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.

Liv Wan Illustration

by Liv | Sep 30, 2012

If you follow this blog, as a lot of you will know I have spent quite a few years working as a professional chef. While I love working as a chef and love working with food, love working with my colleagues and so forth, starting a family has made me have serious thoughts about my future.

Working as a chef can be great but it involves long hours, up to 70 hours a week, in a really busy environment with few breaks. Last year I made the decision to go back to college to study Illustration, one of my other main loves apart from food, to see if I’m any good and to see if I can start working as a freelance illustrator.

Naturally creating works as an illustrator is completely different to anything I’ve done before. Creating works takes a lot longer than say, take a photograph or cook a meal, but I find it a really therapeutic process and this is what I want to do full time somewhere in the future. The illustration work I do is also one of the reasons I don’t update this blog as often as before. With having a six month old daughter who demands attention whenever she’s awake, my husband is out working nearly all the time now and with college I’ve been struggling to cook any new dishes. Most of the food we eat nowadays is much simpler than before, things like fried rice, chow mein, beef noodle soup, these are fairly normal dishes for us.

As and when time allows I’ll be updating this blog also and I have some time off from college soon so I’ll be cooking a lot more dishes. Also Amelia is much easier to manage nowadays. I’m sure I mentioned elsewhere she’s now going to nursery which has been an absolute god-send. This means for good periods of time both Chris and myself can focus on work (more so for him giving me free time in the evenings) and get everything done that we need to.

So to end this blog post, I’ve created an illustration website, Liv Wan Illustration showcasing my work. I got a little help with the coding from Chris but everything on the website was designed by myself from all the illustrations, the layout and the buttons. The link for the site is right below but I hope you like my work and really appreciate feedback about my work and website. If you’re also interested in commissioning me please get in touch.

My website: Liv Wan Illustration

Below are some of the works from my website. The website is being constantly updated as I have new work to put on it but my style is bold, colourful and often humorous. Hope you like.

Ma Po Tofu Sichuan Recipe

by Liv | Sep 23, 2012

Ma Po Tofu Sichuan Recipe

It feels like months since I last updated my blog and prior to giving birth I used to update my blog every week or so, but recently I’ve spent a lot of time working towards my new illustrator business, setting up a website for it and most importantly working on my portfolio. While I have still been cooking in recent times, with both Chris and my workloads we don’t really have time to sit down and eat elaborate meals so we’ve been eating fairly simply.

One thing I have felt though is a bit lost for not having time to cook. I’m due to go back to working in the same restaurant I worked in before part-time and I do actually miss the feeling of cooking properly. I also spent roughly two years working on this website so it’s upset me a litle not being able to update it.

Just recently as well, Chris has been incredibly busy with his photography business so he hasn’t had the time to photograph any dishes for me and we’ve both been really sick with baby flu which Amelia picked up at nursery. Seriously, if you haven’t had a baby, be warned(!), baby flu is literally 10 times worse than adult flu.

So to get back into the run of my blog, I had a re go at cooking and photographing one of my original recipes from this website, Ma Po Tofu. Here is the orignal blog with the story behind this dish and the recipe. I hope you will like it. 🙂

麻婆豆腐) Ma Po Tofu is a well known dish from Sichuan. The creator is a lady who has pockmark on her face and pockmark is Ma in Chinese and Po is a respectful form for a old lady. Ma Po had this small restaurant in Chengdu city and the most of her customers were porters. They usually bought some tofu and mince to ask Ma Po to cook them something to eat. After a long time, this tofu dish got more and more popular and famous, so people named this dish after Ma Po’s name. That’s how we called this dish Ma Po tofu.

I also know of a British chef called Fuchsia Dunlop who is a so called expert on Chinese food after she learnt some Chinese and spent some time at a cookery school in China. The way she pronounces this dish in Chinese translates to “Pock-Marked Mother Chen’s Bean Curd” but if you ever go to a Chinese restaurant in Sichuan or Sichuan restaurant in Taiwan and China . ” Ma Po Tofu “ is the proper way to call this dish.

I went to the original site of Ma Po’s restaurant in Chengdu when I was 14 year-old. But this restaurant was burned down in 2005. Many people felt really sad about this as Ma Po’s restaurant plays an important part in the history of Sichuan cuisine. So, the Sichuan government rebuilt it again at another address in Chengdu city.

Here is one of the cooking methods for Ma Po tofu which was taught to me by my grandpa. My grandpa originated from Sichuan and was a really excellent cook and some of my happiest memories are of the time I spent with him in the kitchen learning to cook many different delicious dishes.

Ma Po Tofu Sichuan Recipe

Course Main Dish

Prep Time 10 minutes

Cook Time 20 minutes

Total Time 30 minutes

Ingredients

600 g tofu
230 g pork mince or beef mince but I used pork
2 spring onions chop really fine
2 cloves garlic chop really fine

Seasonings

1.5 tbsp chili bean sauce
2 tbsp soy sauce
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp sugar
1 cup chicken stock
1/2 tsp sesame oil
1.5 tsp Sichuan pepper powder

Instructions

Remove the hard edge of Tofu and cut it into 1.5 cm cubes. Place it into a plate with kitchen napkin to suck the water from tofu.
Heat your wok with two tablespoons of oil and sauté pork mince. Add spring onion, garlic and chilli bean paste in. stir it constantly for another 20 seconds. Season it with soy sauce, salt, sugar and add tofu cubes into it, gently mix everything together but do not damage the shape of the tofu.
Pour a cup of stock to reduce it down. This way can make tofu suck all flavour from sauce and stock.
After reducing the stock, place it into a shallow bowl. Sprinkle a little bit of chopped spring onion on top to garnish it.

Beef Ragu Recipe

by Liv | Jul 9, 2012

Beef Ragu Recipe

I know I haven’t updated my blog for a while. After finishing college for the summer break I really wanted to finish off my first fully illustrated alphabet and what I thought would be quite a quick project turned out not to be. In total I had to do 26 individual illustrations and that combined with looking after Amelia has really taken up all of my time. Amelia is an absolutely amazing daughter but just like all babies she’s really demanding. She constantly wants attention and while she can now entertain herself by playing with toys (she loves her rabbit rattle) she still wants face to face playtime the most.

So with completing this alphabet and looking after Amelia I’ve had absolutely no time to update this blog (this will hopefully change soon). Now I’ve finished my alphabet I’m really happy with it. This follows on from a “Rocket Man” project I started a few months ago and I’d only recommend you give a project like this a go if you have a lot of time to spare.

But back to food, I’m going to share my Beef Ragu recipe. I first tried ragu around the beginning of this year when I visited Jamie Oliver’s restaurant in Glasgow “Jamie’s Italian”. We read some reviews of Jamie’s Italian before deciding to go there and it’s now my favourite restaurant. The restaurant isn’t too fancy or fine dining, the staff are really attentive but the restaurant has a really nice ambience to it. Most important though is the food is really delicious. The first time I visited I had a venison ragu and it was utterly delicious. I must also mention the restaurant is really baby friendly and of course with Amelia we can only go to restaurants that have baby changing rooms, easy access etc.

Amelia also absolutely loves Jamie’s Italian (actually she loves all restaurants). There are so many things for her to look at, hear and smell. Think of it as a “baby senses paradise”.

I would have quite liked to have made a venison ragu but here in Edinburgh venison is really difficult to get hold of so I used beef shin instead. Beef shin is one of my favourite parts of beef as it can be really delicious but it needs to cook for a while to really tenderise it. Cooked properly it’s really delicious (I use beef shin now for beef noodle soup) and it’s also a lot cheaper than regular cuts of beef like sirloin or rib eye.

Beef Ragu Recipe

Course Main Dish

Prep Time 30 minutes

Cook Time 2 hours

Total Time 2 hours 30 minutes

Servings 4 people

Ingredients

3 medium carrots chop finely
3 stalks celery chop finely
1 large onion chop finely
4 cloves garlic chop finely
100 g bacon lardons
1.5 kg beef shin dice it
1 cup red wine
1 tsp fresh thyme chop
1 tbsp fresh rosemary chop
1 tbsp tomato paste
1 tin chopped tomatoes
1 pack beef stock or water to cove the ingredients

Instructions

Heat the oil in a stockpot with the strongest heat and add bacon first until the bacon oil starts to run. Then add carrots, garlic, celery, onion and tomato paste. Cook until all the vegetables start to caramelise. Stir occasionally.
Add beef and keep cook until beef is cooked on the outside. Add wine, stock, tinned tomato, rosemary and thyme and bring it to boil. Once the ingredients have started to boil, turn down the heat and simmer for at least 2 hours. Stir occasionally while simmering and after 2 hours it’s ready.

Recipe Notes

Note: Ragu is best eaten with a really nice pasta or bread. We usually buy our pasta from Valvona & Crolla which is an Italian delicatessen here in Edinburgh but the point is use a good quality pasta and for bread something like a focaccia is amazing with ragu.

Below is the Space Alphabet I talked about above. Make sure you click on the image for a much larger version.

Stuffed Lotus Root with Sweet Sticky Rice

by Liv | Jun 14, 2012

Stuffed Lotus Root with Sweet Sticky Rice

Recently I’ve been going through a really busy period. I just had my final year exhibition and graded unit which along with looking after Amelia really has taken up all of my time. Chris has also had a lot of photography work to complete so I’ve been doing the extra rounds with childcare while he got his work done.

But finally, I now have some free time for myself. I’ve been thinking about posting a recipe for this Chinese dessert called “stuffed lotus root with sweet sticky rice” for a long time but because of my college course and works I’ve decided I want to try to illustrator the procedures for most recipes from now on. Of course if the dish is really simple I probably won’t illustrate it but this dish does need some guidance.

It’s really good fun but also a pain doing these illustrated procedures. It requires a lot of time to finish one recipe but it’s really good practice, really therapeutic and I hope I can eventually produce an illustrated cook book. If you remember I started designing a cook book a couple years ago and while it looks really professional, I want something a lot more fun so over a period of time I’ll re-illustrate a number of recipes while adding new recipes.

When I worked as a chef, drawing was always really important for remembering recipes. Every restaurant has completely different recipes and some recipes can be quite complicated, so I use a small notebook to illustrate the final dish and I would write the ingredients and procedure in the book. Sometimes I would have to remember 20 or more dishes in one day so the quicker you learn then better. So that’s how and I why I started drawing these recipes. I think this is also one of the reasons I got a place on my college course as the teacher seemed to be really impressed about my recipe book.

So here is my another illustrated recipe for this Chinese dessert “Stuffed lotus root with sweet sticky rice”. I hope you will enjoy it.

Also a few weeks ago, Chris, Amelia and I discovered a very cool castle in West Scotland called “Kelburn Castle”. It was built in the late 16th century but what makes this castle so special? What makes it different to all of the other castles in Scotland? Well, the castle walls needed some repairs back in 2007 and rather than just re-plaster the walls and apply a plain paint, the owner of the castle hired a group of Brazilian graffiti artists to paint the West wall of the Castle.

If you come to Scotland and have a fascination with castles, you should definitely check Kelburn Castle out. The painting on the castle looks amazing but just as importantly the grounds of the castle are fantastic for both adults and children. There’s a secret forest and many playgrounds for children, there are cafe’s and shops for adults, you can go horse riding but also the staff are extremely friendly.

I’ve put some photos of Kelburn Castle on this post, hope you like them.

Stuffed Lotus Root with Sweet Sticky Rice

Course Main Dish

Prep Time 1 hour

Cook Time 2 hours

Total Time 3 hours

Servings 3 people

Ingredients

1 cup sticky rice
2 lotus roots they should be 12-15cm long ideally
5 dried jujubes
50 g rock sugar
50 g brown sugar
2 tbsp honey

Instructions

Soak the sticky rice in a bowl of water for 2 hours.
Cut the lotus root as per the steps in this procedure picture. Make sure you keep the top of the lotus root as you will use this as a lid.
Stuff the sticky rice from step 1 into the lotus root and use chopsticks to push the rice into the lotus root, effectively stuffing it.
After you have stuffed the lotus root use 2 or 3 toothpicks to fasten the lid to the lotus root.
Boil a pot of water and add 4-5 dried jujubes and 50 grammes of rock sugar. Stir until the rock sugar has dissolved. Add step 4 into the pot and cook for 1.5 hour. Make sure you have enough water to cover the lotus root.
Use 200ml of the liquid from step 5 and add brown sugar and honey. Boil this mixture and simmer until the sauce has reduced by 50%. Use this as a sauce for the lotus root.
Leave the lotus root to cool down. Once it has cooled down, slice it to serve with the sauce from step 6.