Cuisine & Culture the Chinese Family Way
Want to impress your family and friends this Christmas? If so, why not try out this delicious Vegetable Spiral Tart with Avocado-Curry Cream recipe by Yvette van Bovan? This is her latest comprehensive Christmas cookbook called Home Made Christmas that will be out on the 16th October 2018 by Abrams.
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.
While some dishes, preparations, and presentations have been altered a bit, it is interesting that one area that remains fairly distinctly Chinese is the concept of desserts.
Checking the menus of Chinese takeaway places on a site like Hungry House or at your favourite local Chinese restaurant can lead you to believe that the Chinese don’t have what foodies call a “dessert culture.” After all the main dessert items you seem to find are fritters (which are believed to have been brought to Asia by the Portuguese), bananas, ice cream and custard tarts; which is not the most extensive dessert menu to be found.
A great deal of the concept of Chinese cooking is the blending of flavours and textures, so the concept of courses is not part of traditional Chinese cooking. This especially applies to the dessert course. Typically Chinese meals are finished with tea and fruit.
A huge welcome to Week 17 of the Tuesday Tutorials Pintorials Pin Party! This week I am featuring 5 different desserts! I love baking and am frequently baking delicious desserts. Although we don’t always have it every day after a meal, we probably have a baked treat at least 3 times a week!
One of my polytechnic Chinese friends from Mauritius has always told us how beautiful his country is. Since then, I have always wanted to visit Mauritius. It possesses a range of natural and man-made attractions, tropical climate just like Singapore and with clear warm sea waters and attractive beaches.
I was thrilled when I received the Winner of Masterchef 2012 Shelina Permalloo’s Sunshine on a Plate cookbook. This book is an introduction to the homely cooking of Mauritius. Looking through the book, I found that there are a few Chinese influences on Mauritius recipes which made me even more excited! Anyway, my hobby is mainly baking cakes and pastries! So I decided to bake an Almond & Cinnamon Cake. This is my first time baking a flourless and gluten free cake. I have no idea if it will taste like an egg sponge. Very much to my surprise, it was excellent! I would definitely bake it again as it requires minimal ingredients.
After I watched Comic Relief Celebrity Bake Off, I really wanted to bake chocolate profiteroles too! They are my favourite desserts! However I was temporarily stopped in my tracks when my mixer went kaput. I managed to find a new affordable mixer so here’s how I got on with the profiteroles.
The Sugar-Free Kitchen is a simple cookbook with recipes that drives towards eating a cleaner, healthier diet. It offers a range of exciting recipes to help reduce or eliminate sugar from your diet while still being tasty and delicious.
The cookbook is also very informative. It explains how both refined and natural sugar affects the body, how it has snuck into our food, the health benefits of eating more quality protein, wholefoods and good fats and much more.
It has certainly enlightened me. I was always very curious about the alternatives for sugar for diabetics. Both my parents suffered from diabetes which I will likely inherit in future. So I should watch my intake of sugar especially as I love sugary food!
The book will be released on 3rd November 2014 and is published by Parragon Books Ltd. The book is paperback containing about 128 pages. It comes with six chapters: introduction, breakfasts, lunch & snacks, mains, desserts & baking and index. It is easy to navigate through the book for recipe ideas. Each recipe comes with clear instructions, beautiful photos and nutritional information per serving (calories, fat, saturated fat, carbohydrate, sugars, salt, fibre and protein).
