Asian Sweet Soybean Milk

Like many Asian who are used to the Asian sweet soybean milk, I cannot stomach the American soybean milk.  What worst is most soybeans produced in the U.S. is GMO (Genetically Modified Organism) product.  Anyway, it doesn't matter to me as I don't like the American soybean milk anyway.  I buy my dried soybeans at the Asian grocery store here as it was imported from other Asian countries. I remembered I helped my mom made soybean milk before but I forgot how easy it is to make our own.  Until I saw Noobcook's soybean post.  I was like wow it is very easy to make our own sweet soybean milk at home.

I measured the amount I used to give my readers a guide.  1 cup of dried soybeans made 1 pitcher of soybean milk for me.  I keep it in the refrigerator because I like it cold.  It should be able to keep for a few days in the refrigerator.  If you like to make your own American style soybean milk, just omit the rock sugar.

Pumpkin Cheesecake

 

I wanted to try a pumpkin cheesecake ever since I tried it few years ago.  It was a store bought frozen kind and it was so good, the memory just stick with me.  I actually prefer the duo version where there was part white and part pumpkin cheesecake.  However, it sort of ended out this way.

You can use graham crackers instead of ginger snap cookies if you like.  Omit the nuts if you prefer. 

Look at my crack cheesecake!!!  This was my first cheesecake and it cracked badly.  Note to self, never offer to bring a whole cheesecake for a party or potluck because you never know how it would turn out.  If you have great tips on baking a non-crack cheesecake, feel free to share with this cheesecake amateur here.  :-)

Butter Cookies & Season Greetings!

 
I wanted to bake some cookies for Christmas, something fun to look at for kids and delicious to eat of course.  I wanted a basic butter cookies and I found the recipe at Joy of Baking website.  Then, I just used my figure cookie cutter and started creating.  I enlisted both my girls to help me to decorate as this was the fun part of making Christmas cookies.  Needless to say, both of them were so happy that they got to help.  Edda did the buttons, Evy did the red sprinkles and I drew the eyes and mouth. :-)

This butter cookies were buttery and crispy when you baked until the edges were brown.  If you take it out too early, the cookies would be soft.   They couldn't wait for the cookies to be cool completely before trying.  Got to say, we all loved it and had fun making it!  We loved the fragrant of the butter!

Hereby wishing all my readers a Merry Christmas and a Happy and Safe New Year 2011!!!

Pumpkin Tang Yuan or Pumpkin Glutinous Rice Balls

Happy Solstice or Dong Zhi “冬至节”everyone!  Today is the first day of winter and in tradition, Chinese eat Tang Yuan and reunion meal on this day.  This year I made a pumpkin tang yuan or pumpkin glutinous rice balls.  I used the leftover dough from making the Chinese Pumpkin Sesame Cakes to make this.  I will show some before and after pictures in the next page.

At first I thought of serving it in a thick sweet syrup but later changed my mind and served this in my Red Bean and Black Glutinous Rice Sweet Soup.  Just have to make it sweeter as the tang yuan is plain. 

Steamed Pumpkin Cake (Pumpkin Kuih)

My one pumpkin can help me create so many new dishes.  If you have been following my blog, I have been popping out all sort of pumpkin recipes recently, have you even noticing it?  And it's not over yet, I still have more pumpkin recipes to share.  Just stay tuned!

I love my stir-fry pumpkin with eggs, so yummy delicious and this steamed pumpkin cake, soft and moist and so well seasoned.  It's so great eating it this way, but I also like it pan-fried because I like the crispy crust on the outside before I bite into the softness inside.

I was so happy I created this recipe.  I never thought of making this kuih in the first place but once I found out that the defrosted pumpkin was soft in nature, I had to change my plan.  Since the soften pumpkin contained lots of liquid so I needed a recipe that suitable for this.  Once I planned on making this, I realized that I only had 100g of rice flour, no more and no less, so I had to create a recipe based on 100g of rice flour.  Luckily it turned out so well and delicious.

This recipe is not hard to make at all.  If you try it, feedback to me ya! ;-)

3-2-1 Chicken Chop

Oh man, the way I crisscrossed it, it looked more like liver wasn't it?  Luckily the main star in this dish was not the chicken chop but the sauce that I invented.  I saw a Kikkoman commercial on my Chinese cable and it was introducing it's 3-2-1 chicken chop sauce using it's Kikkoman special sauce (I didn't really know what kind of sauce, might be some sort of special soy sauce), sweet rice wine and sugar.  Oh well, I didn't have the Kikkoman sauce neither did I have the sweet rice wine but I do have other sauces at home that I could experiment with.

I thought of Worcestershire sauce and Shao Xing rice wine instead.  Worcestershire sauce had a bit of sour taste to it like vinegar so I thought it would pair well with some rice wine and sugar.  I also added a touch of sesame oil in the end.  This sauce got our stamp of approval, we all loved it.  If you tried it, credit me for my creation and feedback to me ya.  It would go well with pork and steak too.

Stir Fried Crunchy Cabbage

I loved crunchy and sweet cabbage.  I finally found the way after all these years.  I saw it at the Chinese cooking show where the host said never to cut the cabbage but tear it with your fingers.  It will give you a different texture.  But I guess I always took the easier way out, that is to slice it with a knife and thinking that shredded cabbage will cook faster and soften easily.  Not sure why but my shredded cabbage never really gives me the sweetness of the cabbage and the crunch that I looked for.

But now with my new way of handling my cabbage, that is to tear it with my fingers, I found the crunch and the sweetness of the cabbage when stir-frying.  This dish is delicious, you can taste the sweetness of cabbage and the crunchiness.  If you read my recipes, you must have noticed that I have been using quite a lot of fish sauce recently.  I think I found the secret of fish sauce in stir-frying, it really give certain dishes a kick in taste.

Pureed Brown Rice Pumpkin Soup

I am not sure of whether to call this brown rice pumpkin soup or brown rice pumpkin porridge.  I made this for my little girl when she was having diarrhea and vomit since everything went into her mouth, it came right out.  I thought if I pureed the porridge, it would go down easier on her.  But guess what?  She refused to eat it, not even a taste test.  The only thing she would eat was Popsicle and of course she could have as many as she wanted since that was the only thing she would eat and won't throw up.

So, I was the one that finished this soup.  I loved it actually, it was sweet and tasted like brown rice.  Now I know what was the difference between white rice porridge and brown rice porridge.  Brown rice taste really stood out. This is suitable for baby, toddler or older people as it's very nutritious and easy to swallow.

Baked Cheese Shrimps Rice

Baked cheesy rice or cheesy baked rice has been quite popular among the bloggers few months back.  I liked the idea and wanted to try it whenever I have leftover cheese or rice.  My opportunity came when I have some leftover Mozzarella cheese from making the Alfredo Chicken.  I needed to finish the leftover cheese within 5 days and just so happen that I had some leftover brown rice.  So, this dish was created.  I did mine in a healthier way as it was less creamy.  No heavy cream, cream of mushroom soup, sour cream, etc.

I found the rice a bit dry, so you can add some fat free or 1 % fat milk into the rice when you add the cheese and stir together.  Perhaps put a layer of rice, cheese, rice and top with more cheese before baking.  Just bake until the top is slightly brown, do not brown it too much as the cheese will turn hard.  Mine was too brown so I know.

Spicy Chicken with Zucchini

I went to my Asian supermarket 2nd anniversary event recently and they were having food demonstration and tasting on that day.  Even the Lee Kum Kee representatives were there to do a food demonstration and sampling of their product.  They were promoting their oyster sauce, hoisin sauce and premium soy sauce and cooked a chicken dish like above and a fried rice.  Their fried rice were tasteless to me but I fell in love with their chicken dish so of course I had to ask them for the recipe.  I tried to memorize it as best as I can and I think this is the best copy I can come out with.  

I added zucchini and carrot for extra veggie intake.  You can also add onion, bell pepper, pineapple or mango if you like.  This sauce is pretty delicious, you can try it out.

Chinese Pumpkin Sesame Cakes

I saw this Pumpkin Sesame Cakes in a Chinese cooking show recently.  It was a pumpkin recipes special and it featured this and a steamed variety.  For the steamed one, the cooking host shaped the dough into a little pumpkin and then steamed it until cooked.  She served it with some sort of sweet syrup.

I was attracted to this pan-fried version as it looked really tasty.  What's more I am also a big fan of sesame seeds so of course I had to give this recipe a try.  I was also curious of how it would taste like.

I gave it a bite to let you see the texture inside of this cake.  It tasted like nian gao, since it was made of glutinous rice flour I guess.  Slightly chewy and not bad at all.  Mine was not sweet enough, I would prefer it to be sweeter.

Braised Pork with Dried Whole Chestnut and Tofu

I recently made some chicken glutinous rice and needed to add some dried chestnuts.  Since I was going to soften the chestnuts anyway, I thought I just cooked the whole packet and freeze half for later use.  I just defroze the soften chestnuts in the refrigerator overnight for this dish.  I bought this natural dried whole chestnut and thus the color was brown.  Not good looking but tasted the same and healthier since it was not whiten.

This was like a braised soy sauce pork except I added a handful of dried chili peppers (not the bird eye dried chili) for some kick.  Since my girls were eating this, so not much to create a huge kick, just a little that I didn't much notice but my little Edda said the tofu tasted spicy.  Probably because I didn't soften it in warm water first, I just added some to stir-fry with the oil.  Perhaps that was why it was less spicy.  You can certainly add more if you like it spicier.  You can also omit the dried chestnuts or substitute it with Chinese mushroom.

Spiced Pumpkin Walnut Cake

I cannot get enough of this cake, it is soft and moist and left you wanting more.  This is almost like my Best Ever Pumpkin Cake except it's has a little more egg with added walnut and one additional spice.  This cake is smaller and I used a 8-inch square pan to bake it.  I created this when I used 1 cup of the pumpkin puree to make the cookies and left with one more cup of pumpkin puree.  I loved pumpkin cake above all others, more than pie, cookies, soup, etc.  So of course I got to make it into a cake.

If you have canned pumpkin puree at home, give this recipe a try.  I am waiting for the Libby's canned pumpkin puree to go on sale so that I can stock up and make more of this cake.  YUM! YUM!  Oh yeah, need to buy more of the chopped walnuts too.

Chinese Almond Cookies

I had some leftover almond that I needed to use up, about 1/3 cup of it.  Just nice that we finished the oatmeal cookies that I made for our snack so I wanted to use the almond to make cookies.  A fool proof recipe that I made before and also must be easy.  So I picked this almond sugi cookies recipe that I made dozen of times and added the chopped almond.

I really loved the extra crunch from the chopped almond and this cookie was very yummy.  So suitable for Chinese New Year too. 

Stir Fried Pumpkin with Eggs

Never did I know that stir-frying pumpkin can be so scrumptious.  I saved some of the pumpkin fresh from a pumpkin that we carved earlier.  I had pumpkin porridge before and I really liked it as it was sweet and filling.  But I know my girls don't really fancy porridge so I thought I would try something different.

I stir fried zucchini with this recipe and we all loved it, so why not try it with pumpkin.  It was my first time cooking a stir-frying pumpkin and it was so yummy.  The fish sauce gave this dish an extra boost.  If you have extra fresh pumpkin at home, give this dish a try!  I took this picture at night, so it did not look very appetizing, but don't be fooled by it's look, this is a dish I will make again and again.

Braised Chicken with Mui Choy

This was actually a remake of a leftover mui choy (preserved veggie).  My hubby ordered a "mui choy gau yook" from a friend and we finished all the "gau yook" (5 layers pork/ fatty pork) and left with lots of mui choy.  It was too salty and the spices were a bit too strong for my taste.  Our friends suggested me to make soup with the mui choy but I thought I would make a chicken dish with it instead.

All I did is chopped some drumsticks, added in a little oil in a pot and gave the mui choy some quick stirs.  Then, added in the chicken, stir a little.  Added in water to cover half of the chicken and a tablespoon of dark soy sauce and let it simmered in low heat for an hour.  Lastly added in a little sugar.  It turned out to be a delicious chicken dish.  What a great use of the leftover mui choy!

Stir fried Spicy Cabbage

I always stir-fry my green cabbage in a non-spicy way.  Stir-frying it in a spicy way never cross my mind until I saw the Chinese cooking show where the chef cooked it with some dried chili.  It gave me the idea of trying something new.  This is a new dish for me and we liked it!  I will certainly make this version more from now on.

I realized that the green cabbage sold in the Asian market is easier to stir-fry than the green cabbage I bought at the American supermarket.  The one at the American supermarket is tougher and harder even after the longer time I spent stir-frying it.  Definitely prefer the texture of the green cabbage I bought at the Asian market, not to say cheaper too.

Stir Fried Ramen

Need a quick meal and yet wanted it to be balance?  I was left with two pieces of chicken strips and I had to make it into a meal that could feed three.  I bought those Maruchan ramen when it went on sales for 10 cents each for stir-frying.  I did not like the seasoning that came with it so I either made my own soup base or save this for stir-frying.  With the protein and carbohydrate readied, all I needed was some vegetable to make it complete.  Just checked the refrigerator for whatever veggie you have and you can cook up this delicious ramen dish in less than 10 minutes.

I'm sharing this noodle with Presto Pasta Nights, an event created by Ruth from Once Upon a Feast.  This week host is Ruth herself! Check out her delicious round up on Friday Nov, 5th! 

Green Tea Pumpkin Seeds

I always wanted to roast some pumpkin seeds.  My opportunity came when I had a bag of pumpkin seeds given by a library event (pumpkin carving) that we went to.  I loved green tea flavor and so automatically I wanted to try green tea flavored roasted pumpkin seeds.  This is definitely good and make a great snack.  Me and my girls all loved it.

Since this was slow roasted for an hour, we can certainly pop the whole thing in the mouth.  It's totally edible with extra fiber and crunch.  You can taste the green tea and salt.  Of course if you choose to just eat the seed, you can do that too. I did that while watching my korean drama.  LOL!

Soft Pumpkin Cookies

What can represent Fall season more than pumpkin?  I just want to make something with pumpkin this time of the year.  I saw this pumpkin cookies recipe on joyofbaking Website and decided to give it a try.  The reason was simple because I never make it before.  This cookie is just like what it stated, soft and cake like in texture.  I certainly would prefer a more chewy one or crispy one.  I used sugar instead of brown sugar as stated in the original recipe, I wonder perhaps it might caused my cookies to be none chewy.  I also omitted the cream cheese frosting.  Anyway, my girls loved it nonetheless so I was glad.  Evy will bring this as her school snack.

As for me, I would love to play and experiment with this recipe some more, as I wanted a crispy pumpkin cookies instead of soft and cake like.  It's like eating a tiny piece of cake on the next day.

Spicy Green Beans with Shrimps

I like this dish and made it quite often.  I don't know if the green bean is in season but the farmer market here has been selling it for 99 cent/ pound.  If I would make this for my family, I would omit the extra chili and since I was making this for adults, I added my chili paste in oil to give it an extra kick.  I only added one teaspoon because I was afraid that it might be too spicy as this new batch of my chili paste in oil was kinda spicy.  I certainly wouldn't want to make it inedible for most because of the heat.

I have a similar recipe here.  Except for this I added some chili paste in oil to make it spicier.  Check it out, super easy to make for the overseas Malaysian who misses this dish.  You can substitute the green bean with asparagus, long bean, okra and eggplant.

 

Evy & Edda Updates 10/10/2010

My Evy at 6.5.  She lost the baby fat on her face and looks slimmer now.  She is considered tall in her class, I think she inherited her daddy's tall gene.  We didn't skip her to 2nd grade so she is at Grade 1 but goes to enrichment class once a week if applicable.  We also signed her up in a Destination Imagination club where she will participate in activities that will challenge her critical thinking, problem solving and presentation skills.  They will get to compete with other schools in COS.

We enrolled her in a Chinese School here.  Now she goes to the Chinese School Grade 1 level every Sunday for two hours.  In this class, she will learn to recognize Chinese characters, read, write, speak and form sentences.  She would received a page of reading material and homework assignment which she would have to learn before class.  I got to say, she did well in it.  Her Chinese teacher was impressed at the sentences that Evy could form in Mandarin.  I was so pleased and proud to hear that of course.  :-P  We just received two text books and 4 work books from the school and she will be getting a test this coming Sunday.

I made her lunchbox everyday to bring to school.  It's nothing fancy like a bento because I couldn't foresee myself being that hardworking.  Her lunch consisted of brown rice, veggie and chicken/fish (sometimes fried rice or noodle) that we had the night before.  I took out her portion before we started dinner.  The next day, I reheat her rice and pack it in a 12oz. food thermos along with her water bottle and snack.  For me, this is healthier than the cafeteria food that the school served (even though this cafeteria offers healthy food choices).   Her reward for finishing all her lunch (Mon-Fri) is she will get to eat in the cafeteria on the day that I don't have a lunchbox for her (like we went out to eat on Sunday night and thus no lunchbox on Monday).  If it happens that one of those day, she brought back half thermos fulled of food, then her reward is canceled.  So, on that day, I will cook some chicken potstickers (from frozen) or omelet and pack with some brown rice for her.

Banana Dried Fruit Waffles

This is another type of healthy waffle that I had in mind.  My elder girl won't eat banana but she liked banana cake.  So, I thought I would smashed up the banana and added into the batter and make the waffle so that she doesn't even know she is eating a waffle with banana in it.  On of my readers suggested me to slice the banana and bake it with the waffle which gave me the idea.  For this, I only used one large banana and surprisingly I could still smell the banana in this waffle.

I read that a good energy food for breakfast is oatmeal, banana, milk and etc.  So, this is definitely a good energy boost breakfast for you to last until lunch.  Not to say, yummy too and no syrup needed!  This waffle has oatmeal, banana, milk, eggs, honey and dried cranberries to list some.

Salmon Mixed Vegetable Porridge (jook)

Porridge again?  Why so many porridge because this time I had been sick.  I had some bad sore throat right after Evy was cured.  It was really painful and I had to cook myself some porridge/jook/congee.  This time I used frozen mixed vegetable, dried scallop, salmon, dried shrimps and some cut bok choy.  Lastly garnished with some fried shallots.  The cooking instruction can be found at my old post here.

This was how I like my porridge, all the rice grains broken out, watery and soft.  It was sweet with a touch of salt as I added dried scallop and dried shrimps in this.  Healthy too right?

Too bad, both my girls do not fancy porridge, even though it is delicious.  My elder has been very picky and my second one just like to follow her sister.  But if the sister is at school, she will eat the porridge with me.

2-2-3-4-5 Braised Chicken

This dish was inspired by 1-2-3-4-5 Sticky Spareribs (Tang Chu Pai Gu).  Since I don't have spareribs and only chicken, I cooked it differently but with almost the same sauce except I increased the Shaoxing rice wine to 2 Tbsp.  Got to say, delicious!  Now I have one more chicken dish to serve my family.  :-)

I added tofu knots in mine.  If you don't have tofu knots in your area, you can omit it.  Or you can substitute it with Chinese dried mushrooms or dried beancurd sticks.  This sauce is so good with rice, you have to try this dish!

Pandan Chiffon Cake 2 (Healthier Version)

 

Pandan chiffon cake was my childhood favorite cake.  I remembered I always asked my mom to buy it at the bakery shop for us to have as breakfast.  It was great being a kid without having to worry about counting calories and just consumed however much we liked.  I seriously would not have known what went into making a cake, a bread, or a dish without me being a cook and a baker myself.  Once I learned that, I have to be careful at what to cook for my family and how much portion to consume in a day, you know to watch my diet and not over eating certain food that is high in saturated fat.

This recipe is adapted from my Pandan Chiffon Cake recipe but because I want to make it healthier with less saturated fat content, I omitted the coconut milk and used 1% milk instead.  I also changed the all-purpose flour to cake flour, just for experiment.  Glad to say it turned out well, still fragrant with Pandan smell and not much difference from the Pandan chiffon cake made with coconut milk.

I didn't do a nice job at dismounting my chiffon cake from the tube pan, this really takes patient and skill.  LOL!

Toast Camembert Bagel

I received this sample of Normandie Ile de France Camembert recently.  I was one of the lucky fews who got to sample the product before it hit the shelf and release to the general public.  Its' flavor is more intense than Brie and I instantly noticed it when I first opened the box.  I could actually smelled it.  Ile de France Camembert is crafted in Normandy, from local Rbst (hormone) free pasteurized cow milk.  The herds spend most of their time outside, grazing in the fields of Normandy, known for its temperate climate and rich soil.  It has the mushrooms and nutty undertones and known for its' creaminess.

This was my first time sample a Camembert and frankly I had no idea how people eat this besides serving as a cheese platter.  So I went to the Ile de France Website and look through the recipes.  But I was too eager to try it and I had some bagel at home, so I just cut two slices and toast it in the toaster oven.  Got to say, even though it didn't smell too good, it tasted not bad at all.  Very creamy and melted beautifully.  Even my little Edda who said yuck at the smell couldn't stop eating it.  Two days later, I tried it in my cheesy shell pasta dish and my two girls walloped it up.  They really loved it. 

Two slices of Camembert on my mini blueberry bagel.

The end product!  Loved how the cheese melted, yummy!  Would go great with a English muffin with bacon and fried egg as well.

Salmon with DOM

I  have been cooking a lot of salmon recently, guess you have been noticing it too.  Salmon is rich in omega 3 fatty acid and thus a brain booster.  Supposed to be good for your brain.  So, I came out with this recipe with what I had in my refrigerator at that time.  The soup of this dish was really fragrant with the smell of DOM, so good drizzle with rice.  It made a good one dish meal too!

Cheesy Shell Pasta

I am not sure how to name this pasta dish because I created it on a whim just for Ruth!  Ruth is hosting Presto Pasta Night this week and I wanted to be a part of it.  :-)  I called it Cheesy Shell Pasta because it had cheese in it.  LOL!  I have some Camembert cheese in my fridge and milk, so why not give it a try.  You can certainly make it more creamy and cheesy by using heavy cream instead of milk and sprinkle with more cheeses on top and bake in the oven for 5 minutes before serving.  Whatever you like right?

I just used what I have in the refrigerator and pantry to create this delicious pasta dish.  My Edda said it tasted like Chicken Alfredo.  Hehehe...  This was our lunch and Evy's lunchbox for tomorrow.

I'm sharing this noodle with Presto Pasta Nights, an event created by Ruth from Once Upon a Feast.  This week host is Ruth herself! Check out her delicious round up on Oct, 1st!

Chinese Cooling Teas

 

I was having a bad sore throat and cold two weeks ago.  I might get it because of the heaty mooncakes I had been eating or the fried food my hubby brought back, I had no idea.  So, I went to the Asian market here in search of my cooling teas to cool my body and be rid of this cold and cough.  This is not a paid post, I just took this picture to share with my girlfriend here who could not read Mandarin.  I remembered she asked me once on what to buy last year when she was sick.  So, I took this picture since I am having these at home now and show her so that she would know what to buy next time.  Each bag has 16 packets and in each packet is a granules form of ingredient in which you just mix it with hot water to dissolve, almost instantly.  It doesn't taste very pleasant at first, but once you got used to it, you should be fine.  I am loving this teas now.  One is heat-resolving granules and the other one is 24 flavors herbal cooling tea.  Great for traveling too!

Herdez Salsa Macaroni with Shrimps

My girls didn't want to eat the porridge so I made this pasta dish for them.  It just so happen that I had a bottle of salsa in the pantry that I needed to use.  So, I created this easy macaroni and shrimps pasta with it.  None of them complaint that it was spicy so I guess it was not spicy to them, as it only listed as mild.  However, my picky eater Evy won't eat the tomatoes.  She is a strange little girl, as she will eat the blended pasta tomato sauce but not if she can see the tomato.  So, she only ate the macaroni and shrimps and picked out all the tomatoes and set it aside on her plate.

It is really hard as tomato is good for her.  I think she got influence by her daddy as he would not eat tomatoes too.  Because of this, I don't buy tomatoes.  Guess I will have to cook more spaghetti with tomato based pasta sauce as this is the only time she would eat it with no complaint. 

I'm sharing this noodle with Presto Pasta Nights, an event created by Ruth from Once Upon a Feast.  This week host is Valli of More Than Burnt Toast. Check out her delicious round up on Sept, 24th!