Leftovers from 2009

Various HK-style café dishes
HK-style milk tea & lemon iced tea; seafood chow mein;
fried rice with langostines & basil; honey-garlic pork ribs;
pork chop with black pepper sauce; Chinese-style "Japanese" ramen;
some other noodle dish; HK-style curry with rice;
thick toast with butter & condensed milk, whole and up close

[ts]
With 2009 over, it's only fitting that we let go of these dishes or items that, for some reason or other (usually because of bad photos), have never gotten a post of their own. Our Drafts folder here sure needed a good purge. Those HK-style cafe dishes above were consumed in April 2008!

LATimes article about HK-style Cafés, if you're so inclined:
http://www.latimes.com/features/food/la-fo-hongkong16apr16,1,6223823.story

Bagoong Salmon "Wellington"


[ts]
Such a shame, the bad photos. This was actually quite a popular dish! We made this for one of our gatherings and there was none leftover!



[ts]
We spread some bagoong on top of salmon, then wrapped it with phyllo pastry.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagoong_alamang#Bagoong_Alamang




[ts]
Even with the very unexpert wrapping of phyllo, the dish was still a hit.



"Giniling Jufran"


[ts]
A Filipino home-style dish with no name. Not posted because JS claims she cannot remember how she made this.

As the name giniling suggests, this has ground pork. Oh wait, JS now tells me she used ground beef. I guess this is why we never posted about this dish!

Other ingredients were bell peppers, peas, raisins, soy sauce, and ...?

I'm not too sure about any other ingredients, but what makes this a giniling Jufran? Well, Jufran Banana Ketchup, of course!

Our other giniling dishes
Mama's Giniling (v.1, v.2 and v.3)
Mama's Giniling (v.4 and v.5)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_ketchup



Philippine Braised Chicken Wings


[ts]
This is simply a dish of chicken wings marinated in our Philippine BBQ marinade, then braised, uncovered, until the wings were cooked and the marinade has reduced to a glaze.

Philippine Chicken "BBQ"
Philippine Pork "BBQ"

Spinach Ricotta Lasagna


[ts]
Um yeah, what it says there. This is a Spinach Ricotta Lasagna.

Broccoli Soup with Cheddar Crouton

self-explanatory

Finally, some sweet things!

Cranberry-Orange Almond Bread


[ts]
This was made by our resident baker, CSC. Unfortunately, the copy she wrote for this was rendered inapplicable because it mostly talked of our faulty oven before our move to the new house.

Ube (Purple Yam) Star Ice Cream Cake with Ube Halaya

Horrid, horrid photo!

[ts]
I should post about this since it's already a year late. If anybody can recall, this was one of the desserts we served for our Starry, Starry Night New Year's Eve party in December 2008!

Our labor-intensive all-Philippine New Year's Eve Menu:
A Starry, Starry Night in Vancouver -- Evoking the Philippine Christmas Spirit



[ts]
I realize now that we haven't posted about this because I don't actually have exact measurements on how to make this Ube Halaya, nor measurements for my Ube Ice Cream!

Ube Halaya is sometimes translated as Ube "jam". I made mine my cooking together purple yam, coconut milk, cow's milk, and sugar.

Here's a recipe from Kusina ni Manang:
http://kusinanimanang.blogspot.com/2009/01/ube-haleyahalayajaleya-basics.html



cut-out ube halaya stars ready for duty

Star Ice Cream Cake Assembly



And there you go! We are done with 2009!
More or less. =)

Chinese "Leftovers" (September 2009)

Chinese herbs n' stuff

[ts]
Ack, we haven't been able to come up with posts during this week! I have pictures ready, but they don't have copy yet. I really don't know what's keeping us so busy.

So, in the meantime, here's another edition of "Leftovers" -- and I believe if you see the pictures, you'll see why they didn't get their own posts.

Sweet and Sour Pork
This is CSC's sweet and sour pork. It was very good! Unfortunately, these pictures were taken very early in our blogging career. Perhaps we will make this again and take new photos, then post it with the recipe.


Frying of pork


left: prepped onions & peppers, prepped sauce
right: cooking of the dish


Very good!

Frog Leg "Kung Pao"

So muscular!


The "kung pao" is in quotations because it didn't turn out quite right. The dish was still tasty, but in an "other Chinese" kind of way, not a kung pao way.

Honey Walnut Shrimp

Shrimp in a honey-sweetened mayonnaise sauce, with candied walnuts. Always a crowd-pleaser.


Mama's "Si Boot" (四物 Si Wu) Soup with Duck Leg

"si wu" blend

[ts]
四物 "Si wu" is a blend of Chinese herb-/medicine-y things. That up there has wolfberries (goji berries), white peony root, Chinese foxglove root, Chinese Angelica root, and Szechuan Lovage Root.

Actually, I only knew about the wolfberries; I didn't have the faintest clue what the other ingredients were.

This page was helpful:
http://www.sacredlotus.com/formulas/get.cfm/chinese_formula/si_wu_tang

"Si boot" is the Fujian (Hokkien) pronunciation of "si wu".

四 -- "Si" -- actually means "four", so I don't know if this pack that my mother bought is actually "si wu", or some other blend of ingredients, since it has 5 components.

But, all our life, Mama would call this concoction with wolfberries "si boot". So, who knows!

http://www.sacredlotus.com/herbs/get.cfm/chinese_herb/gou_qi_zi_chinese_wolfberry_fruit_matrimony_vine_fruit/highlight/wolfberry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfberry

Chinese medicine thingies are a big mystery to me. Because of that, and because of the fact that there is no picture of the finished product, we couldn't write a post about this soup.



Whatever this blend of "herbs" is actually called, making a soup is dead simple. There's some water, there's some meat... In this case, a couple of duck legs.



Boil, then simmer. Done!



Yes, it does get scary-dark like that. Honestly, I can't stand the Chinese medicine taste, although some people do like these medicine-y soups a lot.

That's all the Chinese "leftovers" we have for you today.

More:
[eatingclub] vancouver Chinese food

Summer "Leftovers" (April 2009)

kalbi on the grill

[ts]
Sometimes there are leftover photos that just don't make their way into posts of their own. Here are some pictures from the summer(!) and as summer this year is fast(?) approaching, I figure it's high time they made their way into the sun-/spotlight.

It's "Leftovers" time once again!

JS' Kalbi

Never posted as JS had forgotten the proportions of her marinade!

[js]
I'm still testing out the recipe for the exact measurements of the marinade.

Squid Squid Squid

Left: A Vietnamese-inspired stir-fry, as seen before.
Right: And to dress up some watercress.

Sprouted Grain Tortilla Chips


[ts]
We had to use up all of the sprouted grain tortilla when we made those quesadillas, because we knew that we would never eat them at a later date again.

So, we made them into "chips"... chip-strips!



Grilled Spice-Roast Chicken


[ts]
We served this chicken to accompany our Watermelon Curry with Cucumber.

To echo the flavors of the watermelon curry, we added paprika, turmeric, coriander and cumin to the chicken marinade, as well as having lemon zest, garlic and olive oil. It was then cooked on the grill.




And, finally, our first-ever Pizza and Calzone!


Whole wheat crust and tomato sauce, with cervelat salami, red peppers, and cheese.