Stir Fried Rice Cake with Spring Greens and Pork recipe

by Liv | Apr 13, 2011

Stir Fried Rice Cake with Spring Greens and Pork recipe

Stir Fried Rice Cake with Spring Greens and Pork recipe. Hello everyone, I’m home! So two days ago we returned from our holiday and we’re still suffering from jet leg (not helped by both of us shooting a full day’s wedding the day after we returned) but also suffering from not being able to eat the food we’ve been eating in Taipei and to an extent Bali.

Before going on holiday I was starting to struggle for ideas about what to cook but going home and eating both my grandma’s food but also visiting a number of restaurants that I used to go to has rejuvinated me. I’ll be writing up some restaurant reviews for various restaurants that we visited in the very near future and these restaurants had everything from authentic Chinese and Taiwanese food to the most fabulous Japanese fine dining.

So this dish is called Stir Fried Rice Cake with Spring Greens and Pork (long title I know!). Rice cake is known as Nian Gao in Chinese. Nian Gao has been part of Chinese cuisine for more than 3000 years and there are many different kinds of Nian Gao. Nian Gao can be eaten sweet or savoury. This recipe was influenced by Nian Gao from Ningbo.

The first time I ate this dish was in one of my elementary school classmate’s home. Her grandparents came from Ningbo and they would cook this dish for me. Immediately after eating it for the first time I fell in love with this dish.

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

Stir Fried Rice Cake with Spring Greens and Pork recipe

Course Main Dish

Prep Time 30 minutes

Total Time 30 minutes

Servings 4 people

Ingredients

150 g shredded pork
200 g spring greens shredded
450 g Ningbo rice cake bought from local Chinese supermarket
1 chili shredded
3 eggs
4 dried shiitake mushroms soak in hot water to soften then slice
1 tsp chopped ginger
1 tsp sugar

Seasonings for Pork Marinade

1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp potato starch or cornflour starch
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 drops dark soy sauce
1 tbsp water
1 tsp sugar

Instructions

Marinade the pork for 20 minutes and heat up a wok with a little bit of cooking oil. Stir fry the pork until it’s cooked on the outside.
Beat the eggs and add 1/2 teaspoon soy sauce and 1/2 teaspoon sugar. Keep mixing together until all of the seasonings have mixed evenly.
Heat a frying pan with one tablespoon of oil and just fry the eggs. Once fried leave aside.
Heat up a wok with a small amount of oil. Stir fry the ginger and garlic until the fragrance comes out from the wok. Add the spring greens into the wok and stir fry for 1 minute then add the rice cake and shitake mushrooms with half a cup of water.
Lower the heat and continue to stir fry the dish until the rice cake has softened. Add the pork and eggs and continue to stir fry the dish for another 2 minutes. It’s now cooked and ready to serve.

Egg Spinach and Squid Roll Recipe

by Liv | Mar 13, 2011

Egg Spinach and Squid Roll Recipe

Egg Spinach and Squid Roll Recipe. Recently I’ve been busy doing a series of speeches in Glasgow for Chinese New Year. I was asked by www.ricefield.org which is based in the trendy Trongate building in central Glasgow if I could present some speeches as part of their celebrations for Chinese New Year.

These have now finished, spring is coming and I can now focus properly on my blog once again. I’m also going back to Taiwan for a couple weeks at the end of March which I’m super excited about.

Today I felt like making a roll and while I didn’t want to do sushi I wanted to make something that looks fairly similar. This recipe doesn’t have a story about it but it has a delicious egg skin filled with squid, carrots and regular seasonings.

This dish is light to eat but tastes really good if you like squid.

Hope you enjoy this recipe. I’ll also be doing another Western recipe in the next couple of weeks, this time a Focaccia, so keep an eye on my site for that.

Egg Spinach and Squid Roll Recipe

Course Main Dish

Prep Time 1 hour

Cook Time 20 minutes

Total Time 1 hour 40 minutes

Servings 4 people

Ingredients

Ingredients for filling

270 g squid
1 egg white
1 small carrot
1 spring onion
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper powder
2 drops sesame oil approximately

Ingredients for egg skin

1 egg yolk that we got from the egg white
3 eggs whole
2 tsp potato starch or corn flour
1 tbsp water

Other ingredients

150 g spinach to wrap between the layers as explained in the procedure

Instructions

Procedure for filling

Remove the skin and insides from the squid and give it a thorough clean.
Cut the squid into small dices and chop up in a food processor until the mixture is fine.
Add the egg white, salt, pepper powder and sesame powder and blend for another couple of minutes.
Chop the carrots and spring onion. Mix with the mixture from the previous steps evenly. Leave aside for later.

Procedure for egg skin

Mix all of the ingredients together and heat up a frying pan with a couple drops of oil. Fry the eggs as you would do when making a crepe (the skin should be quite thin).
An important part of the procedure is to make sure the potato starch or corn flour has been mixed with the one tablespoon of water before it’s added to the egg mixture. This is to stop the potato starch having lumps.

Procedures for wrapping

Blanche the spinach, rinse under cold water and squeeze out as much water as you can but don’t squeeze so much as to damage the shape of the leaves.
Lay out the spinach on the egg skin as the photo below shows.
Spread the squid mixture evenly on top of the spinach as the photos below show.
Roll the egg skin, spinach and squid filling and cover with cling film. Roll the cling film on the counter or chopping board a few times to make sure the roll has been rolled evenly.
Use a steamer to steam the rolls (including the cling film) for around 20 minutes.
Once steamed cool the rolls in a fridge or leave aside. Once cooled chop into suitable sized shapes. I wanted to mimick sushi with my rolls so I chopped everything about the same size as I would do with sushi (each slice is maybe 1.5cm wide). It's now ready to eat!

Sixi Scallop authentic Chinese seafood dish

by Liv | Jan 1, 2011

Sixi Scallop authentic Chinese seafood dish

Happy New Year everyone! Sixi scallops is my first post of 2011. I decided to make a quick, tasty and healthy dish for the first day of the year. Sixi in Chinese means “four happiness” or “four lucky, joy”, which also means a lot of happiness. So, I wish this dish can bring you a lot of luck and joy in 2011.

Recently as well as working none stop in my normal job as usual I’ve been preparing speeches for a Chinese New Year festival in Glasgow which is coming up in February and March. I think this dish is one of the healthiest dishes within Chinese cuisine. A lot of authentic dishes are actually really healthy and absolutely nothing like dishes one buys in the UK. Authentic Chinese dishes contain less meat and a lot more vegetable or soy bean products which are really good for our health.

So, here is the recipe for this Sixi Scallops. I wish all of you have a happy and healthy year and remember to keep visiting my blog during 2011.

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

Sixi Scallop authentic Chinese seafood dish

Course Main Dish

Prep Time 1 hour

Total Time 1 hour

Servings 4 people

Ingredients

400 g scallops
1 medium carrot washed and peeled. Cut into slightly thick slices
1 red pepper cut into 2cm diamond shapes
1 yellow pepper cut into 2cm diamond shapes
200 g mange tout
1 clove garlic chop finely
1 slice ginger chop finely
1/2 chili cut into thin slices
1/2 cup stock

Seasonings

2 tsp salt
2 tbsp potato starch 1 tbsp potato or corn flour starch mixed with 2 tbsp cold water, mixed evenly

Marinade for scallops

1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp white pepper powder
1 tbsp rice wine

Instructions

Marinade scallops with rice wine and a couple pinches salt and pepper powder.
Wash and peel the carrot and mange tout. Cut the carrot into thick slices
Heat a wok with 1 tablespoon oil and stir-fry yellow and red pepper first for 2 minutes.
Add carrot and keep stir-frying for another minute or two.
Add mange tout, garlic ,chilli and ginger. Stir-fry everything for another 2 minutes.
Add scallop, stock and cover the lid and cook for 2 minutes.
Stir in potato starch and water and bring it to boil again. It’s now ready to serve.

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.

Steamed Tofu with prawn

by Liv | Dec 8, 2010

Steamed Tofu with prawn

Yesterday I went to the supermarket opposite my house, Sainsbury’s, and was really happy to find that they are now selling tofu. One of my favourite things to cook with but one of the more inconvenient things is Tofu, inconvenient as it means I have to go to the Chinese supermarket. Tofu is one of the greatest things to come out of Chinese cuisine. It’s incredibly health and has high protein, vitamins, calcium and minerals but it’s also low in calories, sodium and fat.

Research has also shown that tofu is great for combating heart disease and is good for ladies when they’re going through their menopause.

So, with all those great benefits, why can’t we buy tofu in every supermarket in the UK? I think it’s because people don’t know how to cook tofu or they had bad experiences with a tofu dish that has been cooked incorrectly. For example, my husband was talking to his colleagues and they said when they tried to cook tofu it turned into a sloppy mess. Cooked properly it should keep it’s shape and texture.

Tofu is a very common ingredient in Chinese and Taiwanese cooking. We cook Tofu in many different cooking ways including stir-fry, pan fry, steam, stew, deep fry and more.

So, here is my recipe for my tofu dish today. It’s called “steamed tofu with prawn”. The preparation time for this dish is around 20 minutes. It’s quick to make, simple, healthy and cooked without any oil at all. How great is that?! Next time people who try to call Chinese food unhealthy might start thinking again. People in western society often think Chinese food is about sweet and sour, prawn toasts, msg, fat etc but in actual fact good Chinese food is nothing like this.

Credits: Preparation photos were taken by myself but final photos were taken by Chris at: http://www.chrisradleyphotography.com

Steamed Tofu with prawn

Course Main Dish

Prep Time 15 minutes

Cook Time 25 minutes

Total Time 40 minutes

Servings 4 people

Ingredients

250 g prawn
500 g tofu
1 piece ginger chop finely

Seasonings for prawns

1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp rice wine
1 tsp soy sauce
1/4 tsp pepper powder

Seasonings for sauce

1/2 cup water
1 tbsp oyster sauce
1/2 stock cube
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp potato powder

Instructions

Take out the tofu from package and dry it. Sprinkle a couple pinches of salt on the tofu and leave for a couple minutes.
Cut the tofu into 1 cm thick pieces. Use a cookie cutter to cut the tofu and use a teaspoon to dig a small hole in central of tofu.
Use a food processor to process the prawn with all the seasonings.
Roll the prawn mixture from step 3 into a small ball and put in the central of tofu.
Steam the tofu with full power for 10 minutes.
Mix all the seasonings for sauce in a small saucepan and bring it to boil. You must stir it occasionally while it cook.
Pour appropriate among of sauce on top of tofu and ready to serve.