炸纸雞, 腐竹白菜汤 & 菜心 Dinner

One of our newest additions to our soup repertoire is the 腐竹白菜汤 which was suggested from newspapers that the PRC president’s, 胡錦濤 (Hu Jintao), chef regularly made to maintain the president’s good health. Well, 白菜 (bok choy) is always yummy to eat and versatile as with many foods in our ‘fridge. I do stir-fry and soups with it. There’s what we call “old fire” method of cooking soup, which is to simmer it on lower heat settings for many hours (anywhere between 2-5 hours). But anyways, this soup is made with 白菜,  腐竹 (dried bean curd sticks), red dates, and we added carrots to it for sweeter flavor and because we thought it belonged there. We tried this soup with 炸纸雞 (it’s chicken that is marinated and then drenched with boiling hot oil to make the skin “paper thin” and very crispy which is where its signature name is derived from) that we bought from Asia City restaurant (~$22.95). Chicken was a little overdone and small but otherwise, tasted great. Most of our dinners have an accompanying veggie dish; tonight it was 菜心 (choy sum). Topped it all off with a little XO Cognac (which, by the way is a little too bitter for me) as a drink.

And actually we had dessert first, which was our lovely traditional 生果 生日蛋糕 that we handmade ourselves.

炸纸雞, 腐竹白菜汤 & 菜心 dinner

腐竹白菜汤

炸纸雞

Dessert: 生日蛋糕

 

Birthday Cake for Mom, success, woohoo!

This was probably the best birthday cake we’ve made by far! Woohoo! And we really didn’t expect it to turn out well at all. I’ll probably share the recipe once it we get it right for sure but we’re getting close!

I have to admit that the birthday card – was totally made it the night before like at 11pm. Maybe this is the time when the time crunch pressure turns out into something good rather than disastrous. I’m proud of the 3D effect with the ribbon and I also have to say, I do enjoy basking in the glory of my artistic creations. The cake success just sweetens the glory.

The box of Snoopy chocos were cute too (bought it at Georgetown Gifts next door to Panera while I was on break for $1.39 – woo, all 1.39 goes to supporting my local businesses : P) and the carnations I bought from PROVIDES. Oh the memories of Valentine’s Day flower sales. Last year, Dad and I had to battle with the car and a nice big snow storm so whoever those lovers were that bought flowers from us, we risked our lives for their love. Just kidding of course.

Anyways, we went out to dim sum at Asia City (another post to follow for the food convo) which was nice. Went to make copies for tax returns for a ridiculous 1/2 hour. Drove mom to work and then went cake ingredient shopping. Came back home and from 5p-10p, we worked on the cake. Yes, that is crazy long to make one single cake but at least our efforts paid off!

Compare to last time which was 2 months ago for Dad’s birthday, the cake was much better .. and probably safer to eat too. The bowl we use is this old metal rice cooker bowl and since we use the mixer on it, the metal from it turns our cakes into a nice gray-green hue. Yes, very appetizing. Add on top of that, dry crumbling texture and denseness. Cake failure.

But this time it was a nice light yellow color, and had much more moisture! But I’ll leave that for when I share the recipe .. if and when I do get to that.

Feb.16.2010 Happy Birthday Mom!

Feb.16.2010

Feb.16.2010

 

Coconut Bread – fail, oh darn.

Bread is getting expensive these days.  No more of those 15 cents for 2 buns type deal, which was what it was like way back in the 50′s in Hong Kong.  But anyways, even in A2 because there’s only this one monopoly Asian superstore (HuaXing), Asian delicacies and commodities are getting a tad expensive. So we decide that of course, we can make cheaper coconut bread that would satiate our Asian bun cravings..

So when I came home from work, the dough was rising…

coconut bread stage 1

and the flour is all pretty like the snow outside, waiting patiently…

the most basic of ingredients for bread

and then we rolled the bread.. mine were especially chubby for some odd reason… and then wait wait to re-fluff/dough rises some more – which I’m afraid didn’t quite happen..?  Ha.

fluffing bread

then stuck it into the oven for 20 minutes @ 360 degrees.. and

final product: coconut bread

and Gah! Dry, crispy hard, really dry coconut stuffing… dry………. o_O  I guess we’re not quite there yet haha.  It was probably at 30% success so maybe we will still have to go broke buying bread from the local Asian store for a while longer… a long while longer haha.