Japanese Ground Chicken Rice

Being a typical Chinese family living down under here, we always have rice for dinner. Ellie from AlmostBourdain via twitter once asked if I still keep the tradition of having Chinese dinner with three courses together with a soup. Yes, as long as I have enough cooking time. Life is so hectic that I can’t keep the tradition as I wish sometimes. But rice will definitely be served on our dinner table as it’s my husband’s most favourite. Or I can say he is a typical Chinese man who can’t live without rice in a single day, whereas my daughter loves tasting different foods in a wide range of variety. So, the same question repeatedly comes up, whether to have Chinese or western cuisine or other kind of dishes for tonight’s dinner. Being a homecook, I have to find a way to please every different palate in the family, without putting too much pressure on myself. That’s why I continue on the search for simple, easy ways of cooking delicious dishes for my family.

We seldom have rice for lunch, but glad that I cooked this scrumptious Japanese chicken rice as lunch the other day, that was quickly recorded as one of my family’s favourites. This rice is quick and simple, full of Asian flavours, best for hectic days or winter days, lunch or dinner.

Stir-fried Gai Lan with Fish Cake & Lap Cheong

Chinese broccoli (aka, Gai lan) is widely used in Chinese cuisine, especially Cantonese dishes. Its name in Chinese, (芥蘭 Gai lan) literally means "mustard orchid", and belongs to the same plant family as broccoli and kale. It's high in beta-carotene, and contains folate, vitamin E, iron and calcium.

The most popular way of cooking gai lan is stir-fried with ginger or garlic, or just boiled with water, then served with oyster sauce. Their thick stems are edible, but take longer time to be cooked as compared with their dark green leaves. Sometimes, you might find it’s got a bit bitter in taste. My mum used to add a hint of sugar to balance their mild bitterness and bring out the best of this lovely vegetable. If you’re fed up with the usual way of blanching gai lan or stir-fried it with garlic, here’s my mum’s favourite cooking way. She liked to stir fry it with fish cake or/and Lap Cheong (臘腸 Chinese sausage). This dish is tasty, full of flavours, that the gai lan turns out to be the most enjoyable part, as it absorbs the oil of lap cheong and natural sweetness of fish. My kid likes this vegetable the most when it’s cooked in this way.

Steamed Golden Fish Cakes with Oyster Sauce + Hong Kong Trip Snapshot

Lee Kum Kee held a cooking competition for bloggers in April. To my knowledge, it’s the first one ever run in Hong Kong before. I felt honoured to be invited and created a demo recipe for their official site. Healthy, creative and fusion were the requirements and themes for every entry. So here you go, I translated my demo recipe into English to share the joy of participating something significant in food blogging.

What else could be more healthier than a steamed fish dish? Believed that this dish had nailed the competition themes, off I went to submit my recipe and posted on my chinese food blog. By adding a bit of vietnamese condiment, fish sauce, into the fish paste, I planned to bring in a kind of cross-over-taste in Chinese traditional seasoning. Besides all the cooking, I was able to know and connect more Hong Kong food bloggers through this event, as well as expand my blogging horizon a bit.

As a side note, I was invited to visit the LKK headquarter during my trip back to Hong Kong last month.

Amazed by their warm welcome message！

Very impressed by their giant, modern kitchen. I could imagine how excited the contestants would have felt while cooking their invention dishes in this splendid kitchen.

A peek view of LKK giant kitchen - taken by my ipad2

Pandan Chiffon Cake

This pandan chiffon cake recipe has been sitting in my draft folder way long ago. Chiffon cakes are my family’s all time favourite dessert. I make this cake quite often. Having posted the Chinese version of the recipe, I’ve nearly forgotten to translate and publish here. Thanks to the tv productions. Watching this season’s Masterchef, surprisingly found that Dan Hong's pandan chiffon cake was set as a pressure test for their contestants. The episode, shown on 6 June 2011 (Elimination Day: The race to recreate Dan Hong's dish is on), reminded me of this silently awaiting recipe. Upon viewing the episode, my urge inside yielded for trying Dan Hong’s recipe as I wanted to give my family a surprise. Too bad, after a long haul searching, Dan Hong's pandan chiffon cake recipe was not found on the Masterchef’s official site, even up to the time of this writing. Will try if it’s up there later for sure. Looking back to my old photos taken by my point-and-shoot camera two years ago, feeling it’s better to reshoot some new ones when I made this cake again. If you can’t find Dan Hong's pandan chiffon cake recipe like me, give my recipe a go. This cottony soft cake, with its subtle fragrance of pandan leaves and coconut, won’t let you down either. The cake was gone quickly. And I might bake one again for bringing along to a tea party on this weekend.

Hong Kong and Malaysia Trip 2011: Three Special Mother’s Day Meals

Hi, miss you all, my dear readers. You might have wondered if I had retired or hibernated from blogging. I just came back from Hong Kong, my home town, where my mother and all my siblings are living there. Looking back, it seemed to be a long time that I haven't blogged here. During the stay in Hong Kong, I also took the opportunity and made a five-day trip in Malaysia, enjoying lots of sightseeing and good foods of course.

Taken by my mobile phone from my window seat