Prawn and Lemon Butter Pasta

prawn and lemon butter pasta
At the end of 2016 we moved to the Marchmont area of Edinburgh and one of the many great things about Marchmont are the really incredible ingredients we can buy locally. We like just two streets away from two really great greengrocers and we also have quite possibly the best fishmongers in Edinburgh; Eddie’s Seafood Market.

Eddie’s are well known in Edinburgh for supplying many of the top restaurants in Edinburgh with their seafood and yes their seafood is a little more expensive than fish from supermarkets but the difference in quality is night and day. Have you ever bought king prawns from the supermarket and thought they are tasteless? Not from Eddie’s, I popped over a couple days, bought 500g of prawns and three sea urchin’s for £10 and the prawns were stunning, so full of flavour and the texture was beautiful.

I also love going to Eddie’s because Eddie and his family run the store and they are from Hong Kong but speak Chinese so I can go there and have a chat in Chinese. They also often give my daughter free sweets so she loves going there as well.

Importantly though they have a huge selection of fresh fish available. I’ve reduced my daughter’s hours at nursery and last Friday we had a trip around Marchmont which included painting a couple pots at Doodles Ceramic Workshop, grabbing a freshly baked 10” pizza from the local takeaway (£4 I think) and a trip to Eddie’s. As mentioned above I bought three sea urchin for £1 and they might be one of the ugliest things on the planet inside but they taste absolutely amazing. I’ll pop over again next week and if they are selling sea urchin I’ll buy some and use it in a dish.

Finally Eddie’s have an old fashioned Chinese business tradition to them. I originally got to know the staff at Eddie’s when I was working at the Witchery by the Castle and Tom from Eddie’s would deliver the fish. I would often sign for it and have a chat with him. I remember when I lived in Taiwan, sometimes I went to a traditional market with my grandmother and the vegetable vendors would always give their repeat customers extra ginger, chili or spring onions, those kinds of things. I think this is just how Eastern people do business. Eddie’s often do the same, a few extra prawns here and there so they absolutely rock.

But back to the dish today.

If you’re on a diet, this is probably not the dish for use. I used a lot of butter in this dish although you can adjust many of the ingredients including the amount of butter and lemon used. This is totally fine.

If you don’t have fresh chilli then you can use chili flakes. Lemon zest is optional but I highly recommend you to put lemon zest in as it will make your pasta taste so good!!

You may have also noticed this is my first pasta dish on this website! Well I’ve decided 2017 is the going to be the year where I start cooking a lot of different cuisines for this website. Even though this website is predominately about Chinese and Taiwanese food, my culinary training and the vast majority of my “working as a chef” experience is in Western food. So even though I know hell of a lot of Eastern recipes, I also know hell of a lot of Western dishes. So keep posted for all kinds of recipes this year.

prawn and lemon butter pasta ingredients
 

Prawn and Lemon Butter Pasta


Course Main Dish
Cuisine Italian
Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 10 minutes
Total Time 25 minutes
Servings 3 people

Ingredients

Main Ingredients

  • 600 g fresh prawns peeled and devined
  • 700 g cooked linguine
  • 140 g butter I used Kerrygold
  • 3 cloves garlic peeled and thinly sliced
  • 1 chili remove seeds and chop finely
  • 30 g fresh parsley chop finely
  • 2 lemon just the zest
  • 1.5 lemons juiced

Seasonings

  • 1 tsp garlic powder
  • 1 pinch salt to taste
  • 1 pinch pepper to taste

Instructions

  1. Peeled and devein the prawns. 

  2. Follow the packaging cooking directions to cook the linguine pasta. Once the linguine has cook to the texture you like, immediately drain the water and quickly rinse under cold water and drain. Drizzle some olive oil on the pasta and mix it up evenly. This will stop the pasta stick together. Leave it aside.

  3. Gently heat up butter in a skillet or deep frying pan at low-medium heat. 

  4. Add garlic and chili into step 3 and gently fry the garlic until it starts to turn a light golden colour.

  5. Add prawns into step 4 and once the prawns start changing their colour to pink then add the garlic powder, lemon juice, zest and pasta.

  6. Cook the pasta for a further 2 minutes and mix evenly with all the ingredients. 

  7. Add parsley and mix evenly, season with salt and pepper. Ready to serve!

prawn and lemon butter pasta

Thai Steamed Fish with Coconut Quinoa

Thai Steamed Fish with Coconut Quinoa
Thailand is one of my favourite countries and Thai food is easily one of my favourite cuisine. I’ve only visited Thailand once but the country, the culture, the weather and the food were all really amazing and one of my favourite dishes when I visited was Thai Steamed Fish.

So for my Sunday lunch I decided to make something out of the normal for me and had a go at recreating a Thai Steamed Fish dish I ate in Thailand but with a twist, with coconut quinoa. This dish is very easy to cook but it’s also packaged with protein and lots of energy.

I think in the recent “health food” trend, one of my favourite dishes is “quinoa”. I can’t believe how easy to cook and delicious it is but one of the most interesting things about it to me is that it’s a complete protein and contains multiple essential amino acids. It’s both very easy to cook and very fast. That it’s really delicious and has a great texture is a huge bonus. So if you don’t have any quinoa in your pantry I will recommend the next time you do a food shop grab yourself some.

I didn’t season the quinoa much and you may find depending on your taste it’s a bit plain but the key to this dish being delicious is the sauce that is used to steam the fish. It’s really delicious.

Ideally serve this dish while it’s still warm or hot. You can either serve the salmon whole or you can flake it and mix with the coconut quinoa and sauce and serve as a salad. When I made this dish I made one plate with the salmon whole and the other flaked, but both covered in sauce and both equally tasty.

You can use other kinds of fish with this recipe, it doesn’t necessarily have to be salmon. I used salmon because it’s easy to get hold of, cheap and I nearly always have salmon in my fridge or freezer. So feel free to use any kind of fish you want. From experience, sea bass, sea bream, cod, tilapia and trout all go well with this dish.

A little update of my life:

We’ve finally settled and unpacked into our new home! I love our new home because we have front and rear gardens and our neighbours so far are lovely. My daughter is going to school this autumn and the local primary school in the area we used to live is ranked on the lower end of the schools in Edinburgh. We’ve always been huge fans of the Marchmont area and that we found a property for the right place and one street away from the one of the best schools in the country is a bonus.

Now we have a garden I’m now able to use the garden to take the food photos where the light is infinitely better. If you check out my photos now and compare to photos months ago you’ll see a huge difference. We’ve also changed our style of photographing food, partly in rebellion to my cookbook publisher who always insists on strange angles.

So I have two main projects for our new home. One is to decorate it (the kitchen which also doubles up as my office (I’ll share photos soon) is well on it’s way and now we’ve found all our pictures we’re going to hang them soon. The other thing I want to do is tidy up the front garden. It’s awful and looks like nobody has touched it in years. The decorating project I’ll do now but I’ll wait until the weather improves before doing the garden.

Chris also completely updated this website and there’s loads more social media things going on. The recipes are all now formatted so search engines can index and find them easier. I’ve got an Instagram feed of which I update content for all the time. There’s also now a newsletter which for now contains content from both of my websites; Egg Wan’s Food Odyssey and Liv Wan Illustration.

As you may know I’m a real busy bee and I don’t have time right now to do separate newsletters but I’m sure you don’t mind seeing a collection of delicious recipes as well as some of my illustrations? So if you are interested in my newsletter, then you can type your email in the subscribe box on the right hand side of my site and subscribe. I will send you a newsletter periodically as well as giveaway news and some other things.

But back to this Thai Steamed Fish with Coconut Quinoa dish.

thai steamed fish with coconut quinoa

Thai Steamed Fish with Coconut Quinoa

Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 20 minutes
Total Time 30 minutes
Servings 3 people

Ingredients

Ingredients for Thai Steamed Fish

  • 3 salmon fillets
  • 30 g coriander chop finely
  • 1 chili cut into small pieces
  • 1 pc lemon grass cut into small pieces
  • 2 cloves garlic peeled

Seasonings for Thai Steamed Fish

  • 2 tbsp fish sauce
  • 1 tbsp oyster sauce
  • 1 lime juice and zest
  • 1 tbsp sugar
  • 2 tbsp water

Ingredients for Coconut Quinoa

  • 228 g quinoa
  • 440 ml coconut milk whole can basically
  • 125 ml water
  • 6 cherry tomatoes cut in half
  • 1 pinch salt
  • 1 pinch pepper

Instructions

Procedure for Thai Steamed Fish

  1. Use a food processor to process the chili, garlic, lemon grass and all the seasonings. 

  2. Mix step 1 with the coriander. 

  3. Place Salmon on a heat proof plate and pour the sauce on top. Steamed with highest temperature for 15 minutes. 

Procedure for Quinoa

  1. Put quinoa, coconut milk and water into a heavy base medium size pot. 

  2. Bring it to boil first then turn to lowest heat and cover with lid to simmer it for 15-20 minutes. 

  3. Check the texture of the quinoa if you prefer al dente then simmer 15 minutes should be enough. But if you like your quinoa quite soft then add a little bit more water and simmer for longer time. 

  4. After quinoa is cooked. Season it with salt and pepper and use a fork to mix it up.

  5. You can garnish with cherry tomatoes. 

  6. Serve warm with Thai steamed salmon and the sauce from steamed fish. 

Chinese Fish Fragrant Omelette

Chinese Fish Fragrant Omelette. You may be familiar with another dish “Chinese Fish Fragrant Eggplant” or even “Spicy Sichuan Eggplant” but there are in fact many “fish-fragrant” dishes in Chinese cooking and to be honest they all taste delicious!

Even though this dish is called “fish-fragrant” there is no fish in this dish at all. There is a story about this dish. A long time ago in Sichuan there was a family who were really serious when it came to cooking fish. They would use ginger, spring onion, garlic, mince, doubanjiang (chili bean sauce) and other ingredients to cook their fish with. They loved their fish!

One day the lady was cooking and she didn’t want to waste any leftovers from the dish she cooked so she used the ingredients to cook another dish. She was however extremely worried that it wouldn’t taste nice and her husband wouldn’t like it.

So when her husband came home, she was thinking about how she would explain the dish to her husband. Her husband was so hungry from work he didn’t wait for dinner to start, nor did he ask what the dish was, and he took a few bites. He said to his wife “This dish is the most delicious dish I have ever had in my life, how did you make it” She told him how she cooked it and they gave the dish the name “fish-fragrant-fry (魚香炒)”. This is where the name “fish-fragrant” comes from.

Nowadays people have invented many different dishes to accompany the “fish-fragrant” title/flavour, including fish-fragrant tofu, fish-fragrant eggplant, fish-fragrant omelette, fish-fragrant julienned pork and many more.

If you have any fish-fragrant mince sauce left over, then you can also mix this sauce with some cold noodles and it’s absolutely delicious.

This fish-fragrant omelette is a quick and easy home-cooking style dish. All the ingredients are very easy to get hold of and you should be able to purchase wood ears from most Chinese/Asian supermarkets. But if you can’t get hold of these you can cook this dish without but you may want to reduce the amount of soy sauce used.

Also once the wood ears have rehydrated and softened, before you julienne them please use your hand to tear them into small pieces and remove any tough ends. You’ll see what I mean when you handle them.

For the eggs, you can fry them line a pancake or you roll it like a proper French omelette. This is entirely up to you but one thing I would recommend is don’t over cook the egg. I like to keep the eggs in this dish very soft, tender and still a little bit runny in the middle. For me at least this tastes much better.

I hope you enjoy this dish and would love to hear your feedback.

chinese fish fragrant omelette ingredients
chinese fish fragrant omelette
chinese fish fragrant omelette

 

Chinese Fish Fragrant Omelette

Recipe for a delicious Chinese Fish Fragrant Omelette. This classic Chinese dish is quick to make and really delicious. One of my favourite omelette dishes

 

  • 280 g pork mince (or beef mince)
  • 1 spring onion (chop finely)
  • 1 chili (remove seeds and chop finely)
  • 2 cloves garlic (mince them)
  • 3 thin slices ginger (mince them)
  • 20 g wood ears (this weight is before they are soaked in water)
  • 6 large eggs (beaten)

Seasonings for Eggs

  • 1/2 tbsp light soy sauce
  • 1 tsp demerara sugar
  • 1 tsp cooking oil

Seasonings

  • 1 tbsp Doubanjiang (also known as chili bean sauce)
  • 2 tbsp light soy sauce
  • 1 tbsp rice wine or Shaoxing rice wine
  • 1 tsp dark soy sauce
  • 1 tsp demerara sugar
  • 180 ml water
  • 1 tbsp potato starch water (you can also use cornflour to replace potato starch. Use 1 tablespoon of water mixed with 1 teaspoon potato starch or cornflour. )

Garnish

  • 2 spring onion (julienne them)
  • Some coriander leaves

Procedures

  1. Soak the wood ears in 1-2 cups of cold water to rehydrate and soften. This usually takes 2 to 3 hours but you can use hot water if you’re in a rush. This will reduce the time to only 20-30 minutes.

  2. Removed any hard “knots” of soften wood ears and julienne them.

  3. Beat the eggs with all the seasonings. Leave aside.

  4. Heat up 2 tablespoons of oil in a wok and stir-fry the spring onion, chilli, garlic and ginger until aromatic.

  5. Add the Doubanjiang into step 3 and stir-fry for 10-15 seconds.

  6. Add mince into step 4 and stir-fry until the mince is cooked.

  7. Add the wood ears into step 5 and stir-fry for further 30 seconds.

  8. Add all the seasonings apart from the potato starch water. Turn the fire to medium low and bring it to a boil first then cook for further 3-4 minutes.

  9. Heat up 1 tablespoon of oil in a frying pan or skillet while the mince and sauce is cooking.

  10. Add the beaten eggs into step 9 and make it into omelette. Once cooked place on a serving plate.

  11. Mixed the potato starch water before gently stirring the potato starch water into the mince sauce (step 8). You will see the remaining sauce start to thicken, then turn off the stove and pour this sauce on to the omelette.

  12. Garnish with spring onion and omelette. Serve with cooked rice.

chinese fish fragrant omelette

Red Cooked Pork Belly with Lotus Root

Red-cooked pork belly, or as some people called it Chinese braised pork, is one of the most popular dishes in many Chinese and Taiwanese households.

There are many different ways to prepare this dish. You can add vegetables to accompany this dish, including carrots, taro and potatoes, but for this recipe I used something a bit more unique; lotus root.

People often ask me how to cook different Chinese vegetables and one of the Chinese vegetables I can asked more often about is lotus root. It seems like a lot of people have no idea what kind of Chinese vegetables this and even less of an idea what to do with it.

So for this reason, I have tried to include different ways of preparing lotus root in both my blog and also in my cookbooks.

Lotus root is a super food in both Chinese medicine and cuisine. Chinese people believe lotus root can improve your digestive system, help blood circulation, improve energy and help with anti-aging. It’s also high in fiber. Some Chinese people also believe lotus root juice is very good for getting rid of hangovers.

I simply like lotus root because of both the taste and texture of it. Nowadays, it’s much easier to get hold of lotus root outside of the East. You can usually find lotus root in Chinese/Asian supermarkets in their fresh produce fridge section.

You can serve this delicious dish with some hot rice and different kinds of green vegetables. I didn’t use a lot of water to cook this dish with, but if you think it’s a little bit dry while cooking, you can add more water.

You can also use a slow cooker to finish cooking this dish but it naturally takes a longer time to cook. Typically with a slow cooker, if you cook at a high heat it will take roughly 6 hours to cook. This can vary depending on the brand of your slow cooker but please check with your slow cooker provider or the cooking instructions provided with it for advice.

red cooked pork belly with lotus root ingredients

 

 

Red Cooked Pork Belly with Lotus Root

Ingredients

  • 1 kg pork belly (slice into 1.5cm thick slices)
  • 700 g lotus root
  • 2 Spring Onions (slice)
  • 2 slices ginger
  • 6 cloves garlic
  • 1 star anise
  • 2 slices licorice root
  • 1 chenpi
  • 500 ml water
  • 6 Sugar snap peas (just a handful and not an exact amount)

Marinade for pork belly

  • 3 tbsp Light Soy Sauce
  • 1 tbsp dark soy sauce

Seasonings

  • 2.5 tbsp demerara sugar (or rock sugar)
  • 3 tbsp Rice Wine (or shaoxing rice wine)
  • 1 tbsp sesame oil
  • Salt (to taste)
  1. Slice the pork belly into 1.5 cm thick slices and marinade with light soy sauce and dark soy sauce for at least 30 minutes. Don’t discard the soy sauce left over from marinating the pork.
  2. Wash and peel the lotus root and slice it into 2 cm thick slice and cut each slice it into quarters.
  3. Peel garlic and leave aside.
  4. Heat up 1 tablespoon of oil in a frying pan or skillet. Pan fry the pork belly until both sides of the pork belly are golden brown. Leave aside.
  5. Heat up 1 tablespoon of oil in the wok and stir-fry spring onion, ginger, garlic and all the spices until it’s aroma.
  6. Add the sugar into step 5 and turn down the fire to medium-low heat and gently stir until the sugar starts melting.
  7. Once the sugar has melted add the pork belly back in and mix evenly. This allows the sugar to coat the pork all over.
  8. Add all the seasonings and the left over soy sauce into step 7. Gently stir and mix evenly.
  9. Transfer everything from step 8 (pork belly, sauce and spice) to a stock pot and add lotus root and water. Bring it to a boil first and let it boil for a couple minutes then simmer for 1.5 to 2 hours. Add more water if it’s too dry and check it a couple times while simmering, just in case the sauce dies out. If you decide to cut the pork into different shapes, for example big cubes, the simmer time might increase. So please be aware of this.
  10. You can garnish with some blanched sugar snap peas or snow peas. Serve with some cooked rice.

Korean Kale Pancakes

korean kale pancakes
Korean Kale Pancakes. My family and I are big fans of Korean food. I really love Korean pancakes, especially ones with seafood in them, and every time I visit a local Korean restaurant this is one dish I have to order.

Easily my favourite Korean restaurant in Edinburgh is Ong Gie. They serve really authentic Korean food and while I haven’t tried too many other Korean restaurants in Edinbugh their food is very similar to what I have eaten in the Far East. Even the chef and owner are from Korea but if you do of any other Korean restaurants in Edinburgh that are worth a try I’d love to check them out.

Because I am a big fan of Korean food and Korean pancakes, I bought some Korean pancake mix from Amazon (makes me laugh you can’t buy this locally but you can on Amazon) and had a go at making them at home. One of my favourite dishes is this Korean kale pancake. Many people probably won’t want to have kale in their pancake but I’m trying to be healthy and I do love the taste of kale, which incidentally is a well known “super food”.

So I chopped up the kale and some spring onion then mixed it with the pancake mix. I then poached some eggs and made a yuzu soy sauce dressing to serve with this healthy and delicious veggie pancake.

I normally serve this as breakfast or brunch but you can honestly eat it any time of the day that suits. If you’re a vegan you can leave out the eggs and it won’t chance the taste of these delicious pancakes too much.

If you’re not a fan of yuzu juice or you’re having difficulty getting hold of it, then you can substitute with lemon or lime juice instead. Otherwise, you can leave either out if you the citrus flavour is too much for your taste.

A little bit of good news from my life. We’ve found a new property! Yay!! We’ve been stressing something chronic recently as we live in one of the worst school areas in Edinburgh but we’re moving to Marchmont which is one of the best areas in Edinburgh. To give you an idea about schools, out of 25 or so secondary schools (or high school as they call it in Edinburgh) our current school is bottom 3. Where we are moving to it’s top 3 and one of the best secondary/high schools in the country.

The new property is also really close to Chris’s work places and we will finally have fast internet (currently 1.5mb/s, new place we’ve gone for 50mb/s but can have up to 100). I’ll also finally have a big kitchen! Super yay!

So as you can imagine we’re all super excited but now we’ve got to pack and move.

But a tip for anyone who needs to rent a flat, be as fast as you can! Finding a flat in Edinburgh isn’t too hard but they go really quickly, typically within a week. When we viewed the flat (we’re renting btw) we had to view it in a group of which there were about another 15 or so people. Literally the second we saw the letting agent we called the letting agents office and said we want it. That’s how quick you need to be and especially in a good area.

Finding the correct home in Edinburgh really is a competition. Some agencies do an application process in which you get shortlisted, our new agency do first come first serve. Thank god! So we’re gone from a really crappy area to one of the best. The meadows are right on our doorstep, Old Town is a 2 minute walk, we’re doors away from the best fishmonger in Edinburgh and there’s a gym three doors away.

Anyway, I’m really happy we have finally found a new flat and my daughter will be able to go to a really nice school. Now we just need to pack and move. Wish me luck!

korean kale pancakes ingredients
korean kale pancakes
korean kale pancakes
korean kale pancakes
You can serve Korean Kale pancakes with sausages, salad, extra eggs or whatever you like. My personal preference is a lovely fresh salad but my husband and daughter insist on sausages.
korean kale pancakes
korean kale pancakes

Korean Kale Pancakes

Course Main Dish
Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 20 minutes
Total Time 35 minutes
Servings 6 servings

Ingredients

Ingredients

  • 280 g Korean pancake mix
  • 375 ml water
  • 6 duck eggs or hen eggs
  • 45 g kale
  • 2 spring onions

Seasonings

  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1 pinch ground white pepper

Ingredients for dipping sauce

  • 1 tsp Yuzu juice you can also use lemon or lime juice
  • 2 tbsp light soy sauce
  • 1 tsp mirin
  • 1 tsp sugar
  • 1 tsp water

Instructions

  1. Boil a saucepan of water and add some vinegar, poach the egg once the water is boiling. Once they are cooked, drain the water and leave aside. I usually poach the eggs while cooking the pancakes so I can serve both warm.
  2. Chop the kale and spring onion finely.
  3. Mix the pancake mix and water in a mixing bowl then add chopped kale, spring onion and seasonings. Mix well.
  4. Mix all the ingredients for dipping sauce and leave it aside.
  5. Heat up a little bit of oil in a frying pan. I use a mini frying pay to fry the pancakes. You can also use a 10 or 12” of frying pan to make a big pancake if you think fry small pancakes take too much time and trouble.
  6. Fry both sides of the pancakes until golden and serve with poached eggs and dipping sauce. You can leave out the eggs if you’re a vegan.