Sweet and Sour Cucumber (酸甜青瓜)

This dish, Sweet and Sour Cucumber is always served in Chinese restaurants as an appetizer, or a side dish, very refreshing and healthy.

When you eat cucumbers raw, sometimes you might taste bitterness in the skin.
The bitterness seems to vary from type to type of cucumbers, with different degree of bitterness from time to time. I learned a small trick from my mother-in-law to reduce or remove the unpleasant bitterness. The secret trick is pretty simple, just cut out both ends and use them to rub the cucumber. This method helps remove the white jelly-like substance from the skin. The more you rub, the more white substance you get, the better the cucumber tastes.

This time I tried the Taiwanese cucumber (小黃瓜 Xiao Huanggua). The flesh is firmer with less water and seeds inside. It’s the best kind of cucumber to make this dish. If you can’t find any Taiwanese cucumbers, try Lebanese cucumbers. It’s also a good choice.

Steamed Cake (Old-styled Dim Sum)

I often went to some old-styled Chinese restaurants with my father. There was a simple steamed cake served as dim sum, with delicate, light and soft texture. The fragrance of the eggs inside was wonderful. The ingredients of the cake are only eggs, flour and sugar. How could the chefs make this cake so soft and light? On the menu, the restaurants used to put 西施（Xishi in Mandarin）before the words of “steamed cake”. Xishi was one of the four renowned beautiful ladies in ancient China. Her beauty was described extremely in an imagery way that while she leaned over a balcony to look at the fish in the pond, the fish would be so dazzled that they forgot to swim and gradually sunk away from the surface. If you’re interested in knowing more about Xishi, here’s her story on Wikipedia.

So people used the name of Xishi to describe the delicate beauty of this steamed cake offered at some old-styled Chinese restaurants to attract their customers. If you have tried this old-styled dim sum, you might have been amazed by its simplicity and delicious taste.

Chocolate Ganache and Strawberry Tarts

When I saw Fiona demonstrating to cook her invention recipe of Chocolate Ganache, Lavender Cream and Raspberry Tart on MasterChef, I said to myself that, I had to make this beautiful tart. Unfortunately, the unsprayed lavender was hard to find. Yet, big and beautiful strawberries were everywhere. So, I adapted Fiona’s recipe to make the tart shells and chocolate ganache, topped with jelly-coated sweet strawberries. It turned out to be a big hit in our family’s dinner last weekend.

Fried Hokkien Noodles (福建炒麵)

As a famous Chinese food critic 蔡瀾 stated on his blog, the original version of Hokkien Noodles is hardly found in Fujian (福建) province, China nowadays. The dish has become a fusion styled, deep black in colour served in many modern Malaysian restaurants. The underlined meaning of his post is that the original version of Hokkien Noodles was not as black as we see in today’s restaurants. Yet people are still arguing about the way how this noodle dish should be cooked.

Well, as a home cook, I can take the advantage of modifying and twisting the cooking way as I want. If you like darker noodles, put more dark soy sauce into the sauce then. When it comes to cooking Hokkien noodles, the very basic thing is quite simple. The Hokkien noodles have to be simmered in long-cooked, tasty stock, so that the noodles absorb all the flavours. Many Malaysian friends of mine use shrimp shells to make the broth. I just simply use the ready-made chicken stock to cook the dish on the go. It turned out to be a simple and quick lunch for my family.

Pumpkin and Sweet Potato Soup

My friend, Tina grew heaps of gorgeous pumpkins at her backyard and had a great harvest this year. Her husband just threw and sprinkled the pumpkin seeds that were removed from a pumpkin bought from supermarket. It took them by surprise that the plant grew rapidly and spread everywhere in their garden. Best of all, they didn’t put any effort or time to fertilize them. The fully-grown pumpkins were meaty, with golden orange, sweet flesh. Tina asked me to do her a favour to take one away as they were not able to eat all the them by themselves. How could anyone not accept this lovely favour?

I have made the traditional Pumpkin Soup many times before. This time I tried to add something new for my family.  I just cut one-fifth of the pumpkin and popped it in a saucepan with a golden sweet potato, then cooked and enjoyed a very creamy, tasty soup, along with a few pieces of baked Baguette. My friends always said, “The most wonderful meals are always made from those produces grown fresh from our gardens.”

Chilli Beef and Beans Tacos

As our International Taco party approached, I had been searching in my mind how to make for a week.

Honestly, I love Mexican foods, but have ever tried to make tacos at home. I’m a big fan of beans, was glad that I happened to find canned Mexican Chilli beans, mainly used red kidney beans at Coles for sale yesterday. Something like this came up in my mind, “It’s not wrong to use canned food if they are of good quality or at good bargain.” So, I went for a short cut, saving much time to cook the beans, and finally made these Chilli Beef and Beans Tacos for a light lunch on last weekend.

Stewed Pork Ribs in Orange Juice (橙汁肉排)

That said, the cold weather would help oranges grow juicier and sweeter. If it’s right, no wonder I can find many large and super sweet navel oranges at supermarkets in recent cold days. I bought a large packet of them as my snacks a few days ago. They were really juicy and meaty. I just used two of them to squeeze out one whole cup of juice. The pork meat nearly fell off the bones after being stewed in the orange juice for two hours, absorbed all the flavours of the sauce. The downside of making this Stewed Pork Ribs in Orange Juice was that I received a complaint from my daughter, “Why wasn’t there enough of pork?”

Stir-fried Prawns with Eggs (滑蛋蝦仁)

This homey dish, Stir-fried Prawns with Eggs is also very popular in Chinese restaurants. The prawns/shrimps used must be very fresh. Although I can’t find any live prawns here, the frozen, raw ones are still good for making this dish. This dish is like cooking scrambled eggs with prawns. Both of the smell and taste of the eggs with prawns are so good and tempting. No wonder many Chinese people love this dish. This dish looks simple and easy to make. But frying smooth and silky eggs needs some practices and experiences. I learned a little trick from my father to cook smooth scrambled eggs. Just add a bit of milk into the beaten eggs, yet not too much, as you don’t want the eggs too runny. Most importantly, the eggs cannot be overcooked.

Mackerel In Tomato Sauce

My mum hasn’t been cooking very much recently as her health is getting not as good as before. Another reason is that I hardly have the chance to taste her delicious food after I moved to Australia. She always cooked her heart out and tried to find ways to get her kids eat more. Her way of cooking tomatoes really get us hooked, whether it’s cooked with eggs, or chicken, pork chops or fish. The sweetness and sourness of the sauce just strikes the balance. And her kids, including myself of course, would finish a big bowl of rice without any complaints when a dish of tomato sauce placed on the table. To be honest, I’d never cook as good as her when it comes to cooking this kind of dish.

Stir-fried Glutinous Rice (生炒糯米飯)

This Stir-fried Glutinous Rice is a long-standing, classic dim-sum in Chinese restaurants. Traditionally, the cooking method is very time and effort demanding, similar to the way how Italian risotto is cooked from raw to done. To cook Stir-fried Glutinous Rice is not hard at all. In fact, I heard many chefs in Chinese restaurants confess they won’t go through this route simply because of consideration of time and labor. Many Chinese people love to cook this dish at home in winter. I religiously followed the traditional way to cook the glutinous rice in order to get the right texture I wanted. Yet, I also share a cheating way of cooking this classic dish followed the recipe.

Japanese Green Tea Bread with Red Bean Fillings

A chain bread shop, Breadtop opened a branch in Brisbane a while ago. Every time I went there or passed by, I noticed there’s always a long queue of customers waiting for paying. It seemed that their soft buns and many breads with new tastes are really welcome not only by Asians, but also Aussies. Amongst all their tasty breads, I like their green tea buns with red bean fillings the most. The buns are wonderfully soft and fluffy. I just wonder if I can bake the same good buns as theirs. So I took an experiment and turned to the reliable tangzhong recipe the other day. The end result turned out pretty good, with soft and fluffy texture as I expected. Although the taste of my buns were a bit different from the Breadtop’s, as I used 宇治抹茶 and homemade sweet red bean paste, their look were quite similar to Breadtop’s. I’m glad that my family was very satisfied with the fluffy texture of these green tea buns. Although mine could not be compared to those professional products, I felt good that I could bake some buns looked and tasted like Japanese ones.