Green Beans with Sesame Dressing

I love sesame dressing for meats or vegetables. The aroma, texture and colour of sesame seeds enrich the whole dish and bring it up to another level. When it comes to using sesame seeds, I often toast them before use, or I can say, I let the sesame seeds dry pan-fry over medium-low heat (that’s stir-frying without any oil on a frying pan). The heat would bring up the fragrance of the seeds and make it much easier to mash. For making the sesame dressing, I used a kind of naturally brewed Japanese soy sauce, that brings in rich soy flavour, yet not too salty. This dish can be served as a side or salad.

Salmon Fish Cakes

In Chinese cooking, steamed live fish is my first choice, not only because it’s easy and quick, but also I can enjoy the fresh and natural taste of the fish. Amongst all kinds of fish, salmon is my most favourite. I’d go for salmon sashimi without second thought. If there’s no salmon available for sashimi or have too much salmon leftovers, this salmon cake recipe is a saver. I can’t over state how tasty, nutritious and healthy these salmon cakes are. These pan-fried salmon cakes are really moist and juicy, with a bit of crunchy onion inside that adds more textures and flavours, just right to be served with any kind of sauces you like.

Pai Bao (排包 Hong Kong Sweet Buns )

Amongst all the Asian bakery shops in Hong Kong that I tried Pai Bao, Maxim’s bakery was on the top of my favourite list. “Pai Bao” (排包) is a kind of Asian sweet buns, arranged and baked in long rows. Maxim’s Pai Bao has rich eggy and milky flavours, super soft and fluffy. I hardly find another bakery shop in Hong Kong that can beat them in making Pai Bao. Sadly, I can’t have Maxim’s Pai Bao as many as I could when I was in Hong Kong. As you might’ve known that I’m getting addicted to making tangzhong breads more and more. Then a question came up in my mind. If you crave for those lovely, soft Pai Bao, why not try to make some with tangzhong? From getting the idea to getting the wonderfully soft Pai Bao on hands, it took me quite a lot of time of refining the recipe. After two trials, not much satisfied with the taste and texture, finally I got the homemade Pai Bao that I love the most, very close to those of Maxim’s.

Up to the time of writing this post, I think this is the stickiest tangzhong dough I’ve ever made, and also the most fluffy and softest homemade bread I’ve ever enjoyed. If it’s not impossible, it would be tremendously hard to knead the dough by hands. Please take this as a kind note that this bread is very easy to make as long as you use a breadmaker. Many fans of my Chinese blog showered me with emails asking what brand of breadmaker I use. My breadmaker is the very basic model of Sunbeam. I just bought it for kneading dough because I like shaping the dough myself and bake breads in oven to have more fun and ensure the best results. You can use other brands of breadmaker though. The key is to let your dough properly be kneaded to the “elastic stage”. Why didn’t I use a stand mixer? I experimented with my stand mixer once. As this tangzhong dough, especially the one of Pai Bao is extremely sticky, the dough was stick to the hook and curled all the way up to the top. Having tried many times of scraping the dough out and get it started again, the dough couldn’t be kneaded properly after a long time. I ended up with turning the dough back to my breadmaker.

Having gone through all the trials and errors, I keep using my breadmaker to knead tangzhong dough since then. I must say that I’m really satisfied with the end results. The texture of every tangzhong bread is exactly like the kind that I’m after, very fluffy and remains soft for days.

Braised Beef Cheek in Pedro Ximenez on Cauliflower Puree

I heart beef, but seldom thought of making any dish with beef cheeks. The recipe of the slowly braised beef cheek that Trissa found in the Movida Rustica cookbook really got me thinking, “Hm…I should give it a go.” When I asked my daughter, “Do you want to try beef cheeks?” she instantly raised her eyebrows. “Beef cheeks? How to cook?” I know her very much. The two words “beef cheek” absolutely got her interest. With a bit concern, I didn’t promise her to make this dish because I was worrying that I couldn’t get all the ingredients, as I hadn’t seen any beef cheek here before. Well, I might haven’t noticed if there’s any.

To my surprise, I found three packets of beef cheek at Woolworths the following day. No need for second thought, I took two of them. I, myself, felt the end result was very satisfied. My daughter asked me to save a big portion for her next day’s lunch. The super tender, melt-in-mouth beef cheek on the creamy cauliflower puree was really a big hit in my family.

Sukiyaki (Japanese Hot Pot)

There are times to cook, times to eat. Would there be times that you just want to eat good foods but don’t want to do too much cooking? For whatever reasons, be it busyness, or tiredness, there could be some reason you don’t want to stand in the kitchen for long hours, still love staying at home and enjoying a good meal. Sukiyaki (Japanese hot pot) is on the list of my favourite dishes for a day as such.

Making this dish is far easier than you might imagine. What I need is to get a packet of thinly sliced Shabu-shabu beef from a Korean shop nearby first. Quickly grab some vegetables out from fridge, rinse and roughly cut them into pieces. Put all the ingredients in a pan and cook with the delicious Sukiyaki sauce. Another way of enjoying this dish is like having Chinese steamboat (fondue). Just set up a stove and pot on the table and let everyone pick anything they like and cook by themselves. You can sit back and relax, as well as eating of course.

Browsing the ingredient list, you might notice I added one special thing, Konjac threads (see picture shown below). Konjac is commonly used in Japanese cuisine, including sukiyaki and oden. Konjac has almost no calories but is very high in fiber, often used as a diet food too. The preparation of Konjac is minimal. Discard the water in the packet and drain out the Konjac. Give them a good rinse, then they are ready to cook with the sauce.

Combination Seafood Rice Noodles (雜燴海鮮滑蛋河粉)

We love to go for lunch in a cozy Malaysian restaurant in Market Square, Sunnybank. The name of the restaurant, “Little Singapore” might get some people confused though. Why does a Malay restaurant name itself with the word of “Singapore”? Little Singapore is often packed with customers, Asians, Aussies and other foreign visitors. The most favourite dish that my hubby loves to order is their Combination Seafood Rice Noodles. It’s very different from those of Hong Kong style.

The uniqueness of this fried noodle dish is from the smooth and thick sauce, cooked with silky whisked egg, topped with a variety of tasty seafoods and balanced with vegetables.

Trying to surprise hubby. I whipped up this dish the other day for lunch. Many Asian restaurants would keep their recipes/dishes as their business secrets. If not impossible, it’s really hard to get any recipes from them. If only I could have the same charisma of Trissa from Trissalicious getting every recipe that she likes from restaurants, I would surprise my hubby everyday. The following recipe was my own creation done from scratch. I felt the taste and look of this dish were quite similar to Little Singapore’s. It's so amazing to see hubby having finished the whole big plate.

Shanghai 'Zha Jiang' Noodles (炸醬麵)

When I came across the recipe of Zha Jiang Noodles (炸醬麵) on Almostbourdain, I said to myself, I’d make it one day. That “one day” had come eventually.

I often cook rice not noodles for dinners. After moving to Australia, I still try my best to keep the Chinese tradition and cook 3 dishes with one soup for dinner. If I’m not wrong, Ellie asked me twice on twitter, that if I still followed the Chinese tradition making 3 dishes. My answers were “yes” and “no”. I would try to, as long as I have time and energy. Honestly speaking, many things would get into my way so that I can’t keep this tradition. For an instance, my daughter needed to go out before 5:30pm the other day. Apart from the time constraint, cooking dinner that early was not my default mood. Then Ellie’s Zha Jiang noodles came up in my mind instantly. It’s a yummy quickie, good for meals at any time, for lunch, dinner or supper.

For making this dish, all you need is to get the “sweet bean sauce” with Shanghai noodles. Both of them are easily found at any Asian grocery stores. For the vegetables and minced pork, I think it’s not a problem for you at all.

Salmon Pasta with Tomato Chickpea Sauce

As I said before, I have really been motivated to make some fresh pasta since I got with my new kitchen toy – pasta machine. Making pasta is so much fun indeed. I cooked the first batch of pasta with some homemade tomato sauce, tossing in some chickpeas to add more textures with more protein and fiber. As for myself, the dinner at that night was one of my favourites with lots of satisfaction in cooking and tasting. Since my daughter loves to have all her pasta swimming in the sauce, the amount used in this recipe was quite large. It might be more than you need. So you can reduce the ingredients according to your need, or keep the leftover sauce in fridge for a week or so. The sauce is so tasty on pizzas or breads as well.

Homemade Fresh Pasta

One of the most luckiest things I came across last week was getting a pasta machine from  Kmart. Believe it or not. It’s 15 dollars. Here, you can’t get one without 100 dollars, or even 145 dollars from those classy department stores. I was too lazy and not motivated to make any fresh pasta until I got this new kitchen toy. There’s nothing wrong with using the ready made pasta from supermarkets, very quick and handy. Yet nothing can compare with homemade fresh pasta, given you have a bit of spare time. The process is simple and easy. All you need is a pasta machine to help you roll out a dough made by 3 to 4 ingredients and cut them within a minute.

By adding a small amount of Semolina flour that is commonly used in making pasta, you’ll enjoy delicious pasta with a hint of wheat flavour, light yellow colour and stretchy texture.