Cuisine & Culture the Chinese Family Way
It is not every day you get to step into a First Class Lounge! Luckily for us, my sister is a Solitaire PPS Club member and she was allowed to bring a guest. We were so fortunate to be flying with her and her girlfriend to Hong Kong and enjoying all the privileges that came with it.
When I think of Hong Kong, the first thing that pops into my mind is Cha Chaan Tengs (local Hong Kong cafés). Back in my childhood, my sisters and I would binge-watch Hong Kong dramas, always drooling over the dim sum scenes and those cozy café settings.
Hong Kong is truly a foodie’s paradise. From roast goose and wonton noodles to claypot rice and beyond, the city serves up some of the best comfort food in the world. On top of that, it’s also home to countless Michelin-starred restaurants and Bib Gourmand eateries.
This year, Singapore celebrates its 60th year of independence, and in true creative style, Play Nation joined in the fun with a nostalgic pop-up stall at Marina Square. The pop-up features a range of kopitiam-inspired plushies, quirky collectibles, and other local treasures.
My son was the one who discovered it on Instagram and insisted we check it out. So off we went—and sure enough, as soon as we reached the foyer on Level 2, we were greeted by a charming, old-school kopitiam-themed setup that instantly transported us back in time.
Last month, I went back to Singapore to visit family and it had been ages since I last stepped foot in Marina Bay Sands. It must be 5 years ago when I went with my husband. A lot of my friends and family told me that I must visit Marina Bay Sands as they have so many things to eat and do. A particularly close friend of mine told me that it is her Saturday place to hang out with her family. So before we left for the UK, my sister took us there for dinner at Imperial Treasure Fine Chinese Cuisine and we managed to squeeze in a few activities.
Chinese food has often been a staple of fantastic takeaway and brilliant restaurant dining throughout the UK. While this wasn’t always the case we have now embraced Chinese food as part of our own and it is one of the most popular meal choices around. With that being said, here is where you can get the very best Chinese food in the UK.
This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #CollectiveBias
Did you know that recently the Singapore pandan cake has made headlines, after being named one of the world’s 17 best cakes by the travel website of US news outlet CNN? They have described the cake as essentially a chiffon cake infused with green-coloured juice from the pandanus palm.
Having this Collective Bias opportunity, I decided to make a Pandan Pretzel to celebrate World Pretzel Day which is today!
Making Chinese Desserts at Home
Chinese food has been rated as the most popular food in the UK for many years, a ranking it also holds in the US and some other countries as well. While many of the dishes have been “Westernised” to be more appealing to British tastes, the basic concepts and traditions of Chinese cooking have remained largely intact.
Earlier last month, we received a Chinese New Year pack from Wing Yip to help us to cook some nice Chinese meals. We are no strangers to Wing Yip as we pop by our local Birmingham store every few months to stock up on all our favourite Asian ingredients and foods. We often buy a 20 kg bag of rice, frozen dim sum, instant noodles and not forgetting all my favourite snacks! I love to buy prawn crackers, dried fish slices and various drinks many more!
Anyway, I have received these four different type of sauces: Chinese Fried Rice Sauce, Curry Sauce, Sweet and Sour sauce and Yellow Bean sauce.
Apam Balik, also called Min Chiang Kueh (面煎粿) is one of the local snacks from my childhood that I used to eat for breakfast or dessert. Nowadays, it is a very common kueh/snack you can find at shopping malls or at hawker centres. They can come in many different fillings like ground peanut, red bean paste, cheese, salted green bean paste, chocolate, black sesame seed and many more. It is more common/traditional to have ground peanuts as the filling. If you have a nut allergy, you might want to avoid some of the Asian desserts!
My preferred filling for Min Chiang Kueh is ground peanut. I had already bought a few packets of ready-made ground peanut with sugar while in Singapore last year so now was an opportunity to use it.
Kikkoman have kindly shared one of their favourite recipes for my readers: Classic Sweet and Sour Chicken. This is also one of my favourite childhood dishes. It’s a dish that my mum always cooks for me whenever I visit.
Caramel Almond Crisp is a cookie recipe from The Secret of Cookies by Gu Huixue. I absolutely love this book my friend bought for me in Singapore and have been trying out many of her recipes!
Steamed rice cakes are one of my favourite childhood snacks when I was in Singapore. I grew up eating them for breakfast. They come in various bright colours and you simply dip the cake into orange sugar (brown sugar coloured orange) to eat. The cake is very plain by design, so dipping sugar makes it more delicious to eat. I bought a packet of orange sugar when I was in Singapore in August and have wanted to bake this cake for a while. Now I have finally got around to do it. It requires minimal ingredients but it takes a long time to prepare. So if you want to have it for breakfast, remember you need at least 2 hours.
In addition to the ingredients, it’s also useful to have these small aluminium cups which I bought from Singapore too. This recipe is to make with coconut milk but I have replaced it with fresh milk which is a good substitute.
I have always loved to drink Milo since young. For any of you unfamiliar with Milo, it is a tastier, chocolatey version of Ovaltine. Since coming to the UK, I do miss drinking cold Milo and Milo Dinosaur (a Singaporean drink – cold Milo with undissolved Milo powdered). So I decided to bake a cookie out of Milo. It was a great success! All my family members love it! You can get Milo in most Asian supermarkets like Wing Yip or you can also try the world food aisle of Asda. Strangely, depending where you buy it from, it can taste different depending where it was imported from. We prefer the South Africa import over Malaysia. So this is my Milo Almond Cookies!
This is another recipe from The Secret of Cookies by Gu Huixue. In her book she has a recipe to bake almond tuiles. Instead of using all almond flakes, I am using a mix of sunflower seeds and almond flakes. Also one of the ingredients is cake flour which I replaced with plain flour.
Tomorrow will be the Mid-Autumn festival where Chinese celebrate the fifteenth day of the eight lunar month – the Mooncake Festival. Last year, I explained the story behind this festival which you can read more here.
