Lo Mai Kai (aka glutinous chicken rice)

Must be some temporary phase that I'm going through, either that I am in the midst of using the same ingredients for different dishes heh. The best part of this is that you can actually freeze the dish for about a month! It is also quite simple to make but of course the more pre-preperations you do, the tastier it'll get ;).

This dish is also seen when you go to a yum cha restaurant, where they serve it in lotus leaves. I wanted to get those but they were selling it in bulk :S. Also, my dear d suggested chestnuts, not water chestnuts because he thought that it was part of the ingredients but it wasn't!Haha, but it did taste rather good with it, so no harm trying it ;)

My ever ready steaming devices...

*kvt27 is going through some tim sum / yam cha phase*

Curious? Click here for more...

Chinese Tea Eggs

The ultimate easy and healthy dish to make! Okai, lemme begin by the history of tea eggssssss...

"Fragrant and flavorful tea eggs are a traditional Chinese treat. The original recipe uses various spices, soy sauce, and black tea leaves in the recipe. A commonly used spice for flavoring tea eggs is Chinese five-spice powder, which contains ground cinnamon, star anise, fennel seeds, cloves and Szechuan peppercorns. Some recipes do not use tea leaves, but they are still called "tea eggs". In the traditional method of preparation, eggs are boiled until they reach a hardened cooked state. The boiled eggs are removed from the water and the entire shell of each egg is gently cracked all around. Smaller cracks produce more marbling when the egg is peeled for eating. The extra water from the boiling should be allow to seep out of the eggs on its own. After about ten minutes, the cracked eggs are ready to be put into the prepared spiced-tea liquid and simmered at medium heat. The simmering allows the spiced fluid to seep into the cracks and marinate the eggs inside their shells. After about 20 minutes, the eggs and the spiced-tea liquid should be transferred to a glass or ceramic container for further steeping in the fridge. For best results, the eggs should be allowed to steep for two days. The dark color of the spiced tea gives the egg a marbled effect when it is peeled to be eaten..."click here if you want to know more

What brings the flavour most out of these eggs is the soy sauce I think. It's one of my childhood dish as I was growing up. And I think if you love green tea cupcakes, loves to try out new herbs, is addicted to chai lattes then there's no harm in trying these eggs out!

As for making them, I used a ready made sachet but there are ingredients available if you want to do it from scratch =). Check out a recipe here. And it's super ultimately easy because all you do is just dump them into a pot and let it simmer.

As well as I learnt something new: The chinese 5-spice flavour or powder. What's amazing is that it encompasses 5 different flavours all in one - sweet, sour, bitter, pungent and salty. And I can't believe that I grew up being expose to this all these while. What's even more amazing is that the ingredients are so healthy and is also used in Chai mixes - peppercorns, star anise, cloves, cinammon and fennel seeds.

Talk about relation in food...they all share the same thing yet give out different flavorsome dishes

Curious? Click here for more...

Le Cordon Bleu

There was an open house event at Le Cordon Bleu, one of the prestigious Parisian School who teaches fine cuisine and patisserie courses, ranging from short one day courses to a full year diploma programmes.

And I signed up to their newsletter, in which sometimes I receive nice recipes :). As well as this invite!

So I went to check out the place and the demonstrations of the introduction to cuisine cooking and patisserie of course.

To my lovely expectation, I was greeted by a dish full of canapes and drinks ranging from sparkling water to wine. And we were lead into a room with desks and bags of courses pamphlets.

Yuuuuummmyyy

It first started off with the patisserie dish: Dacquoise aux poires epicees et sauce chocolat au vin aka Spiced Pear Dacquoise with Chocolate and Red Wine Sauce (what a loooonnngg name). The demonstration was very interesting as there were some hints as the chefs cooked and explain (but I forgot a pen, DOH). Glad I got my phone to type the hints as well as there was a break in between, in which we could try the food demonstrated (NicE~)

There was also a raffle to win 2 lovely books and the person who got it sat beside me! Talk about so close yet so far.

The next dish was another long name one: St Jacques Marinees aux graines de vanille, bettrave en deux facons, 'espuma' au raifort aka Vanilla Marinated Scallops, Beetroot Two Ways with Horseradish 'Espuma' (far out, by the time I finish saying that, the whole dish would be finished. 

If you wish to grab the recipes, let me know :)

Overall, I find that the session was not as impressive as I thought (maybe it was because the building was slightly run down), in the sense that cooking was brought to a more serious stage, whereby I felt like I was in university all over again but this time it was slightly different as the kitchen is the lab / lecture hall. So yeah...I did have this vibe telling me not to take down this route as a career, and further conclude that this will be my all time hobby passion.

But hey, it doesn't stop me from taking the short courses ;). Tempted tempted...