Shanghai style wonton made easy

Chopped up ingredients in a big bowl.

At home, having wontons for dinner means having 20 (or 40 for my brother) wontons served in simple broth. Never with noodles and the filling of the wontons consists mostly vegetable. This is what I called Shanghai style wonton.

To make the wontons properly, Grandma uses Chinese bok choy, which needs to be precooked, drained and cooled. Yes, you have guessed it. This process put me off from making it, because it is too time consuming, then Mum came to the rescue and this is her no fuss not-the-best-but-the-easiest-wonton recipe.

Ingredients are now well mixed and ready to be assembled into wontons.

Wontons are ready to be cooked

Ingredients (serves 2 - preparation time: 1 hr - cooking time: 15 mins):

1. Chinese mushrooms - 6 or more
2. Chicken/Pork mince - 400g 
3. White pepper - 1/2 tsp
4. Garlic - 2 cloves
5. Chinese chives - 400g
6. Carrots - 400g
7. Sesame oil - about 3 tbp 
8. Salt - 2 tsp
9. Wonton pastry - 1 pack (about 50 sheets)
10. Vege/chicken/pork stock to serve [1]

Steps:

1. Soak Chinese mushrooms in warm water for at least half an hour or soak them in water and leave them overnight in the fridge. Chop them up once they have soften. Make sure you press out all the water from the mushrooms. 
2. In a big bowl, mix mince, white pepper, chopped garlic together. Leave them in the bowl and move on to the next step. 
3. Chop Chinese chives, carrots into small pieces (chop them as small as you can, try not to use a food processor if you can manage)
4. After all the cutting, the mince should be well flavored. Now, put all the vegetables, sesame oil and salt into the same big bowl and mix well. The mixture should be sticky, if not, add more sesame oil until all the ingredients are glued together. [2]
5. Google how to wrap a wonton on YouTube, there are no rules, as long as it does not have an opening. The trick is to use water as the "glue".
6. To make sure the wonton filling is ready, make a few wontons and cook them in some boiling water and make sure you are happy with the taste. Once you are happy, then make all the fillings into wontons. [3]
7. To cook the wontons, bring about 1.5L to boil, then put about 10-15 wontons in the boiling water at a time. Once the water is boiling again, add a cup of cold water and when it boils again (this is to ensure the wonton content is cooked). Take out the wontons and place it in a clean big bowl filled with cold water (so that the wontons wouldn't stick to each other when you continue cooking). 
8. Repeat step 6 until all the wontons are cooked. 
9. Serve the cooked wontons with some nice hot stock/broth or my super lazy "soup" below. Enjoy!!

Tips:

[1] Instead of stock, the wontons can be served in a very basic "soup" which consists of left over mushroom water from Step 1, light soy sauce, a bit of sugar and sesame seed oil.

[2] The filling should not have any juice, if there is, the wonton pastry will tear when you assemble it.

[3] Don't skip this taste test step, this is to ensure you got the filling right, otherwise, all the wontons will  be wasted.

Bunny Chow in Wimbledon

Bunny Chow from Kafe Karahi in Wimbeldon

Bunny Chow has got nothing to do with Bugs Bunny or Chow mein, it is in fact a South African dish which consists of curry inside half a loaf of bread.

We had it with lamb curry which itself is pretty amazing, the meat was tender and the sauce was tasty. Next time when I forget to cook rice after making the curry, Bunny Chow it is!!

Turn leftover rice to congee

Grandma never let us waste any food, rice in particular. She told us rice farming is a very labour intensive task, she also said if you leave a grain of rice on the plate, then your future spouse will have a pimple on his/her face... right...

So for breakfast this freezing morning, I made congee (or jook) using a bowl of cooked rice. All I did was pouring about 3-4 bowls of water with the bowl of rice into the pot, bring it to boil, then simmer it for about an hour. This makes a basic congee.

As you can imagine: rice + water = bland food, therefore, I made a simple spinach side dish to go with it.

1. fresh garlic - one clove, finely chopped
2. light soy sauce - 2-3 table spoon
3. spring onion (optional) - 1/2 cup, chopped
4. frozen spinach* - 3 cups, steamed

Now, mix 1-3 in a big bowl, then add the spinach in the bowl and that's it. Simple.

*Note: Fresh spinach can be used as well, instead of steam it, boil it till it is just cooked, run it under cold water, then chop it up and remove all excess water by squeezing it using your hands.

Food tube map

After the awesome London tube map in Maori art work, here is another fine example of what people do with the London tube map - rename the stations with food names!!

If you are not sure what the actual station names are, here you go:

• Paddington (Puddington)
• Edgeware Road (Eggware Road)
• Notting Hill Gate (Notting Hill Cake)
• Mornington Crescent (Mornington Peasant)
• Charing Cross (Charing Croissant)
• Tottenham Court Road (Tortellini Count Road)
• Highbury & Islington (Highbrie and Biscuit Tin)

Wouldn't it be nice if all the station names changed into food names? Like change Gospel Oak to Gospel Oat... still around 252 stations name to change, ok maybe not now.

Do cashew nuts grow on trees?!

Yes, they do and here is the proof, a cashew nut fruit. 

Some cashew nut facts:

• India (home of the fruit above) is one of the largest cashew nut exporters. Vietnam is the largest exporter according to the latest Google results.
  
• Each fruit only bears one nut and it is on the outside of the fruit (the green bit at the top)

I thought cashew nuts "grew" in plastic bags at the supermarket. It is sad that we don't seem know or care how food is grown and where it is coming from. Next time before you put food in your mouth, ask yourself  - Where does it come from?

Takeaway for two

After a long day of work, we really don't have the energy to cook, so we got some takeaways. We went to a little local restaurant/cafe place and ordered two dishes and we ended up with 9 items!! 

We wasn't sure why we have got so many boxes of food by paying a bit more than two Big Mac combos. We rushed home and opened our dinner and here is what have got:

• Freshly baked bread with two dipping sauces.
• Lamb curry with rice and freshly made salad.
• Grill quails with rice and freshly made salad.
• Free desserts.

 

The food was amazing, I am not a big fan of fastfood or takeaways, but this is really not a bad alternative.

Say cheese!!

Do you know any kids or big kids who do not like cheese? This may be your solution, animal shape cheddar cheese!! 

It reminded me of the alphabets pasta soup that I had when I was young, I will drink the soup and left the alphabets pasta behind!! Never managed to get all 26 letters in a bowl of soup though.

2 in 1 movie snack

Instead of holding a bag of maltesers and a tub of popcorn, you can have this - Chocolate popcorn. It is popcorn coated with thick chocolate. Surprisingly, you can actually taste both the chocolate an the popcorn. Now, all you need to do is get your coke and off you go to the movie.

Talking about 2 in 1, I must show you this product which I think it meant to simplify our lives, handwash and air refreshener??huh?..interesting....

Moist roast chicken made easy

After my successful roast lamb, I moved on to roast chicken. Here is my not very precise recipe (.. cooking is an art not a science; it doesn't need to be exact..!!).

1. Put ginger, garlic and spring onions inside the chicken. This is to remove the chicken smell.
   
2. Season the chicken with plenty of salt, black pepper and oil. Put some five spice powder if you have any.
3. Cut up carrots and potatoes in big chucks. This way everything can be cooked at the same time.
4. Put some water (about half a cm deep) in the roast dish, then place the chicken and vegetables in it.
5. Cover the roast dish with foil and bake in the oven for 40 mins at about 200C, then bake for another 10 mins without the foil, so the skin dries up.
6. Cut up the chicken and enjoy!

It is a "leave and forget it" kind of dish, so easy to make, you can even make it during the week.

Hmm... pancakes

Dad didn't cook very often when I was young, but I do remember he made pancakes for us every now and then. They were yummy and were perfect circles!!

I have tired and failed so many times to recreate the yummy and perfectly circular pancakes until I found a "Just add milk" pancake mix and a Chef'n pancake flipper.

Is it cheating? Maybe, but I don't care when I can make it look this good...

Roast lamb leg

A sunday roast looks impressive and difficult to make (well, to me anyway). 

I was surprised to find a roast lamb leg recipe in my "Best three & four ingredients cookbook", so I decided to give it a try.  

Lamb leg + fresh rosemary + garlic  + 2 hours = Perfectly roasted moist lamb leg 

One more reason why I love Sundays! 

England national dish

According to Wikipedia the national dish of England is Fish & Chips and according to me, it should be crisps (or chips for us Kiwis) ..... and voi-la: Fish & Chips crisps!!

My verdict: hmmm... I will stick with lightly salted, thanks.

Milan: Part II - Latte

The best way to rejuvenate after walking around Milan all morning, is to sit at a relaxing cafe and have a nice cup of coffee. Knowing how much Italians love their food and drinks, I had great expectation of how good my Latte would be -- and what I got was ...............hot milk. In Italian, "latte" means "hot milk".

If only I had read about Latte on Wikipedia before the trip, I would not have made such a mistake. Check it out on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latte.

"Latte" in Italian means "Hot Milk"

There is no shortage of coffee places in Milan, even Gucci have their own cafe right outside their store. To my surprise, their coffee is actually reasonably priced, unlike their bags!

Gucci cafe menu

The quality of food in Milan is pretty high and that applies to the price, too. The general rule of thumb we follow when comes to choosing a restaurant is, the more people there are the better. With this rule, waiting time is unavoidable, but since dining out is quite expensive over there, it is better to wait for a table in a good quality restaurant then taking the risk.

Out of all the pizzas, risotto, pasta, salad, gelato and coffee that I had during the trip, the clam spaghetti was the best. The clams were fresh, the spaghetti was perfectly cooked and the sauce had a mild taste and light texture which complimented the clams really really well.

Clam spaghetti

A trip to Milan would not be complete without art, so the third part of this trip is Milan: Part III - Michelangelo.

Sweet?!

Meatballs Recipe using Bread!

One of the problems of a small household is left over food! For example, a loaf of bread can last me almost two weeks. I don't want to admit this, but the last few slices of bread ended up in the birds' stomach most of the time.

The solution can be put half a loaf in the freezer, but I have this "thing" about frozen bread, therefore I generally don't do it. So, I always wonder what else can I use the bread for, other then toasts in the morning, sandwiches for lunch, bread with butter and sugar for afternoon tea, french toast as a supper? The answer is Meatballs!

I found a meatball recipe online using bread and eggs as the binding agent. I tried it out and the result is amazing. It is so easy and fun to make, I made it as a Meatballs with Tomato Sauce Pasta and it was very well received. The good thing is that it tastes great on its own as well, serve it with ketchup would definitely cheer the kids up!

Meatballs with Tomato Sauce Pasta that I made the other day.

Unfortunately, I can't find the recipe anymore, so here is my not very accurate Meatball recipe (this makes about 40 meatballs):

Ingredients:
500g lamb/beef mince
2 slices of bread
2 eggs, beaten
2 tbspns grated parmesan
2 tsps dried oregano
1 garlic clove, minced
1 big onion, finely chopped

Steps:
1/. Soak bread in beaten eggs for 5 mins. The bread is ready when it soaks up all the liquid without dripping.
2/. At the mean time, cook the chopped onion with a little bit of cooking oil in a frying pan until it is soft. Set aside to let it cool down a little.

3/. Once the bread is ready, pull it apart into small pieces (use your hands to do this) and put it in a big mixing bowl with the rest of the ingredients (including the cooked onion). Mix everything together using a spoon (I used a pair of chopsticks) in one direction. You will ended up with a mixture looking like this:

This is what the mixture looks like when it is ready to be made into meatballs.

(This photo is taken half way through my meatballs making process, so don't panic)

4/. Make meatballs the way you like it. If you don't know how to do it, Google is your friend. The way I do it is to put olive oil on my hands and put a spoon full of mixture in my palm and make a ball out of it. Then put some corn flour or flour on the meatballs so that they don't stick with each other.

Meatballs ready to be cooked.

5/ To cook the meatballs, heat up a frying pan with a bit of cooking oil. Cook meatballs in about 3 batches (depending on the size of your pan and size of the meatballs). Each batch takes about 5-8 minutes to cook, the only way I can be sure it is completely cooked is by tasting it!!

Give it a try, it is so much fun!! Or if you are extremely lazy or have absolutely no time, you can try the Jamie Oliver way of making meatballs - pull the meat out of fresh sausages and make it into meatballs, there you go, nice and easy!!

Sweet?!

Hmmm Scones...

Unless we plan an action packed weekend, otherwise, London can be quite dull sometimes. (I will get to the scones, read on...)

We planned to drive to Windsor last Sunday about a week and a half ago, thinking that we will get there early, have a swim, wander around and maybe say hello to the Queen if she is "hanging out" in the Windsor Castle.

It was a great plan until it started snowing heavily on Sunday morning?! Now that we are stuck at home, what can we do? Perhaps, build a snowman? No, too cold! Go to a museum? No, takes too long on the tube!! Go shopping? No, too heavy to carry the shopping around! Arrr... what else can we do? Watch DVDs at home maybe?

When we are feeling sorry for ourselves not being able to go, the snowing started to ease a little. So, we decided to carry on with the original plan... (except it is 1.5 hrs late, but who cares!!)

It took less than an hour to drive to Windsor, no traffic whatsoever! ( I guess everyone else stayed at home to watched DVDs!! Ha Ha!). We ended up having late morning tea in a very traditional looking cafe near Windsor Castle, window shopping at Windsor Royal Shopping Centre, had a two hours lunch at Latino Restaurant, went to Eton College and was amazed by the beautiful Eton College Chapel.

Eton College Chapel. It reminds me of the magic school main hall in Harry Porter.

Out of all these activities, I like the morning tea the most simply because of the scones. My experience with scones are mostly from bakeries all around NZ, they are alright, nothing special. I had scones in the US where they call them biscuits, but I am not a big fan of them. However, my Aunt Lucia in Sydney makes very very yummy cheese scones, very moist and tasty.

The scone I had in the little Windsor cafe is completely different though! It is warm, very soft, it tastes wonderful when you put cream and jam on it and it melts in your mouth! The texture of the scone was perfect!! It was so good that I have eaten half of Mas's scone as well!!

With a cup of tea, there were nothing more I can ask for! Hmmm...scones

The perfect scones served in a little cafe near Windsor Castle.

It might sound crazy, but I would consider going back to Windsor soon just to have the scones. This time, I will have at least two scones all by myself!! Sweet?

Tom Yum Soup Steam Boat with Frozen Oysters

Steam boat is one of the best winter dinners. It is easy and quick to prepare, and entertaining for both adults and kids. Also, It is a good way to introduce cooking concepts to children (or adults who cannot cook), e.g. chicken pieces are cooked when they turn white, beef slices become tougher when cooked for too long.

The key to a good steam boat is the soup base. There are many ways to prepare the soup base. A common way is to use pre-made chicken stock from the supermarket and add vegetables in it to provide the sweet taste.

There is an easy way to make a good spicy soup base using Tom Yum Soup Paste (if you don't eat chilli food, then it is just too bad). Add a few table spoons full of paste to boiling water and off you go!


According to my friends, the Namjai brand is the only one that will give you the kick, so make sure you get the right one. Once the soup base is sorted, you can put whatever you fancy in it. Normally people put fresh meat, fresh vegetable and even fresh oysters.

But if fresh oysters are too hard to get or too expensive, frozen oysters are as good. In fact, I found that frozen oysters are even better for steam boat. By the time they are cooked in the pot, the centre of the oysters are only slightly cooked, therefore the texture and sweetness of the oysters stay.

Frozen spinach is also a good alternative instead of fresh vegetables. But make sure the frozen spinach is not blended, otherwise, when it gets into the pot, you will not be able to scoop it out. Put the frozen spinach in pot without thawing, just like the frozen oysters.

Sweet?!

Kicking the after interview blues with...Waffles

The worst part of having an interview, is the day afterwards. I sat in front of the email and right next to my cellphone the whole morning hoping that the agent would call, email or text me telling me that I have either got the role or not. But, nothing, nothing at all.

So then I started second guessing myself, thinking about what I could have done better in the interview yesterday, how could I have presented myself better, things I should have said or should not have said etc. All these thoughts made me even more miserable.

This self distructive process quickly ended once I decided to visit the Belgium Chocolate Waffle shop just down the road. And this is what I got from the little shop at Ealing...

Belgium Chocolate Waffle and Maple Syrup Waffle from a small shop in Ealing

You can put chocolate, maple syrup, jam, caramel, peanut butter, banana, stawberry or any combination of that on top a waffle. It is so versatile that I can have one everyday! And today's waffle was just the best, after a bite, all the silly thoughts went away.

In London, a waffle can cost from around £2 to £6. However, I found that the more expensive it is, doesn't necessary mean it is better. I paid about £6 for the waffle in town.

Banana Caramel Waffle from a cafe near Regent St in the city

With it being almost three times the price, obviously, it looks much sophisticated. However, it was slightly warm, dry and light weight. In my opinion, it didn't qualify as a "waffle".

A waffle should be hot, but not too hot, slight crispy on the ouside but moist on the inside, also, it needs to be substantial, but not too heavy like a meal. In short, the one I bought from Ealing today was a perfect waffle.

Sweet?!

Prawns & Eggs Dish Recipe

When we go out for a big family dinner, the children normally get to sit at their own table. The reason for this "practice" was never explained to us, but I suspect it has something to do with one of the following:

(A) The adult conversations are not suitable for children;
(B) The food served at the "grown up" table is not suitable for children (...price wise maybe?!?!)

From what I can remember, I think it was because of option (B). When the grown ups are having lobster, the kids table gets a Prawns & Eggs dish. Not that I am complaining, because it is actually one of my favorite dishes, the best thing is - it is easy to make.

Tasty and moist Prawns & Eggs Dish

Without further ado, here is the (not very detailed) recipe from my talented Uncle Herman:

Ingredients
Prawns (shelled)
Eggs
Cooking oil (not a lot)
Salt
Pepper
Garlic (ground)
Ginger (ground)
Coriander (optional)

Steps
(1) Heat the cooking oil in a frying pan, then add the garlic and ginger.
(2) Put the prawns into the frying pan and leave them until almost cooked.
(3) Add a pinch of salf and pepper to the prawns.
(4) Add the eggs into the frying pan with the yolks still intact. **See picture below for clarification**
(5) Leave the eggs as they are in the frying pan until half cooked, then gently break up the yolks.
(5a) Add the coriander into the mix if desired.
(6) Stir quickly to mix the prawns and eggs together.
(7) Scoop all the contents onto a plate before the eggs are completely cooked. Serve hot with rice.

Step (4) Add eggs into the frying pan with the yolks still intact.

Give it a try and I am sure you will like it! Sweet?!

The most expensive glass of Coke in the world!

Well, it might not be the most expensive in the whole world, but in my little world, €8,80 for less than 500ml of coke is the MOST expensive I have ever paid for, heard of or seen!


When I realised how much this glass of coke costs, my head immediately did the following calculations:

• That is about HK$105, I can get an off-peak movie ticket (HK$40) and a movie snack combo which includes a large popcorn, a hot dog and a 500ml bottle coke (HK$65).
  
• Or for NZ$17, I can get a big chicken rice (NZ$10) and almost four glasses of coke (NZ$2 each) from my favourite food court, Food Alley in Auckland.
  
• Even for expensive London, ₤6.7 can get a chicken pad thai (₤5) and a bottle of 500 ml coke (₤1).

Sure you get the picture now. But these calculations were not doing me any good at the time, so I quickly stopped doing it and turned my head and looked at the reason for the extreme high price...

Arrr~ isn't this nice... yes, you have guessed it, the coke was served in the restaurant 2000m above sea level, on top of Le Brevent, one of the Chamonix ski fields. It was a perfect day for any snowboarder/skier, clear blue sky, fluffy snow and most importantly - hardly anyone on the mountain!!

Given the high price and the fact that I was dieing for a coke after snowboarding the whole morning, I actually think that glass of coke in the end, is the best tasting coke in the world!! Sweet?! =)