Cuisine & Culture the Chinese Family Way
Crispy roast potatoes, tender meat, and a generous serving of gravy: who doesn’t love a roast dinner, especially at this time of year? But slow-roasting a big joint of lamb or pork can take half the evening, and you end up using so many pots and pans to cook everything, making a mountain of washing-up.
However, I’ve recently discovered a few simple hacks that make it easier and quicker to cook a roast dinner. Have a read and test them out for yourself.
This autumn, McCain want to champion the simple joys of teatime. They want to hijack every Thursday night of the week where mums and kids can connect over food by simply swapping roles and encouraging kids to take over the helm in the kitchen.
I totally love this idea, not only is it a great way to get kids to learn a basic life skill, it also gets them off the TV or iPad to spend some time with me in the kitchen. It is also the only time that we are able to spend time in the kitchen. Most of the days we are rushing to their extra-curricular activities and Thursday night is the only day that we get to come home straight from school.
Both Mr K and Ms C are at the age where they can give me a hand in the kitchen and for them to decide what to have for tea. Mr K is the head chef while Ms C is his runner.
For the next few weeks on Thursday night, to make my life easy, we are going to use McCain Oven Chips, McCain Curly Fries and McCain Baked Potatoes as part of our meal. These McCain products are a few of my favourite! Also not forgetting the Potato Wedges. Whenever I host a party, these always get served.
Love Christmas? Why not try making Christmas dinner in summer? Recently, you may have seen on Twitter or Facebook a trend of people sharing Christmas in July which reminded me that we’re over halfway through the year and so Christmas is not that far off now! It is always a holiday I look forward to because it is a day that is usually filled with laughter with families. Anyway, I am going to give a twist to this Christmas dinner I made. It is a kind of Asian fusion meal with a summer twist!
When you think about Christmas, you will think about Turkey! So sticking with tradition, I am using Turkey meat. However, that’s where the similarities end as I wanted to use my Asian background to make it a fusion between the two cultures.
This Valentines day, OXO Good Grips set us a new challenge – to cook a 3 course meal for our loved ones. So I decided to make crispy duck pancakes for starters, duck breast with cranberry sauce for main and waffles with strawberries for dessert.
In order to help me with this challenge, I have picked the 3 piece large bowl & colander set, mandoline slicer and 9” tongs with silicon heads to use along with all my other OXO Good Grips kitchen accessories.
Last week, we had a unique and lovely meal at Fiesta Del Asado, Birmingham’s first Argentinian restaurant. The white historic building is located on the busy main road of Edgbaston and they have their own car parking at the front and back. When we arrived inside the restaurant, the place is deceptively large with a nice comfortable atmosphere. It is very well designed high end restaurant with plenty of beautiful ornaments around.
One more week to go before my children go back to school! Have you started thinking about what to pack for their lunch box? Do you find that you always run out of ideas?
Fresh Gourmet is the biggest provider of salad toppings, especially croutons, in the US and have brought their delicious products exclusively to UK Tesco stores to inspire us Brits to become more creative with our salads. The range includes three crunchy croutons flavours – Cheese and Garlic, Basil Pesto and Sea Salt and Cracked Black Pepper – along with Crispy Onions and is ideal for people who like a salad in the summer but need that added texture to jazz up the dish.
As a family meal, we aim to eat a healthy meal with at least two portions of fish a week. To accompany the fish, I always use oven chips at the same time. We only stock McCain’s chips as they have always been our favourite chips. I love McCain’s French Fries as it is very crispy and crunchy. While Mr C prefers the texture of McCain’s Crinkle Cut chips.
