Yes Sushi Restaurant Review

by Liv | Feb 2, 2014

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.

Egg Wans Food Odyssey Update

by Liv | Jan 26, 2014

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.

Zha Jiang Noodles Recipe

by Liv | Jul 29, 2013

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

Course Main Dish

Prep Time 20 minutes

Cook Time 20 minutes

Total Time 40 minutes

Servings 3 people

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

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.
Heat up two tablespoons of oil in a wok and saute the spring onions and shallots until soft.
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.
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.
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.
Serve with noodle, bean sprout and carrot.

Carrot Cake Recipe

by Liv | Jul 16, 2013

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

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

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

Braised Chinese Chestnut Chicken

by Liv | Feb 11, 2013

Braised Chinese Chestnut Chicken

Hello everyone, I’m back!

It has been a very long time since my last blog post. I’ve finally completed my Lauriston Castle 2013 workshop brochure for Edinburgh council. That project went very well and I’ve learnt a lot and gained a lot of interesting and valuable experience working as an illustrator. Here is the link for the images I created for this brochure. Please have a look if you have interest.

My life has been very busy with Amelia, work, college and building up my freelance illustrator business. A lot of the time I really wish I have 36 hours in a day instead of 24 hours. Because of deadlines for various projects as well as work and family commitments I haven’t even been able to celebrate Chinese New Year this year. But even though I didn’t celebrate Chinese New Year in the traditional way I still managed to cook a couple really simple recipes, one of which I’ll share with you now.

Do you remember my Chinese new year dishes last year? I explained that Chinese people like foods that have a lucky meaning behind them, especially when celebrating Chinese New Year.

Today’s dish is Braised Chinese Chestnut Chicken. In Chinese language, chestnut is pronounced “li-zi” (栗子) and “Li” sounds like the other Chinese word, which means “profit” also could mean “mean”. So people will feel really happy when they have this dish in Chinese new year dinner.

Here is the recipe for Braised Chinese Chestnut Chicken and I hope you will be very happy, very healthy in this coming year.

Braised Chinese Chestnut Chicken

Course Main Dish

Prep Time 10 minutes

Cook Time 20 minutes

Total Time 30 minutes

Servings 3 people

Ingredients

8 chicken thighs de-bone and cut into big dice
1 pack chestnut I like Merchant Gourmand whole peeled chestnuts
2 pieces ginger
3 spring onion
3 cloves garlic

Seasonings

1/2 cup soy sauce
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tsp salt
1 cup rice wine
2 tbsp water

Instructions

Heat up 1 table spoon oil in the wok and stir fry ginger, spring onion and garlic. Add sugar in the wok when you can smell the fragrant.
Add chicken after the sugar is melted. Stir fry it until chicken’s colour turn into golden brown.
Add all the seasonings and boil it. Add chestnut once the sauce is boiled.
Reduce down the sauce until it’s nearly dry and it’s ready to serve.