Baby Bok Choy with Minced Chicken

I made this for a potluck dinner the other day.  I just want to show you a picture of how I plated the baby bok choy.  In the middle, I stir-fried some minced chicken with chopped fresh shiitake mushrooms and garnished with chopped scallion and crispy fried shallots.  You can also make it vegetarian by omitting the ground chicken and use an assortment of mushrooms.

You can serve this during a Chinese New Year dinner.  I think it's beautiful!

* I am submitting this post to Chinese New Year Delights 2013 hosted by Sonia aka Nasi Lemak Lover*

Avocado Milkshake

We all know that avocado has the good fat that would help in reducing heart disease.  But how often do we eat avocado anyway?  Hardly for me as I have no idea what to do with it except to eat it with a little sugar sprinkle on it, top it with salad (but we hardly eat salad) or make it into guacamole.  Then, I saw Phong Hong Bakes's Avocado Milkshake with chocolate sauce and according to her, it was delicious.  So, when shopping at Sprouts recently, I saw that the avocado was on sales for 3 for $1, it's just too cheap to pass it up.  Hence, I bought some to give this milkshake a try.  I was surprised at how rich and creamy this milkshake was and definitely yummy with the chocolate sauce.  It was very filling too, perhaps a smaller glass for dessert or serve it as breakfast or light lunch.

Korean Spicy Kimchi Topokki

My variation of topokki.  Kimchi Topokki!!  I figured the intense flavor of kimchi would give the basic spicy topokki a boost and I was right.  I actually liked this version better as I found the flavor was more well rounded.  This makes a great meatless meal too.

Feel free to adjust the thickness of your sauce as I think mine was a bit too dry.  I think it would taste better with a little more sauce.  Happy experimenting and whoever try this, please feedback to me ya! 

Congo Bars

I was given some cookie bars during the holidays that left me with a favorable impression as it was really delicious.  I had no idea what it was nor I have tasted it before, so I went online to look for a cookie bar recipe that resembled the cookie that I had.  I found the picture of Congo Bars looked similar and decided to give it a try.  Later, I realized that this Congo Bar actually resembled Blondie very much as they both make with similar ingredients.  And Congo Bar is actually another variation of Blondie.  I might give Blondie a try in the future.  For this, the only difference I changed was I used cashew nuts instead of walnuts or pecans.  The taste was fairly closed and I am happy with the result.

The above picture is how I wrapped the cookie bars.  I used red and white tissue papers, cut them out and wrapped the cookie bars like wrapping a candy and put them in a decorative zipper bag.  You can also wrap it in foil first and then cover with a solid color cellophane paper and pack them in a decorative box as gift.

Green Tea Cream Puffs

I was left with some heavy cream from Thanksgiving.  So, I needed to use it before it expired and I thought of  making a green tea flavor cream filling for some cream puffs.  Cream puff is very easy to make, I just followed a classic cream puff dough recipe and play with the flavor of cream filling.

Cream puff freezes well and I especially loved how the heavy cream filling tasted after in the freezer.  To me, it tasted so much like ice-cream and making it so good.  You can drizzle the top with melted milk chocolate to make it more presentable for a party or potluck.

Korean Spicy Topokki

Topokki or dukbokki is a popular Korean street food that is made of rice cake sticks, fish cakes and gochujang.  You can spot the street vendors selling this popular snack food all day long.  Because of it's popularity, lots of variation had been created.  Most of it are spicy but there is also a sweet and salty variety that uses oyster sauce as a base.  Some added ramen, cheese, seafood, curry, meat, chicken, etc.

Here, I used the basic recipe that was at the back of the package of the rice cake sticks that I bought.  I liked the chewiness of the rice cakes and I didn't make it too spicy.  You can add 1 Tbsp. of  Korean chili pepper powder to brighten up the color further and make it spicier.  I will be sharing my other variation in a different post later.