cook book Archives - Egg Wan's Food Odyssey

Chinese Daikon Carrot and Tomato Beef Stew

by Liv | Oct 10, 2014

Chinese Daikon Carrot and Tomato Beef Stew. One day while back in Taipei, I was watching TV with my grandmother and smelt this really awesome dish coming out of a neighbour’s home. So I asked grandma to make this dish for me. I know people might think I’m horrible asking my grandmother to cook for me but grandma is a very old fashioned traditional Eastern lady.

Few things make her happier than cooking a big meal for her family. She loves cooking for he children and grandchildren and when we say something along the lines of “Oh grandma, the food you made is so DELICIOUS! We love it!” you can often here her giggling. For a lot of older Eastern ladies, most of them are housewives their whole lives. They sacrifice themselves to their family and children so the “kitchen” is their stage. When my grandmother came to the UK in 2012 she brought her rubber gloves with her and when she was cutting vegetables she refused to let me help her, even though I’m a trained chef. This kind of thing always makes me laugh.

I cook most of the meals at home for my husband and daughter but a lot of times I really don’t know what to cook. I’m used to people ordering food from me at work so I guess this carries over at home so I usually present Chris with the question “Eastern or Western food” “noodles or rice?” then I have a pretty good idea about what to cook. I believe for a lot of mums who cook most of the food at home they must have the same feeling so whenever I go back to Taipei I always prepare a “list” of food for my grandma or my mum. This way everyone is extremely happy.

While I was back in Taipei recently dealing with the death of my father, I was away from home sorting things out and grandma, being the cute old lady she is, even phoned me to ask me if I want her to put tomatoes in this beef stew she was cooking. I told her to cook it anyway she likes, which she will really love hearing but in all honesty the addition of tomato was perfect. It made the beef stew less fatty/greasy. I cooked a very similar dish in my cookbook without tomato and I have to admit this recipe tastes so much better.

So this is my grandmother’s recipe for Chinese Daikon, carrot and tomato beef stew:

Chinese Daikon, Carrot and Tomato Beef Stew

Course Main Dish

Prep Time 15 minutes

Cook Time 2 hours

Total Time 2 hours 15 minutes

Servings 4 people

Ingredients

1 kg beef flank or shin or any slow cook beef, cut into big dice
480 g vine tomato chop roughly
120 g onion or 1 medium size onion, chop roughly
10 g ginger slice thin
200 g carrot peel and slice 2cm thick
600 g daikon peel, slice 2cm thick and cut into quarters
1 ltr boiling water

Seasonings

200 ml light soy sauce
1 tsp dark soy sauce
70 ml rice wine
2 star anise
1/4 cinnamon stick you could add tangerine peel for extra flavour

Instructions

Boil a big pot of water and add the beef. Boil for 5 minutes to clean any dirt off the beef. After 5 minutes, use cold water to wash away any dirt on the surface of the meat and drain the water. Leave the beef aside for later
Heat up 2 tablespoons of oil and stir-fry the ginger and onion until the fragrance comes out. Add the beef and stir-fry for another 3-5 minutes
Pour the rice wine in and cook for 30 seconds. Add light and dark soy sauce and boil
After step 3 has boiled, add tomato, water, star anise, cinnamon stick and tangerine peel (optional)
Cook for 1.5 hours. The beef should be nearly soft and then add the carrots and daikon. Cook until the carrots and daikon are soft. Check the seasonings to suit your taste before serving

Home Style Taiwanese Cooking Cookbook

by Liv | Apr 26, 2014

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.

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.