Snowman Cake

I have 2 god daughter's whose birthday is around Christmas. One before and one after. So we always celebrate their birthday at the Christmas gathering.
This year, they requested a Snowman cake.

Luckily, I had some fondant left and I was able to make it.
It was actually pretty easy.
Cover the cake with white, color some of the fondant and roll it out for the hat.
The extra strip on the hat is optional.
Then use a knife to make the markings on the hat.

The most difficult part was making black fondant because black is hard to make from white.
I started off mixing in all the colors together to make the fondant darker. Then I added the black coloring. I find that has the best result. If you try for black right away, it'll turn grey because the fondant is white.

If I didn't have fondant, I would have used white chocolate ganache cream to cover the cake and color the cream and pipe the hat etc etc.

Happy decorating.

Curried Roasted Pumpkin Soup

Fall is time for pumpkins and all the wonderful winter squashes. I love pumpkin soup. It's yummy on it's own or as a soup base for noodles. If you want to use it with noodles, try cooking frozen Udon noodles in with the soup. 

The first time I made pumpkin soup, I just cut it up, peeled, boiled and blended it. The roasting method takes a little longer but I find it's less work overall because peeling can be a pain. It also adds another flavour to the soup because it's now roasted.

This recipe will make everything from scratch including the soup base! You can replace the soup base with instant broth if you already have it available.

Curried Roasted Pumpkin Soup

Ingredients

• 1 Medium size pumpkin
• 2 onions
• 3-4 cloves of garlic
• 1 chicken shell
• 3 bay leaves
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1 tsp garam masala
• pinch of nut meg
• Sprinkle of Savory powder
• Sprinkle of cinnamon powder
• 2-3 L water
• Salt to taste

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.
   
2. Cut the pumpkin in half and use a spoon to the scrap of the insides. (save seeds to roast for pumpkin seed snack)
3. Cut the pumpkin into smaller pieces and line them into baking trays. If there's an empty space, add the onions as well. There's no need to cut up the onion.
4. Add a bit of water to the trays and then put it into the preheated oven to bake. Baking process should take 30 min to an hour depending on your oven, size of your pumpkin etc.
5. While the pumpkin is baking, get your soup base ready. Start with 2L of water in a pot and bring it to a boil.
6. Add the chicken shell to the water along with the bay leaves and let it simmer for the entire time you bake the pumpkin. Add more water as necessary. 
7. You can poke the pumpkin with a fork to test it's readiness. Once it's soft it's ready for blending.
   
8. If you have a blender that can withstand heat, use a spoon and scrape the pumpkin meat right into the blender. Add a little bit of the chicken stock to help it blend.
   If you do not have a blender that can withstand heat, scoop all the pumpkin meat into a big bowl to let it cool. Blend after it's cooled.
9. Once you're done blending the pumpkin, blend the onion with the garlic as well using the same method.
10. Remove the chicken shell from the stock and add the pumpkin and onion puree into the pot with the chicken stock.
11. Add the cumin, garam masala and nut meg and sprinkle savory and cinnamon powder. Let the mixture simmer for 5-10 mins for the flavours to combine together.
12. Taste and add as much salt as you want to bring out the flavours.

Yummy on it's own or as a soup base for Udon noodles!!!

Enjoy!

Shiitake and Spare Ribs Rice Cooker Meal

Don't have time to cook?
Do you have a rice cooker?
If you said yes to both, then this will be perfect for you!

The key to this dish is to prep the night before. You want to marinate the meat overnight in the fridge so the flavour penetrates through so you do not loose any of the flavour when you cook the meat with the rice. If you marinate it over night, you also do not need to use as much seasoning as you would if you try to do it last minute.
Too much seasoning can result in very salty rice so you want to avoid that.

Prep time including washing the meat and cutting it is around 20 min.

Shiitake and Spare Ribs Rice Cooker Meal

Ingredients 

• ~1lbs spare ribs
• 3-5 Shiitake Mushrooms (up to your taste)
• Optional 2-4 pieces of 雲耳 (to your taste)
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp soy sauce
• 1 tsp Black Bean Garlic Sauce
• 2g of julienned ginger
• 1 tsp corn starch
• 3 muks (rice cooker cup) of uncooked rice

Directions

1. Wash the spare ribs.
2. Cut the spare ribs so it's 1 bone per piece.
3. Mix sugar, soy sauce and black bean garlic sauce together in a container that can fit all the meat.
4. Add the meat to the container and mix well so all the meat is coated.
5. Let it marinate overnight in the fridge.
6. In the morning before you go to work, put the shittake mushroom and the 雲耳 into a bowl of water so it re-hydrates during the day. 
7. When you're ready to cook the rice, mix the corn starch into the meat.
8. Wash the rice as you normally do and add the normal amount of water to cook the rice.
9. Squeeze the water out of the shittake mushroom and rinse it off.
10. Cut each shittake mushroom into bite size pieces.
11. If you're cooking with 雲耳, cut that up into 1 inch strips. (mine are usually around 1x0.5 inch strips).
12. Julienne the ginger
13. Add the meat to the rice cooker pot on top of the rice.
14. Then add the mushroom and 雲耳.
15. Sprinkle with ginger and make sure some of the ginger is touching the water to ensure that the ginger taste will make it all the way into the rice.
16. Then turn on the rice cooker to cook and let it cook.

And that's all to it! All the work is during the prep. The cooking is easy. You can leave it alone and do other stuff like wash and cook veggies or work out etc :)

Pork and Lotus Root Patties

Yes, it's possible to eat lotus root and not just in soup! When you cook it, it has a sweet flavour and crispy texture.
Probably not the best looking picture in the world since it's just meat patties but the flavour and texture is pretty awesome.

This is one of those rare recipes that I will use volume rather then weight for measurements.
I also like to make big batches of this and then freeze them in dinner size batch to make it an easy meal later.

I use minced pork butt or a mixture of pork butt and pork shoulder for this recipe if I want to go leaner.

Pork and Lotus Root Patties

Ingredients

• 2lbs boneless pork butt
• 1lb pork shoulder
• 3 big pieces of lotus root
• 3 tbsp soy sauce
• 3 tbsp sugar

Directions

1. First, remove the skin from the pork shoulder. Cube up the pork butt and pork shoulder into smaller pieces.
2. Mix the meat together and use your grinder or food processor to mince the meat.
3. While the meat is mixing, scrape off the outer skin of the lotus root with the back of a knife. It'll be all nice and white like the picture below when it's done.
4. Cut off the ends of the lotus root.
5. Cut off the lotus root into long pieces that will fit into the food processor's opening.
   
6. Use the blade option to slice the lotus root thinly. Or you can use the shredding option as well. Both will work fine.
7. Now that you have everything in pieces, you can start mixing everything together. In a big bowl or several big bowls, add the meat, lotus root, soy sauce and sugar together.
   The minimum ratio I would suggest is 1:1 volume for meat:lotus root (as shown in the picture to the right
   
   with a container). I would even go as far as 1:1.5 ratio for meat:lotus root so the crunchy texture will come out even more! So having said that, you may  not need to use all the meat you grounded up. But that's ok cause you can use it later for something else. Any left over meat, wrap and freeze or refrigerate for later use or just cook it right away.
8. Once everything is mixed up, you can pan fry them up to eat right away, or package it up and freeze it for an easy meal on a different day.

Soy for your garden

So it's fall time and starting to get cold.
There was frost on my windshield this morning.
I decided it's time to get rid of the remaining flowers in the flower bed so I can transform it into a vegetable garden next year.
Since it was previously a flower bed, I don't know what's the state of the soil, how much nutrients are in it etc. So I decided to heavily fertilize my soil to make sure it's ready for growing vegetables next year.

My fertilizer of choice is....soybeans!

Yes that's right, soy beans. Why Soy?
Soybean is a rich in protein and is usually used as a supplement for protein in vegetarian diets.
The microorganism loves the protein as much as we do and will use it and in return create nitrogen for your soil!

Soymeal adds 7% Nitrogen, 2% Phosphorus and 1% Potassium.
The process to make soymeal is a little different from soy milk since I boil the ground up bean to make milk instead of keeping it in powder form. And the oil is not exactly extracted in the process to make soy milk. But it's almost the same so the ratios of the type of nutrients it'll provide is not far off.

I currently do not have a compost so I'm burying the ground soybeans right into the soil after I finish making soy milk.
But honestly,  this takes forever because 1/3 cup of soybeans makes about 1L of soy milk.
It'll take me forever to make enough soy by products to dump into the garden. And I'll feel guilty if I boil the beans and then throw it into the garden without using it for anything else first. (Boil first to eliminate risk it'll grow into a plant next year.)

Doing it a bit at a time is great for in season trench composting if you want to give that a try.
But right now I'm trying to get my garden ready for winter. So I went to a tofu shop and brought several bags of soy leftovers for $1 each. It's the exact same product I make but they have it in huge quantities because they mass produce soy milk to make tofu.
The bags I brought were huge so it was perfect for fertilizing my entire garden before winter stars. Much cheaper then buying compost and it's organic!

Give it a try before the frost sets

5 Spice Chicken Congee

I had chicken that was over marinated because we left it marinated for way too long. So what to do with a salty chicken? Make congee with it :)
Turned out it was a pretty awesome mistake. It made a weeks worth of breakfast and some lunches since you can reheat it in the microwave in the mornings.

5 Spice Chicken Congee

Time: 60 mins Makes: 1 big pot of Congee

Ingredients

• 1 Cornish Hen or 1 Small Chicken (depends on how much meat you want)
• 1 muk or 1.5 muks of rice (frozen over night)
• 1/2 tsp or 1.5 tsp salt (pending on which bird you picked)
• 1/2 tsp or 1.5 tsp 5 spice powder (pending on which bird you picked)
• 1 green onion
• 1 cm block of ginger
• 1.5 - 3L of water

Directions

1. Wash your Cornish hen or chicken. Dry and then rub the chicken with the salt and 5 spice powder. Let it sit for 30 minutes to marinate or leave overnight in fridge if you desire.
2. Start off with 1.5L of water and bring to a boil.
3. Wash the green onion and ginger. Cut the green onion into smaller pieces and put both green onion and ginger into the water.
4. Add the rice
5. Once the water is back up to a boil, add the hen. The amount of time it makes Congee is about the amount of time required to cook a chicken so it's safe to add at the same time.
6.  Monitor the thickness of the congee and add more water as required. You'll probably want to increase it by at least 0.5L if you want to leave it unmonitored. 
7. Let it simmer at medium-low heat for half an hour until everything cooks through.
8. Once it's cooked, take 2 forks and shred the meat into the congee.

Serve hot. Great for breakfast or brunch. 

Chayote Squash and Pork with 雲耳 and/or 木耳

The Chayote in the picture above is home grown so they might look a little different from store brought ones.
This is an other one of those dishes where there are many different variations.

The very basic of this dish is Chayote, meat, soy sauce, sugar and cornstarch.
The onion, garlic and 2 types of black fungus is actually all optional.
The onion and garlic will add more flavour so I always cook with it as long as I have some on hand. But the fungus doesn't add flavour, just nutritional value.
My mother in law only cooks this dish with 雲耳
My parents likes to cook with both 雲耳 and 木耳.
I like to cook with both because I find the texture of both to be slightly different and I enjoy mixing the 2 together.

If you google the word of both types of black fungus, it'll return the same name in English! So when you go shopping, write these words down to find them both.

Chayote Squash and Pork with 雲耳 and/or 木耳

Ingredients

• 2 Chayote Squashes
• 150g pork neck 
• 1 small onion
• 1 tsp minced garlic
• 1/2 tsp soy sauce
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• handful of dried 雲耳 (optional)
• 5 dried pieces of 木耳 (optional)

Directions

1. Soak the dried 雲耳 and 木耳 for a couple of hours, or 30 mins in warm water.
2. Peel the chayote. Use a fruit peeler. You may want to use gloves to peel the chayote. I find it'll make my hand peel but it doesn't affect my mom in the same way. So give it a try.
3. Cut it in half. The seed is quite soft so you'll probably cut it right in half. Take the seed out. 
4. Cut it into slices like you would for apple slices. 

5. 

   This is 雲耳

   Cut the onion into strips. 
6. Cut the pork into thin strips and mix in a bowl with the soy sauce and sugar.
7. Once you're done all this, the dried 雲耳 and 木耳 should be ready for use. They should have expanded a lot. 雲耳 expands a lot more then 木耳. 
8. Lightly rub the expanded fungus to wash it. Rinse under the tap.
9. Check the back of the 雲耳 to see if you need to cut off any connection points. It should be small segments of hard white ridges. 
10. Cut it into 1 inch pieces so you can quickly and easily cook it. 
11. There usually isn't connection points on 木耳 but check and 

    

    This is the back of  the 雲耳

    cut away if necessary. Then cut into similar size as the 雲耳.
12. Heat a wok to medium heat, once it's warm add the oil, onion and garlic.
13. Once you smell the mixture cooking, add the chayote slices. Stir and let it cook at medium heat.
14. After 2-3 mins, add in the slice pork. Cook and stir. To speed up cooking time, cover for a bit in-between stir.
15. When the pork is about 80% cooked, add in the 雲耳 and 木耳
16. As usual, stir around to ensure it's getting cooked.
17. Cover and cook for another 2 mins and cover again and let it cook until the pork is done.
18. And you're good to go :)

Notes:
木耳 is firmer in texture where as 雲耳 can be softer.
Do not over cook either of them, especially 雲耳. It can be a bit slimy when overcooked so do not overcook it.

This is 木耳

Buttermilk Banana Bread

This is one of those baked goods that's more forgiving and easy to make.
All you need is a bowl and a fork and you can mix this by hand.
It's fast, easy and yummy. And it freezes well.
I use silicon modes to make bit size treats and freeze anything I want to keep for later

Buttermilk Banana Bread

Makes 12 normal size cupcakes

Ingredients

• 1 egg
• 40g buttermilk
• 40g vegetable oil
• 1 big banana, mashed
• 105g brown sugar
• 105g all purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 cup chopped walnuts (optional, can be replaced by pecans as well)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F and prepare your pans (either parchment paper or oil/flour them)
2. Mash the banana.
3. Add the egg, buttermilk and oil to the banana and mix.
4. In another bowl, sift together the sugar, flour, baking soda and salt and mix.
5. Mix the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients.
6. Pour into prepared pans. Add nuts to each individual cupcake to guarantee nuts in every bite. 
7. For cupcake size, bake for 20 to 25 mins or until cake tester inserted in the centre comes out clean.
8. Remember to completely cool before you freeze. 

叉燒醬 Chinese BBQ Pork Sauce (Char Siu)

It's true you can buy the Lee Kum Kee Char Siu sauce from the supermarket but honestly, I usually have all the ingredients I need to make it, so I just make it whenever I need.
I typically make it, then use it to marinate something and freeze it.

The color of your Char Siu will not be as bright as what you buy from stores. The only way to make it that bright color is to use food coloring which I refuse to do. But when you eat it, you can totally tell it's char siu. :)

Char Siu sauce can be use to make Char Siu or you can just use it to cook other items like spare ribs.

叉燒醬 Chinese BBQ Pork Sauce

Prep time ~5mins

Ingredients 

• 30g (2 tablespoons) soy sauce
• 25g (1 tbsp) oyster sauce,
• 20g (1 tbsp) hoisin sauce,
• 15g (1 tbsp) wine
• 30g (3 tbsp) brown sugar
• 5g (1 tsp) garlic
• 85g (1/4 cup) honey,
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp  5 spice powder

Directions

1. Measure all the ingredients and mix it together
2. Store in jar or use right away

This amount will  fit into a small mason jar.
It will also marinate 3lbs of pork butt to make into char siu.

Korean BBQ Sauce

I love KBBQ ribs but it's very expensive to order when you're at the restaurant. So I asked my Korean friend how he makes his KBBQ ribs.
And his response was, it's simple, just throw in everything, blend and marinate it overnight and then cook it.
He was able to give me a list of all the ingredients but he was not able to give me the amounts since he never measures it.
I tried the same and I found that generally, the taste is very similar as long as I don't go overboard on any one of the ingredients (ie half a finger of ginger, too much soy sauce etc).
So I took the time to measure and test the recipe and tested it on my husband until he thought it matches fairly well.

Another note I wanted to make up front is what I used for the sweetener.
He uses only honey, it has a unique flavour and it thickens the sauce!
Honey will make the sauce nice and thick and clingy which makes it easier to use to marinate. But at the same time, honey can be very expensive depending on you live. So my recipe below uses a bit of brown sugar to replace some of the honey but you can always swap it out for pure honey.

So this post will cover the marinate itself. You can make a big batch and keep it in the fridge or freeze it for future use or just make it as you need.

Korean BBQ Sauce

Prep Time: <5 mins Makes enough to cover about 500g of ribs pending on the box/bag you're using for marinating

Ingredients

• 40g Soy Sauce
• 5g Ginger
• 10g Garlic
• 2 Green Onion
• 20g Honey
• 10g Brown Sugar
• Juice from Half a Lemon
• 10g Vinegar
• 40g Water

Directions

1. Measure and put all the ingredients into a blender and blend
2. Let the foam settle, after 10 mins or so, stir the foam and bits into the sauce if it doesn't mix in on it's own
3. Use right away or save in fridge or freezer. Shelf life is shorter then what you buy because there's no preservatives

Simple right? :)

Enjoy!

King Oyster Mushrooms

Have you ever seen these at grocery stores and wonder what to do with them? How they taste like?
I live in Canada and I remember the first time I saw them at the grocery store was several years ago.
It was on demo, I tried it and fell in love with it.

Since then, I've seen the popularity of this mushroom grow. I now see it in restaurant dishes (both Asian and non Asian places) and I see more groceries stores carrying it. However I noticed a lot of people still don't know what it is and after so many years, it's still one of the demo booths I see at the grocery store every week. So I thought I would do a quick post on how easy it can be to cook these tasty mushroom.

Even though I first found these in an Asian grocery store, they are actually native Mediterranean, Middle Eastern and Northern African plants. It became popular in Asian and now different Asian countries also grow it.

How to store?
If you're not eating it right away, take it out of the tray and plastic wrap and put it into a paper bag. Then place it in the fridge. If you leave it in the tray, sometimes you'll find something fuzzy on it. That's still safe to eat but I find you avoid that if you put it in the paper bag.

Here's a super simple way to cook the mushroom to try it's flavour and texture.

King Oyster Mushrooms

Prep Time: <5 mins Cook Time: ~5 mins

Ingredients

• 1 package of King Oyster mushrooms, normal or baby size works
• 1 green onion
• 1/2 tsp minced garlic
• Dash of oil
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Optional sesame oil

Directions

1. Rinse the mushrooms
2. Cut into slices as shown in the picture to the right with the white line.
3. Cut the green onion into strips
4. Heat up a pan to medium heat
5. Add oil to the hot pan to help make it non-stick and add the garlic and white part of green onion and stir
6. Count to 30 and add in the mushrooms
7. The mushrooms will start turning more translucent as it's being cooked. Add in the green onion when the mushroom is about 75% done, just the centre is still the original raw color.
8. Add some cracked salt and pepper to taste and you're done!

The sesame oil is optional because it's a very strong flavour and it can over power the mushroom if you're trying to figure out how it taste like. But adding a little gives it extra fragrance.
Simply, yummy and fast!
Enjoy

Mini DIY Floor Revitalizing Project

Hi!!

Sorry for the lack of posting.
I was moving houses and doing some mini fixes so we've been crazy busy.
Finally more or less moved in now.

I learnt a lot about flooring during our mini project.
In general, apparently whatever you think your timeline you need and add 20-50% more time.
We thought we would be able to do everything in a week but it took us an additional half a week.
So what did we do? We decided that the carpet is very old and dirty so we wanted to rip it out and use the original hardwood underneath. Yes, someone covered hardwood floors with carpet! Seems baffling now but the house is about 50 years old and carpet was the thing to do back in the 70s/80s.

Each piece of carpet is held down by a strip of nails poking up and there's foam stapled into the board that's in-between the carpet and the floor.
So really, pulling up the carpet is the easy part.
Removing all those strips of nails and the staples was the painful part of the removal.

After removing the carpets, this is what we had:

It seems like some floors had stains on it, some spots were ok, some spots still had old varnish on it. So it all depended on what happened. We had one room that had broken glass and paint all over the floor. That was the worst to sand and clean up.

I honestly thought now, the hard work is done and it's easy stuff now with the sanding and varnishing but boy was I wrong. 

We used 80 grade and 120 grade paper.

We rented a floor sander to do the floors. It was great on floors with no varnish, but floors with a bit of varnish left gunked up the sand paper so we would either have to spend time cleaning the paper or use new ones.

After the fact, we were told to use courses sand paper first. It'll still gunk but easier to clean. 

But sanding made a huge difference for majority of the room.

Half sanded

Fully sanded 

We rented an edge sander too but had too many issues with the varnish and sand paper. And we found that the circular motion went against the grain of the wood so it messed up the wood even though we ran 120 over it. Perhaps we needed even a finer grain to finish but that was upsetting.

So we ended up scrapping and sanding by hand after doing 1 room unsuccessfully with the edge sander. That took us days cause it was back breaking.

Now that all the floors are nice and sanded, we had to decide if we will stain or just varnish. 

Because some of the dirty stains were not removed during the sanding process, we decided to stain to hide it. We did not imagine staining would take us hours to do.

The small room took 1.5 hours. The family/dining room took me 3 hours to stain. 

There's no short cut when it comes to staining. You have to wipe on and wipe off the excess and then leave for 24 hours to dry.

At least it looks good after. 

The varnish is pretty fast. I just run around with my roller and varnish. 

Several days later, this is the result.

We decided not to stain the stairs and the hallway in the upper floor and learned something else.

Apparently, if you use an oil base varnish, it will tint the wood so you really don't have to stain if you're looking for a pretty normal color floor!!!!

It turns the very white floor you see and tints it with enough yellow so that it's not just the pale color you see after sanding.

If we didn't have dirty stains to hide, we would have just done this and saved us 2 days of staining time. Live and learn :)

Good luck to anyone else doing floors.

Citrus Honey Duck Breast in less then 20 mins

One of the tricks to a quick meal is to take advantage of a well stock pantry and fridge!

In this case, I'm using the Citrus Honey Tea I always have in the fridge. Honestly it's pretty similar to a jam but it's used to make tea.
With the help with the tea, I can make this dish without marinating in advance. Great when you need to whip up something fast.

Please note, this cooks in less then 15 mins because my duck breast has been unfrozen and I like mine cooked to medium. Just like steak, you do NOT need to cook duck all the way. It's best served medium.

Citrus Honey Duck Breast in 15 mins

Servings: 2 people Prep Time: 3 mins Cook Time: 15 mins

Ingredients

• 2 Duck Breast (unfrozen in fridge overnight)
• 2 tbsp Citrus Honey Tea

Directions

1. Take the breast out of the packaging and wash it.
2. Pat it dry and score the skin in a crisscross pattern.
3. Heat a non-stick pan to medium and put the skin side down.
4. Cook out the oil!!! This is a very important step as duck is very oily, it's very important to cook out as much oil as possible. I let it cook on this side for 5 mins and then pour out the oil.
5. After you pour out the oil, let it cook another min to cook out a bit more oil.
6. Once there's a bit of oil on the pan, flip to cook the meat side for 5 mins.
7. Depending on how flat or round your duck is, you might want to stand it up and cook it on each of the sides for 2 min each if it's very round.
8. Plate the duck breast and brush it with the Citrus Honey Tea on all sides.
9. Let it sit for a couple of mins before you cut and eat.

After trying to cook duck with this sauce in different ways, I found the best way is to actually apply the tea after it's cooked if you're cooking it in a pan.

If you're using cast iron and after you sear you're planning on baking the duck, then brush on the tea before you put it in the oven! That creates the best result if you're searing and baking.

Keep the duck fat to saute veggies! It's very tasty.

Enjoy your mean in 20.

New Look

It's been a while since I last posted.
Getting pretty busy with preparing for moving.
I'm either packing or trying to find things for the new place so I haven't had time to measure out what I cook to actually make it into a recipe.
Hopefully I can get back to it soon.

In the mean time, I've been looking for ways to improve my blog.
I'm now using the Zylyz template to give my blog a face lift.

I hope you like the new style.
I'll make some additional adjustments as I continue to blog.
Cheers

Shrimp Tacos in 30 mins

Have you ever been in a situation where you buy something for 1 recipe and have lots of left overs you have to finish?
We brought a bag of avocado for something but only needed 1, so I had to think of a way to use the rest.
I had a package of frozen shrimp in the freezer so I decided to make tacos for dinner.
Shrimp is a great choice when you need a fast meal because it marinates in a very short period of time and it cooks very fast.

Shrimp Tacos

Makes 12 tacos Prep Time: 20 mins Cook Time: 5 mins

Ingredients

• 1 package of Shrimp (400g of shelled and deveined shrimp)
• 1/2 TBSP Mango Chipotle Seasoning
• 2 cloves of garlic minced
• 1 package of taco shells (12 hard or soft shells)
• 1.5 cups of shredded lettuce
• 2 avocado
• 1/3 cup grated cheddar cheese
• 2 tbsp diced red onion
• salsa

Directions

1. The first thing to do is rinse the shrimp under cold water and marinate it with the Mango Chipotle seasoning.
2. While the shrimp is marinating, wash the lettuce and cut into strips.
3. Grate the Cheese
4. Dice 1/5 of a red onion
5. Cut an avocado in half and pull it apart. Remove the seed. I like to cut the avocado while it's still in the shell before I cut it out. It's easier to dice up that way. So while it's in the shell, I made 4 cuts vertically and 6-7 cuts horizontally. Then I take my knife and using the hole the seed left behind, I cut out the blocks of avocado from there. To remove avocado from shell, take either a spoon or your knife and slice along the edge.
6. 10-15 mins should have passed since you first started washing and cutting things. This is perfect time to cook your shrimp.
7. Heat up your pan to medium high heat.
8. Once the pan is hot, add oil and the garlic. Stir until you smell that garlic smell. Once you smell that nice cook garlic smell, add the shrimp.
9. Stir the shrimp around to ensure even cooking.Once all the shrimp changes color and shrinks a little it's cooked. Should be less then 5 mins.

Then the fun begins to assemble your taco :)

Fish and Corn Congee

This congee is one of the ones where you add the extra ingredients in last.
This is a very simple yet yummy tasting congee. Using Fish as the protein allows for a very lean and healthy meal.

I use frozen basa fish fillet because it's easy to use and I usually have a package or 2 on hand in my freezer. I defrost the fish in the fridge overnight. As always, because there's seafood, I add ginger to help get rid of the "fishy" smell/taste.

For Corn, you can use either frozen or canned corn. If you have corn on the cob you'll have to remove the kernel from the corn to use it. Since I live in Canada where I can only get fresh corn in the summer, I typically use frozen or canned corn for this congee.

This recipe will make 1 big pot of congee enough to feed a family of 5.

Fish and Corn Congee

Makes 1 big pot Prep Time: Overnight Cook Time: 30 Mins

Ingredients

• 3 to 3.5 L of water
• 1.5 rice cooker cups of frozen rice
• 2 packages of defrosted basa fillets
• 2 cups of frozen corn or 2 cans of corn kernel, drained
• 3 slices of ginger
• 1.5 tsp of salt
• 2 green onion chopped (optional)

Directions

1. Put the water and ginger into the pot on the stove top and turn the heat to max.
2. Once the water is boiling, add in the rice and stir until it's boiling again so nothing sticks to the bottom.
3. Once it's boiling, turn the heat town to simmer and cover. Let it simmer for 20 mins.
4. While the pot is simmering away, wash the basa fillets and then cut each piece into 4 like I show in the picture to the right. You don't want to cut it too small as it'll break apart some more when it's cooked.
5. Strain the fish in the fridge to get rid of the water.
6. Chop up the green onion on a clean surface. (if you're adding the green onion)
7. At the 20 minute mark, turn up the heat again to high.
8. Once it's at a roiling boil, add the salt and the corn and stir.
9. Once it's boiling again, add the fish and stir. Let it come to a boil and cook it for 5 minutes.

The congee is not ready to eat. You can top it off with the green onion or stir it in at this point.
I generally like my green onion raw so I just add it on top of my boil of congee

Enjoy!

Stuff Squid Tubes with Pork and Water Chestnuts(馬蹄)

Sorry it probably doesn't look the prettiest in the world but it's very tasty!!

Instead of just stuffing the tubes with only meat, I like to mix in Water Chestnuts.
It's a little bit more work but very worth while.
Water Chestnuts brings a nice sweetness to the dish as well as a nice crunch. The sweetness and the crunchy texture is what makes the dish so special.
Actually, the meat mixture I use can be cooked as a dish on it's own and this dish is actually a twist on that one. :)

If the meat is seasoned well, there's no need for a sauce. If you didn't have time to season the meat, then you can pour a little soy sauce or make a thicker sauce with soy or oyster cause and some corn starch.

The squid tubes I buy are already washed and cleaned but I always wash myself and double check to make sure the bone is not left behind. There's only 1 bone in the squid and it's quite easy to find and rip out if it is left behind.

Stuff Squid Tubes with Pork and Water Chestnuts

Makes 6 tubes Prep Time: 15 mins Cook Time: 15 mins

Ingredients

• 1 Package of squid tubes, about 6 tubes in the package.
• 200g of minced pork
• 4-5 water chestnuts
• 1/2 tsp soy sauce
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp ground white pepper (optional)

Directions

1. Mix the soy sauce, sugar and white pepper into the minced pork and let it sit and marinate.
2. Peel the water chestnuts with a knife and then mince. The volume of the chestnut should be less then the volume of pork. So start off with 4 and see how much you have and add the 5th chestnut if required. All depends on the size of the water chestnut.
3. Add to the pork and mix well.
4. Wash the squid tubes and strain to dry.
5. Stuff the pork and water chestnut mixture into the tube. Stuff about 3/4 full. The squid will shrink!! NOTE: Left over pork mixture can be pan fried to look like hamburger meat!! Very tasty on it's own.
6. Place in a dish that can be used to steam.If you have time, leave the dish alone a little longer so it can sit and marinate.
7. Set up your steaming equipment and heat the water.
8. Once the water is boiling, place the plate in place for the dish to be steamed.
9. It should only take about 15 mins. After 10 mins, check on how the dish looks, you can even us a meat thermometer to poke the middle to check temperature of the meat.

Once it's cooked you're done and ready to eat :)
If you didn't have time to let it marinate or you didn't use pre-marinated mince pork, then you might want to add a bit of soy sauce or make that oyster sauce.
The flavour will come from the meat and the water chestnut!

Variation

Instead of using Water chestnut, use Lotus Root. It also has a sweetness like water chestnut but it's less crunchy. Volume wise, I like to use the same volume of minced Lotus Root as pork so it's 1:1 volume wise.

Pork Bone Congee with Dried Bean Curd Strips

You don't normally see pork bone congee in the menu at congee restaurant because this is one of the ingredients you should cook with the congee from the start for the flavours to really meld together.

You might ask, "why use pork bone instead of just the meat?" The reason why I used pork bone is because there's a certain sweetness that comes from pork bone when you make soup or congee. You can definitely use meat in your congee instead of pork bone, but that's another type of congee that I will post about at an other time.
Different flavours and different styles.

I cooked this for 30 mins to ensure that the flavours is mixed nicely into the congee.
I also pre-treated the pork bone when I first brought it before I froze them in the freezer so I can use it at any time. For the pre-treatment, I quickly blanched the bones. Then washed it under cold water with a brush to brush off any impurities. Once cooled and dried, I bagged them and stuffed them in the freezer to be used in soup/congee.

This will cook a very big pot that can feed up to 5 people.

Pork Bone Congee with Dried Bean Curd

Makes 1 big pot Prep Time: Overnight Cook Time: 40 mins

Ingredients

• 1000g Pork Bone
• 3 to 3.5L of water
• 1.5 rice cooker cup of frozen rice
• 85g (1/2 bag) dried Bean Curd (picture to the left)
• 2 tsp salt

Directions

1. Put 3L of water into the pot and boil.
2. Add in the pork bone, bring it back up to a boil.
3. Rinse the Bean Curd and put the Bean Curd and the rice into the pot of boiling water.
4. Stir and bring back to a boil.
5. Turn the heat to simmer and leave it alone for 20 mins.
6. Check on the thickness and add more water if needed.
7. Add salt and stir and cook for another 10 mins for 30 mins in total.

If you added water, you'll have to turn up the heat again.

And you're done :)

The congee will continue to thicken after you cooked it and it's cooling!!!
I used 3.5L of water, when I first started eating it, it was still a bit watery. By the time I was on my last bowl, it was at a thickness I prefer.
So if you start off with 3L of water and you have left overs, you might need to add more water the next time you eat it.

Intro to congee and trick to making smooth congee in short period of time

Congee (粥) is a rice dish that can be eaten at any time but it's a very common dish at breakfast, brunch and late night snack times.
You can find it when you go yum cha (some people like to call it dim sum but dim sum actually refers to the food you eat there), cafes, food court or specialty restaurants that specialize in congee, noodles and fried rice.
It can be full meals on it's own or one of the many dishes you eat.

It's also a very common dish to eat when you're sick as it's suppose to be easy on your digestive system so it doesn't zap the energy you need for healing.
Although when you're sick, you're eating very plain congee with minimum things added to it.

Congee is very very versatile. You can make many different variations depending on what you put in it. You can either add the additions at the beginning and let things cook together to enhance the flavours or add it at the end. If you look at the menu at a congee restaurant, you'll find that most of the different flavours are things they can add to a plain congee base and cook so they do not have to have 10 different pots of congee all waiting for people to order. Great idea for even home cooking if you need to save on time and you want a different congee flavour every day.

Besides all the different things you can add to the congee, there's 2 distinct style and it's determined by how the rice appears.

The most common kind you'll find is the one where the congee is a porridge with the rice all broken down and smooth. My parents will cook the congee for several hours to ensure all the rice is broken down. Some people will put it in one of those pots that stay hot over night for the rice to break down. Others even go to the extent of putting the congee through a food processors to ensure that it'll be smooth.
To make this style of congee, you use very little rice to make lots of congee. The water to rice ratio is huge. 1.5 to 2 rice cooker cups of rice makes a huge pot of congee that can be enough for 5 people to eat at least 3 bowls each.

The other kind is 潮州粥 (Chiu Chow style Congee). This one is not as common. You usually have to go to a Chiu Chow style restaurant to find it. The rice in this congee is solid and not broken! It's almost as if you made a soup and added cooked rice to it after. Very different then the more common style congee. I find this one definitely more filling then the other one as it requires more rice.
There are other Asian countries that cook this style of congee too so it's possible to eat it at those restaurants but I don't have a full list of what style each country cooks as I haven't tried them all myself.

After all that explanation, onto the tip.
Here's the trick my friend taught me to make that smooth congee without cooking the congee for hours or using the blender.
It's very simple, just freeze the rice before you cook it!!!
Wash the rice that you are going to cook, drain it and then freeze it for at least 2 hours.
I froze it over night as I was making the congee in the morning.
The frozen rice broke down much faster then unfrozen rice.
Within 20 minutes, the rice was broken down and basically the congee was ready to eat.
You can continue to boil it down so it thickens up to a thickness you like.
I found my congee continued to thicken up even after I turned off the heat and it was starting to cool.
It was definitely a lot thicker by the time I was finished eating and trying to pack up the left overs. Perfect for the next several days :)

Give it a try, definitely simple and makes it much faster to get your breakfast up and going in the morning.

Chocolate Swiss Buttercream Cupcakes

Here's an other new flavour I tested. Chocolate.
Yes, it's weird, I've baked for so long but never tried making a chocolate buttercream before.  It's actually so much easier then the fruity flavour creams I make that I don't understand why I didn't do it earlier.
Worked well on top of vanilla cupcakes but I can see chocolate lovers putting this on top of chocolate cupcakes as well. Double whammy.
I know some people use melted chocolate but I used cocoa powder instead.
The cream was smooth, no powdery clumps and nicely flavoured.

Why I used cocoa powder?

Several reasons:
1. I always have cocoa powder on hand as I use it for the cakes. Chocolate on the other hand, you'll want to buy specifically dark baker chocolate so it's deep in flavour and it has less added sugar.
2. It's bitter so it's great to use to balance the sweetness of the cream so it actually doesn't taste too sweet.
3. Easy to use! No need to slowly use a double boiler to melt the chocolate, wait for it to be the perfect temperature before you mix it in etc
All I did after the Swiss Buttercream was finished whipping was scoop in cocoa powder and mix.
4. Easy to adjust flavour. You can easily add more flavour by adding more powder where as if you melt chocolate, if you didn't melt enough, you have to go through the whole process to add more and it's honestly a pain.


Try it out! Easy and pipes very beautifully.