Singapore Noodle cooking class with politician

Singapore Noodle cooking class with politician

Today, I had an interesting cooking class. My student Robin Harper is a member of the Green Party and in turn a member of the Scottlsh Parliament (MSP) who is celebrating his 70th birthday (Happy Birthday, Robin!!!). How cool is that?! I never thought that one day I would have a chance to teach a British politician. I can’t believe a politician who has shook hands with the queen and has met the prime minister was in my kitchen this afternoon and listened to my directions for pouring in stock and adding soy sauce to the dish.

singapore noodle cooking class

It felt great when I saw him wolfing down both the Singapore noodles and steamed scallops he cooked in my kitchen. From the way he was eating them it looked like he really enjoyed both and has kindly offered to endorse us.

When he arrived I didn’t quite catch his job title but his wife explained who he was but I didn’t quite catch on. (How daft I am! 😀 What can I say? I’m not very good with English politics.) I’m really happy that I didn’t know he is a real politician before we start cooking or I probably will be too nervous or panic. 😀

singapore noodle cooking class

We cooked Singapore noodle and Steamed scallop today but I will only share this Singapore noodle recipe on my blog today with all of you. (Steamed scallop’s recipe will be on it’s way soon!!)

Singapore Noodle is another popular eastern dish in the UK and it has a rather strong flavour. The rice noodle has been marinated by turmeric powder and curry powder but you can choose a different kind of curry powder to marinade the rice noodle to your own personal preference.

The other interesting thing about this dish is this dish is actually not from Singapore. I have no idea where this dish originates from but it appears on many Chinese restaurants and take away menus. I kind of think Chinese people named this dish as “Singapore” noodle is because of the kind of spices used to marinade the noodles.

Credits: Photos were taken by Chris at Chris Radley Photography

singapore noodles

 

Singapore Noodle

Course Main Dish
Prep Time 1 hour
Cook Time 20 minutes
Total Time 1 hour 20 minutes
Servings 2 people

Ingredients

Ingredients

  • 3 bunches rice noodles
  • 1 piece chicken breast julienne it
  • 1 red pepper julienne it
  • 1 small carrot julienne it
  • 3 heads bok choi julienne it
  • 1 chili remove the seeds and chop finely
  • 2 cloves garlic chop finely
  • 2 thin slices ginger chop finely
  • 1 tsp dried shrimp

Marinade for chicken breast

  • 1 tbsp soy sauce
  • 1 tsp sugar
  • 1 tsp potato starch

Marinade for prawns

  • 1 tsp potato starch
  • 1 tsp rice wine
  • 1/2 tsp salt

Marinade for rice noodles

  • 1 tbsp curry powder
  • 1 tsp turmeric powder

Seasonings

  • 1 tsp salt
  • 2 tbsp soy sauce
  • 1 tsp sugar
  • 1/2 tsp sesame oil
  • 1 cup stock

Instructions

  1. Remove the skin from the chicken breast and julienne it. Marinade it with the seasonings for 15 minutes.
  2. Make a deep cut on the back of each prawn. Marinate with seasonings for 5 minutes. Stirfry it until the prawn turns to red colour and leave it to one side.
  3. Soak the rice noodles in warm water for 20 minutes to soften and then marinade the rice noodle with curry powder and turmeric powder for 20~30 minutes.
  4. Soak the dried shrimp in warm water 15 minutes to soften it and chop finely.
  5. Heat a wok with a couple tablespoons of oil and fry the garlic, ginger and chilli first then add chicken breast and carrot to stir-fry it until the chicken turn white colour.
  6. Add pepper and all the seasonings to the stir-fry then add the rice noodles.
  7. Using a spoon add small amounts of stock to the noodles and keep stir frying it at the same time until the rice noodles suck up all the stock.
  8. Add bak choi and prawn in the end and keep stir fry it until the bak choi is cooked.

 

Raspberry Snowflake Cake

Raspberry Snowflake Cake

There are couple things that have made me feel very happy recently. The first thing is my head chef asked me for the Peking duck recipe for the new dish on our restaurant menu. The second thing is Lisa from http://www.koreanamericanmommy.blogspot.com follow my recipe and made her first “three cup chicken” and it turned out really awesome. Here is her blog about this three cup chicken: http://koreanamericanmommy.blogspot.com/2010/07/chef-liv-wans-chinese-three-cup-chicken.html

I feel so proud and also super happy. I wish people who visit my blog can enjoy my recipe and have fun in the kitchen. That’s the greatest thing to me. I feel really honour that my head chef asked the recipe from me and I wish my recipe help him a bit with the new dish. This is the two thing make me feel really happy and I share my happiness with you who is reading this post at moment and wish you have a great day.

Now, It’s the time for the recipe of the day. I’m going to share this Chinese dessert recipe with you. My colleague asked me if there any popular Chinese or Taiwanese desserts? Yes, of course there are a lot of desserts in both China and Taiwan. But I have to say they are different from desserts that are popular in the UK. Here is an example dessert that I share with you today.

raspberry snowflake cake

When the first time I read about this dessert’s name I just fall in love with it. How cute is the name? I guess the name snowflake comes from the layer of coconut powder that actually looks a bit like a snowflake.

Raspberry snowflake cake tastes a little bit sweet and sour and the most important thing is this dessert has to be eaten in cold. You must eat it immediately after taking it out from fridge.

These photos were taken by Chris from Chris Radley Photography

 

Raspberry Snowflake Cake

Course Main Dish
Prep Time 30 minutes
Total Time 30 minutes
Servings 2 people

Ingredients

A

  • 50 g rasberries
  • 450 g water
  • 180 g caster sugar
  • 200 ml milk
  • 50 ml double cream
  • 5 leafs gelatine

B

  • 120 g potato starch
  • 100 ml water
  • coconut powder

Instructions

  1. Cook raspberry, 450g water and caster sugar in a small sauce pan and bring it to boil. Keep whisk it while cooking to help sugar and raspberry dissolve.
  2. Soften gelatine in cold water. Add milk and double cream into step 1 and bring it to boil again.
  3. Turn off the gas and add gelatine into step 2 and keep whisk it to help to mix evenly.
  4. Mix potato starch and water evenly and add it into step 3.
  5. Pour the mixture from step 4. Into a long rectangle shape baking tray with baking paper in it. (Baking paper helps us to take out the snowflake cake easier later.) Put the snowflake cake into your fridge for 1 or 2 hours to help it form. Cover the snowflake cake with coconut powder and it’s ready to serve.

 

Hot and Sour Soup

Hot and Sour Soup

hot and sour soup

Hot and sour soup is a very common dish in both Taiwan and China. People usually have fried or plain dumplings with hot and sour soup. The sourness of this soup is very good for one’s appetite and my mother use to tell me when I got flu that it will go away quicker if I drink a lot of this soup when I was young.

I don’t know if it’s true or not but I think drinking a lot of hot fluid is good for your body when you catch the flu, right? But please go to doctor if you catch flu or don’t feel well.

The Eastern way to cook soup and western way to cook soup are so different. Most of the western ways to cook this soup are to puree the soup to make it really smooth and soft but in eastern people usually like chunks of meat, fish and vegetables in their soup that they actually can see it. I have to cook a few different kinds of “western soup” when I work and it’s a precious experience for me because I can learn western cooking during work and learn eastern cooking from my family or learn it by myself in my personal time. It’s always fun to learn new things, don’t you think?

Credit: These photos were taken by Chris at Chris Radley Photography

 

Hot and Sour Soup

Course Main Dish
Prep Time 20 minutes
Cook Time 15 minutes
Total Time 35 minutes
Servings 2 people

Ingredients

Ingredients

  • 1 ltr chicken stock
  • 80 g pork loin
  • 10 wood ears soak in warm water for 15 minutes to soften then julienne
  • 1 medium carrot julienne it
  • 300 g fresh tofu drain the water and cut into 5cm strips
  • 2 eggs beaten

Marinade for pork

  • 1 tsp soy sauce
  • 1/2 tsp potato starch
  • 1/2 tsp sugar
  • 1 tsp rice wine

Seasonings

  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 2 tbsp soy sauce
  • 1.5 tbsp dark rice vinegar
  • 1/2 tbsp normal rice vinegar
  • 1 tsp sugar
  • 1 tsp ground pepper
  • 1/2 tsp sesame oil
  • 2 tbsp potato starch

Instructions

  1. Marinade the pork for 15 minutes.
  2. Boil a pot of water to blanch pork, carrot, wood ear and tofu then leave it on aside.
  3. Boiled the chicken stock and add all the ingredients from step 2 to bring it to boil again.
  4. Add soy sauce, vinegar, sugar, salt into the soup, then mix the potato starch with a little bit water first (Remember the potato starch with water must be mix evenly and without any lumps) and add into the soup to make it look a bit dense and sticky.
  5. Turn the gas power to lowest heat and pour the egg into the soup. Stir the soup gently after 30 second and turn off the gas.

 

Drunken Chicken

Drunken Chicken

drunken chicken recipe

When I was a child I always thought you prepared drunken chicken by feeding the chicken a bottle of rice wine before cooking. I thought if the chicken was drunk enough it would make the meat taste of alcohol. Now I think how silly I was but who knows these things.

I love the taste of drunken chicken even if I’m not a big fan of food that tastes of alcohol. This drunken chicken uses Shaoxing rice for which people who have tasted it know it has a strong but special flavour. Some so called celebrity Eastern chefs use Shaoxing rice wine in many dishes but this really isn’t the way to use it.

This drunken chicken is best served as a cold dish making it a great summer dish. It’s refreshing, tasty but not too strong. I hope you enjoy making this dish.

These photos were taken by Chris from: Chris Radley Photography

drunken chicken procedure

 

Drunken Chicken

Course Main Dish
Prep Time 1 hour
Cook Time 30 minutes
Total Time 7 hours 30 minutes
Servings 2 people

Ingredients

Ingredients

  • 2 chicken legs including thigh, de-boned
  • 2 spring onions cut into 3cm lengthways
  • 2 thin slices ginger
  • 1 tbsp goji berries
  • 1 thin slice Chinese angelica root
  • 2 thin slices liquorice root

Seasonings

  • 200 ml Shaoxing rice wine
  • 1 cup stock I used chicken stock
  • 1 cup water
  • 1 tsp salt
  • Couples pinches sugar

Instructions

  1. Use some salt to marinade the chicken legs for 20 minutes and use a few sheets of cling film to wrap the chicken as displayed in the procedure photos below.
  2. Use a small sauce pan to boil the water, stock, spring onion, ginger, goji berries, angelica root, liquorice roots, salt and sugar. After boiling reduce to lowest heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Leave it aside to cool down.
  3. Add Shaoxing rice wine into step 2.
  4. Steam chicken for around 20 minutes until the chicken is cooked.
  5. Remove chicken from sling film and soak in marinade for at lest 6 hours. Leave in a fridge overnight.

 

Beef Shank with Spring Onion Pancake Wrap

Beef Shank with Spring Onion Pancake Wrap

Beef Shank with Spring Onion Pancake Wrap

Beef Shank with spring onion pancake wrap originates from Northern China. Northern Chinese cuisine uses flour as an ingredient very often while Southern Chinese cuisine uses rice as an ingredient very often.

The weather in Northern China, with it’s extreme climate changes from very hot to very cold is far from ideal for growing rice so they grow wheat which is more suitable for the weather in north China. South China’s weather is humid and warm. It’s the best weather for grow the rice so we can usually find a lot of rice dish from south China, for example: rice cake, rice ball.

Most of the Beijing cuisine restaurants in Taiwan definitely sell this beef shank wrap. I love to have a bowl of soup or cup of pearl milk tea with this wrap for my dinner or lunch when I lived in Taipei. This is yet another sublime dish which is very hard to say not to. When I lived in Taipei I found it difficult to control my weight but now I live in Edinburgh if I want to eat some real, traditional food from China I have to call my mother and grandma to ask them how to make it. It makes me laugh when my mother tells me her cooking skills have improved after she has read my recipes on my blog.

Here is the recipe for this yummy beef shank with spring onion pancake wrap and I hope you will enjoy it.

Credit: These photos were taken by Chris at Chris Radley Photography

how to make Beef Shank with Spring Onion Pancake Wrap

 

Beef Shank with Spring Onion Pancake Wrap

Course Main Dish
Prep Time 2 hours
Total Time 2 hours
Servings 4 people

Ingredients

Ingredients for stewed beef shank

  • 800 g beef shanke
  • 2 spring onions cut 3cm lengthways
  • 4 thin slices ginger
  • 2 shallots peeled and chopped roughly
  • 5 cloves garlic
  • 1 dried chili or you can use fresh chili

Seasonings for stewed beef shank

  • 1 Chinese spice bag (available in Chinese supermarket) or use 2 star anise, 1 cinnamon stick, 1 teaspoon fennel seed
  • 1 cup soy sauce
  • 1 tbsp rice wine
  • 1 tbsp sugar
  • 1 tbsp spicy bean paste

Ingredient for spring onion pancake

  • 350 g bread flour
  • 250 g plain flour
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1.5 tsp sugar
  • 400 ml warm water
  • 6 spring onions chopped finely
  • Handful white sesame
  • 60 g lard

Instructions

Procedures for stewed beef shank

  1. Cook the beef shank in boiling water for a couple minutes and rinse under cold water. Leave it to one side.
  2. Stir fry spring onion, ginger, garlic, shallot, chilli until you can smell the fragrance and add spicy bean paste to stir fry for another 30 seconds.
  3. Place step 1 and 2 into a stock pot and add all the seasonings. Pour the water into the stockpot to cover the shank and use full gas power to boil the shank. After it’s boiling turn the gas power to the lowest and leave to simmer for 2 at least.

Procedures for spring onion pancake

  1. Mix flour, salt, sugar with warm water together and knead it until it’s nice, soft and smooth.
  2. Cover the dough with a clean, wet tea towel and leave it on aside for 20~30 minutes.
  3. Separate the dough into 10 small dough balls and flatten them individual.
  4. Brush Lard on the flatten pancake first and sprinkle spring onion, sesame, a couple pinch of salt.
  5. Roll the dough as the way in the procedures photos.
  6. Just use a little bit of oil to pan fry the pancake until both side are golden brown, crispy.

Recipe Notes

* Slice the beef shank into really thin slice and wrap them with spring onion pancake, Hoi sin sauce, spring onion or any salad, vegetable you like.