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.

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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.

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.

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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.

Salmon Gravlax Recipe

by Liv | May 19, 2012

Salmon Gravlax Recipe

Recently for both this blog and at home, I’ve been making a lot of Eastern dishes but now I really fancy eating something a little different. Also, there are so many really delicious and beautiful western dishes that I love to make, both professionally at work and at home, but haven’t had the opportunity to share. So, for this particular blog post, I decided to make salmon gravlax.

Salmon gravlax is a dish which originates from Norway during the Middle Ages. Fishermen used to salt the salmon then lightly ferment it by burying it in the sand. Gravlax’s literal translation is “grave”. Thanks to Wikipedia for this information and also inspiring me to draw a couple Vikings for this recipe.

Now this is probably going to sound really strange but even though I have made salmon gravlax many times professionally, I’ve never actually eaten it. I know this sounds really bizarre but probably because I’ve prepared it so many times I’ve kind of been put off it but my husband absolutely loves salmon gravlax so when I asked him if he fancies eating it, of course he said YES (with capital letters)!

I first learned how to make salon gravlax when I worked in a fine dining restaurant in Birmingham but after moving to Edinburgh I made it a few times while working in a hotel that I used to work in. Again I know it must sound strange that I haven’t tasted it before but as anyone who works as a chef knows, you barely even have time to have a glass of water or go to the toilet (this is one of the many reasons chef smoke – so they can have a cigarette break).

With this dish I combined two different recipes.

So what do I think? Interesting! It has a really unique mild herb and spice flavour with a little bit of a citrus taste. I have to say I like it very much and Chris gave me the big thumbs up. I liked it so much I used some of this salmon gravlax to make eggs royale (I’ve been absolutely crazy lusting after hollandaise sauce for nearly a year but couldn’t eat it because of the raw eggs which is obviously bad for unborn babies).

So I hope you enjoy my salmon gravlax recipe. It’s great to try a new dish and tick off one of the many hundreds of dishes out there that I want to try.

As there a really large number of preparation photos with this post, I haven’t included any new pictures of my daughter or any updates about her (she’s doing fine btw, she’s absolutely awesome) but in a few days I’ll post my recipe for eggs royale along with an update about her and some new photos.

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Salmon Gravlax Recipe

Course Main Dish

Prep Time 3 minutes

Total Time 3 minutes

Servings 4 people

Ingredients

450 g fresh salmon with skin on
1 bunch fresh dill chopped
2 tbsp sea salt
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp peppercorn toasted and crushed
1/2 lemon juiced
1 lemon zest
1/2 tsp ground coriander or fennel seed
2 tbsp vodka

Instructions

Rinse salmon under cold running water and pat dry with kitchen napkins.
Mix the sea salt, sugar, crashed peppercorn and ground coriander in a bowl evenly.
Mix vodka and lemon juice together
Lay couple sheets of cling film on a tray as procedure photo shown. Put salmon on the middle of tray.
Pour vodka and lemon juice on salmon.
Sprinkle lemon zest on the salmon first then sprinkle step 2 seasalt and spice mixture evenly on the salmon.
Sprinkle chopped dill on the salmon and wrap salmon nice and tight with the cling film.
Try to find something heavy put on top of salmon. I used 2 wooden boards on both side of salmon and wrap really tight to give it a bit of pressure to help it totally marinade.
Leave it in the fridge for 3 days and take it out. Wash away the seasalt and herb. Slice very(!) thin to serve (you’ll need a really sharp knife for this)

Oriental Pork Chop

by Liv | Apr 25, 2012

Oriental Pork Chop

It has now been six weeks since I became a “mum”. Every day my little girl grows healthier but also happier. She occasionally has a little colic, especially at night, but apart from that she is healthy and happy. She’s also growing in size and strength. When she was born she was immediately too long for newborn baby clothes but 0-3 months clothes were a little big. Now she’s six weeks, seven this Saturday, she has to wear 3-6 months clothes but she’s not a fat baby at all.

Whenever she holds my finger, I can really feel her growing strength and while I love being a mother, my sincere advice is to try to take as much rest as you can whenever you can, even if it’s just a nap for an hour or two. If your partner gives you a chance, sleep for 12 hours if you can and really don’t feel any guilt if you do manage to sleep that long.

Just before I gave birth I had a really big college project to complete, which really tired me out, then literally a couple days after the project had been completed I started having contractions which lasted 3 days, so I had absolutely no rest! In the first two weeks we (meaning me, Chris could sleep through a war!) found it was completely impossible to sleep for more than 2-3 hours. Now several weeks along we’re able to sleep for up to 4 hours without any distraction but only because we’ve made some big changes in our lifestyle. We basically now follow a routine which goes as follows.

8am: Baby wakes for feed. Feed baby, change nappy, baby goes back to sleep for 2 hours.

10am: Feed baby again and check nappy. Change her into day clothes. Clean her face etc

Afternoon: This is the most important. Take her out! The longer you take her outside, whether it’s to the supermarket, to the park or even a walk around the block, the more tired she will be and the better you will sleep at night. Typically we will take her to the shops then take her to the Botanical Gardens/seaside or wherever, every day. Also note, even if your baby sleeps while you are out, she will still become tired from all of the sounds, sights and smells.

8.30pm: Give her a bath. Babies are incredibly cute but they’re extremely dirty. They pee a lot, have giant poos, they dribble, they puke milk sometimes. They’re dirty! A bath also hopes the wee one relax and feel sleepy. Feed her, change her nappy, swaddle her as normal then she will sleep. Takes about an hour to put her to sleep at this time.

1-3am: Amelia wakes up for a feed and change of nappy somewhere between 1 and 3am. Usually she will wake for about 30 minutes, maybe a little longer.

7.30am: Usually just a really quick feed, nappy change and after a quick cuddle she’ll pass out almost immediately afterwards

10am: Starts all over again

So, seriously if you’re a mother to be who is reading my blog at moment, turn off your computer now and take a nap or have a good sleep. Book a massage for yourself, because you will need all your energy for giving birth and look after baby!

One other piece of advice I have is don’t be too harsh on yourself when it comes to breastfeeding, especially if you’re a first time mum. In the first couple of days, I followed the strict rule of “you’re not allow to feed your baby with a bottle and you can only feed your baby breast milk or formula, but not both!”. But just like many new mums, at first (and still now to an extent) I simply was unable to provide enough breast milk (I found this out after two days when I hand expressed my breasts and found very little milk coming out), so for the first two days at home Amelia was practically starving. Because of this Amelia basically latched onto my breast for two days which gave me really sore cracked nipples and meant neither of us could get any rest at all.

After two days at home, one of our favourite midwives, Nelly, came round (Nelly is awesome) and she advised it’s ok to give babies both breast milk and formula. This was the perfect news so Chris ran over to the supermarket and bought a big tub of SMA Gold, came home and made up a bottle and Amelia drank the whole lot (about 50ml if I remember correctly). Since then, Amelia has been an absolute sweet little angel and she is a really happy baby. So now, what I do is express milk every 3-4 hours and then give Amelia the breast milk first and then top up her, so to speak, with formula. This ensures she gets all of the nutrients from the breast milk but also ensures she doesn’t starve. I’m still unable to provide Amelia with enough breast milk to last her a day but I can now easily provide enough for 2-3 big feeds per day.

Another thing I’ve found is green papaya with pork ribs soup really helps me to produce breast milk. Remember I mentioned in a previous post this dish gives you big breasts? Well, it also helps to produce a LOT of breast milk. I can’t guarantee this will work for everyone, but for me it really does.

So this is how my motherhood journey is going so far. Amelia will be four weeks old this coming Saturday but so far the experience has had it’s challenges but I absolutely love being a mother. I hope my little experiences will help other mums.

Back to food! The recipe today is oriental pork chop. When I started this blog, one of the very first recipes I did was oriental pork chop. At that time we were learning about food photography as well and the resulting photos were (in Chris’s words) horrendous! So I decided to remake it. As before, this recipe is really easy to make (perfect for a new mum!) and it’s also really delicious. I’ve also shared a couple new photos of Amelia as well.

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Oriental Pork Chop

Course Main Dish

Prep Time 1 hour

Cook Time 30 minutes

Total Time 1 hour 30 minutes

Servings 2 people

Ingredients

Ingredients for Oriental Pork Chop

4 pork chops

Seasonings for Oriental Pork Chop

2 spring onions
4 cloves garlic
3 tbsp soy sauce
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp sugar
2 tbsp rice wine
1 tsp Chinese five spice powder
1/2 tsp black pepper powder
1 tbsp water
2 tbsp plain flour
2 tbsp potato starch

Instructions

Use meat hammer to beat the pork chop and make the pork chop bigger and more tender.
Marinade pork chops with all the seasonings for 1 hour at less and massage the pork chops with seasonings for around 30 seconds. This procedure can help the pork chops marinade better and tastier.
Heat up 3 cups of oil in a wok or deep frying pan to 150c around medium gas power and fry the pork chops to medium well done. Place it onto a plate aside.
Heat up the oil by full gas power to 180c degree and fry the pork chops until well done, then it’s ready to serve.

Recipe Notes

You can also put ½ teaspoon baking soda to make the pork chop texture more tender.

Chili Bean Paste Fish and Tofu Chinese new year dish

by Liv | Jan 14, 2011

Chili Bean Paste Fish and Tofu Chinese new year dish

Chili bean paste fish and tofu is the name of this Chinese fish dish. This dish is also my first recipe for this Chinese new year. A lot of people probably don’t know when Chinese New Year is this year but it’s actually the 2nd of February. People from Hong Kong, China and Taiwan will usually celebrate from this day and celebrations will go on for about a week. In

In Chinese language we call Chinese new year eve “除夕” (Chu xi). All of our families will gather together, wear new shoes and wear new clothes. We usually wear red and then we’ll have a large new year dinner together. We call this new year dinner “年夜飯” (Nian ye fan).

Fish is one of the dishes that we must have for new year dinner. Fish in Chinese is called “yu” and it sounds similar to the word “餘” which means “more than enough, spare”. We usually call the fish dish in New year supper “Nian nian you yu 年年有餘”, The whole phrase means “every year have some good things happen and/or money left. Or every year have more than enough money or luck”.

Different families have different traditions for this fish dish for New Year dinner. In my family, we can’t finish this fish in one go. We must leave some fish on the plate, we can’t eat all of it. This is because we believe leaving some fish will bring us luck and money, which also means more than enough money or luck. My grandfather told me, in his navy friend’s home, they can’t turn over the fish because the method for turning over fish looks like a ship or boat capsizing, which of course no-one and especially a navy officer doesn’t want to see.

There is no strict rule of how to cook “Nian Nian you yu” (this dish) for Chinese New Year. You can use any kind of fish you want so long as it’s a whole fish that includes it’s head and tail. I know you’re probably wondering why it has to be a whole fish but using a whole fish represents you doing everything from start to finish and not just doing something halfway.

For this dish I decided to cook Dou Ban Yu. Dou Ban Yu is a really tasty Sichuan style fish dish that can be as spicy as you like but has a really strong taste typical of Sichuan cooking. The most important thing is the red colour from the chilli bean paste (sauce). As mentioned before red is a very good colour for Chinese New Year.

The English translation for Dou Ban Yu is “Chili Bean Paste Fish” and here is my recipe for this dish. I hope you enjoyed reading about this dish and maybe you could give it a go this Chinese New Year.

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Chili Bean Paste Fish and Tofu Chinese new year dish

Prep Time 15 minutes

Cook Time 30 minutes

Total Time 45 minutes

Servings 2 people

Ingredients

1 whole fish I used sea bass
2 thin slices ginger chop finely
2 spring onions chop finely
3 cloves garlic chop finely
1/2 chili remove seeds and chop finely
50 g beef or pork mince
350 g tofu cut into the size as the photo shows, pan fry both sides

Seasonings

1.5 tbsp chili bean paste sauce
2 tbsp rice wine
1 ltr boiled water or vegetable stock
1/2 tsp ketchup
2 tbsp soy sauce
1/4 tsp sesame oil
1/4 tsp rice vinegar

Instructions

Remove all the dirty bits of fish as procedures photo. This procedure ensures the fish tastes better and removes any unpleasant fishy taste.
A teaspoon or similar can help to get rid of the bits you don't want
Cut the fish as the photo shows and use your finger to rub some chilli bean paste into those cuts and inside the fish belly. Leave it aside for 15 minutes after you have done that.
Use your finger to rub some chilli bean paste into those cuts
Use your finger to rub some of chili bean paste inside of fish belly.
Heat a wok with 1 tablespoon of oil and panfry both sides of the fish. Leave each side to fry for 2~3 minutes at least, don’t keep turning the fish or you will just make a mess of the fish. Place the fish on a plate after both sides are a golden brown colour.
Cut the tofu into the size as this photo shows
Pan fry the tofu on both sides
Using the wok from step 3, stir-fry the chilli bean paste first for a couple minutes then add the mince to fry it for another 2 to 3 minutes.
Add rice wine, chilli, ginger, garlic and just half of a spring onion into the wok and stir-fry it until all the fragrance comes out from the wok.
Put the fish back in the wok and add the boiled water or stock to cook.
Add tofu and simmer it to reduce down the sauce.