Dejah
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Apologies for no-show posts from last night. Have pics but need text.
Schedule's a bit cramped at the moment . . . doing interpretor job via 3 way phone with
American company this morning, as well as trying to get stuff ready for lunch . . . as well as rehearsing with daughter and the gang. Will catch up when I get a "clear window" later.
Sorry
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Dejah, would you care to share your wonton-stuffing recipe?
Jason,
Here's the recipe I used when I had the restaurant. Now, I make up five lbs each time, and portion it into Ziplock freezer bags. I pat each bag of meat flat so it is thin and will thaw quickly.
I order the ground pork from a local butcher who was my supplier. The pork has 15% fat content. The shrimp and waterchestnuts used to be hand-chopped with 2 cleavers. My son was a whiz at that. It was my daughter's job to get her hands into the tub of cold meat and fixings and get it all mixed up thoroughly. She's quite happy to have lost that job.
40 lbs. lean ground pork, one commercial size can of sliced waterchestnuts, 5 lb box of small shelled and deveined uncooked shrimp.
Seasoning: Using a Chinese porcelain soup spoon:
7 spoons of sugar, 10 spoons of salt (same for MSG option), 2 spoons white ground pepper, 7 spoons EACH of oyster sauce, sesame oil, soya sauce for colour, 1/4 cup veg. oil, about 1/2 cup of cold water. Work the mixture for a few minutes with your hands. This produces a really nice texture and makes sure the seasonings are well distributed. These days I use my KitchenAid with the paddles to do the mixing.
To test the seasoning, put a small ball of meat in a bowl. Add acouple tbsps. of water, cover with platic film and microwave for about 15 seconds. Taste and adjust if needed.
When I make war wonton soup, I sometimes put a small shrimp inside the dollop of meat.
This mixture can also be used for sui mai if I don't have time to make plain pork filling. I may add a bit more water and beat it again for a more "elastic" texture ... not sure if that is the right description for the texture.
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Mmm...pie! Do you make your own crust?
Jenny,
Yup, I make my own pie crust,, but I have been known to use frozen shells from the store. I use the old Crisco shortening recipe: 4.5 cups flour (less than what they say), 1 block of Crisco, 3/4 cup ice cold water, 1 tbsp vinegar, one egg beaten and salt.
Jo-mel,
Atticus (Atti, Woofie, Muffin, Snowball) is very polite when it comes to human food. Whenever we are eating, he sits, usually beside Bill as he is easily swayed, waiting patiently. He drools something fierce, and belches until he gets his morsel. You can come and visit anytime, jo-mel. I know you can teach me quite a few things about Chinese cooking!
Phaelon: Thanks for the compliment!
I have a great camera and sidekick to help with the pictures.Ben: I'll guard the rest of the joong until you get here.
Jason: I will post the recipe for my wontons. You might have to scale it down a bit. :
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Day 2: Here we go again!
Slept through a refreshing early morning rain, which hasn't stopped! Good thing we are performing at the Folk Festival on Saturday and Sunday and not today. While my coffee was brewing, I drove downtown to pick up China-Li, our daughter, from one of her three medicine-related summer jobs. She worked from midnight to 8 this morning.
As it was still raining, we demolished the last couple of pieces of banana cream pie for breakfast. Took a bit of time to check out and respond to the queries regarding yesterday's lunch entry. Packed China her "crunchy lunch" of chicken and greens sandwich, fresh cauliflower, celery sticks, sweet pepper, and Babybel cheese. For dessert, there's a leftover biscuit from last night with mixed berry jam and grapes. She then left for her day job at the city hospital. Bill and I processed the pictures and posted yesterday's supper log.
It's now mid-afternoon. I have ground beef marinating for tomorrow's dim sum meat balls. The fresh Shanghai noodles are cooked and cooling. By now, we were in need of sustanence. No time to cook for lunch, so I pulled some frozen joong (sticky rice in bamboo leaves) from the freezer. My Mom and I made 200 of these packets this summer.
http://www.angelfire.com/trek/erbmuseum/soos/
Bill and I devoured one each, along with some Dragon tea.This tea was brought back from China by a friend who went on a qi-gong tour. It was light and went well with the savory joong and chili oil.
Hubby is itching to go buy new guitar strings and check in at the festival for our passes. So, I'd better get the pictures done up and post this!
Now, onto preparing shrimp dumplings, BBQ pork bao, sui mai, curry chicken in puff pastry.
For supper tonight, we are having lemongrass/cilantro/lime salmon, and something else . . .
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What a challenging task! I am the blogger for the week, started yesterday, running until next Wed.
Take a peek ... in General Food Topics
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Most of the busier restaurants/bbq places have such a high turnover rate, the meat that is hung in the front windows probably gets sold a couple of hours after coming out of the oven. Tell me, how long has your brown bag lunch been packed before it is eaten?
We have to drive 2.5 hours to Winnipeg to buy our BBQ duck, sui yook, etc. Even tho' we keep everything in a cooler, the smell gets thru' to the nostrils. Do you think we'd leave it untouched until we get home! That's why we keep WetOnes in the car.
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Day One continued . . .
I needed a nap after my wonton soup but Dejah's kitchen had hungry family to feed for supper.
Most of my postings in Egullet have been in the China and Chinese Cuisine Forum. As mentioned in one of the threads, I am a lo wah kiu . . a Chinese immigrant who's been here a long time. Our family's involvement with food began with my paternal grandfather, who worked as a cook (on the CPR railroad crew). Later, working as the cook for the first water commissioner of Winnipeg (Manitoba's capital city), he saved enough money to buy himself a little hotel and restaurant in the small village of Newdale. My dad joined him from China when he was 16 years old. They didn't serve any Chinese food at that time . . . just good hearty prairie fare, translated to mean meat and potatoes!
Newdale was well known by many avid duck hunters . . . especially our American neighbours to the south. Clark Gable was said to have been a frequent visitor. During hunting season, Dad always had a big pot of stew, made with beef short ribs, big chunks of vegetables and buttermilk biscuits. It remains one of our favorite comfort foods.
So, as requested by my sister, who doesn't do much Canadian cooking, I spent my afternoon cooking stew, biscuits, and another of my Dad's signature dishes -- home-made banana cream pie.
For the stew, I used beef short ribs and brisket point. Stew never seems to taste as good without the fat and the bones. The meat is seasoned with salt, pepper and flour, then browned in my stew pot. While the meat waited patiently in a pan, I browned chunks of onion, celery and carrots in all that gooey stuff on the bottom. The meat went back into the pot, with enough beef stock (made from leftover roast beef, au jus, and rib bones) to cover. To this, I threw in bay leaves, 4-peppercorn steak spice, and about 1/4 cup of Italian herb blend. Brought this to a boil for about half an hour, then transferred everything to my big trusty old stainless steel roaster. This concoction "stewed" in the oven at about 300F for acouple hours. About 45 minutes before supper, I added new potatoes, more carrots and celery. It went back into the oven, without the cover.
While waiting for the stew, I mixed up 3 batches of the buttermilk biscuit recipe. Once the roaster came out, I popped in 12 biscuits at a time. They were ready by the time everyone (14 adults 3 kiddies) came to the table. We're not really knowledgeable about wines, but we did have acouple bottles of Australian Wolf Blass Pinot Noir which went well with the stew.
Oh, we also had peaches and cream corn on the cob. The West-Coasties liked their corn with lime juice and crushed peppers!
Even Atticus, our Great Pyrenees dog, got into the act. Someone slipped him a verboten cob of corn -- he never turns down "human food." Any under-the-table contraband is a welcome change from his usual Pedigree "rice and lamb" pellets for sensitive stomachs.
Also made banana cream pies in the afternoon. I was supposed to hand whip the cream like Dad did, but my Kitchen Aid insisted on helping.
Hubby then dashed off for rehearsal with a Christian rock band, getting ready for Faith Festival on September long weekend. Knowing his religious inclinations, it must be his musical talent that prompted them to select him as lead guitarist for the gig.
Tomorrow's schedule will be making dim sum and food for Saturday's crew. My head is spinning!
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Good Morning!
Thanks for all the encouraging comments
. Damn nervous about doing this blog after reading the incredible ones that went before.Just getting last night's supper entry to post. I got home too late from chauffering duties to process pictures.
To answer a couple questions first:
Johnnyd and Laska:
"Is that a dollop of chilli/sambal on top of the wontons? I can't tell but those look like fresh noodles? Store-bought or home-made? Shrimp egg noodles? I'm unfamiliar with those."
That dollop is a mah la oil I made, crushed chili peppers, veg oil, garlic and shallots. One of my Vietnamess friends showed me how. It packs a wallop
The noodles are store bought, at our local Superstore. Saves a lot of time, and really quite good.
For the Soo's archived link, we used a Sony Mavica. It has since died. I am using a
h/p 5.3MP now. My hubby Bill is the whiz on the computer. He processes and trims down the pictures for me. For that, he gets fed well
What else but Tim Horton's would you drink in a rural hockey city?
My grandson love TimBits...I love their honey cruellers.
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FOOD! GLORIOUS FOOD!
The word "BLOG" is a familiar one in our house. My hubby Bill, is a prof. in the Faculty of Education, and "blogging" is one of the requirements for his Communications and Computer technology courses. But, I have never been involved in blogs until this invitation...and this sounds much tastier! Thanks for the opportunity.
Life is much more relaxed now that we have retired from the restaurant biz.
http://home.westman.wave.ca/~hillmans/soosera.html
Since 2002, I have been teaching half time at our university in the EAP program with international students. This leaves me the rest of the day to cook . . . what else?
Brandon is a rural city of 44,000. Dining out does not include gourmet meals, tasting menus, etc. Until I found Egullet, a tasting menu was a 9 or 11 course Chinese banquet, complete with a 26 oz. bottle of Crown Royal ;-) My cooking these days involve learning traditional family recipes from my 95-year-old mother, pulling out old recipes from pre-Soo's Restaurant days, and trying out ideas from Egullet and my overflowing collection of cookbooks.
This week will be a hectic one for blogging. My sister and family are visiting from Burnaby, B.C. so lots of food will be involved. On top of that, hubby, our kids and myself are performing Saturday and Sunday at the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Brandon Folk Music & Crafts Festival. We will have out of town musical guests . . . so more food! Good thing I am on summer vacation this month.
DAY ONE
I love my mornings. When university is in session, I am up at 5 a.m. so I could do my prep. while the house is quiet. These days, I can sleep in until 6 a.m. I take our daughter to work at her summer job at the hospital, then I get to relax with my breakfast and 2nd cup of coffee.
Today, I sat out on the deck with a cup of Tim Horton's brew-at-home with Coffee Rich creamer, 2 slices of toast with my home made peach/apricot/pineapple conserve. I love this stuff on toast, ice cream or just by itself as a snack. The recipe is one handed down by hubby's Nana Campbell. She even used bits of apricot pits in her recipe! It added a touch of crunchy bitterness to the sweet and tang of the fruit, but not enough arsenic to topple us.
For lunch, my daughter packed a roll-up made with whole wheat tortillia, poached chicken breast, a handful of spring greens with raspberry vinegrette, shredded carrot and juilenne cukes. At home, we had wonton soup with shrimp egg noodles, Shanghai bok choy, shrimp and lap cheung.
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Wife's Cake picture and description:
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Wife's cake is sweetened wintermelon paste encased in a flakey layered pastry, like the ones on pai dan so.
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Can someone tell me the difference between black beans and black bean sauce? Is black bean sauce supposed to be rinsed? I know it is very salty and I've frequently used it then not liked the resulting dish because of that.
Black bean sauce is fermented black beans, mashed and blended with soya sauce. I find it too salty, and don't care for the flavour. I prefer to mash my own soaked and rinsed dried black beans...or blend my own "sauce" with water.
Black beans in the prepared sauces are too fine to be rinsed.
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I use a recipe from About.com as a base.
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I had Pai Dan Gow for late night snack.
Should it be "Pai Dan So"? "So" means crispy skin (made of flour and butter mostly). "Gow" means cake usually. I am familiar with Pai Dan So. What does Pai Dan Gow taste like?
hzrt8w: You are correct. Pai dan so...of course!
Should I have another piece for dessert right now?
or Wife's cake? -
Last night, (because I couldn't wait until today!) I had Wife's Cake and Pai Dan Gow for late night snack.
My neice arrived from Burnaby laddened with boxes of pastries from Kam Do Restaurant and Bakery Ltd. of Richmond, B.C.
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I usually brown any meat that goes into braised/stewed dishes first...adds nice flavour and a bit of "browning".
I do this when I made a large casserol of black bean garlic spareribs. Once the ribs are browned, I drain off the excess fat. The smashed garlic and ginger is cooked first, then add the black beans before returning the ribs to the pot. To this, I add pork stock to cover, and some black beans that I previously blended with some water. This really adds to the flavour and colour without adding soya sauce.
I boil this mixture for about 20 minutes, then thicken with a half cornstarch and half flour slurry. This prevents the sauce from breaking down when you do the next step.
The whole lot is poured into a cast iron casserol dish. Put the lid on, into the oven at 350F for an hour. When ready, the meat is full of flavour, tender and ready to put over large mounds of fluffy rice...LOTS of rice!
I agree with Ben about the hot wok/cold oil method. This is especially true if you rinse your wok between ingredients. This ensures there is no moisture left on your wok...so no surprise splatters when you add the oil.
Mom said that if you salt your oil before the ingredients, this will also prevent splatters, especially if you are adding freshly washed and drained vegetables.
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Dejah, perhaps you are right. But I always thought that they were one and the same. Gou gi leaves with pork liver soup, was a regular summer treat when mother was alive.
Gou qi soup is like rhubarb...the first treats from the garden for me.
Gou qi is a perennial. Before guy choi, spinach, melons, etc is ready for soup, gou qi is.
It always helps when the older "aunties" in the city bring you bags of the leaves, cleaned and ready to use.
Gou qi zi is also the last soup harevst from the garden.
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I like my watermelon au naturel as well. My older relatives seem to like salt to "enhance the sweetness" of the melon.
Anyone know how to cook the white part of watermelon rinds?
I remember eating it but can't remember how or with what it was cooked ?
I love Chinese pomelo rind (goo look pei) that had been soaking in soya sauce...
thinly sliced and steamed on top of pork.
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I know what I will be snacking on tonight...gai jai bang...those little chewy cookie things with nam yu in the middle. My sister just came in from Burnaby, B.C. with a suitcase full of goodies. I have beside me, nam yu peanuts, candied ginger and of course the cookies mentioned above.
She also brought me lots of dried goods, for making soups. I have just found out what one of the items I use all the time is called in English. At least, this is what is written on the package " fragrant solomonseal rhizome". Also, I got lotus nuts, Chinese almonds, shittake mushrooms, and several other soup ingredients.
Back to the topic on hand...midnight snacks: I love having leftover soup or vegetables from supper as my midnight snack.
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The berries add a sweet undertone to a lot of broth based soups. What's better is soups made with the tender leaves of the wolfberry plant.
I have a gou qi zi shrub in my garden and it is always loaded with plump red berries by
late summer. Used to pick them and air dry for later use in soups, but mostly, I like to make soup with freshly picked berries, with a clear pork broth.
My daughter likes to eat them fresh off the bush.
If you air dry the fresh berries, they will stay red. You must pick them WITH the stem intact.
I didn't know that you can use the leaves from the gou qi zi shrub for soup.
There is one kind where I use the leaves for soup, just called gou qi. The leaves on the qi zi bush are longer and more slender. The soup gou qi are more rounded. I cut the individual stalks, run my hand in the opposite direction the leaves grow, then stick the stalks back into the ground for next year. These have never developed into bushes.
I love the soup with salted egg swirled in it... gou gai dan fa tong!
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Bitter after taste with a lingering sweetness - really refreshing in the summer.
Funny how the bitterness can be refreshing. I find that whenever I make soup with bitter melon...Bitter followed by a cool and refreshing sensation.
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lap cheung bao!
This always works when I run out of char sui
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I enjoy the grass jelly drink, but hate the struggle to get the" last chunk"from the can...
One of my Chinese students brought grass jelly to a potluck supper. It was cut into chunks and swimming in a mixture of diluted sweet condensed milk. I prefer it ice cold in a light sugar syrup.
仙草 I believe the second character is "grass"?
There is another "jelly" that I love...called agar agar. Can't remember for the life of me, at this moment, what it is called in Chinese. It is like Jello, except it is clear, and often has egg swirled in it with sesame sprinkled on top.
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My wife washes and soaks the bamboo leaves but she doesn't boil them, and they seem to be supple enough.
Gary,
I'll take your wife's advice on that! That would save me acouple hours of work.
Just don't tell my Mom.
We were at an 11 course Chinese wedding banquet last night. The final dish before dessert was fried rice in lotus leave. The leave was mainly for presentation. The fried rice had egg cooked in the rice, Chinese mushrooms, peas. It was then wrapped in a large leave and cut on top to look like a lotus flower.
eG Foodblog: Dejah - Dejah of the Canadian Prairies
in Food Traditions & Culture
Posted · Edited by Dejah (log)
Well, supper was a bit of a rush as rehearsal for tomorrow's show was called for 8 p.m. Good thing I had the salmon with all the fixings preped and waiting in the fridge. I tend to forget time when I am making stuff
Instead of our usual jasmin rice, I cooked basmati, and steamed some asparagus. To prevent the banana leaf from burning, I placed the salmon bundles on top of foil on the BBQ. Thirty minutes over medium flame, it was ready to eat! I just drizzled melted butter on the asparagus and added a sprinkle of coarse salt. Diet Sprite worked well with fish
Didn't get as much done as I wanted 'cos the phone kept ringing! I do have a cookie sheet full of beef meatballs. Made some sweet 'n' sour chicken drumettes from a Canadian cookbook series called Best of Bridge. I already had sticky rice in lotus leaf and bao in the freezer. Perhaps with some congee, this will suffice for lunch tomorrow.
Got home about half an hour ago. Having acouple of homemade old fashioned oatmeal, pecan and cranberry cookies with a glass of milk while we wait for our Japanese five-string bluegrass banjo player, Mitsu, to arrive. Will probably run over his feature numbers before heading off to bed.
Daughter China will be playing Celtic harp and electronic bagpipes on the show. Guess we'll go over her slections when she gets home from her midnight to 8 a.m. shift!
Until tomorrow . . .