New theme and New change

by Liv | Dec 27, 2010

Recently, since the weather turned dark and cold, I’ve become a bit dismayed with both blogging and cooking. Just as with my good fried Chef Dennis I work extremely long hours and have very limited time to cook any food let alone photograph it.

So, while the light and time still suck, to revitalize my interest in blogging I’ve been looking at changing my blog theme. Since I started blogging in English (I used to blog in Chinese) I’ve been using a theme we bought from Themeforest called Unite, made by a developer called Parallelus. While it looks professional it looks too professional, I wanted something more personal.

I’ve wanted a new theme for my blog for a very long time and a pink blog theme has always been my dream since I started blogging. Neither Chris or I are trained in web design and developing and although Chris knows some CSS/HTML he doesn’t have the time to sit down and really learn how to create a WordPress theme from scratch.

We spent quite a bit of time searching online and we found one WordPress Consultant in the US who makes stunning themes but charges in the region of $2000-3000 a theme, which is too much. Chris then found this amazing theme company called DIYThemes who created a theme called Thesis.

The thing that really stood out to us is the level of customisation possible with this theme. You can really change virtually anything you want in terms of layouts, colours, etc without needing any coding. It’s also optimised way beyond anything we’ve seen elsewhere for SEO. Because of this awesome theme I can now finally own what is for now the perfect blog theme for myself. It’s “pink”!!! My favourite colour!!!

(You can see the difference compare with these 2 photos so you can tell the thesis theme can actually allow you to do a lot of changes. )

People who follow my blog have also heard me talk about wanting to change my blog a bit. I have to admit I’m that kind of person who can’t always keep doing the same thing and live the same routine every day, it drives me nuts!

So it’s time for me and my blog to have new change and it’s start from this new theme. If you remember I cooked Souvlaki for my blog a month or so ago and you’ll also remember I work in one of the busiest and most famous restaurants in Edinburgh. From now on this blog will still be mainly about Eastern food but I’ll also start cooking Western food that I have learnt from my time working as a chef.

Fish Fragrant Tofu Chinese tofu recipe

by Liv | Dec 22, 2010

Fish Fragrant Tofu Chinese tofu recipe

I’ve mentioned so many benefits of tofu in my previous blog post and here is another tofu recipe that I want to share with you today.

“Fish fragrant tofu” (魚香豆腐) is one of many famous dishes from Sichuan cuisine. It has “fish” in the name of it but without fish in this dish. It’s called “fish fragrant” because the ingredients for this dish are usually used when cooking fish but people use it for cook tofu, eggplant and other dishes.

There is a story about this fish fragrant dish. A long time ago in Sichuan, there was a family who were really serious when It came to cooking fish. They will use ginger, spring onion, garlic, mince, chilli bean sauce and other ingredients to cook with fish. One day, the lady of this family didn’t want to waste the ingredients so she used the ingredients to cook another dish. She was however realy nervous that it wouldn’t taste nice and her husband wouldn’t like it.

Her husband came home while she was thinking about what she should explain to her husband later about this dish. Her husband was so hungry from work he didn’t wait for dinner to start and literally just took a few bites of this dish. He asked his wife: ”Oh, this dish is the most tasty dish that I ever had in my life, how did you do it?” She told him how she cooked it and they gave the name of this dish “fish fragrant fry (魚香炒)”. This is how “fish fragrant” this name came from.

People who are vegetarian can also cook this dish but just without using any mince. You can adjust the amount of chilli and chilli bean sauce if you prefer your food more or less spicy.

As people who follow my Facebook page will know, I recently bought a pink knife bag. I really like anything that’s pink and when I saw this bag online I just had to buy it! Here are some of photos of my new pink knife bag.

Credit: All photos were taken by Chris at: http://www.chrisradleyphotography.com

Don’t you think this is the cutest knife bag ever!

Fish Fragrant Tofu Chinese tofu recipe

Course Main Dish

Prep Time 20 minutes

Cook Time 30 minutes

Total Time 50 minutes

Servings 4 people

Ingredients

2 boxes tofu around 692g, I bought it from a regular supermarket
1 spring onion chop finely. I used half for the sauce and the other half for garnish
2 cloves garlic chop finely
2 slices ginger chop finely
1 chili chop finely
100 g beef or pork mince I used beef mince in this dish

Seasonings

1 tbsp chili bean sauce
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp soy sauce
2 drops sesame oil approximately
1 cup water

Marinade for mince

1 tsp sugar
1 tbsp soy sauce
1/2 tsp salt
2 pinches white pepper powder approximately

Instructions

Marinade mince with sugar, soy sauce, salt and white pepper powder for 15 minutes.
Remove the packaging from the tofu and cut it into 1.5 cm thick pieces.
Heat a wok with 1 tablespoon of oil and stir fry the spring onion, garlic, ginger and chilli for 30 seconds.
Add mince into the wok and keep stir-frying it until the mince is cooked.
Add chilli bean sauce to stir-fry it for 30 seconds. Add rest of the seasonings into wok and bring it to boil.
Add tofu into wok and gently push them into seasonings and turn the gas power to the lowest and simmer it for 10 minutes.
Place the tofu onto a plate and pour some sauce on top. Sprinkle the rest of the chopped spring onion on top and it’s ready to serve.

Stir Fried Pickled Bamboo shoot with chili beef mince

by Liv | Dec 15, 2010

Stir Fried Pickled Bamboo shoot with chili beef mince

Stir-fry pickled bamboo shoot with chilli beef mince is one of my favourite dishes that my grandma cooks. Every time I go back to Taiwan I always ask grandma cook this dish for me which she does and I really love.

Grandma is a very traditional Chinese and Taiwanese mother and grandma. Kitchen is her stage and she is the queen of kitchen. She will kick you out if you try to cook in her kitchen and her happiness comes from her children or grand children’s compliments about her food. So, I especially taught my husband to say: “I love you grandma, your food is delicious” when we went back to Taiwan.

She is original from Guangdong (Canton), China. So all the dishes she has cooked for her family are always influenced by Cantonese cuisine. She and my grandfather are two of the best chefs in my heart. She is also my role model for my old and retired life. She is always full of energy, enthusiasm and has a real passion for life. She’s been through a lot of really bad moments in her life but she always stays such a strong, happy person and rarely complains about her life. She is also the busiest old retired lady I’ve ever met in my life. She learnt (patchy) English, how to swim, play the erhu fiddle, ballroom dance, join the chorus, become a member of women’s Federation meeting and much much and more. She also has so many friends who always invite her shopping and have tea together. Even she is that busy she still manages to look after us. Whenever we come home she always prepares the tastiest dinner imaginable. I wish when I get old I can be just like her.

I was so excited to see they sell this pickled bamboo shoot in my local Chinese supermarket. I even called grandma on Skype to show her it. I know how to cook bamboo shoots just like grandma but I still ask for it when I go home and somehow it tastes so much better.

Credit: All photos were taken by Chris at: http://www.chrisradleyphotography.com