Icy Flame

I've been doing reading on my study for several hours after finishing my classes so far.
I suppose my blog looks very boring now.lol.
Okay I am posting a new recipe for today, also one kind of Chinese food. to be specific, Chinese traditional dessert :Chinese New Year Cakes (Nian Gao).
(This sweet, cake-like Nian Gao has a slightly sticky texture or bite to it. This is a good recipe if you don’t like standing over the stove worrying about the steamer boiling dry, if you don’t want to pan fry lots of pieces, or if you want to share with non-Asians who might be used to a more cake-like cake. )

Ingredients:

16 oz. Mochiko sweet rice flour
One stick of butter or 3/4 cup of vegetable oil
3 eggs
2 1/2 cups milk
1 to 1 3/4 cup sugar--depending on if you like it sweeter
1 Tbl baking soda
One can of red azuki beans
Directions:
1. Mix everything but the beans with an electric mixer at medium speed for 2 minutes. Beat for 2 more minutes at high speed.
2. Sprinkle Mochiko flour over a 9"x13" baking dish that has been oiled or sprayed with Pam
3. Spread half of the batter on the bottom of the baking pan
4. Spread the red azuki beans (you can mix some batter into the beans if they are too thick to spread)
5. Spread the other half of the batter over the red azuki beans
6. Bake in oven at 350 degrees for 40 to 50 minutes

Ingredients:

half pound boneless beefsteak, sliced into 1 half X 2 x half inch pieces
half teaspoon baking soda
half Cup water

Marinade:
half teaspoon kosher salt
1 small egg
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 tablespoon corn oil

Sauce:
2 tablespoons chicken broth recipe here
1 teaspoon sugar
half teaspoon cornstarch (corn flour)
half tablespoons rice wine
half teaspoons mild rice vinegar
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon oriental sesame oil
2 cups corn oil, for frying
1 large piece dried tangerine peel, in small pieces
4 to 5 dried hot red chili peppers
2 tablespoons minced fresh ginger
half teaspoon minced garlic
1 scallion, chopped
2 teaspoons sugar

1/2 lb Lean pork, chopped
1 1/2 c Bean sprouts, chopped
1 1/2 c Cabbage, chopped
1/2 c Bamboo shoots, thinly sliced
1/2 c Grated carrot
3 Mushrooms, chopped
3 Green onions, thin slice
1 Garlic clove, minced
2 Slices ginger, minced
1 ts Soy sauce
1 ts Suar
1 tb Sesame oil
Dash pepper
8 Egg roll wrappersInstructions

Mix all ingredients together. Fill eggroll wrappers. Fold in sides, roll, seal with water or egg white. Deep fry in HOT oil until brown. Remove and drain. This will make 6 to 12 depending on how much filling you use.Barbecued Pork Buns Ingredients (16 servings)

1/3 c Warm water

1/2 ts Sugar
1 pk Dry yeast
2 1/2 c Flour
2 1/2 c Cake flour
4 tb Sugar
1/2 ts Salt
2 tb Shortening
1 1/4 c Low fat milk
16 Pieces white paper 2 inches square

FILLING:
6 oz Chinese BBQ pork, diced
1 tb Oil
2 ts Water
1/2 ts Salt
1/2 ts Sugar
1/2 ts Thin soy sauce
1 ts Oyster sauce
1 ts Hoisin sauce
2 ts Cornstarch
4 ts Cold water (For thickening)Instructions

Mix together the warm water, 1/2 tsp. sugar and yeast in an 8 oz. measuring cup. Let stand until it rises to the 8 oz. level (about 20 minutes).

Sift flour, cake flour, sugar and salt into a large mixing bowl.
Add shortening, yeast mixture and mil,.
Knead mixture 5 minutes to form a dough. Cover with a damp cloth and set dough in a warm place. Allow the dough to rise for 3 hours.
Heat wok, add oil and stir-fry pork for 2 minutes.
Add 2 tablespoons water, salt, sugar, soy sauce, oyster sauce and hoisin sauce. Bring it to a boil.
Prepare thickening by mixing the cornstarch and 4 tablespoons cold water. Stir into the mixture and cook for 1 minute. Let cool before using.
After 3 hours, when the dough has risen, shape into rolls about 2 inches in diameter. Cut each roll into 1-1/2 inch pieces.
Shape each piece into a shallow bowl shape.
Put 1 tablespoon filling in the center, close ans twist dough to form a bun. Put the bun on a 2 inch square of white paper. (This prevents the bun from becoming soggy while steaming.) Place 8 buns in a pie pan and allow them to set and rist for 15 minutes in a warm place.
Steam for 25 minutes.

1 pk Round dumpling skins *
1/2 lb Prawns
12 Chinese mushrooms, small or use canned but squeeze dry
1/2 lb Ground pork
2 Green onion, finely chopped
1 sm Egg

SEASONING:
1/2 ts Salt
1 ts Sugar
1 tb Sesame oi
2 ts Thin soy sauce
1 ts Oyster sauce
1 tb CornstarchInstructions

Shell, devein, wash, and drain prawns. Dice into bits.

Boil mushrooms in water for 10 minutes, rinse, squeeze dry, cut off and discard stems; then chop into very small pieces.
Combine the pork, mushrooms, prawns, and onion. Put mixture on chopping board and chop 10 to 15 strokes with cleaver. (Use a sharp knife if you don't have a cleaver.) Texture, when you're finished, should be slightly finer than hamburger.
Add "seasoning" and the egg to the pork mixture. Mix well.
To make dumpling, place 1 Tb filling in the center of a dumpling skin. Then bring all sides of the skin up to cover the meat as much as possible, without closing. The top of the dumpling is left open.
Cook dumplings by steaming for 30 minutes. Use as many as you need, with the rest, cool, wrap, freeze. Reheat after thawing by steaming 10 minutes.
Serve with soy sauce, hot sauce, or mustard.
* Dumpling skins are similar to won ton skins, except that they are round and slightly thinner. You may substitute won ton skins by merely cutting off the corners to round off the skin.
SOURCE: Chopstick, Cleaver and Wok.

In South China, espeically in the cantonese cities like Guangzhou, Hongkong, Macau, Shenzhen ,they would say they'd eat everything that has four legs except the dinner table and everything that has two wings except a plane. Many of the dishes served in China may really surprise foreigners. Apart from seafood and animals, insects and worms, flowers and weeds are all made into dishes.
Btw, I never eat dogs or cats. I think it is awfully cruel to do that. I've kept two cats and a dog as my pets--actually they are more like my close friends in my life.:)
Snake soup is among the most treasured soups in China. Then, there is snake gall and blood mixed in liquor that supposedly will brighten your eyes. Some "westernized" Chinese would suggest that if Adam and Eve had been Chinese, we humans would still be in the Garden of Eden because they would have eaten the snake.

Here is the beancurd snake soup.Don't get scared:p. the cantonese people do think it is very yummy.

I always enjoy cooking.

As a matter of fact I dislike all kinds of housework apart from cooking. I hate washing or cleaning and dislike gardening. I enjoy cooking just because I enjoy eating but I am too choosy and picky (lol well I am not a gourmet still). I always complain a lot about the food my mom cooks when I am at home. Finally one day she really ran out of patience and told me to cook myself and she would make no complaint and try my food. I began to learn cooking since then:P

And after I began a college student I left my hometown and live on campus (even now I am living on campus in a student apartment). I usually eat in the canteens or restaurants. But when I have time I'd love to cook something for myself and my friends. I am thinking of moving out of the postgraduate students apartment and rent one outside the campus because I hope I can have a nice kitchen.

Anyways, I will post some essays about all kinds of cuisines I know or get interested in as well as some recipes.
I am good at some Chinese(espeically Cantonese) food, some Thai food, and some Japanese food:D

Chinese cuisine can be broadly divided into four major regional categories which follow a north, south, east, west orientation: Beijing and Shandong, Cantonese and Chaozhou, Eastern, and Sichuan.

Cantonese&Chaozhou and Beijing&Shandong

Cantonese & Chaozhou

This is southern Chinese cooking. They have lots of streaming, boiling and stir-frying. They don't use so many oils compared with the other Chinese cuisine.

Dim sum is a snack-like variation, served for breakfast and lunch and consisting of all sorts of little delicacies served from pushcarts wheeled around the restaurant floor. The Cantonese are famous for making just about anything palatable: specialties are abalone, fried squid, 1000 year old eggs, shark's fin soup, snake soup, and dog stews.

Guangzhou is popular for its rich and exotic dishes both at home and abroad.cantonese cuisines is one of the famous four in china, which is characterized with various unusual gradients and materials. Apart from seafood and animals, insects and worms, flowers and weeds are all made into dishes. There is a variety of Cantonese dim sum, sweet or salty. It is estimated that there are over 1000 ways of making deserts. Scattered all over the city there are over 5000 restaurants, teahouses and snack eateries, offering service around the clock. Guangzhou is a paradise for gourmets.

Beijing & Shandong

Beijing and Shandong cuisine comes from one of the coldest pats of China. Since this is China's wheat belt, steamed bread and noodles are the staple rather than rice. Basically, northern cuisine combines very simple cooking techniques (stir-frying and steaming) with the sophistication of imperial dishes.

China's most famous northern specialty is Beijing duck, served with pancakes and plum in sauce. Another specialty is beggar's chicken, supposedly created by a beggar who stole a chicken earmarked for the emperor and secretly cooked it underground (the chicken that is, not the beggar)-the dish is wrapped in lotus leaves and baked all day in hot ashes.

Eastern


The cuisine of eastern China is probably the least understood of China's regional cuisine's-by foreigners at least. It encompasses Shanghai, Zhejiang, Fujian and the so-called lower-Yangzi region of Jiangsu.

It is undoubtedly the most diverse of China's regional cuisine's and has produced many famous dishes. Wuxi spare ribs is one to look out for; it features the common eastern technique of "red cooking" in a stock of soy sauce and rice wine to produce a tasty stew. Soups are a celebrated aspect of eastern cuisine, and there are hundreds of varieties.

In the coastal regions, seafood is an important ingredient and is generally cooked simply to enhance the natural taste. It is true that stir-fried dishes in this part of China tend to overdo the oil or lard, but in mainly restaurants nowadays this is becoming less the case. Cooking standards 10 years or so, and anyone with some money to throw around can enjoy some of best cooking in China.

Sichuan
Sichuan cuisine is world-famous and in a class of its own. The Chinese claim that it comprises more than 4,000 dishes, of which over 300 are said to be famous.

It's easily China's hottest and spiciest cuisine, often using huajiao, literally "flower pepper", a crunchy little item that leaves a numbing and strangely unfamiliar aftertaste-some compare it to spicy detergent.

Sichuan chefs have a catch-cry that draws attention to the diversity of Sihuanese cooking styles: "baicai baiwei", literally "a hundred dishes, a hundred flavors". Whether "a hundred flavors" is a characteristic Chinese exaggeration or not is difficult to say. There is, nevertheless, a bewildering cornucopia of Sihuanese sauces and culinary-preparation techniques. Some of the more famous varieties are yuxiang Wei, a really tasty fish-flavored sauce that draws heavily on vinegar, soy sauce and mashed garlic. Mala Wei, a numbingly spicy sauce that is often prepared with the most justifiable famousness is that used with smoked duck; and, perhaps most famous of all, the hot and sour sauce (suanla wei).

The hottest and sour soup, suanla tang, is eaten throughout China and is great on a cold day. A famous dish is spicy chicken fried with peanuts (gongbaojiding). Equally well known is mapo douhu, which is bean surd, pork and chopped spring onions in a chili sauce.

A favorite with travelers and worth trying simply for the novelty value is guoba roupian. Guoba refers to the crispy bits of rice, uncannily similar to Rice Krispies, which stick to the bottom of the rice pot -they are put on a plate, and pork and gravy added in front of the dinner.