very lightly browned then ginger, garlic, scallion and hot bean paste were added. When it started to smell good, I added the melon pieces, tossed it about a few times, seasoned with a little salt and a few drops of water and it is done.

Bitter Melon and Chicken 豆豉苦瓜炆雞

Almost everywhere I go, meal in a pot is always the favorite winter home cooking. Here I marinated some chicken thighs (cut into small pieces) with ginger, garlic, sugar, salt, soy sauce, cornstarch, sesame oil and shaoxing liquor. It is then very lightly browned in the clay pot before soak and rinsed cure black bean, garlic, ginger and hot chili peppers are added. After a few second, bitter melon is added, and then some water. Cooked over medium heat under the lid for a few minute and it is done. Rice just lives it.

Steamed Scallops 蒜蓉蒸帶子

These scallops are on sale so I bought a few. Simplest can be--open them, rip out the tough rings, guts and gills, leave the roe. Here is have some pressed garlic, a touch of salt and a little chili oil; steamed for 7 minutes or so and voilà. All I needed was a couple drops of best soy sauce I can find.

Wintery Noodle Soup 榨菜肉絲湯麵

I made a whole lot of pork with zhacai 榨菜 (a hot pickled kholrabi like vegetable). It is a easy thing to make. Lean pork is cut into strips just like the zhacai, marinates lightly with salt, sugar, cooking wine and cornstarch. It is cooked in a hot wok until white and then ginger, zhacai and shiitake are added. Toss it all about, add cooking wine, sugar, soy sauce and some water. Cook until the flavours come together, add some sesame oil and that is it. I like to over salt it a little; that way I can put it into some hot water and a very flavourful soup is made for noodles. With it in the fridge, a quite meal is never more then 10 minutes away.

Pot o' Rice 滑雞煲仔飯

In the winter, on the street of Hong Kong, stoves are set up outside of neighbourhood restaurants, burning gas or coal, to cook rice in clay pots. The rice is half cook and then raw ingredients are added to finish cooking under the lid. The rice cooked this way is widely agreed to be the best. Here I make do with my stove. The meat is chicken marinated briefly in ginger, salt, sugar, cooking wine, pepper and cornstarch. A few shiitake mushroom and half a Chinese sausage and that is it. Not as good as a coal fire cooked pot rice but close--lovely fragrant from the rice and creamy chicken. All in one pot.

Quick soup

With some fish left over, I sautéed the bones and used them to make the soup base with a little ginger. The soup then is brought to a boil and sliced fish and cilantro are added quickly to make this very refreshing soup.

Hot Pot

Everybody knows too few people having hot pot is not a good thing and here is an example. A big pot of water but just a plate of red snapper, beef, tofu, mushroom and chrysanthemum greens. Not bad but can be so much better. The beef though is good, one of them is directly from Kobe and cost an arm and an leg (only if my arm and leg worth that much...).

Quick Meal

A little quail marinated with ginger, sugar, pepper, soy sauce and garlic was pan fried. The lingcod was dusted with cornstarch, curry powder, salt and pepper and then panfried slowly. The eggplant is even simpler--steamed plain and then 'Chinese BBQ Sauce' 柱候醬 and sesame oil was mixed in. Easy as can be.