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Caramelised Pineapple Coconut Rice Pudding

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Prawn and Lemon Butter Pasta

Feb 04, 2017 by Liv Wan

Prawn and Lemon Butter Pasta

Chinese Fish Fragrant Omelette

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Chinese Fish Fragrant Omelette

Red Cooked Pork Belly with Lotus Root

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Buttermilk Fried Chicken

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Thai Steamed Fish with Coconut Quinoa

Jan 22, 2017 by Liv Wan

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Stir Fried Beef with Thai Chive Flower and Bean Curd

Oct 10, 2016 by Liv Wan

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Shanghai Style Sweet and Sour Pork

by | Jul 6, 2016

It’s very likely at some point in your life you’ve eaten something sweet and sour. If you’ve eaten sweet and sour you’ve almost certainly eaten Cantonese style sweet and sour and it had either pork or chicken. But have you ever tried “Shanghai Style Sweet and Sour Pork”?

Shanghai style sweet and sour pork is one of my all time favourite dishes and is a dish my grandfather used to cook for me when I was a child. My grandfather was a great cook and this combined with all of his love made me madly fall in love with this dish.

To be very honest with you I’m not really a fan of sweet and sour pork that is made with ketchup (Cantonese style). I just think ketchup based sweet and sour pork is too strong for me but I love this Shanghai style sweet and sour pork.

This dish uses “black vinegar” instead of rice vinegar and you can use any kind of sugar you want for this dish. I personally prefer to use demerara sugar or rock sugar for this dish because these two types of sugar have much more flavour than caster sugar.

You can use pork ribs cut into small cubes if you want to (I cooked this dish with pork ribs for my upcoming cookbook “Home-Style Chinese Cooking”) or you can use pork belly (my favourite), pork loin or shoulder roast. If you don’t like pork at all you can substitute pork with diced chicken breast.

As of June 2016 I’m finally finished with studying at university and my life over the last five years has been absolutely manic. My illustration business is really busy at the moment and it looks like I’m going to be very busy until next Spring at least. This is making me immensely happy and with my four year old daughter at nursery four whole days a week I’m now making time to update this food blog again. A lot of my illustration work and a lot of my work in general is because of food and I love updating this blog when I can so I’m back.

I also have a third cookbook which I’m going to have published soon. The title of the book is “Home-Style Chinese Cooking” and I have to admit it’s been bloody hard work combining working part time, working and studying as an illustrator as well as raising a four year old energizer bunny but I’m proud of what I’ve created and can’t wait to see the book. Please stay tuned!

 

 

 

Shanghai Style Sweet and Sour Pork

Ingredients

  • 800 g pork belly (skinless and cut into cubes)
  • 1.25 litres water (for cooking the pork belly)
  • 2 slices ginger
  • 750 ml oil (for deep frying the pork)

Ingredients for marinading the pork belly

  • 1 tbsp light soy sauce
  • 1 tbsp rice wine
  • 1 tsp salt

Ingredients for batter

  • 1 egg
  • 1 tbsp water
  • 1 tbsp corn flour
  • 1 tbsp plain flour

Seasonings

  • 3 tbsp water
  • 3 tbsp demerara sugar (you can use caster or rock sugar instead)
  • 2 tbsp light soy sauce
  • 1/2 tbsp dark soy sauce
  • 2 tbsp black vinegar
  1. Marinade pork belly with marinade for couple hours.
  2. Boil 1.25 litres water and 2 slices of ginger in a stock pot and add pork belly. Bring it to a boil first then simmer for 40 minutes. Drain the water.
  3. Mix step 2 pork belly with all the ingredients for batter.
  4. Heat up 750ml oil in a wok or deep saucepan. Deep fry the pork belly until it’s golden colour, take it out from the oil and drain the oil.
  5. Heat up 3 tablespoon water and 3 tablespoon demerara sugar and cook until the water and sugar turn into thick syrup.
  6. Turn the fire to medium temperature. Add pork belly in and keep stirring for a couple minutes until the syrup looks like it has coated the pork belly.
  7. Add light soy sauce and keep stirring for 1-2 minutes.
  8. Add black vinegar and keep stirring for 1 minutes. Ready to serve.

Deep Fried Prawn Balls with Almond Flakes

by | Nov 1, 2014

deep fried prawn balls with almond flakes
Today’s recipe is Deep Fried Prawn Balls with Almond Flakes but before I get onto the recipe I’ve now been back in the UK from Taiwan for a month now and my life has been very busy but I’m really happy I’ve finally quit my job as a chef. Sometimes you just have to take a jump from one career to another and now I’ve quit working as a chef I’m suddenly got a lot of illustration enquiries so it’s perfect that I’m now working for myself.

I’ve also finally caught up with most of then projects I have been working on but I’m still struggling to find enough time to balance studying, commission projects and family. I have absolutely no idea how I managed to work in a kitchen and do all my other work as well.

With regards to my cookbook, I am always monitoring stock levels of my cookbook on amazon.co.uk and amazon.com so I can get an idea of how well the book is selling (it appears to be selling well). It also allows me to chase up my editor to make sure there is enough stock.

So back to today’s recipe for Deep Fried Prawn Balls with Almond Flakes, this is a dish really suitable for banquets and special events. I’ve always loved seafood, especially prawns, and the deep fried almond flakes are crispy and delicious. Prawns and almonds are a great combination both in terms of texture and flavour and if you put these Deep Fried Prawn Balls together properly they both look and taste great, making them perfect for banquets and special events. So maybe you can make this dish to treat your friends and family.

deep fried prawn balls with almond flakes
 

 

deep fried prawn balls with almond flakes
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Deep Fried Prawn Balls with Almond Flakes

Course Main Dish
Prep Time 20 minutes
Cook Time 20 minutes
Total Time 40 minutes
Servings 13 balls

Ingredients

Ingredients

  • 380 g prawns peeled
  • 120 g fatty pork
  • 75 g onion finely chopped
  • 1 tbsp spring onions finely chopped
  • 150 g almond flakes
  • 1/2 tbsp potato starch or corn flour
  • 1 egg white
  • 600 ml oil for frying the prawn balls

Seasonings

  • 1/2 tbsp potato starch or corn flour
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp fish sauce
  • 1/4 tsp ground white pepper

Instructions

  1. Use a food processor to process the fatty pork first. Process the pork until it looks like fine mince.
  2. Add the prawns to the mix and process for a further 1-2 minutes. Move everything into a big bowl once the prawns and mince are finely minced.
  3. Add all the seasonings, onion and spring onion. Mix the the mixture clock wise for 3-5 minutes.
  4. Roughly chop the almond flakes and spread onto a plate. This way the almond is smaller and easier to stick to the prawn balls.
  5. Wet both hands with cold water and take a little bit of mixture and roll it into a ball. Repeat this procedures until all the mixture has been rolled into balls.
  6. Coat the prawn balls with almond flakes.
  7. Heat up the oil in a wok and fry the prawn balls at the lowest heat for 3-4 minutes. Moving the prawn balls around gently will help the prawn balls keep a nice round shape. After 3-4 minutes turn the stove to the highest temperature and try the balls until they turned to a nice golden colour.

Chinese Daikon Carrot and Tomato Beef Stew

by | Oct 10, 2014

Chinese Daikon Carrot and Tomato Beef Stew
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
 

 

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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

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

  1. 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
  2. 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
  3. Pour the rice wine in and cook for 30 seconds. Add light and dark soy sauce and boil
  4. After step 3 has boiled, add tomato, water, star anise, cinnamon stick and tangerine peel (optional)
  5. 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

General Tso Chicken Recipe

by | Oct 2, 2014

General Tso chicken is a really popular Chinese dish all over the world. There are several stories behind this dish but my favourite is about General Tso‘s son who is a drug addict. During a period of time when the Chinese government tried to ban people from using opium, General Tso was really worried about his son so he lost all of his appetite. General Tso‘s chef was really worried about him so he made up this chicken dish and hoped the flavours from this dish would help General Tso to enjoy food again.

 

authentic general tso chicken
I honestly don’t know if this dish actually helped General Tso or not but this dish and the story has certainly helped my appetite after recent events that have happened.

On the 30th August my father passed away after suffering a heart attack. He needed open heart surgery but due to other underlying health issues which needed fixing first he wasn’t able to make it to surgery and suffered a heart attack at home from he sadly passed. So one week after he died I flew back to Taipei for three weeks to sort out his funeral and other family things.

The last time I spoke to him was just two days before he passed away and on that day he looked well so when I received the news on the 30th I completely broke down and I’m still in total shock one month on. Right now I’m suffering badly. I’m completely depressed, I have no will to illustrate and I can’t even think about going back to work right now. During the last conversation I had with my father on Skype the only positive I can give is that he saw Amelia playing and being really happy. A lot of my conversation was me complaining about my work situation. I won’t name where I work but suffice to say as a part time worker and a woman working conditions are pretty awful. We don’t get breaks and the more senior chefs bully the junior and part time chefs. I could honestly write a whole book about the disgusting things that have been said to myself and other colleagues but of course this conversation has left me riddled with guilt. Why couldn’t I have been more positive or even told him I loved him? Now I don’t have a chance to do so. Even the day before he passed away he told my mother that he was really worried about me and my mother.

After my father passed, all I have left from him is his diary and on every single page he wrote about how much he loved me and wished he could spend more time with me. He felt like he never did a good job in raising or looking after me but now he has passed I really understand that he was a great father and did the absolute best he could despite all the problems he faced. But still, even now I wish I could tell him once more how great he was, how much I loved him and tell him about all the great memories I have with him.

Right now, all I want to do is curl into a ball and hide inside my bedding. But unfortunately, life has to move on. I still have my family to look after, although my husband has been great with his support, and I still need to complete my University degree which my father always wanted me to achieve. I was expecting he and my step mum (I refer to her as my mum as she is 1000x times a better mother than my birth mother) would come to the UK to see my graduation. This won’t happen now.

So. Food has always been a big comfort for me and I feeling cooking (not for work) and eating is one of the best remedies when you feel sad. While I was back in Taipei my grandmother cooked a lot for me and her food always has a tremendous amount of love in it, so that was a huge comfort and really helped me. So I’ve decided to start cooking for my food blog again to try to help me find some peace. I love cooking for myself and my family and I’ve always loved sharing recipes and receiving wonderful feedback so here is my first dish for this blog in a really long time.

I’m really sorry this is not a happy blog post but no matter, I really wanted to share this really simple but really delicious recipe with you. I’ve got a whole load of new recipes in the pipeline so I promise there won’t be anymore five month gaps between posts in the future.

As a final note, for General Tso chicken you can adjust the usage of sugar if you would like this to be a little sweeter.

 

authentic general tso chicken
Print

General Tso Chicken Recipe

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

Ingredients

Ingredients

  • 500 g chicken thigh fillets
  • 2 chilis remove the seeds and slice 3cm lengthways
  • 2 spring onions slice 2-3cm lengthways
  • 1 ltr oil to fry the chicken. Use sunflower or vegetable oil

Seasonings for chicken thigh fillet marinade

  • 1 tsp rice wine
  • 1 tbsp soy sauce
  • 1/2 egg beaten
  • 2 tsp potato starch or corn flour
  • 1 tsp oil sunflower or olive oil

Seasonings

  • 1.5 tbsp ketchup
  • 1.5 tsp sugar
  • 1 tbsp soy sauce
  • 1 tsp rice wine
  • 1 tsp water
  • 1/2 tsp rice vinegar

Instructions

  1. Cut chicken thigh fillets into big dices and marinade with seasonings for 10 minutes.
  2. Heat up 1 liter of oil in a wok and add one chicken dice at a time into the wok. Fry until the chicken turns golden brown in colour. Drain any liquid/oil from the chicken and leave aside.
  3. Mix all the seasonings in a bowl. Heat up 1 tablespoon of oil in a wok and stir fry the chilli for 20 seconds until the fragrance comes out of the wok.
  4. Add the chicken into the wok and stir fry for 10 seconds. Pour the seasonings form the bowl into the wok and stir fry until the sauce has reduced down. Add spring onion and stir fry it for 10 seconds.  Sprinkle a few drops of sesame oil and add a little bit of ground pepper. The dish is ready to serve.

 

Zha Jiang Noodles Recipe

by | 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

 

Zhajiang Noodles
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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