Simple meal idea for Valentine’s day

I normally like to cook Valentine’s day dinner at home, it is simply because the restaurants are all very crowded, difficult to book a seat, and also at home, you can chat over the ‘romantic’ table for as long as you want. :))

Well, then the task is to make the meal ‘romantic’, not only the taste, also the presentation, and the combination, and it has been to good with wine -- I guess many people would like to have sip of wine to accompany the romantic dinner. :)) So the taste is supposed to be ‘soft’ and ‘gentle’, for instance, too spicy is probably not a very good option; the presentation is supposed to ‘warm’ and not too ‘plain’; and also you’d like all the dishes to combine well with each other. In addition, I guess we all try to avoid to make something difficult to eat, for example, peel things with hands, and to avoid something strong smell, like garlic. :)) --- Oh, of all, it should not be too complicated, you don’t want to bring the kitchen smell with you to the romantic dining table.

Read more »

A weekend meal idea for 2-3 people

Tweet

Weekend is coming again? Time - where has the time gone? Last weekend is just like yesterday. I could not remember what I have done during the whole week at, or probably I did not do anything at all. A few nights I woke up from sleep, could not help thinking time fast passing by, and how much I have wasted. I swear, for some time I got even scared to sleep. --- Don’t we just miss the years when we were very young, and we never had to understand what time was, what worries meant, what life means.

One thing has got to continue, and not wasting time --- to eat. We don’t only take ‘eating food’ to supply our body, but also for tasting life, you know, bitterness, spicy, sweet, salty, sour… and just joyful chewing…:))


Here is a meal idea for the weekend. I picked up some recipes I already posted.

I say ‘weekend recipe’, is because, in northeast China, it is a kind of tradition -- on the weekend -- to cook some flour based food, the common ones are different kinds of dumplings, baozi, shaomai…

Read more »

Meal idea: Sunday morning breakfast idea

Tweet

This morning, when I opened the window to the balcony for watering my plant, I suddenly saw a few flower buds on the tip of each branch. I screamed with extreme excitement.

 I was given this plant by a friend’s mum when she came to visit two years ago. It was a beautiful plant with all the beautiful flowers, many flowers. However, after all the flowers gone, the leaves all faded away, I was very sad and thought that I just lost another plant - I have always been a ‘plant killer’. I cut off the faded flowers and leaves, kept on watering it time to time. A few months later, some stems and leaves grew out, and last year, it even had one flower - I was so happy, jumped up and down. And now, more than ten flower buds there, just I thought I would not have any flowers this year…

This is what I meant by ‘beautiful hope’, I could not help smiling all day long, and everyday from now on. :)



Sunday morning, I normally make a ‘lazy Sunday breakfast/brunch’… But the ‘lazy’ here does not mean easy lazy recipes, rather having lazy, enjoyable, relaxed ‘eating’, because 'he' does not need to rush to work. :))

Read more »

Meal ideas: Chinese meal weekend garden dinner for 4/5

If the forecast does not lie :), it is likely that we are going to have very warm weekend, starting from tomorrow lunch time. :)) So we can enjoy the summer for 2 -3 days!! I am getting excited just by seeing the ‘sun’ sign on the forecast page. So, I imagine you are going to have a good garden gathering with friends, having some beer, soaking into the sun, chatting, eating…

In Chinese custom, you cannot only take drinks without having some dishes in front of you. :)) There are some dishes that are actually called ‘Xia Jiu Cai’, which literally means ‘the dishes going down with Alcohol. Probably you already noticed that in some recipes I mentioned that ‘this dish is good to go with beer’. ‘Alcohol’ with Chinese dishes  normally refers either to Chinese beer (which is a very light beer), or to Chinese rice wine (never to red / white wine).

The meal idea for this weekend is for either 4 or 5 people, (with beef and lamb dishes), if you will have beer or other soft drinks with them, rice is not necessary. It is only a suggestion, and I chose the dishes from the recipes I put out already, it is easy to explain.

The meal consists of two meat dishes --‘lamb pieces on toothpicks’(Ya qian rou) Soysauce beef salad’ (jiang niu rou); two salad (liang cai) dishes --mungbean starch salad (la pi liang cai) black fungus with cucumber salad (Mu’re ban huang gua); one stir fried green dish - stir fried mange tout (qing chao he lan dou), and just five spice adame beans for filling the gaps in between the meals, and it is the season now, too good to miss. :)

In hot weather, (or when having beer, which can be heavy already), I prefer something light, (I don’t drink), but with enough proteins and vitamins to give me enough energy to go through the day. So, this meal provides enough proteins from the meat, (having one type of meat can be a bit boring when chatting with a few friends), iron from black fungus, fibre from mange tout and adame beans. And there is not much fat in any of the dishes, (apart from ‘toothpicks lamb’, which can contain some).

Another advantage of this combination is that you don’t have to worry about the dishes getting cold since they are all good even if they are not warm, including the lamb (not too cold though). So, you can spend longer time drinking, chatting, and eating. However, for making preparation easy, it is good to do a little bit work the night before, for example, boiling the beef, soaking the seasonings with lamb and inserting the toothpicks, and soaking the black fungus, or even fry the peanuts.

After these preliminary steps, the actual cooking will take probably one hour: I would boil the adame beans first, and soak the mung bean starch. Meanwhile, chopping and mixing the beef, and making the black fungus salad. … By now, you have half of the table ready already. Then I would stir fry the mange tout, while it needs to be in the wok for a little bit, shred the cucumber and making the mung bean starch salad. I leave the lamb at the last, as it is still better if it is hot or warm. :)

Am I talking sense? For the details of each meal, check the original post.


I think it is a good table of food accompanying the sun, do you agree? :)

Enjoy the sun and weekend! -- I am off to prepare grilled lamb leg for our friends’ gathering tomorrow, and it will be Sunday’s recipe. :))

Meal idea: Chinese dinner for two at home

Tweet

Since our friends have been asking whether I cook a lot at home, the answer is definitely ‘yes’. Unless my husband takes over the kitchen (for him, cooking is a relaxation session, while listening Chinese lesson), or we go out for dinner, I do try to make simple breakfast, lunch (if we both are at home), and a proper dinner. We joke that this is probably one of the most used kitchens in England. Ha…

We don’t like fast food, and we are not big fans of ordering deliveries from Takeaways. The thing is that sometimes you just want some simple ‘homey’ food, not necessarily fancy at all. So I like to ‘fix’ dinner -- if I am not too tired or lazy, and have enough time, I ‘fix’ a ‘rich’ dinner (taking a bit longer time), otherwise, I do ‘quick fix’, :))) as I mentioned at the very top of this blog -- it is like doing a quick sketch, I am not a very patient person when working on the very details on ta painting anyway. je je….

Is it too much work? and it

Read more »

So, what is there in a Chinese meal?

Tweet

Having talked about many Chinese dishes, I still haven't discussed how to combine them together into a nice Chinese meal.

People I come across always ask me, ‘so what do you eat in one meal?’, or when we go to restaurants here with my Western friends, they would ask me what to order according to Chinese custom.

This is the first post of ‘many’ forthcoming meal ideas - well, it is not so much an ‘idea’, but rather, what I would prepare or plan a table of food for a quick weekday dinner, or weekend for ‘two’, or a table for 8 guests, for example, according to Chinese custom. Hope it helps.

If you ask any Chinese what kind of dishes make up a meal (for example), most Chinese people would simply say ‘Four dishes and one soup’

I am not sure when such concept of a meal became ‘so common’ in China, but that is what is considered as a standard meal. Of course there are many variations from family to family, and depending on the situation ( for example, how many people at the table, and what you can afford...etc).

These ‘Four dishes and one soup’ normally include

Read more »