Home Style Taiwanese Cooking Cookbook

Last October I got a surprising email from an international publisher called “Marshall Cavendish” asking me if I’m interested in publishing my first cookbook. After the initial shock I didn’t hesitate at all and immediately agreed, once I read the terms of the contract of course, to publish this book with them. The result is Home Style Taiwanese Cooking.

Publishing a cookbook has always been one of my dreams and this invitation from a large international publisher has made this dream come true. So for the last 6 months Chris and I have been really busy with this book. I was originally contacted around September/October and we were asked to provide 60 recipes and photographs of these recipes before Christmas. However, without really diving into photographic techniques, the core lighting in our food photos is natural lighting but here in Scotland during the winter it’s dark from 3pm to 8am (sometimes seems later if the weather is really bad which this winter it really has been).

This was a huge headache so it meant lots of extra nursery sessions for Amelia and literally I would have days where I would prepare 8 dishes and present and photograph them in rapid succession. Stressful doesn’t even come into it. It was also difficult as Chris is out working everyday as a photographer so his time is also a major factor but just yesterday I received a few copies of my cookbook in the post and I’m absolutely delighted with it.

Naturally through the process of making the book there were some “interesting” moments where the publisher wanted something but we wanted to do it differently but in the end, with a little compromise on both ends, I think the book looks absolutely fantastic.

So the first photo below is how the cover of the book will look like and the photos following that are photos of the book taken in the back garden. I might redo these photos but when I received the book I was so super excited that as soon as Chris got back from his morning photo job we quickly rushed outside, took some photos, then I went to work.

Home Style Taiwanese Cooking

This book is literally about Home Style Taiwanese Cooking. I chose dishes that I will eat when I go home, dishes that many Taiwanese mothers and grandmothers will cook at home. Many of these dishes I learnt from my grandparents on both sides of my family and there are also dishes that I know are very common in other people’s homes. There are a couple recipes that are more Taiwanese street food style but street food is a whole other thing and if the sales of this book go well I would love to be able to make another book about street food.

This book contains 65 recipes and 99.9% of the ingredients are available in local Chinese supermarkets and normal supermarkets. The only ingredient I can think of off the top of my head that I definitely couldn’t buy in Edinburgh (bearing in mind Edinburgh doesn’t have a China town) was marinaded cordia but otherwise practically everything else I sourced locally.

Here is Amazon UK link for my book

Here is Amazon US link for my book

Here is Waterstones link for my book

Book Depository link for my book

Here is Penguin Books Australia link for my book.

There are many other online bookstores in different countries that sell my book. So if you need to help to find my book in your home country please leave message or comment for me and I will be more than happy to search for you or contact my publisher and ask them for information. To be honest I’m not too sure how many countries will sell my book but so far all of the English speaking countries that I can think of do sell it.

Home Style Taiwanese Cooking
Home Style Taiwanese Cooking
Home Style Taiwanese Cooking
Home Style Taiwanese Cooking
Home Style Taiwanese Cooking
Home Style Taiwanese Cooking
Home Style Taiwanese Cooking

Yes Sushi Restaurant Review

Yes Sushi is one of a few restaurants that Chris and I really like to go to when we want to eat out. We always go there for all you can eat hot pot and sushi and while I don’t think it’s the best hotpot and sushi in Edinburgh but for the price we paid I think it’s fair. The food is about 7.5 out of 10. We simply like go there to dine because of the combination of price, the location and that we can eat both hotpot and sushi.

If you go to yes sushi do try the sushi but make sure you don’t order either the duck or pork sushi’s, they really aren’t good (at least for my taste). Other sushi is fine although the best sushi in Edinburgh is still Kanpai. Another thing about Yes Sushi is you can’t pay by card for the hotpot. This wasn’t clear the first time we went so we had the annoyance of having to run outside to find a cash point. All you can eat hot pot and sushi, minus drinks, is £17.99 per person. The ingredients they use for the hot pot are fresh and clean and it’s a relaxing price to have some food that really warms you up inside. This is exactly what you want to eat during the Scottish winter and that’s why we like to go there and have a couple hours of chatting, laughing, relaxing and eating hot pot and sushi until we’re ready to explode.

Another thing worth mentioning is the service at Yes Sushi. The first time we went there we took Amelia and the service was great. The staff were friendly, they made a fuss of Amelia, they refilled the broth in our hotpot without asking them to do so and it was a great experience. 10 out 10, 5 stars, great!

The most recent visit I would have given their customer service a minus 10 if I could. No matter whether I go to an English, Scottish, Chinese or whatever restaurant in the UK I always speak English. There are two reasons for this. One is as a courtesy to other guests. I’m in an English speaking country so I speak English. Another is a lot of Chinese restaurants are actually run by people from Hong Kong and I don’t speak Cantonese. This most recent visit which was actually today I caught one of the waiting staff red handed complaining about me in Chinese to her colleagues.

Maybe she thought I’m “British Born Chinese” and can’t speak Chinese but regardless it’s absolutely unacceptable for waiting staff to complain about their customers out loud.  I shouted back at that member of staff who looked completely shocked for a moment then said “oh I’m joking”.

So to summarise Yes Sushi. The hot pot by UK/Edinburgh standards is really good. The sushi is lower side of average but the customer service (at least recently) absolutely sucks.

Yes Sushi Edinburgh Restaurant ReviewYes Sushi Restaurant Edinburgh DecorYes Sushi Restaurant Fish selectionYes Sushi Edinburgh Meat SelectionYes Sushi Restaurant Edinburgh Hot PotYes Sushi Edinburgh SushiYours trulyHow to eat hotpotYes Sushi Restaurant Edinburgh MenuYes Sushi Restaurant Edinburgh Menu

Egg Wans Food Odyssey Update

It feels like it’s been a million years since I last updated this blog but I’m back and with a lot of updates. The last blog post I did was about Zhajiang Noodles last July and since then I’ve started university, worked on my first cook book, photographed some weddings, took some illustration commissions and really knuckled down with my Illustration career.

Eventually I might share some of the wedding photos and my illustration website is updated periodically but my main cooking related thing in the latter part of 2013 was my first cook book.

I had been talking to a couple small publishers in Edinburgh about producing an illustrated cookbook but around the time they failed to come of anything I was contacted by the Singapore office of a large international publisher about making a book about Taiwanese Home Cooking. Awesome! The book is due for publication somewhere between this spring and summer.

For this book I was tasked with coming up with approximately 60 recipes all about Taiwanese home dishes. The recipes had to be about dishes that really are unique to my home country and despite having little time to make everything I’m really excited to see the book.

The book, called Taiwanese Home Style Cooking can be preordered here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Home-style-Taiwanese-Cooking-Yun-Tsung/dp/9814516368/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1391034254&sr=8-2&keywords=taiwanese+home+cooking

The cover will be amended and as of the 29th January my name is wrong but these should be amended before publication. I’m not really allowed to share anything with the book but here are some design proposals that I sent to the publisher that were unfortunately rejected. Both Chris and I really like these design ideas so perhaps we’ll make our own cook book in the future with these designs but do a book about Chinese dishes or something else. Once the book has been published I’ll update more information here and just as a credit Chris (http://www.chrisradleyphotography.com) did all of the photography.

Here are some pages that we came up with. Would love to get some feedback.

Steamed Salted Duck Egg MeatloafDeep Fried Prawn Roll RecipeMeat Book ChapterSeafood Book ChapterPoultry and Eggs Book ChapterVegetables Book ChapterNoodles Book ChapterSoups Book ChapterDessert Book Chapter

Zha Jiang Noodles Recipe

Zha Jiang Noodles Recipe

Monday afternoon has officially become my food blogging day. Monday is the one day each week that I definitely don’t have work and Amelia is in the nursery in the afternoon. Right now with the summer holidays she goes to nursery on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday afternoons and while recently I’ve been working on both of those days, I’m not on the Monday.

So on Mondays Chris is always out working the whole day so I play with Amelia, do some houseworks but in the afternoon I cook. If you read my last blog post you’ll see that I’ve started baking, which I’m really enjoying, but I wanted to cook something savoury for my blog. Monday is kind of like my preparation day for the week. I cook for my blog but I also cook many days worth of food for the week. For example I cooked the recipe below today but I also cooked fish pie which will last us at least a couple of days,

It feels really nice to be able to cook for my blog again. I love sharing recipes that I know and once I start university this autumn I really hope I can find time to keep updating this blog.

And yes, I mentioned university. University! One of the dreams I had as a young adult was to study at university and while I studied the equivalent of a diploma in Taiwan in cooking, I’ve always wanted to study something to do with art. Towards the end of my college course most of my class mates, including myself, applied to study illustration at Edinburgh College of Art (part of University of Edinburgh) and I was the only one to get a place on the course. I’m both really excited and nervous about starting the course but this is a real “dream come true” for me and I’m anxious to get started.

I feel nervous about starting a new course and meeting new people but fingers crossed my new classmates are at least as nice as my college classmates (well, most of them!).

Back to this blog post, today’s recipe is for one of my favourite noodle dishes; Zha Jiang Noodles (Zha Jiang Mian, 炸醬麵). My grandfather and my mother used to cook this noodle dish very often when I lived at home and I believe this was for quite a few reasons. First of all it’s really easy dish to prepare, has lots of vegetables and it’s pretty cheap. Essentially you can have a big bowl of hot delicious noodles in the same time it takes to make mash potato.

I altered the recipe a little bit by adding edamame beans as all of my family love these beans. The original recipe had things like finely chopped green beans but for preference I added edamame beans instead.

So that’s Zha Jiang Noodles, hope you like them.

Zha Jiang Noodles Recipe

 

Zha Jiang Noodles Recipe

Course Main Dish
Prep Time 20 minutes
Cook Time 20 minutes
Total Time 40 minutes
Servings 3 people

Ingredients

Ingredients

  • dry noodles no exact amount
  • 200 g pork mince or beef mince
  • 120 g bean sprouts
  • 1 carrot
  • 6 pcs dried bean curd finely chopped, you can find it in Asian supermarkets
  • 1 bowl edamame beans
  • 2 tbsp shallots finely chopped
  • 3 spring onions

Seasonings

  • 1/2 cup water
  • 2 tsp corn flour
  • 2 tbsp soy sauce
  • 3 tbsp sweet bean sauce
  • 1.5 tbsp chili bean sauce
  • 1 tsp sesame oil
  • 1 tsp sugar

Instructions

  1. Boil a big pot of water and blanch the carrot and bean sprouts. Use the same water to cook the noodles. Once the noodles are cooked, refresh in cold water and toss some oil on the noodles to prevent the noodles sticking together.
  2. Heat up two tablespoons of oil in a wok and saute the spring onions and shallots until soft.
  3. Keep the stove at full power and add the pork mince until cooked (the mince should turn white). Add dried bean curd and stir fry for another 3-5 minutes.
  4. Add sweet bean sauce and chilli bean sauce, stir fry for another 3 minutes. Add edamame beans (optional), water, soy sauce, sesame oil and sugar. Mix evenly.
  5. Mix corn flour with a couple tablespoons of cold water and add into step 4 and mix evenly. Cook for another couple minutes and it’s ready to serve.
  6. Serve with noodle, bean sprout and carrot.

 

Zha Jiang Noodles Recipe

Carrot Cake Recipe

Carrot Cake Recipe

It’s been long time since my last blog. Before I gave birth I was able to update this blog every 5-7 days but since then I have been busy watching my daughter grow up. I have also been really busy with my college course, I had some health issues which put me out of action for a little while and I’ve also been busy setting up my illustration business.

But one thing I really miss is updating this blog with new recipes and communicating with many of the wonderful people who leave comments here.

So this is a new recipe I want to share with you. It’s not Chinese/Taiwanese food, it’s a carrot cake.

The first time I ever tried carrot cake was after I moved to the UK. We don’t have carrot cake in Taiwan and I have to admit the first time I heard about carrot cake I wondered if a vegetable cake could be tasty. But in fact, carrot cake is tasty! Delicious even! It’s now one of my favourite cakes and can also be quite a healthy cake if you don’t put too much icing on the top.

I learned to make this while working as a pastry chef at the Sheraton Hotel. I worked at the Sheraton for about 18 months and for a few months within that time I worked as a pastry chef. I’ve eaten many different carrot cakes but this is still my favourite recipe by far. The cake itself is very soft, moist and flavoured (at least for myself and Chris) perfectly.

I also illustrated this recipe for my illustration blog and “they draw and cook” website. “They draw and cook” website is for people or illustrator who like to draw and cook (just like me) to share the two joy in their life. It’s a great website to check out.

One thing to note, as a savoury chef and ourselves being experienced photographing savoury food, sweet foods are really hard to photograph. I’m reasonably happy with this photo but definitely want to do a lot more bakery and as and when time allows photograph it.

Hope you like the recipe below.

carrot cake recipe

 

Carrot Cake Recipe

Course Main Dish
Prep Time 20 minutes
Cook Time 30 minutes
Total Time 50 minutes

Ingredients

Carrot Cake Ingredients

  • 3 large eggs
  • 250 g sugar
  • 175 ml vegetable oil or sunflower oil
  • 200 g plain flour
  • 1 tsp bicarbonate soda
  • 1.5 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp mixed spice
  • 325 g grated carrot

Lemon Icing Ingredients

  • 225 g softened butter
  • 500 g icing sugar
  • 3 tbsp lemon juice

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 150c. Prepare a muffin tin and cup cake cases.
  2. Mix the oil, sugar and eggs in a large bowl or electric mixer until totally combined.
  3. Sift flour, bicarbonate soda, baking powder and mixed spice in a bowl. Then gently mix into step 2.
  4. Fill the cup cake cases until they are 80% full and bake for 20 minutes.
  5. Sift icing sugar first before you mix with butter and lemon juice in a electric mixer and beat until light and creamy.
  6. After the cake has cooled down pipe the icing on top of the cake.