Tofu with salted fish and minced meat 豆腐肉末咸鱼粒

Quick and easy 30 minutes meals

If you are a working mom who loves cooking, who still prefers to make delicious home cooked meal for your love ones at home after a long day at work. Following recipe that I’m going to share is a great recipe for you.

This tofu dish is so quick and easy that you can serve it on dinner table in less than 30 minutes even if you included the dish preparation time.

This dish is one of the popular dishes serves in our local Chinese restaurant; it is also kid’s friendly meal. For healthy version you can do away salted fish or if salted fish not available you can replace with dried shrimp or anchovies.  For chilies lover, you can also spice up with chopped chilles.  

Tofu with salted fish and minced meat 豆腐肉末咸鱼粒

Happy Dragon Boat Festival - 端午节快乐

 端午时节粽子飘香

Today is the 5th day of the 5th month in Lunar calender, a significant day celebrated by the Chinese world wide (Duan wu jie) 端午节.

This traditional custom has long been practised annually for more than 2000 years in China, commemorating a famous patriotic poet Qu Yuan (340-278 BC). I am not going to elabroate the history, you can click here to read more about it.

I just wish to highlight the food that I'm going to introduce in relation to this festival. Yes, in general for almost every Chinese festival, it is usually accompanied by some sort of special food.

The special food for this special day is "Zong Zi" (Rice dumpling). I had introduced this rice dumpling before in 2010 - Bak Chang (Savoury Rice Dumpling) 咸肉粽子. Here, not only you get to have a very traditional glutinous rice dumpling recipe, you also get to watch the video on how to wrap rice dumpling.

Yesterday, Auntie Lan again demonstrated her cooking skill in the making of one of her signature dish - Rice dumpling. Since last Saturday, she had asked me to get the necessary ingredients ready. In fact, as long as a month ago she had started her preparation by making homemade salted duck eggs, to prepare one of the key ingredients - salted egg yolks.

Duck egg yolks - eggs soaked in saturated salt water for 30 days

After nearly a day of preparation and cooking, with 2kg of glutinous rice, Auntie Lan managed to make more than 40 rice dumplings.

When I came home from work yesterday, we had rice dumplings and rice porridge for dinner. With over 40 rice dumplings made, I reckon for the coming days, rice dumplings would be our main staple especially for my hubby who is crazy over rice dumplings!

Bak Chang (Savoury Rice Dumpling) 咸肉粽子

I just had another one for lunch today and the only word that I had to say was " Yummy!"

Key ingredients - Glutinous rice, salted egg yolk, peanuts, pork belly and mushroom

Butter Cheese Buns 牛油芝士面包

Butter and cheese, perfect match!

I started to make this dough a night before to try out the slow rising method.  Letting the dough rise in the fridge overnight saved time and increased flavor to the dough.  That night after dinner, I started to prepare the ingredients. After pouring all needed ingredients into the mixing bowl, I sat down in front of the TV and applied my multitasking talent - kneading the dough and watching online soap drama simultaneously. It took me more than 30 minutes to massage the dough until it became ready for proofing. Well, that’s how a busy working mum like me made time for her after work entertainment - watching downloaded drama. J

The next morning at 7.30am, I checked on the dough, it did proof to about 75% of the original size.  As we already had a plan to take Ray to a nearby park for morning jog, I asked Auntie Lan only to take out the dough from the fridge about an hour before our planned return time. Upon our return at 11.30am, Auntie Lan already had the dough left in room temperature for half an hour, I felt the bowl was still pretty cold. It took about an hour more before the dough was at room temperature and doubled in size.

I think this batch of non Tangzhong starter bread was so far my best sweet buns; the bun texture was so soft and wholesome with strong buttery flavor. When the buns came out from the oven in the afternoon, hubby surprisingly asked to have the buns for afternoon tea.  He seldom likes bakery and it got me even more surprised when he ate 3 buns at one go! 

Well, I guess one of the reasons why he liked the buns was the butter in the bun. He isn’t into bakery but he just loves butter J

Chicken Herbal Soup 药材鸡汤

Let’s have a bowl of nourishing tonic soup

Chinese herbal soup is good for replenishing certain nutrients needed by our bodies; stimulating appetite and especially good for women either during pregnancy or post delivery. For post delivery, one of the key herbs to be added in is Dang Gui (当归), a common ingredient used during confinement period to speed up after birth recovery.

However, this nourishing tonic soup is not restricted to women only but it is also good as a supplement source of nutrients and energy in addition to boosting the immune system.  The following simple chicken herbal soup Auntie Lan used to prepare for us does not include Dang Gui. The herbs she used were general purposed Chinese chicken herbal soup combination for daily consumption. Apologies again for not giving the exact measurement of the ingredients used, however the portion I estimated she used for following was about: 1:0.5:0.5:0.25:0.25:0.125:0.125

Nowadays you can easily find this pre-packaged dry herbal soup ingredients at any Asian Grocery shop. All you need to do is just to add in water to cook and salt to taste. For working moms, even this may still be too much a hassle. Here’s a way to further make life easier. Read on.

The secret is to have a 24 hour 24 hour timer timer switch device  and a slow cooker (Crock-Pot).  Instead of cooking over stove and watching over the heat, all you need to do is to plug the slow cooker to the timer, add in boiling water to slow cooker, dump in the packaged herbals and chicken (you can wash chicken a night before) and set the timer on to cook it at high heat for 1.5 hours before you leave your house in the morning. With the timer, you can also set to warm the soup again by setting the timer to automatically switch on half an hour before you come back from work.

I bet when you come back from work, as soon as you open the door you will be overwhelmed by the nice strong tonic aroma coming from your kitchen! What you need to do next is to have another 30 minutes for you to cook the rice and you and your family will get to enjoy a healthy chicken herbal soup dinner. Now who said working moms do not have time to prepare healthy and nutritious meals for her family?  J

Chicken Herbal Soup 药材鸡汤

I extracted explanation of the herbs and medical effects from this site Complementary and Alternative Healing University:

Item	Herbs Name/药材名	Medical Functions/功效
1	red dates (Chinese dates or red jujube) 红枣	Treats weakness, shortness of breath, lassitude, lack of appetite, loose stools due to spleen deficient. 强筋壮骨，补血行气，滋颐润颜。
2	qi zi (Wolfberries or goji berries) 枸杞子	Nourishes and tonifies the liver and kidney, helps eyesight, improves blurred vision, alleviates sore back, strengthens the leg and stomach, improves circulation, boosts immune function, promotes longevity. 养肝，补肾，滋阴，明目，益气。
3	dang shen (Codonopsis Root) 党参	Corrects blood deficiency, invigorates Qi (lack of appetite, fatigue, thirst, diarrhea, vomiting, polapse of uterus, stomach, rectum due to spleen deficient), improves digestive system. 补中益气，养血补肺。
4	yu zhu (Rhizoma Polygonati Odorati) 玉竹	Nourishes Yin, promotes the production of body fluids and relieves dryness syndrome. 养阴，润燥，除烦，止渴。治热病阴伤，咳嗽烦渴，虚劳发热，消谷易饥，小便频数。
5	huai shan (Dioscoreae Oppositae) 淮山	Invigorates Qi, nourishes Yin, controls spermatorrhea and reduces urination. 补脾养胃，生津益肺，补肾涩精。
6	bǎi hé (Lily Bulb)百合	sweet and cooling in properties. The herb is also associated to the lung and heart meridians and help to relieve coughs, dry throats, clear heat, and moisten the lung. Dried lily bulb is also used as an herb to calm the spirit, promote restful sleep, and lessen irritability. 养阴润肺；清心安神。主阴虚久嗽；痰中带血；热病后期；余热未清，或情志不遂所致的虚烦惊悸、失眠多梦、精神恍惚；痈肿；湿疮
7	xing ren(Semen pruni armeniacae) 杏仁	for arresting coughing and asthma, expelling phlegm, help bowel movements. 降氣止咳平喘，潤腸通便。用於咳嗽氣喘，胸滿痰多，血虛津枯，腸燥便秘。

Madeira cake 马德拉蛋糕

Classic English Cake

When I found out our newly recruited HR manager was going to celebrate her birthday on Sunday, 29th April, I decided to make her a birthday cake to share it in our Friday morning tea meeting in conjunction with the welcoming of her joining the company.

However, given the short notice and a week day, I didn’t have much time to prepare in the evening after work.  Eventually I chose to make a simple and easy cake. I was pleased Ray offered a helping hand that night and we had a fun bonding time in making the cake together. 

My handsome kitchen helper

Flipping through recipes, I came across this lemony and buttery Madeira cake. Following the Victoria Sandwich I made earlier, this was another classic and simple to make English sponge cake. This cake was traditionally consumed with a glass of Madeira wine, where the name of the cake originated from. Nowadays it is good to go with a cup of tea too.

This cake took longer baking time than usual, about an hour at lower temperature of 160 degree Celsius. Initially, when I saw the cake with cracked surface, I thought it was yet another failed project.
The next morning, I did some google search and was relieved to learn that it was normal for Madeira cake to have peaks and crack on the surface.  I found the cake texture to be very light and a bit dry. It is no wonder the English like it to go with Wine.

I was wondering if I should increase the portion of butter or reduce the baking time for my next trial.

Madeira Cake

I was glad the birthday girl Sandee liked the cake; we had a small celebration at her office before sharing with the rest of the managers in our morning tea meeting.

Happy birthday Sandee

Bunga Kantan (Torch Ginger Flower Bud) 姜花

From garden to table

Etlingera Elatior, the scientific name for TorchGinger Flower, or Bunga Kantan in Malay and 姜花 in Chinese, is a type of tropical flower commonly found in South East Asia. Its pink flower bud is particularly important to be used as a spice ingredient in Malay and Nyonya cuisine, with its distinctive, aromatic fragrance to zest up curry and seafood stews i.e. Tomyam and Laksa.

Over here, we also call it Laksa flower (Bunga Laksa in Malay), since it is used in the famous Penang Nyonya Assam Laksa. In addition to Laksa, it is also widely used in Malay, Nyonya and Thai fruit salad i.e. Rojak or Kerabu.

We had this flower planted opposite our house by my late mother-in-law a year before she passed away in 2008. It took more than a year to flower. The leave stalks and flower stalks grow out from an underground stem and the flower plant can grow over 4 meters in height. It requires larger space and is not suitable to be planted in a pot. I didn’t place much attention on it and just let it grew wildly. When we were about to leave for NZ in mid 2009, we got to see it just started to flower.

Taken in year 2009

First flowr

By the time we came back from NZ, we were surprised to see it still grew healthily and flowered so well.

About 4 years old trees - April 2011

Flowers grew wildly

Harvest to use

When I was in Auckland, instead of fresh buds we were lucky enough to be able to find frozen ginger flower buds from certain Asian grocery shops, as I knew many people could hardly find it in European countries and the US.

To use Bunga Kantan, we only take its bud and chuck the stalk.

TorchGinger Flower, or Bunga Kantan

Few ways in using the buds in cooking:
First slice bud into half or quarter and place into curry/gulai/tomyam
 to cook to flavour the soup.

Flower bud to add in curry, gulai or tomyam soup

or you can also opt to finely shred the whole bud and use for garnishing or adding into Kerabu or fruit salad

Victoria Sandwich 维多利亚三明治蛋糕

Pandan Victoria Sandwich

Victoria Sandwich is one of the classic English tea time treats. From the name you can easily guess it must be named after Queen Victoria, who favoured a slice of this sponge cake with her afternoon tea. 

I adopted this cake recipe from Agnes Chang “ I can bake”.  You can have many variations by substituting the spreads with various kinds of fruit jam.

In conjunction with my Pandan series, for this first try, I made Victoria Sandwich in Pandan flavour, spread with my fresh homemade Pandan kaya (Coconut Egg Jam in Pandan flavour) , made earlier in the morning.

If you are keen to learn to make homemade kaya just click on the name to bring you to my old post on homemade kaya using microwave method which was faster and easier than the traditional way of kaya making.

Homemade Pandan Kaya (Coconut Egg Jam in Pandan flavour)

I brought the sandwich to the office and shared it in our office morning tea meeting. J