Oyster Sauce Topokki

As I mentioned earlier, Topokki or Dukbokki is a popular Korean street snack made of rice cake sticks and fish cakes.  This is my sweet and salty oyster sauce version of topokki.  I added Korean smoked fish ham, rice cake sticks, onion and fish cakes.

I sliced the rice cake sticks into half for faster cooking time.  This dish is more suitable for children or those who can't seem to take spicy food.

Angel Hair Pasta with Clams

If you are my avid blog reader, you should know that I loved to watch healthy Chinese cooking shows from Taiwan.  And clams have always been brought up as a healthy food to eat.  It is high in vitamins and minerals especially B12 (prevents Alzheimer disease) , iron (prevents anemia) and selenium (helps fight arthritis), protein, manganese, Vit. C, copper, riboflavin, zinc, and potassium.  You can read more about the health benefits here. 

Since the clam meats that I bought were frozen and cooked, I made a pasta dish with it.  If I have some fresh and live clams, I would cook Kam Heong clam/ lala or steam it with homemade sweet rice wine with gingers and scallion.

Anyway, I read that wild clams or any seafood might have some mercury in it, so I paired it with cilantro!  Oh yes, as cilantro can remove heavy metal like mercury from the body through elimination process.  Hence, it's a great idea to pair cilantro with any seafood that you cook.

Fish Maw Soup (鱼肚汤)

I don't know why but during the Chinese New Year, I always want to cook a pot of fish maw soup or bamboo fungus soup (竹笙).  I added bean curd sticks, shrimps, mushrooms and eggs into the soup.  I did not thicken the soup with starches but tried it with beaten eggs instead.

Is there any benefits of eating fish maw?  I did a search and it said fish maw is an excellent source of collagen.  Just like what the Chinese believe the collagen of chicken feet and pig trotter would give you a beautiful skin.  It is said to help with blood circulation and improve your skin.  Do you know any other benefits besides what I had mentioned?

Easy Guacamole

When avocado is on sales, I like to buy some to make guacamole, milk shake, or add in salad.  Guacamole is very easy to make and I would prefer to make it myself rather than buy it at the store.  I think it is very versatile as you can also add red or color bell pepper, jelepeno (for a spicy kick), roasted garlic and white onion.  Basically just whatever to your fancy or just keep it plain.  It makes a great appetizer or party snack!

I served my guacamole with Sprout's multi-grain tortilla chips, loved that chips!  It is a great way to add shallot, cilantro and tomato for my girls as usually they are kind of picky with those.

Deep-Fried Nian Gao with Seaweed and Sweet Potatoes

Nian Gao/ sticky rice cake (年糕), a must have for every Chinese New Year (CNY) because of its' symbolic meanings.  Eating nian gao is said to bring you good luck in the new year.  Also "nian nian gao sheng",  年年高升 means whether in your career, money wise or studies or whatever you do, you will get better each and every year.  Eating something sticky also means your family will stick together.  The above nian gao is made with my Super Easy Steamed Nian Gao recipe that I devised for people who want to make homemade nian gao the easy way.

I fell in love with deep-fried spring roll nian gao 2-3 years ago.  This year I tried it with a piece of seaweed and the seaweed imparted an extra fragrant to the fried nian gao with sweet potatoes.  This is super crispy and irresistible!  Try it with your leftover nian gao from the CNY and enjoy this delicious snack!!

Orange Marmalade

You all know how much I adored the mandarin/ clementine marmalade, but for some reasons the cuties clementines were not on sales at this time of the year unlike previous years.  What is on sales is the California navel oranges, so this year my house is fulled of navel oranges instead of clementines. 

This marmalade had everything in it including the juice, pulp and zest so it looked more like apple sauce.  The color was off as I burnt some at the bottom of my pot.  It would be brighter orange in color instead of this darker color as I didn't even know I burnt the bottom, so when I stir the marmalade, the burnt bit got mixed in resulted in darker color (hence, I put a warning at method below) .  Anyway, I managed to savage about 3.5 bottles before throwing away the burnt part.

It's hard to ask a woman not to multitasking right?  I was multitasking at that time and thus the result.