Jeffrey C.

Here is another request from a reader for a recipe.Yeung Ji Gum Lo 楊枝甘露 is a cold Chinese dessert created by some Hong Kong restaurant in the '80. It's quite a refreshing dessert soup which is creamy, sweet and fragrant from mango and pomelo. Very simple to make, all you need is gather the ingredients and mix everything together. The key ingredients are mango, pomelo, sago pearls, mango ice cream and cream/milk.In Hong Kong you can get Mango icecream easily but may be a bit difficult in UK. If you can find some that is great if not can use mango sorbet. Otherwise just use a good vanilla icecream with ripe mango puree.Pomelo is an oriental large grapefruit. In Chinese it is called 柚子 (yu z i). You can find this citrus fruit from Autumn to Winter in most Chinese supermarkets. You may find them in your local Lidl (in UK) from Nov - Feb too, cheaper than Chinese supermarkets. To eat this fruit you need to peel the rind and the skin each segment. Most of the 'honey' pomelos

I love Chinese dumplings and I am sure many of you too. There are hundreds of different kind of Chinese dumplings, from quite small and dainty to golf ball size, so many different methods to wrap, so many different types of pastry and infinite types of fillings. Dumplings can be boiled, steamed, fried or deep fried. And different parts of China have their own different recipes.Southerners' dumplings: Cantonese - har gau 蝦餃, sui mai 燒賣, wonton 雲吞, sui gau 水餃, goon tong gau 灌汤饺 etc... Chaozhou 潮州 - fun guo 粉果 Hakka 客家 - cha guo 茶果For the Northerners, dumplings are normally referred to as as Jiaozi 餃子 here are some different types and names. Shanghanese - xiao lung bao 小籠包, potsickers 鍋帖, etc... Sichuanese - hong you chao shu 紅油抄手, zhong sui jiao 鐘水餃, all dressed heavily with a spicy chilli oil sauce Beijingnese - boiled dumplings 水煮餃子, these dumplings are also the most common in many parts of Northern China.** If you need further explanation on some of the above dumplings and n

During CNY many Chinese will have a box of candied fruits and nuts at home to welcome friends and families when they visit and also given them as gifts. Popular candied stuff like candied lotus root slices, lotus seeds, red dates (jujube), kumquats and winter melon.Candied lotus seeds (tang lan zi 糖蓮子) are popular especially for any family wishing to have kids because the word lotus seeds in Chinese rhyme with having more children.Candied lotus seeds are quite yummy if you don't count the sugar. It's not that difficult to make. If you want to try here is the recipe. Ingredients: This recipe will make about 2 cups1 packet of whole skinned lotus seeds about 170 - 180g1/2 tsp bicarb (baking soda)3/4 cup sugarabout 1 cup of icing sugar, sifted (confectioner sugar) Method: Soak the lotus seeds for at least 10 hours or till the seeds are plump without any wrinkles. Then take each seed and lightly squeeze the brown end to check if there is any greenish/brownish stem inside the seed i

Rice cake or nian gao 年糕 is something nearly every Chinese family will have for CNY. The two words 年 nian and 糕 gao rhyme with the Chinese greeting phrase 年年高升 nian nian gao sheng, literally translated as higher year after year or simply you will prosper year after year. So eating nian gao is considered lucky for the coming year.There are different nian gao, the Northerners have white plain rice cake made with plain rice (see this post ), similar to Korean rice cake and normally cook with other things to make a savoury dish or rice cake soup.The Southerners like Cantonese have sweet sticky cakes made with glutinous rice flour. There is a little story about why these sticky sweet cakes are made. Any Chinese (Taoists) with praying Gods at home will know this. On the 12th lunar month and 24th day which was the 7th Feb in 2010, the Kitchen God/Stove Master (Zao Jun 灶君) will leave Earth to Heaven (I wondered if Zao Jun needs Scottie to beam him up :)). He is to report to the Heavenly Grandf

新年快樂! Happy New Year! 福虎和你拜年! Greetings from Lucky Tiger! The following phrases are Tiger greetings. May sound a bit stupid translated to English, but quite sweet in Chinese. 福虎年祝你財源滾滾 Lucky Tiger wishing you rolling in with money in the coming year 發得像肥虎 Properous like a fat tiger 身體壯的像頭虎 Strong as a tiger 愛情甜的像虎奶 Love life sweet as tiger’s milk 好運多的像虎毛 Good lucks many as tiger’s hairs 事業蒸蒸像大虎 ! Career/business flourishing like a roaring tiger You may like to read some CNY traditions from last year post Source

Our New Year's Eve dinner highlight was a Fu Gui Ji 富貴雞, commonly known as beggar chicken (乞丐雞 chi gai zi) or (叫化雞 jiao hua zi). I preferred to called it Fu Gui Ji 富貴雞 for this occasion because fu gui 富貴 means fortune and prosperity.This beggar chicken recipe started a long time ago in Hangzhou 杭州, China. The story was a beggar stole a live chicken from a village. He was found out and the owner chased him. He got panic and buried the chicken in some mud. Later when he come back, he dug out the chicken, without bothered to clean the chicken, he bbq it on open fire with its feathers and mud still on it for a long time. When he cracked open the mud he was surprised how fragrant and tasty the chicken was. He then told his friends and words started to spread throughout the village, so this method of cooking chicken (obviously with cleaned chicken later) become very popular. Everyone referred to this as Beggar Chicken. Sometime later, the Emperor happened to visit this town and heard of

On the first day of CNY many Chinese. especially Cantonese, will go meat free. Many will cook an assorted vegetarian dish using dried vegetables, edible fungi, tofu products and fresh vegetables. This dish is normally referred to as Buddha Delight or Monk's Vegetable, in Chinese is 羅漢齋 (lo han zai) or simply 齋菜 (zai choi).This dish is the custom in my family for this day every year. My mum would cook a massive pot of this waiting for us at around 5am in the morning, we would eat this for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I never get tired of it, sometime we also cook this other times in the year. Ingredients can vary depending on what are available at home and the season. On the first day of CNY, this dish is always special because mum would put in as many ingredients as she could get.After I moved to England, I would only cook this if the first day of CNY fallen on the weekend or if I had taken a day off work. There are some ingredients which can be hard to find over here than in the f

I love poached chicken, the meat is so juicy and tender. That is why I love Hainanese Chicken rice. Another of my favourite is soy sauce chicken (See Yau Gai 豉油雞). This poaching liquor is a mixture of light soy, dark soy, sugar and spices normally referred to as master sauce (lu sui 鹵水). Chicken poached with this sauce is a lot more flavourful than just poaching with water or plain stock like Hainanese chicken.I normally poach a whole chicken, if you like you can also use chicken pieces.Quite a simple recipe, to poach one whole chicken the essential tool is a large pot which can fit the whole chicken in with a bit more extra room.Next is to get a flavourful plump chicken preferably free range, organic or corn feed. Night before (or 24 hours before) you are ready to make this poached chicken rub the chicken (1 whole chicken) with about 1 tbsp salt , 4 - 5 tbsp light soy and 1 tbsp sugar. Keep the chicken in a zip lock bag with the marinade and leave in the fridge overnight. The flavour

Most Chinese are very superstitious, I know we are a weird bunch, many of the things we do and eat around CNY can all relate to some meanings, mostly something to bring auspicious lucks. Any thing bad is usually avoided or not permitted like no sweeping around the house during the first few days of CNY, this will sweep away any lucks!. Bad luck food is stir fried squid 炒魷 because another meaning for (chow yau 炒魷) is being fired or lost your job, a very bad karma for these days.Yesterday (Saturday) was the 7th day of CNY, referred to as everyone's birthday, see this post . This was another important day to celebrate with auspicious food. Normally I have raw fish salad or Yu Sang but I could not find any good quality tuna and don't fancy salmon. So opt for other food common for this day.Because it is the 7th day, it is lucky to eat either 7 different auspicious dishes or made a dish with 7 vegetables. With these 7 different vegetables every one selected usually means something t

This is a simple breakfast common during the CNY season. Nian gao will harden after a few days, most people will fry it with egg to soften the cake and also given it a nicer flavour. Sometime if I have sweet potato and/or taro I would use them to sandwich nian goh and dip in egg to fry which is also very tasty too.Here is just a simple fried nian gao with egg. Dead simple to make.Cut some nian gao into slices about 5 - 6 mm thick.Beat 1 or 2 eggs with a little sugar. You need about 1 large egg per rice bowl of nian gao. If anyone who finds the beaten egg very difficult to stick to the nian gao read on.Heat a little oil in a pan or wok,Fry few slices of nian gao without coating with egg till both sides beginning to get hot and soften, then dip into the egg and fry again. This you will find the egg will stick much better. If you still find the egg coating is too thin, dip into egg again after the last coating has setFry till the pieces are golden brown. Source

韭菜糊餅 Jiu Chai Hu Bing Some people called this Beijing pizza, it's an old Beijing style snack 'xiao chi 小吃', made with a thin crunchy cornmeal crust topped with Chinese chives (garlic chives), egg and a little dried shrimp for a more savoury flavour. Very tasty.Pictures are a bit fuzzy due to the hot steam. Here is the recipe - make an approx. 1 x 25cm round pizza (pancake) Ingredients: about 80 g cornmeal, coarse or fine (coarse cornmeal gives a harder and crunchier crust)about 70 - 80ml (g) of boiling water*, if using cold water use around 60 - 70mlabout 1/4 tsp salt* you can also use cold water, I find hot water makes the cornmeal absorbed more water making the crust less gritty.1 heap tbsp of dried shrimps, soak for few minutes and finely chopped (if you don't like dried shrimp can leave this out but it does give a lot of savoury flavour to the pizza)2 eggs, beatencooking oilabout 125 - 150 g Chinese chives or garlic chives 韭菜 (gau choi in Cantonese, jiu chai in Mand

It's been a while since I last posted a Malay recipe. This is what I made last week with opor ayam (creamy chicken). The pineapple was spicy, sharp and sweet, the chicken was mild and creamy, perfect match. This pineapple curry is one of my favourite curry, very tasty. If you like curry and sweet & sour this is for you. Recipe is quite simple. All you need is a fresh pineapple ** and some standard curry spices. Ingredients: Spice paste about 125g shallot or red onion2 cloves of garlic 1 small chunk of ginger 1 heap tbsp dried shrimps*, soaked with a little water for few minutes, keep the soaking water 1 - 2 finger size red chilli *vegetarian can leave out dried shrimps about 800g fresh pineapple, cut into chunks 1 small piece of cinnamon or cassia bark 5 - 6 whole cloves 5 - 6 green cardamoms 2 whole star anise 3 tbsp curry powder (I used Malaysian meat curry powder - serbuk kari daging, you can use any reddish looking curry powder you have at home). If the c

I had few very ripe bananas sitting in the fruit bowl. The only way I can think of to use them up is cake. I want something light and less calorie rich. I had banana chiffon before, it's a bit bland IMO. Then I thought why not add coconut with banana for a change. Can't use coconut milk on top of the pureed banana or the cake will be too wet. Then I thought why not add coconut cream powder then I can have the coconut flavour without compromising the wetness of the cake. So this recipe was what I concocted and it worked. The cake was light and much more flavourful than banana alone.Chiffon cake is a South East Asian Cake similar to American Angel Cake. Difference between angel cake and chiffon cake is angel cake use all egg whites and chiffon cake use whole eggs. Chiffon cake has two parts one is the whipped egg whites and the other is a batter mixture. Both Angel and Chiffon are baked using a tube tin/pan. There are few do and don't when making chiffon cakes. Always us

I like any spicy and fruity sweet bread and buns. Since it is Easter I have the excuse to make a batch of hot cross buns.I like this Dan Lepard recipe - day bake with Mumsnet . I like the use of glace ginger, I am sure will be very nice. I am not one to follow any recipes exactly as written. I always add my own tweaks. I like to use this Dan's recipe together with water roux . My tweaks: 1. make a water roux using 60g of flour and 300ml water and add this to the bread mix.2. Here is the change to Dan's recipe ingredients: 175ml warm water (replaced by water roux) 1 sachet dry instant yeast (5 g or 1.5 tsp) 550g plain flour (changed to 250g plain flour and 250g bread flour) 1 tsp salt 75g sugar, any sort (reduced to 50g) 4 tsp mixed spice 75ml milk 75g butter, cut into smallish pieces 150g raisins or 100g currants (100g sultanas and 50g mixed peel) 150g chopped glacé ginger, or mixed peel (150 glacé ginger) Finely grated zest of an orange or lemon (lemon) 1 large e