Dejah
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Posts posted by Dejah
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THE LAST SUPPER
With this cooler weather, and the way I've been using chilis, banana and habanero peppers, one would think I was stoking up my internal stove for winter.
One chicken thigh and a breast were hiding in the fridge. These I browned quickly in a small cast iron casserole. I added a splash of cooking wine and light soya, the leftover wood ear, Chinese mushrooms, gum choy (lily buds), and some chicken stock. The dish went into the oven at 350F, with the lid on. There really wasn't enough for three people, so I decided to save this dish for China-Li as a late night supper. She's not back from her volunteer job yet.
For Bill and myself, I made ma pao tofu with ground pork. Wow! This is the second item we've eaten today that didn't require much chewing, and I still have all my teeth.
I had saved some green papaya from the early afternoon snack. The bone from a piece of pork butte steak was used to make a clear broth. After simmering the bone while the rice cooked, I added a few slices of pork and the papaya. Even though it seemed a shame to cook this beautiful fruit, it did make a nice soup that is beneficial for the lungs and digestion.
With the now boneless pork butte steak, I sliced it into thin strips, added seasoning, cornstarch and oil and put it into a shallow bowl. On top of this, I added chopped preserved mustard greens (mui choy) on my half, and thin slices of preserved turnip (ham choy) and habanero peppers on Bill's half.
I steamed this in my wok. I know -- I know. You are not supposed to use your wok for steaming, but I do. 
Vegetables are a must for me. Tonight, I had a dish of bok choy, stir-fried with garlic and slivers of ginger.
A dish of chocolate ice-cream was our last dessert!
This has been a hectic week for me, but made very enjoyable by the opportunity to share my cooking with you.
I already have a Web site dedicated to many food-related topics:
http://www.hillmans.soupbo.com/soos/
The experience of doing this blog was so satisfying that I have adapted it to Web page format for display at:
http://www.hillmans.soupbo.com/soos/foodlog.html
I've thoroughly enjoyed the interaction with other eGulleteers that this medium has provided. I look forward to an ongoing interchange with fellow foodies.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Dejah has left the building ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
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This is a big gripe of mine, when every Tom,Dick and Harry( or Tina, Daisy and Jane) evening community college cooking instructor and all the glossy cooking magazines extol the virtues of using the wok, for with a wok, you get instant and delicious "stir fry" dishes just like the Chinese takeouts. Truth of the matter is, by using a wok over a weak flame you cannot "fry" anything in reasonable time. What you get is a soggy, sodden slew of substance that would not have the remotest of resemblance to Chinese food, in my estimation.
There, that's my rant of the day.
HMMMMMMMMMM-----------!!!!!!!!
There! That is my rant!! LOL!
Before my first wok, for years, I used a large iron frying pan. Worked beautifully. Great tool!
HZRT - What is the 'salt and pepper SAUCE' you used in that shrimp dish?
Anyone---- About posting pictures --- is there a trick to doing it? I know how to transfer an image, but even getting my digitals to Webshot has been difficult.
ahem....
I just have a household General Electric stove, at least 15 years old, and it works very well with my 14" cheapy rustable wok.
My s-i-l has a gas stove, and I find it slower to heat my wok than my electric. I DO agree with you that, unless you have 80,000btu burner, one cannot reproduce that restaurant flavour. I miss my old restaurant stove. In fact, I dragged it out of the restaurant before the demolition crew came in. It is sitting in our garage. I thought of installing it for an outdoor kitchen, but the thought of having to clean up the baked- on grease on the backside from the late 70s on kinda discouraged me. One of my friends is going to haul it to his farm and use it for an outdoor kitchen.
Jo-mel:
As for posting the pictures, this is our proceedure:
Download the pictures from your digital camera to a folder in your computer.
Then when you go to upload your pictures on image egullet, you hit "BROWSE", then go into your folder and type in the jpg number.
Once you have entered all your pictures, hit the "upload" button.
It will show you your entries.
Copy the
line and paste onto your post.
I think this is what you are asking...but the WEBSHOT kinda threw me...
Is this the info' you need.
Funny. It took doing the blog for me to figure out how to post a picture.
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FOOD BLOG: DAY 7 ~ Wednesday
Woke up to another chilly, windy and wet morning.
I packed China-Li a double lunch of chicken, (Again? Hey! it's her favourite!) and shredded vegetables in sun-dried tomato tortilla wrap, fresh vegetable chunks, chocolate cupcake, cantaloupe and cheese strings. After she finishes work at the hospital, she will head to a small town called Onanole as a St. John Ambulance volunteer. Not sure if you non-Canadian readers are familiar with the R.C.M.P. (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) ceremonies. They are performing their precision musical ride (all on horseback) at the country fair this evening. BTW, I am also a member of the R.C.M.P. WAIT! I am not an officer, but I am an advisor on the Commissioner's Cultural Diversity Committee.
Because of the weather, we will be eating comfort food today. Breakfast for the two of us was a bowl of hot Red River cereal. This is an unadulterated mixture of three whole grains -- wheat, rye and flax, which originated in Manitoba's Red River Valley. It is a great "cleanser" after food binges.
I ate mine with brown sugar and milk. Bill must have his pushed into a mound, and the milk forming a moat around his porridge.
Some days, I feel like I am back in time; back in the restaurant! I barely got through my cereal before the phone started ringing. One of our old customers called up for my "bad cold fixes." I used to dispense this foul herbal tea to my customers if they have a cold, the flu, or just a hang over.
They also asked for some of my kick-ass hot 'n' sour soup. It comes with a guarantee to clear up sinuses! So, out came my soup pot, Chinese mushrooms, wood ear, bamboo shoots, chili paste, vinegar, ginger and chicken stock.
While that was simmering, our grandson Soulin called and asked for his favourite lunch stuff: mini-pizza swirls. He's at mini-university (a day camp for kids at our alma mater and place of employment, Brandon University). At least my kitchen got warm and cozy.
I took a snack break with papaya while the pizza dough was rising. Only half of the fruit was ripe, so I saved the green parts for soup this evening.
Soulin likes pepperoni, green peppers and cheese on his pizza. These were easy to make up, baked for 20 minutes in a moderate oven, and I put some in the freezer for China's lunches.
For lunch, Bill and I had savory tang yuen. As I was getting the ingredients together, the phone rang again. It was CyraCom International, an interpreter service out of Tucson, Arizona. Even when I don't log on, the calls come through automatically as I am their only Toisanese interpreter on the roster. Most of the calls are from hospitals and immigration at ports-of-entry. By the end, I was pretty distracted. This always creates problems.
Turning back to make lunch, I reached blindly into the pantry for the glutinous rice flour to make the dumplings. The daikon was julienned and boiled. What a foul smell, but oh so essential and delicious in this soup. After removing the daikon, I dropped in the dumplings.
Half an hour later, they still hadn't floated to the top. I took one out, cut into it, solid! I threw those out, thinking I didn't add enough water in making the dough. The same thing happened with the second batch.
Then I got the bright idea to check the date on the flour package. Guess what . . . I had grabbed the ordinary rice flour and not the GLUTINOUS rice flour. Even if I boiled them for another hour, they would still not be light and chewy. I made the new batch with the proper rice flour. This time, the dumplings floated in just a few minutes. I added the lap cheung, dried shrimp meat, silkened lean pork and the cooked daikon. The tang was worth waiting for. It's one that will stick to your ribs. Bill was able to tackle about six dumplings . . . with help from Atticus.
For an added crunch, I opened my last package of "instant jelly fish." I don't know why I love this stuff . . . rubber bands with chili/sesame oil. Bill doesn't like them, and even Atticus turned up his nose!
I finished the hot 'n' sour soup with silkened sliced chicken, BBQ pork, shrimp and tofu. The cornstarch rubbed into the chicken was enough to thicken the soup. It was picked up shortly after.
I have some chicken pieces in the fridge, tofu, ground pork, leftover wood ear, mushrooms, and the green papaya. I think I see supper forming up . . .
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hzrt, I'd love to have your recipe for Indian tandoori chicken. Do you cook yours in a conventional oven, the BBQ, or do you actually have a "tandoori oven"?
How about your BBQ pork? and your potstickers? I am always looking for different ways to cook my favourites.
I cook Chinese food most of the time. . . This week was a liittle different because my sister and family were here. The Canadian fare was by request.
They get all kinds cuisine in Vancouver, but not old Canadian family favourites like our beef stew, banana cream pie, etc.You need to take pictures of your food! This blog has given me the impetus to do my cookbook for the family and past customers. This morning, we are having porridge to clean our system of last night's over-indulgence!
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Yin, or (childishly) yinyin is the title of your paternal grandma. You would not normally use yinyin to address anyone except your own grandmother. Her husband would be "yehyeh" or just "yeh", if you ever feel grown up around him.
Really?
I just call my maternal grandma "ah maaa".
Hmm.
In my family, Yin Yin is Toisanese and Ah maaaa is Cantonese for paternal grandmother. Po-Po is for maternal grandmother.
My grandson calls me Grammy.
He wasn't going to have any of Joshua's cake until he was told that his Grammy baked it! -
Question: In Manitoba, do you get Pacific or Atlantic salmon, or both?
This blog is making me smile a lot. I think we have about 4 or 5 of the Best of Bridge cookbooks in our library.
wink: For the Canadian readers ... is that the same Mitsu who sang "Bye Bye Mon Cowboy"??
DA
Daddy-A:
The salmon I used was from the Atlantic.
Have you used many of the recipes from the best of Bridge cookbooks?
I don't think our Mitsu is the "Mon Cowboy" Mitsu.
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TUESDAY NIGHT SUPPER WITH THE WHOLE FAMILY:
Supper was devoured and the family, with appetite repleted, headed back to my brother's house for the night. The dishwasher is slaving on the first load, and I can sit back with a final cup of coffee. Going back over the menu posted earlier:
I took the shoulder of lamb out of the marinate, coated it with whole grain dijon mustard and crushed mixed peppercorns. At 4:30, I started the roast with the oven at 400F for half an hour. Then I poured the reserved marinate over the lamb, covered it with foil and reduced the heat to 300F. until 6 o'clock. The garlic bread went into the oven while the lamb rested under foil.
While waiting for supper, everyone munched on the summer rolls I had made in the afternoon with Chinese mushrooms, bean sprouts, bean thread, carrots, cilantro, and shrimp.
The new potatoes and baby carrots were cooked and buttered. One of the nieces tossed the salad with raspberry vinegrette and put toasted whole pecans in a side dish for those who want them. I stir-fried the zucchini and mushrooms and scattered sesame seeds on top.
The 20 eight oz. bison steaks were put onto the BBQ over medium flame until rare. (See, we all love to eat!) China had set the table, nephew-in-law Paul sliced HIS lamb and garlic bread, and the girls put the rest of the food on the table.
The bison was excellent, very tender. There was a subtle difference in taste from beef. These animals were free-range grass-fed on an organic farm. The lamb was so good! Even those who don't usually like lamb tried some. It had a mild lamb flavour, perhaps because of the peppercorn crust. I made a mint sauce with fresh leaves.
We made short work of a couple bottles of Chilean merlot with supper.
Dessert was chocolate cappuccino mud pies that I made last week. They were well hidden in the freezer, away from hubby's grasp. I again relied on my Best of Bridge series for this "guaranteed to please" recipe. The crust was chocolate wafer crumbs, layered with cappuccino ice-cream, chocolate sauce and whipped cream. My camera was no match for the speed of the server!
We always enjoy fruit after a meal, and tonight, it was fresh strawberries picked by one of the nieces enroute from Winnipeg. Maybe because of the cooler season this year, the berries were smaller than usual, but very sweet and fragrant. They were great dipped into the extra whipped cream.
My sister and her family will leave early in the morning on a shuttle to the Winnipeg International Airport for their flight home. The families from Winnipeg are all headed home now, for work tomorrow morning.
One of the packages from Burnaby contained century egg cakes (pai dan so). I am so full, but . . . I can't resist!
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Hi,
I have a question about "silkened" chicken. You've mentioned it a couple of times. Do you mean coating the chicken pieces in a cornstarch solution just prior to cooking????
Thanks!
I believe simply cornstarch is used instead of a cornstarch solution.
Whenever I silken meat, of any kind, I first season, then add acouple tablespoons of cornstarch and vegetable oil. This is "worked" together and allowed to rest until needed.
I always season first, because once the oil and cornstarch is added, the seasoning won't penetrate the meat.
Hope that helps.
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Foodblog Day 6 continues:
Joshua's cake turned out pretty well. His dad came to pick it up as we left for breakfast.
Buttermilk waffles was a good choice for a chilly summer morning. This was a recipe I clipped out of the Winnipeg Tribune. It was one of the two Winnipeg dailies for many years. The paper no longer exists, but we appreciated the WT as they did a number of features on us in their colour weekend magazine.
My sister-in-law Rebecca, a terrific cook, prepared a huge fruit platter. This was perfect to tie everyone over until I cooked enough waffles for a first go-around. One of my nieces brought Starbuck coffee beans with her. The aroma in the kitchen was incredible . . . The bacon, pre-cooked on the George Forman grill, crisped up nicely in the oven.
Another niece brought BBQ ducks from Chinatown in Winnipeg. Bill and I stole a container when we came home to prepare supper. We finished a small plate of ho fun cooked with oyster sauce. The duck provided Bill with his required protein
Atticus' patient drooling beside hubby was finally rewarded with a few ho fun noodles.
SUPPER MENU
Food and cookbooks are but two of my passions. My other "collections" are teapots and roosters. I posted tonight's menu to forewarn incoming guests. A pride of lions guard my lair until opening time!
Bison New York strips are for the BBQ tonight. I will have some with just 4 peppercorn steak spice, and some with a light brushing of Bull's Eye Hot Southern Cajun sauce. My Burnaby niece's hubby, Paul, loves lamb, but no one else in their family likes it. So, to keep him happy, I have a rolled boneless lamb shoulder marinating in crushed peppercorns, red wine vinegar, chopped mint, rosemary, and garlic. It will go into the oven. The heat will be welcomed, especially with me running out for the BBQ!
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Foodblog Day 6
It’s 7 a.m. and temperature of 6 degrees C this morning, cloudy and windy. What happened to summer? My sister will be looking forward to the 17C in Burnaby.
China is off to work at her regular summer employment at the hospital. Grabbed toast and her lunch of sun-dried tomato wrap with chicken, fresh watercress, orange pepper julienne, a chocolate cupcake, grapes, and Edam cheese. We’re going to ease up on her this week. ;-) This is the joke between us: many parents have to push their kids to work. China (pronouncedChEEna) set the schedule up herself. Her career goal is medicine, so she wants to see if she can handle the gruelling routine of “resident life”. She watches way too much reality TV.
Her schedule last weekend: Thurs. 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. at the hospital, midnight to 8 a.m. at group home where she “may” catch scattered bits of a nap. Friday morn, back to the hospital from 10a.m. - 6p.m. shift, grabbed supper then volunteer with St. John at the folk festival until 11:45 p.m., to the group home for the midnight to 8 shift. She actually got about 3 hours of sleep at home Sat. morning, until lunch and rehearsals with her harp and her brother. We performed at 5 p.m., she changed clothes and was back at the St. John Ambulance tent until her midnight to 8 shift at the group home. Hooray! She was able to sleep Sunday from 9 a.m. until 3 p.m, then back to the festival by 5. As the group home was short staffed, she took on another midnight to 6:45 shift before this morning's 7a.m. to 3 shift.
No festival gig this weekend, but she is now pratising her repetorie for a wedding this Sturday.
Although she can cook, she is probably the only 18 year old whose mom still packs her lunch. LOL!
For me this morning, I have to finish decorating the Spider-Man cake. Later, I am taking my trusty old stove-top waffle iron to my brother’s house. Breakfast will be my buttermilk waffles, maple syrup, bacon. My sister-in-law will supply a fresh fruit platter and coffee. Saw a tip somewhere that suggested using my George Forman grill to do a whole pound of bacon at one time. I tried that, and it worked great! Now, I just have to crisp the strips up in the oven when the waffles are ready.
9 a.m. The cake is decorated. I am heading off to cook breakfast.
Ben, I am a yinyin. Our older son, Ja-On, was also at the folk festival. He plays sax. Couldn't get him to perform on the weekend as he just started his new massage therapy biz in Brandon, so he was prmoting.
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Dejah,
I'm just catching up on this thread from the weekend and was knocked out by how wonderful the dim sum looked!
One question: your bao's look incredible! Could you please post your dough recipe? Mine don't turn out nearly as well...instead of white, light and fluffy, my baos turn out grey and doughy
Thank you!
Fred12fred et al:
I will post requested recipes after I finish my week of blogging . . . this Wednesday.
Thanks for all the compliments and feedback. It's very much appreciated by this newbie.
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Monday, Day 5
The carrot cake in mauve icing and coffee was a big surprise for Anita. She always remembered our birthdays, but hers is during summer break when she is alone at the office. So, it was pay back time.
Mauve is Anita's favorite colour.
Arrived home before lunch, just enough time to bake a sour cream chocolate cake from scratch. This is a Spider-Man cake for our neighbor's son Joshua's 6th birthday party tomorrow. Our grandson and he are Game Boy buddies.
For lunch, Bill requested one of his favourite dishes, an omelette with leftover rice mixed in the eggs. I made a cheese sauce to ladle over it after it is cooked. I was craving vegetables, so it was "clean out the vegetable cooler" omelette for me. There was zucchini, mushrooms, half a banana pepper, orange pepper, asparagus, bean sprouts. I put slices of cheddar on one half of the omelette then folded the other half over it. Man! It was good.
That piece of birthday cake and lunch knocked me out. I had a nap on the couch before picking China up from work at 3. Stopped in at Superstore and picked up some chicken breasts for supper, Gold Fish crackers for China's snacks, and a big Caribbean red papaya for us.
For supper, we had curry chicken with onions and banana peppers. I silkened the chicken, then just stir-fried it with Chinese curry powder and dried chili peppers. For vegetables, we had a medley of lotus root, wood ear, baby corn, asparagus, bell peppers, pea pods, fresh ginger and garlic, topped with shrimp. Soup du jour was simple watercress in pork broth. We had our usual jasmine rice.
The chocolate cake turned out level! Covered it with white butter cream icing. I made up a batch of royal icing, tinted up different portions in red, blue, black, green, yellow. (Joshua coloured one of his favourite pictures for me to copy onto his cake.) China and I made the Spider-Man and Doctor Octopus topping on wax paper tonight. It needs to harden before we can transfer it to the cake.
Tomorrow, we are hosting my sister, her family, my Mom, my brother and his family for breakfast and supper. My sister and her crew will be flying back to Burnaby the next day. We'll be BBQing bison steaks for supper.
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Dejah,
c'mon, tell us the truth. You have successfully created clones of yourself. That's how you managed to rehearse and perform in a band, prepare all that magnificent food and post pictures to this blog, be a chauffeur, a mother, and the zillion other things that we all have to do. Amazing!
The food looks marvellous (yes, it does bear repeating
) I would like to use your picture of the dim sum items and jook for my desktop. Do you have a larger image that you are willing to share?Ummm, you found me out. I have a vat that clones me whenever I need extra hands.
Also, I have all the little old Chinese aunties from the city and my Mom locked up in the backroom. I just slip my orders through a little window.
I am lucky at the moment...freedom from teaching duties until Sept. 7! Yay!!!
The pictures I have been using have all been cropped. What size do you need? You are talking about the cooked dim sum picture? I would be happy to send that to you. . . the picture, that is!
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"Jahm" means chop. In Mandarin, it's 斩 [Zhan3].
This reminds me of one of the more repeatable phrases my cooks used to use all the time:
Jahm ah nai gaw taow!
CUT YOUR HEAD OFF!
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. To get the Cantonese consistency, my mom always taught me to "wash" the rice with coarse salt and oil. good luck experimenting.
Hi,
This is my first post and I love this thread. I am addicted to the Cantonese version of
Chicken and Ginger Congee, but mine never comes close. I use the crock pot and have taken Trillium's suggestion about adding the glutoneous rice flower disolve in water
and stirred in at the end. It still does not have the same mouth feel.
I read the comment about " washing" the rice in salt and oil and would like too know if anyone can describe the procedure Any other suggestions? Thanks,
Ok, I cook congee quite often for brunch and usually with chicken and ginger. But, what IS this Cantonese version?
Is it supposed to be thin? Thick? Rice still in granular form? Like gruel?
Aiyeeeah!
I like mine with substance!
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By the way, not to sidetrack the thread (we could discuss this further in another thread, if people are really interested), but lunch is "lunch" where I come from. Somehow, I think there's been a previous thread about which meal is called "dinner," but I wouldn't be too sure how to search for it.
My mind is a bit clearer this morning, inspite of the rain.
Hubby reminded me that I needed to make a correction about the "lunch or dinner" comment made in an earlier post ( posted August 8th)
What I meant to say was: the meal at around noon is lunch. But the evening meal may be called dinner, as perhaps in the U.S. and supper for those raised on the prairies. In England, called "tea"?
To make it more confusing, Bill said when he was growing up, the big meal was at noon, for the farmhands, so it was breakfast, dinner, supper.
To me, food is food! I'll eat anytime.
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awwww, Ben, thanks for the compliments.
We are proud of our kids.
And, you know what!? They can all cook!
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It's a "Moody Manitoba Morning" . . . more rain today.
Transferred my daughter from her midnight shift to her day shift at the hospital. She ate 2 pieces of whole wheat toast with blackberry jam enroute. (7 a.m. yawn . . . )
Had my first cup of coffee while waiting for the icing from the fridge to warm up.
Made simple decorations with the mauve icing.
I need to plan my "writing" better before putting it on the cake! But, Anita will understand when I tell her I baked the cake at 11 p.m. and decorated her cake at 7 a.m.
I'll post a picture after the colour intensifes.
The licks of cream cheese icing will qualify for breakfast . . . until cake time at 10 a.m.
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DAY 4 ~ SUNDAY
The family finally all got up around 10 a.m. I still had a few biscuits left in the fridge, so I made my version of egg McMuffins for brunch! Some of us slathered salsa on the eggs, just to give us a kick start before the show. A juicy peach made the brunch complete.
On our way to the festival, thunder roared across the city, and it poured as we humped our equipment to the stage. Luckily, our first performance was an entertainers' workshop under the big top: "Partners in Music." One of the questions posed was "When do you rehearse?" My answer, of course, was "while I am wokking" ;-) Over the years, Bill and I learned a lot of songs while I cooked.
During the afternoon break, we came home for lunch. Son Robin, our bass player, was home from his I.T. job, an eight-hour drive from Brandon. One of his favourite foods is Shanghai noodles, with a twist. I cooked the noodles with smashed fermented black beans, garlic, Habanero peppers, chopped mint, BBQ pork, and deep-fried julienned wonton skins. These are SO GOOD!
Spent the rest of the evening back at the festival. Supper was from Morden Munchies truck, a familiar sight at many outdoor functions in Manitoba. I had a smokie dog, and shared a family sized tub of chips. The grease was hard to resist.
Dessert was a single scoop of cookies 'n' cream ice-cream, a dish of apple crisp from the entertainers' tent, and many cups of coffee.
A few pictures from our evening show:
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Dejah is so busy this weekend, let me play as her assistant for a minute.
Those shown in the pictures are Gluten rice in lotus leaves, not joong (which is gluten rice and mung beans and lap cheung etc. wrapped in bamboo leaves). They taste similar but different.
hzrt: Thanks for the help! Mucho appreciated.
In the lunch photo, it was, indeed, sticky rice in lotus leaf. These ones had lap cheung, Chinese mushrooms and peanuts. suzilightning probably saw the joong from Friday's lunch.
I should have left the deep-fried wheat flour cruellers (Thanks Ben! I couldn't remember what you called them before.
) in their original length. They are about 12 to 14 inches long. Would have been less confusing. I cut them so they'd fit into the soup bowls. They are a little crunchy, a little chewy, and a lot of bad cholestrol . . . Can't have jook without them!suzilightning: I'll trade you joong for brownies . . . I can't make these and I love them.
"never heard of shoji tabuchi? he is one of the most amazing fiddle players i have ever had a chance to hear...." This guy is incredible. I have seen him on TV, from Branson. Mitsu, our banjo player loves sui mai. I wonder if Shoji likes dim sum?
Ben, I hope you are musical. My guests always have to "sing" for their supper.
jackl10 "What are electric bagpipes?? " Are you a piper? This is indeed a chanter with a microphone and electronic drones. I'll post a picture once we get them downloaded.
BTW, it is nearly midnight. We got home from the festival around 10. I have a carrot cake in the oven for a bday party tomorrow at 10 a.m. The cream cheese icing is made, and some of it coloured mauve - our Ad. Assistant's favorite colour.
Daddy-A : The aforementioned carrot cake is another recipe from Best of Bridge. It's called Karrot's Cake . . . it's one of my most requested cakes. Of course you'll get a photo of it tomorrow!
I will have today's menu up soon. Just waiting for the photos.
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Daddy-A et al:
Will answer your queries, post recipes, etc once this day is over
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It’s Sunday morning . . . thunder is rolling overhead, and rain. I can see a bit of blue to the south, so maybe it will be clear by the time the festival opens at noon. We are on stage at 1 p.m.
I’m going to backtrack a little and catch up on Saturday’s (yesterday) lunch, or dinner to the U.S. readers.
Dim sum was the order of the day. Ran out of time last night due to rehearsals, etc, so I knocked up the har gow and sui mai in the morning.
Pulled the sticky rice, beef meatballs, and baos from the freezer. I started the jook (congee) before I had my breakfast: a cupful of rice, slices of ginger, and lots of fresh chicken neck bones and backs. The necks give the best flavour, and the bits of meat works all through the congee. As my family doesn’t like watery jook, I silkened thinly sliced chicken breast and added it just before serving.
The beef balls were steamed for 20 minutes. They still had that pink tinge inside. This came up in the China and Chinese cuisine before:
Why do the meatballs stay pink no matter how long they are steamed!?
Jo-mel thought maybe the cilantro was the culprit. I liked cilantro A LOT, so it got to stay ;-) The meatballs were bouncy and chewy, as dim sum meatballs should be. Kept these warm in the oven while the har gow and sui mai were steaming. I zapped the already steamed baos and sticky rice in the microwave.
Hubby picked up the wrong gage strings last night. This is what happens when you try to find the “freshest” from the back of the rack
While downtown, he picked up “deep fried devils”, Chinese long donuts, yow tieu? for the congee. I really appreciate the Real Canadian Superstore for carrying this item. Now, if they’d just bring back the egg custard tarts!
Drank pots of Oolong tea with lunch. One of my Taiwanese student’s family is in the tea business. He gave me a gift when he returned home.His last words were “Anytime, Teacher, you need tea, e-mail me”!
The whole band was here now, so it was “going over the song list” once more. China-Li was trying to keep her harp in tune. High humidity plays havoc with her strings. Then it was: I need a new 9-volt battery for my electronic bagpipes! Scramble, scramble through a multitude of drawers . . . At the end of the session, Adrenolin was pumping and we headed off to the fair grounds, where the festival was held.
Our show was titled “A Folk Odyssey” . . . Celtic, Canadian folk and cowboy songs, Aboriginal, Appalachian, bluegrass, blues to gospel . . . as mixed up as some of my cooking!
Supper was in the performers hospitality tent. I didn’t need to cook for the first time this week! There were BBQ burgers, hot dogs, vegetarian items that I didn’t get to, trays of fresh vegetables and dip, fruit, a huge tray of apple crisp, various cakes and cookies, coffee, tea, etc. My camera was already filled with pictures, so no pictures of the food here.
The festival ended shortly after midnight. China was volunteering with the St. John’s Ambulance First Aid Brigade until midnight, and then she dropped me off and headed for her midnight to 8 a.m. shift as an attendant in a group home. I crashed. The guys went to an after-show bonfire at a country home.
They are still in bed, so breakfast will be brunch before heading out for our 2nd show at 1 p.m. Bill and I are on stage with two other couples. It’s a workshop, Musical Partners, Musical Friends. Bill and I will have been partners for 38 years this August 29th.
What’s for supper? Ummmmm…Let me think about that. I DO know that two cakes need to be baked and decorated by tomorrow. One is for my school’s Administrative Assistant’s birthday, and one for the little boy next door.
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Sneaking in another few minutes before leaving for warm-up practise, at drummer's house today.
Jake:
Mitsu is quite unusual . . . plays a mean five strings and sings too!
He also brought his congas and various percussion instruments. We've jammed several times but he is not a full time member of our family band.Daughter is just going over her pieces with her brother on the Celtic drum (bohran). He drove in from Red Lake, Ontario late last night to make the gig. (8 hour drive)
I am trying to put the kitchen back to order before I leave
Breakfast was quick this morning. Grabbed acouple slices of toast, smothered with crunchy peanut butter and a marvelous marmalade. The marmalade was from an elderly friend, a war bride from England. The recipe has been in her family for years. I haven't made any but if anyone is interested, I will post the recipe later.
Lunch was various dim sum items and silkened chicken congee.
Will add details perhaps after our show this evening.
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What is Cantonese for 'please, don't slice'?? Can someone help?
As Dejah said -- getting it home is a problem! The first to go are the charred tips. The same as when I make it myself --- those burned edges are addicting!
jo-mel:
You can say " Siang tiu" which means in one piece...
or " mm ho tsee" don't cut!
When I buy crispy pork (siu jook) it is really hard to keep all hands off the crispy parts!
Dejah's foodblogging this week!
in China: Cooking & Baking
Posted
Thanks you, Betty. It was a lot of fun. Now that the family has left, I need to go on a diet...