The final week for my last semester! I decide to make Huoguo (Hot Pot) with my friend to celebrate the last week class. I love Huoguo because it is very easy to make and I can eat various vegetables, meat, and seafood at the same time. These were what we prepared for hot pot: Sliced Potatoes Enoki Mushrooms Napa Cabbage Bok Choy Shii-take (Mushroom) Beef Slices Various Meat and Seafood Balls Noodle As you can see the typical Hot Pot has two different soup bases, one is spicy and one is not spicy. Actually you can find various hot pot soup base paste at any Chinese Mart that will make it easier for you to make Hot Pot at home. Once you chose your soup bases and had all vegetables and meat ready, you can get your pot. If you don't like spicy or light flavor, just want one flavor, you can use normal pot. If you want to have two flavors one time you can find the pot I used here. Get you pot ready, add enough water and put soup base paste and mix well with water. Wait till the soup base boiled, you can start add whatever you like into the soup to cook and enjoy your hot pot party! I like to make additional sauce to eat with, usually chili, vinegar, sesame oil, garlic and soy sauce. Once we finished most of the food, we will add noodles into the not spicy side, also some vegetables and meat to make a bowl of delicious noodle as main dish. Of course, you can choose whatever you want to eat. Hot Pot does not have recipe, you can freely add what you like. If you are going to make Hot Pot at home, what foods you will choose to eat?
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Candy & Beverage & Snacks You must see some of these snacks in my Instagram and Facebook. Since it is very close to the end of my last semester of Undergraduate study, I want to do the snacks giveaway to thank you all supporting my blog. The winner will get the HUGE snack pack. Candy bag! This candy bag contains Fruit Gummy candy, Fruit Milk candy, Coconut Candy, and my favorite WhiteRabbit Creamy Candy. Hot Kids Milk Drink! Sweet milk made with condensed milk. Yam & Mixed Cereal! Very healthy and yummy cereal with mixed natural crops. Good choice for breakfast and dinner when you are dieting! Red date with Walnut! I didn't know many of you never heard about red date, a kind of sweet and healthy fruit, which also been used in many cuisines. Here you will have the red date with walnuts and dried grapes. Want to try how it tastes? Tea Egg! Tea egg, boiled in spiced sauce, is a very common street food and home-cooking cuisine in China. How to win?
I have shared many delicious Asian cuisine, and last week I cooked my first foreign dish. Does any one I mentioned in my blog inspire your Asian food interest? Did you ever cook or try any foreign food? Leave your comment to share your experience with me and other readers. I will choose the winner on April 19th at 6pm. Sorry it is open only for STU, but feel free to leave your thoughts and questions. The lucky one will get all the snacks I mentioned above. Thank you! Look forward to hearing from you! If you read my home page, you must know I also love Korean food because many Korean dishes are spicy and I love spicy food. I watched a lot of TV shows about Korean food and I want to go to Korea with my best friend one day to eat all of the delicious food I have seen on TV. Actually, I found and went to a great Korean restaurant here in Miami. The chief is Korean and they have many delicious real Korean dishes. I cannot wait to go to Korea to try local restaurants and street food. Similar to China, Korea also has various yummy street food. Today I am going to share my first cooking experience of foreign food, Tteok-bokki, the stir-fried rice cakes. In China we also eat rice cake, but Korean rice cake has special recipe with Korean red pepper paste. Let's see what we need for Tteok-bokki: Main Ingredients: 1 bag of rice cake 2 or 3 pieces of fish cake 2 handful cabbage(forgot put in the picture) Scallion Korean Red Pepper Paste Crispy Seaweed White Sesame Sugar Steps: 1. Cut fish cake into triangles, shred cabbage, and cut scallion into strips as the similar size as rice cake. 2. If you have rice cake refrigerated, cook it for 5 minutes. And then soak in cold water and put aside. 3. Add water (enough to cover rice cake in the pot), and 3 tps red pepper paste, wait till boiled. 4. Add rice cake and boil till the rice cakes get soft and the sauce get thick (during this step, keep stirring to avoid the rice cakes sticking on the bottom of the pan), then turn the fire to medium and add fish cake (stir for 2 minutes), then add cabbage (keep stirring for 1 minute). Lastly, put scallion and mix well. 5. Scoop out rice cakes in a plate and Enjoy it! (I love to sprinkle some seaweed and sesame on the top) Hope I can go to Korea for my first food tour very soon. I want to try the strange sausage Sundae, and I must go to the Gwangjang Market first to try the local street food that I saw on TV, such as fish shaped pastry, and the mini Gimbap, of course I must try the local Kimchi dishes, for example the pancake made with Kimchi.
What is you favorite foreign cuisine? Where is your dream place to have food tour? Did you ever try to cook one foreign dish? In China, April 4, 2017 is the day of Qingming Festival. The date of Qingming, dpending on the 15th day from the Spring Equinox, changes every year between April 4th to 6th. On that day people will go to sweep tombs to commemorate ancestors as the most important activity to show respect to our ancestors. Also, people will have 3-day holiday to go out for spring outing to celebrate the coming of spring, green and blossom. During Qingming, willow starts turning green, for a good meaning, people will put willow branches on gates for protection against evil, as well as for welcoming the spring and green. When people going out for spring outing, they will make a willow crown and put on head. To celebrate Qingming, different places in China has their own special food to celebrate. I am going to introduce several common food in China. One calls Qing Tuan, meaning green glutinous rice ball. Mixed glutinous rice and juice from green mugwort or barley grass makes it green, symbolizes the green of spring, and normally with red bean paste as fillings. There are many other food that people eat around Qingming time. For example, snails are getting fattest around Qingming, thus it is the best time to eat snails, which been called Qingming snails. Snails can be stir-fried with shell, and flavored with garlic, ginger, soy sauce, cooking wine, and chili, then eat with toothpick to pick out the meat. Also the flesh can be picked out first and cooked with other ingredients, for example, in my hometown, snail meat stir-fried with Chinese chives is the most common combination. Sanzi is made of wheat flour dough as noddles and deep fried, making it very crispy. Nowadays, it is not only eaten during Qingming, gradually it is eaten as snack in many places in China. Around Qingming, in many warm places the peach starts blossoming. In my hometown, the peach blossoms every year, and my family will go to botanic garden to visit the beautiful peach blossom. As a good ingredient to cooking, people will use peach blossom for congee. This custom can be traced back to Tang Dynasty. Thank you for reading about the new culture about Chinese Qingming Festival. Even though I am at Miami now where always is green, I still want you enjoy the coming of spring and try more Chinese food!
Similar to Salad, Chinese also have seasoned vegetable and meat as cold appetizers served as first dishes. Generally, the cold dishes are divided in to two categories: vegetarian and meat or seafood. Cold dishes are common during summer for appetizing and cooling. A few dishes are easy to cook at home, and many dishes are commonly be ordered or bought for banquet. Depend on different type of vegetables, it can be served as seasoned raw vegetable appetizer or seasoned scalded vegetable appetizer. The cucumber and tomato are the two most common and easiest vegetable cold dishes. The tomatoes are served as slices and sprinkled with sugar. The cucumber can be cut into slices, strips or chunks and then seasoned with salt, sugar, minced garlic, soy sauce, vinegar, sesame oil, and if you like, chili can be added. These are the two typical vegetables that need to be scalded first and then seasoned with salt, soy sauce, vinegar, garlic, sesame oil, and chili. The century egg (mentioned at the breakfast post: century egg and pork congee) and soft tofu can be served separately or as one dish, seasoned with soy sauce, black rice vinegar, and sesame oil. Eating the starch jelly with savory sauce makes you cool and feel comfortable in hot summer. There is another kind of thinner cold noodle seasoned with sliced cucumber, gluten, and bean sprouts, could be a dish on table but more commonly as a street food. The marinated chicken and duck wings and feet are already seasoned during pot stewing and served as cold dish. The mixed animal offals also are pre-marinated, commonly including pig ears, beef shank, and gizzard. The Fuqi Fei Pian also is a famous cold dish. Saliva? You must be curious about the weird name. There are two explanations, one is that the deliciousness makes your mouth water, and another one is that the chili makes your mouth water. Thus, it is a metaphor of its deliciousness. The saliva chicken is short poaching cooked first and cool down in cold water, finally soaked in chili oil. Similarly there is one dish called Slat Brined Duck, cooked duck and served as cold dish, while no additional sauce to eat with since it already been flavored during cooking.
The Jellyfish, while I know many of you haven't heard about it and you may think is that edible? Yes, some jellyfish is edible and can be found at Chinese mart. Even though jellyfish is tasteless, it can be soaked in savory sauce and with its crunchy texture, it is a good choice of cold dish in hot days. If you have chance must try it. Thank you for your reading! See you next time! In China, it is common to have one soup for a meal. Zhu Yuanzhang, the first emperor of Ming Dynasty stipulated that courtiers must economize on food and gradually people have a rule of "four dishes and one soup" for a meal. Nowadays this rule has changed a lot, but for a normal family meal of 3 to 5 people we normally keep four dishes and one soup on table. Vegetarian Soup The vegetarian soup is very easy to make. Egg is common ingredient in Chinese soup recipes. Putting vegetable into boiling water first and then pouring in egg mixture is the common method for making Chinese homemade soup. The tomato and egg soup, seaweed and egg soup, and spinach with egg are typical home cooking soup. Also, we have bok choy (Chinese cabbage) as one of the common vegetables to cook, sometimes meat and zha cai are added. Miso soup is a famous soup from Japan, contains seaweed and tofu boiling with miso. And Kimchi is one of the typical Korean food used a lot in Korean cuisines. The kimchi tofu soup sometimes with pork, is flavored as sour and spicy because of the kimchi. Broth As I mentioned last week we have various types of broth, fish soup (sometimes with tofu), ribs (other ingredients can be added), and chicken (medicinal crops can be added for more nutritious, such as ginseng, angelica sinensis, goji, cordyceps flower, and red dates). Korea also has the famous ginseng chicken broth. These nutrient broth need to be cooked for relatively long time so the soup will be tasty. Another simple soup made with bok choy and meatball also is popular in Chinese households. Thank you for your reading for this week! You may want to start cooking Asian soup with the vegetarian ones because they are easier. The broths are delicious but take a lot of time, thus my mom usually make broth once a week. And we usually use the leftover broth as the soup for noodles. Miss my mom's cooking! Share your asian dishes with me! See you next week.
Today's topic is the main Chinese cooking ways. If you really want to cook Chinese food, the first thing is to understand the several main Chinese cooking methods. Stir-frying Stir-frying is the most basic and common home cooking method. Normally, stir-fried dishes are for cooking vegetables or vegetables with meat or seafood. The vegetables and meat need to be cut into slices or strips. With small amount of oil heated in the pot, quick and keep stir-frying meat first until half-cooked, then add all the other ingredients, add seasonings adjust to your taste, keep stir-frying and turning ingredients until they are done. There are numerous combinations of stir-fried food, while I find some common dishes that have ingredients easy to find here. Since I live on campus, I have no choice to eat at Cafeteria. I am not saying I don't like food there (sometimes). I find many food that can be cooked better and delicious in Chinese way. For example, the I saw celery is served as salad or chopped in soup, while in China we stir-fry it with meat, which is very delicious. Besides, I love squash, while it tastes really different that served in Cafeteria. I prefer the dish we cook in China. I don't know whether it is because the squash is different than the squash from China. I will cook it in Chinese way once I have my own kitchen. Stew or Red Braised This method is common for cooking meat and fish, also for some vegetables like eggplant and tofu. Compared to stir-frying, this is a much slower and time consuming cooking methods, so that we can get strong flavored food. We call it red braised because we use soy sauce or red sugar for this cooking method, which will make food become red or dark red. With water, seasonings like ginger, star anise, five spice powder, and so on, usually braise the ingredients for at least one hour (shorter for cooking vegetables) over low heat in order to get tasty and tender. Stewing also been used to cook broth, such chicken, fish, pork ribs or others that cook meat with amount of water for couple of hours to get delicious meat broth. Steaming Steaming uses a lot for making buns and dim sum, but also for many other ingredients. It is a time consuming method too, but this method can remain most of the nutrient and taste of food. Actually you just need to get the food seasoned and put it into steam machine, and then just wait for it to be done. In China, we have a special cooking utensil made of bamboos, thus the steamed food will have the bamboo fragrance. These three are the main Chinese cooking methods. Check the videos I collected on my Youtube playlist so you can get clear idea how they are made and follow the steps to make Chinese food by your own. Feel free to leave your comments or questions, as well as share your cooking Chinese food experience with me! Thank you for your reading!
Let me take a break ^_^
Remember keep checking my Instagram and Facebook. I keep updating on my social media. Next post is coming soon. See you next Saturday! Last week, I shared the top number 6 to 4 unbelievable Chinese dishes. Some of you may know one or two of the three dishes. Probably, you can accept one or two. I am so glad you are brave and lucky that you will know those delicious food that other people never taste. If you are curious about them, just go to try. You cannot judge them by their appearance or smell. You need to use your other senses to better assess one thing. To taste it, gustation is the best way to judge food. You never know how it tastes without tasting. Attention, if you still cannot accept the Chinese food culture I talked last week, please be careful about the content I am going to introduce later. Hahaha, I am not scaring you. I promise they are all delicious. I just want you know more about what Chinese eat that is different than foreign. It is part of Chinese culture. And I want people know more about China. TOP 3: Chinese style fish When I just came to United Sates to study, I found that people here only eat filleted fish without bone. While in China, we cook fish whole, which maintains the savory fish. You may think it is scared to see the fish head, it is not necessary to keep the head because there is nothing to eat, it is troublesome to eat fish with bones, while Chinese like to eat food what it is. keeping the head and bones makes food more flavorous. Of course, the fish will be completely scaled and gutted. There are many ways to cook fish, such as boiled fish as soup, steamed, braised, and fried. And there is a famous dish called steamed pepper fish head. For Chinese, the fish head is a very nourishing part that it contains a nutrient helping to "improve liver function and lower cholesterol." The fish head also can be commonly cooked as soup. And the steamed pepper fish head is much more famous with the spicy and sour flavor. it can be steamed with red pepper, green pepper, or red and green pepper. Usually, after finishing the fish head, we will keep the sauce and eat noodle with it. http://www.theworldofchinese.com/2015/10/flavor-in-a-fish-head/ TOP 2: Animal innards Well, you must think it is horrible, dirty, evil. But no, they are also edible ingredients from chicken, pig, beef...... I cannot believe how you miss these delicious food. Fuqi Fei Pian (Husband and Wife Lung Slices) This name came from a story that this dish is created and sold by a couple. Thus it known as the lung slices sold by a couple. It is made of beef slices and beef offal, including beef heart, lung, tongue, and tripe, stirring with special flavoured spicy sauce, Mao Xue Wang is made of duck blood and pig offal, also commonly with bean sprout, asparagus lettuce, ham, and eel. As you can see from the picture, it is spicy, but I love it! It is really delicious, it is a common dish in many Chinese restaurant. In addition to the two dishes that can be found at Chinese restaurant, there are many other home cooking dishes, such as braised pig intestine, stir fried scalloped pig kidney, stir fried chicken giblets with chicken heart, intestine, gizzard, so on, and the soup with spinach and pig liver. Although the first two dishes contain pepper, they are not spicy. But the stir fried chicken giblets is really spicy and delicious. Besides, we cook the spinach and pig liver together because both of the two ingredients are nutritious that they can relieve fatigue and blood deficiency. TOP 1: Pig's brain Here it is! This the the Top 1 that I think you probably will never try, even many Chinese can accept it. People are afraid of it because it is brain, While I like it. We eat pig's brain as food commonly spicy and with hot pot. There is a folk adage saying "you are what you eat" thus people think eat brain can make them smart, while I do not know whether it is true. Many people can accept it when they do not know what it is. Thus I think they are just scared what it is but it tastes good. Thank you for your reading of these two posts. Hope you do not hate Chinese food after reading. I hope you can have chance to try them without judgement of the name, looking, smell, just do it. Thank you again!
Thank you all for loving Chinese food. This week I am going to tell you some dishes that are really delicious but are unbelievable and unacceptable to western people. People refuse to eat them may because they smell bad, look strange, or cannot accept what them made from. Actually, every country has their own special food culture, which may unacceptable to others. For example, many Chinese people cannot accept Cheese, rare steak, or Avocado. For my family, we cannot accept rare steak. Especially, I cannot accept the Steak tartare, which is made from chopped raw beef. But not all the people cannot accept the so called unbelievable food. There are so many Chinese like cheese and rare steak. It depends different people's taste. And now Let's look at the 6 dishes that I love and I think most of you may dislike or don't know. Top 6: Stinky Tofu Stinky tofu is a very popular street food in China. Don't be scared of the name. Yes, this kind of tofu has a strong smell. But just like cheese, they both have special smell but taste good. The stinky tofu is made by marinating fresh tofu in special brine usually contains fermented milk, fermented soy bean, shiitake mushroom, bamboo shoot, and many other ingredients depend on different regions. With different recipe of the brine, the color of the tofu is different. After Marinating, just fry the tofu and eat with sauce, commonly spicy sauce. It has crumbly outside and soft interior. I have to say it tastes amazing. Visit this website to know how a foreign's real feeling about this dish in China http://travel.cnn.com/shanghai/eat/diy-stinky-tofu-how-make-perfect-albeit-it-smelly-shanghai-street-food-310682/ Top 5: Animal‘s claws Most of you may think how can people eat animals' feet right? They look scared and even don't have meat, especially the chicken and duck feet. While we like how it taste differently than meat, very chewy and interesting by gnawing the skin and tendons off the bone. The common Chinese cuisine is stewing and simmering in flavored sauce, consisting soy sauce, Chinese prickly ash, star anise, cinnamon, and pepper. It is very common eating with beer and wine. And now there is a new recipe that add coke into the sauce to stew the claws, which will make a sweet flavor. Top 4: Animal's blood Blood! Are we Vampire?Of course not. I know that not only Chinese, many other Asian countries also eat blood as food. The animal blood, also known as "blood tofu" commonly from pig, chicken, duck, and goose, is make from coagulated blood. Animal blood dishes are usually braised as spicy or strong flavored. And there are many popular street food that cook duck blood with noddles, rice noodles, or bean thread, which I eat a lot when my mom is lazy doesn't want to cook for me. Here are the Top 6 to 4 special food from Chinese that I want to introduce to you. I stopped here because I want to give you time to accept these first and be ready for the next week.^_^ |
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