Cuisine & Culture the Chinese Family Way
Egg tarts are one of my husbands favourite Chinese desserts. We always buy it from the Chinese supermarket. So I decided to bake some. This is my second attempt. The first bake didn’t turn out great. I used ready-made mini tarts from Tesco instead of making my own.
Wishing everyone a Happy Mid-Autumn festival! I had made this colourful snow skin mooncake from the leftover ingredients from the Swiss Roll Snow Skin Mooncake.
In many countries like the USA, they celebrate baby shower before the baby is born. As for Chinese custom, this is traditionally celebrated one month after the baby is born. This also coincides with the end of the new mum’s confinement period. During the confinement period, visiting the new mum and baby is not advisable. The full month is the day where both mother and baby are introduced to the extended relatives and friends.
Hope you’ve enjoyed my Chinese Wedding series so far where I have covered gifts, tea ceremony, hair combing ceremony and Yue Lao. This week, I am writing about ‘small uncle’ or in English tradition this is called a Page Boy. In a Chinese Wedding, our ‘small uncle’ have a very important role than just walk together with the bride.
Last year, I made Chinese Steamed Buns – Man Tou using the Food Network website. So last week I went to my Chinese friend’s house and she taught me her own recipe. She had tried a few recipes but they were not as good as the ones sold in her own country. She had also tried a number of different brands of plain flour but found that the Aldi plain flour is whiter than other brand. Also it is cheap at only 49p. Also by adding strong white flour, it makes the bun spongier. She also taught me a new way to steam buns. I saw it on internet before but I dared not try it until now. Since she taught me once, I have been trying it out and it was great but just slightly oily.
Following my recent theme on Chinese traditions, I decided to write about Yue Lao who is the god of marriage. Without him, there wouldn’t be any wedding. According to legend, Yue Lao appeared as an old man under the moon. He is like cupid but instead of holding a bow and arrow, he is holding a red string. If he ties the red string onto the couple, they will fall in love and get married.
Green bean soup was never one of my favourite desserts until I came to UK as this is the only dessert I know how to cook. Fairly simple! Soak the mung beans / green beans for a couple of hours or overnight before placing them into the slow cooker, with a 2 to 1 water to bean ratio. Cook it till soft and mushy. After which, add rock sugar or brown sugar. It is then ready to serve.
Glutinous rice is often served as dim sum in Chinese restaurants. They were wrapped up with lotus leaves and steamed. They do sell lotus leaves in Chinese supermarkets typically as a massive pack of 20 leaves. I decided to cook my glutinous rice in my rice cooker instead of using the lotus leaves and steaming it.
Stir fry the meats and add all of them into the rice cooker. It is that easy.
Qing Ming festival is a day where you pay respects at your departed loved one’s grave. The day varies each year as it goes according to the Chinese lunar calendar. This year it falls on the 5 April 2014. However, it is an acceptable tradition for the families to pray to their ancestors 10 days before and 10 days after the actual day. This is to avoid major congestions at the cemeteries and temples. As many countries like Singapore are densely populated and short of land, most of the deceased are cremated. If you would like to know how this festival originated, check out Chinese Culture for more details.
My mother in law is an expert at cooking char siu pork. She gave me her recipe seven years ago but I had never tried to cook it. This is one of my husband’s favourite dishes and he gets to eat it whenever he visits his mum. So I decided it is about time that I would try to learn!
Last week, I wrote a blog post about Chinese superstitions when entering a hotel room, this week I would like to share some tips of gift ideas to avoid buying for your Chinese friend. I find that it is sometimes not easy to understand one person culture but by learning through interaction or reading will help each other to understand and live in a better and tolerable environment.
Earlier this week, my mum and sister flew over to the UK to visit us. We took them on a road trip to visit Scotland. My sister is a proper Singaporean Chinese who can’t live without noodles or rice. So we went out to eat Chinese food for most of our meals on our trip. I came across an old fashion dumpling restaurant in Edinburgh and they have these paper wrappers for the chopstick. It has been a long time since I have seen these wrappers in restaurants. It triggered memories of how my Japanese friend taught me to make an Origami Chopstick stand. This is to keep the tip of the chopstick clean if the restaurant didn’t provide chopstick stands.
I only managed to get a single wrapper as my children kept stealing the wrappers to play with it. In the following pictures, the wrapper is quite creased. If I ever get hold of an original wrapper, I will take a better picture. So for now, please bear with it.
1. Stand
Fold the wrapper from one of the ends inwards to a length of 3 cm. Keep folding inwards for the rest of the length of the wrapper. Fold in half along down the length. Pinch in the sides to make it stand.
Valentines Day is approaching soon. Instead of buying an expensive gift to Mr C, I decided to make him a jelly heart as a treat! I bought the jelly mixture from a Chinese supermarket. It is called agar agar and is slightly firmer than other jellies which is good with moulding and cutting. I also bought a pack of heart shaped cookie cutters.
Each time you go to buy a Chinese takeaway, are you tempted to buy a bag of prawn crackers? Sometimes in Chinese restaurants, they may serve you a basket of prawn crackers too. My children love it and we always have to stop them eating too many in case it spoils their dinner! In fact, prawn crackers are the simplest snack to cook! I always get the them from a Chinese supermarket and they cost less than £2. Uncooked, they are a small solid round shape.
Each week, my son has been asking me to make mantou as his fellow Chinese students are eating it for their tea during our weekly Chinese lesson. So I followed the Food Network website to make this but I have altered the recipe.