Beijing Restaurant

Sorry dear readers....I'm quite upset that I cannot blog on my phone and have to use a laptop. I really dislike this inconvenience of having to use a laptop and transfer the pictures from my phone. I'm in between deciding what to purchase next... an ipad, a new smart phone, a laptop or a puppy. I'll eventually get them all but just figuring out the timing.

Anyways, you're here to read about yummy food. During the long weekend, I went to Beijing Restaurant with my family for Alaskan King Crab. It is starting to be the season so it's a good chance to eat this type of crab. To fish this, it's actually very hard and potentially dangerous for the fisherman. "Alaskan crab fishing is very dangerous, and the fatality rate among the fishermen is about 80 times the fatality rate of the average worker. It is suggested that, on average, one crab fisherman dies weekly during the seasons," as mentioned in Wikipedia. Click here if you want more info. 


If you have not had Alaskan King crab, read this article from the Globe and Mail. It talks more in detail about this: Alaskan King Crab is all it's cracked up to be.


So here is a picture of our 13lb King Crab that my family ate. In Chinese restaurants, they like to show you the fresh seafood so that you know what you are getting. Truth is, I only believe this at reputable restaurants. With other places, I always worry that they will show the seafood to you then in then kitchen, change to something that is less fresh. I don't think that this place would do such a thing. 

"Bow Ties" (蛋散)

Sorry for not posting anything but Christmas was too busy. Here's the first post of 2012!!!

I'm guessing South African Chinese decided to translate "dan san" (蛋散) to "bow ties" because they look like bow ties. They are amazingly good, at least the ones my mom and grandmother made. The ones at bakeries are greasy or the dough is too thick so I no longer buy even if I'm craving them.

Anyways let me introduce you to my family's bow ties. They are light pastries that are deep fried and covered with a syrup coating. They are shaped into bow ties, hence the name bow ties.

The dough is simple to make. It's just sifted flour and baking powder. You can use vegetable oil but my mom said lard makes the dough more crispy and flaky.




Then four eggs are added.

ABC Restaurant

At the suggestion of an anonymous comment, I went to ABC Restaurant (愛彼茜餐室) to try out their souffle.

The One

After supper, I was very thirsty and didn't want to go home. So where did I go??? Bubble tea!!!

Went to a place called The One Restaurant (美味x係-can't replicate 3rd word)

Mr Zhang's Karaoke Restaurant

Initially I wanted to have Chinese hot pot for supper but when my friends and I saw that the price was $25 per person, we decided it was too expensive and tried this new restaurant.

It seems that Northern Chinese food is quite popular. I'm not sure if it's because there are a lot of new immigrants from China and not from Hong Kong or it's a trend but many new restaurants are popping up that serve this type of food.

Hot Pot Rice

One of my favourite food when I visited Hong Kong in winter is hot pot rice (煲仔飯). I like it when they cook the rice outside the door of the restaurant. Here's a close-up of rice pot made in HK that I found on the Internet.

Lin Chinese Restaurant

I went to a Chinese Restaurant for lunch. I've been here a couple of times and have always enjoyed the food. Strangely, I've never been there for supper, only lunch. The restaurant is called Lin's Chinese Cuisine and Tea (林餐館).

Usually this restaurant is so busy that you have to wait for a seat but this time, we got a seat right away. Maybe it's a Sunday.

Thermomix

I had a Thermomix class with Agnes to make some Exotic Snacks. It was a very good class as it demonstrates what the Thermomix is a capable of.



Background of Thermomix

The Thermomix is a German designed and French produced kitchen appliance. It was initially designed to make baby food, as it was healthy, safe and quick/easy to use. However, others decided to apply it in other parts of their cooking and have een very successful. Chinese have now used it to stir-fry, steam and make soups. Even professional chefs are using it to make mousse, puddings and other difficult dishes.

The Thermomix replaces many applicances including blender, grinder, blender, food processor, stand mixer, ice shavers, juicers, slow cookers and probably a lot more. The only thing that it cannot do is deep fry and bake. Actually, that's not the only downside. The downside is the price...however if you do not have a lot of kitchen appliances, and plan to buy, this will be perfect since you will only need ONE machine and it will take up less space than owning 2 appliances. Plus many of my classmates who have bought this machine have started to use it regularly and all vouch that it's a great appliance to have at home.

Here are some links praising it. Honestly, the only negative feedback with this machine is price.

http://www.superkitchenmachine.com/2010/4904/buy-thermomix-in-canada.html

http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/412015

Globe and Mail's view on Thermomix

This last link is from Anna and Kristina's Grocery bag. It's a blog so was not on their show.

Anna and Kristina's view of Thermomix

It cannot be bought at the store but by a dealer directly. It is a very popular applicance in Australia. If you do any search on it in English, you will find many users in Australia and ways they have learned to apply in their daily lives.

Here's a picture of Thermomix:



So back to the main topic Exotic Snacks using Thermomix:

As with all my classses, I do not take pictures of each steps since I'm learning in the class and also it's hard because there are other students around. I only take the final product. However, when I do replicate the recipe at home, I will definately show you my steps. In the case of Thermomix, I can only do that when I have access to a Thermomix.

We made three items in this class.

The first item was Green Tea Pudding. It was very nice and smooth pudding. The flavour was subtle but you can play around that by adding more sugar or green tea powder. Thermomix was used because when heating milk, this machine will keep the temperature constant so you don't need to have a thermometer. If you have ever made pudding, it's not always easy because you have to constantly stir to prevent burning and two you have to control temperature so the milk and cream doesn't boil over. With Thermomix, just put your ingredients in, close the lid and turn on the setting and after 15 minutes, your mixture is ready to be put in the fridge.

I liked it but I don't know if I'll make it again. I'm not a pudding person and if I had to eat extra calories that pudding has, I would probably prefer a different dessert. Here's a picture with Japanese red bean topping.




We then made Spinach Corn Muffin. It was so easy to make this. Just put spinach and grind. Then add other ingredients and done. If you look at my blog, I recently made this with a blender and a mixer. It was such a mess, even though the recipe is great. I green liquid from the spinach spilling out plus i had to pulverize my spinach numerous times because the blender blades were not as powerful as Thermomix's blades. I really like the muffin because of the green colour which would be great for Halloween but also because it was healthy!! It tasted good as well.




Lastly, we made a traditional Chinesse dessert called Chinese Birthday Steamed Cake (賀蕁紅粿) Wow! I loved this. I really loved the filling. It was amazing!!! I know that there is NO way I can make this without Thermomix. If I had to make this without Thermomix, I would probably not bother. As well, to make the red colour, we grounded up a beetroot, so the colour is natural plus you get the nutrients of the beet.

Without Thermomix, you can probaly use a food processor and a pot afterwards to cook the beetroot. In this case, I didn't need to use another equipment, just Thermomix mixing bowl.

Here are some pictures.







Final Thoughts:

I enjoyed this class. It was a great way for me to see even more the potential of Thermomix. I am planning to buy one for myself, as I can see myself using this for at least 2 of the above items. Also, many of my classmates who already have this machine say that they often cook their rice, soup and steam veggies/fish all at the same time so they are able to have a full meal within 15 minutes. How great is that for someone who doesn't like cooking like me?

I tried the spinach corn muffin at home and it worked really well. It was harder to make without the Thermomix but doable. The Chinese Birthday steam Cake might be a challenge without the right equipment. I will make this though!! The pudding was good but not my thing.







- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Traditional Chinese Pastries Class

I took another class with Agnes Chiu (趙太). Her class was a Traditional Chinese Pastry (中式糕餅班). It was a good class since I had the chance to learn pastry techniques, which I've been wanting to learn.

We made Almond Tofu (杏仁豆腐) using Chinese almond (南杏). I always thought the almond that we snack on is used to make this. As well in other recipes that I've seen, they used almond extract only. This almond tofu was quite refreshing.

Steamed BBQ Pork (Char Siu) Bun (叉燒飽)

I had extra BBQ pork this weekend and it was way too much food to eat as leftovers plus it was pretty fatty. So I decided to make steamed BBQ pork buns. The best recipe is the one my mom used to make using Bisquick. It was a "cakey" dough. Unfortunately that recipe has been missing since 1990s and could not be found. My mom asked my grandmother and my aunt but no avail. (To my relatives in SA, if you read my blog, please ask your mom if she has a BBQ bun recipe. It's important because it came from our grandmother and don't want to lose that recipe).

Anyways, I was going to use the recipe I got from my cooking teacher but I couldn't find it either, so I used this book's recipe.



This book was a gift from a good friend many many years ago. She stated that it was pretty authentic. I agree. I haven't tried a lot of recipes because many are from other parts of China, I have so many recipes from my mom and grandmother to perfect plus I'm taking cooking classes that it's hard to try so many recipes.

Cold Crab

I made cold crab ( 凍蟹) tonight. It is a dish from a Chinese village called Chiew Chow. You can see some dishes I learned from a class that taught a few Chiew Chow in this blog.

First I went to a Korean fish store and bought the crab. The lady said it was expensive because recently it was windy so hard for the fishermen to catch. But she also said it's crab season, so the crab will be meaty. I decided to buy the crab. It weighed 2.5lbs.

Here's me checking out the crab at home after I bought it. It was quite active and what's bad was it's big claws were not tied. I was thinking "oh no! What did I get myself into!?!?"

Chiew Chow Class 2

On our second Chiew class, we made Cold Crab (涷蟹), Deep fried shrimp ball (炸蝦棗), Szechuan pepper chicken (川椒雞).

I was interested in learning how to prepare crab. It seemed easy (incidentally it seemed so easy that I bought a live crab to cook tonight. I'll blog about that experience later).

I was also impressed with the shrimp balls, as they had a nice bounce and tasted very nice. I was less impressed with the chicken dish.

So let me go into the dishes...

The cold crab is apparently quite expensive at Chiew Chow restaurants.


It's a steamed crab that allows you to enjoy the natural flavour of the fresh crab since the sauce isnt strong. There was a nice garlicky vinegar dipping sauce that goes well with steamed crab.

Thermomix

I heard about Thermomix and thought it was a myth. It is claimed that it replaces the blender, stand/electric mixer, steamer, grinder, food processor, scale, juicer, ice cream maker, ice shaver, thermometer, bread machine (without baking) etc.

Here's how it looms like.

Baked Chinese Cake 雞蛋糕

I tried making the what I learned in class. In the class, we added lotus paste. I didn't have lotus paste so I just made the cake.

Method:
First I mixed eggs and icing sugar until it was very very light.



I beated it for a long time because it wouldn't turn light yellow. So I kept beating and decided it was better not to overbeat. Wonder if you can overbeat eggs.

Chinese Snacks and Dim Sum

Had a class again with Agnes Chiu (趙太). I think that she is not only a great cook but amazing at teaching her trade. I will definitely make her stuff.

Here's what we made:

BBQ steam rice roll (叉燒腸粉）


Whoa! It was do easy to make that I was shocked. The only hard part was rolling it. I'm sure you're wondering about the texture. It was smooth, tender and soft. The way Chinese would describe it, would be waat

Chiu Chow class

I love this teacher. She's the one that got me start baking bread. She's very fair, knowledgeable and healthy. All the recipes I learned from her have been great!! Her name is Agnes Chiew.

I'm taking 2 of her classes. Today is Chiew Chow food. Tomorrow is Chinese snacks and Dim Sum.

Here's what we made today:

Chiew Chow Oyster Pancake:
















Man, it was yummy. It had a great chewy texture. It reminded me of my village's pancake (we call it "pak San"). Both my grandmothers made them. Lucky my dad learned how to make it, as it was our midnight snack treat. I kinda know how but should try to perfect it!!!

We also made Chiew Chow duck（滷水鴨). Wow! She definitely is amazing.







Here's a pic after it was chopped.







Finally dessert. It was a green bean soup. It was very clean (清)

Next week is crab and more Chiew Chow food.

Out of all the cooking class teacher, she is the BEST!!


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Chinese New Year food

I forgot to talk about some of the food. I won't show my traditional supper food since I didn't prepare very good food for last night's supper. Last night was New Year Eve, where we eat supper together with certain food.

I do have some snacks that I eat.

This is fried dumplings. It called "kok".

Buns

Went to a Bread making class in Cantonese. It was fun because teacher is very interesting and direct. The bread was really good. The secret is using bread flour. Anyways, here is a pic of 7 buns I made in the second class. They include a Mexican bun, Pineapple bun, Corn Beef Braid, Coconut roll, Lotus paste piggy, Taro bun and Cream spiral.

This other one is all the buns I made at home including Kwai Fei Bun (BBQ pork filling with Mexican bun topping). Now I can make it VERY VERY quickly! No longer have to buy bread anymore!