Fruity Mooncakes

My in-laws received some delicious mid-autumn festival mooncakes from friends and shared them with us. If you aren’t familiar, these are delicious little Chinese pastries (you could even say, filled cookies) filled with red bean, lotus paste or maybe a hard-boiled duck egg. Ours are fruit-filled which bodes well for the kids.

The imprint on the cake is my favorite thing… I wonder if I can find some “stamps” from a Chinese bakery? Wouldn’t those be fun in a craft room display? And the box that the cakes came in, it’s so cute with a magnetic closure. We’re keeping that for something – maybe my craft supplies. Just when you thought there wasn’t anymore, you get plastic knife and tiny little forks that say, “OK”. You know, because waiting to eat the cakes until you get home from the bakery just won’t cut it.

Tags: autumn, chinese food, eating, mooncakes

Broccoli in Oyster Sauce

Back to the daily grind! My husband and I went away for a little “stay-cation” in the city. It was really nice not having a schedule, but we did miss our kids. I’ll be sharing some foodie moments from the weekend another time… haven’t downloaded the pics, yet.

When I was little, I actually liked vegetables. Maybe it was because my mom cooked them in and with delicious sauces or gravy which was really good with a bowlful of sticky white rice. My kids aren’t like that, and it’s a little disheartening that they don’t like veggies as much as I did at their age. I’m hoping they grow out of it, sooner than later. What is promising is that they enjoy vegetables if they are prepared Chinese-style or somehow Asian. Actually, when I feel the kids aren’t eating well at all, I pull out all the Chinese-Filipino recipes and they magically start eating again. Here’s my recipe for a nice side dish that the three-year old ate with rice. He passed up the chicken main course and ate only this.

• 3 cups of broccoli – mostly florets
• 1/4 c. water
• 2 tbsp. oyster sauce (can get in most groceries)
• 2 tbsp. soy sauce
• dash cooking wine
• 1-1/2 tsp. light brown sugar
• 1 tsp. vegetable oil
• 2 cloves garlic crushed
• 1 tbsp. minced ginger
• 1 tsp. cornstarch dissolved in 2 tsp. water
• dash of sesame oil

Combine water, oyster sauce, soy sauce, cooking wine, sugar in small bowl. Mix well, set aside.

Prep the broccoli by blanching – fill pot with enough water to cover broccoli. Get water to boiling first, then place broccoli in pot, cook until bright green, about 1-2 minutes. Drain, rinse with cold water, set aside.

In a wok or pan, heat vegetable oil. Add garlic and ginger and toss until fragrant, but not brown. Next, add the sauce you mixed before, and heat.  Return broccoli to pan and mix in sauce well. Cook for one minute, then add cornstarch mixture to thicken. Add a splash of sesame oil at the end if you’d like, only optional. Stir around, and plate…

Tags: broccoli, chinese food, cooking, kids

Making homemade potstickers

As a person living in an Asian household and cooking Asian food, there are some must-haves in the kitchen like a rice cooker with a steamer attachment, a hefty bag of short grain rice (in our case we have three different kinds), a wok, soy sauce, you get the picture. But egg roll wrappers or dumpling wrappers, we usually buy those from the Asian market. Until one day… we got the itch to roll out our own wrappers after watching Anita Lo (Top Chef Masters) make some. It’s only water, flour and salt. Oh, correction, HOT water. We used cornstarch to dust the rolling pins, surface and our hands.

Abby thought it’d be fun to help. Thank goodness Ollie was napping. (Yeah, look at my man’s guns there.)

Anita Lo makes it look so easy on television! I didn’t feel so bad, though, when Bobby Flay tried making some on one of his “Throwdown” shows (dumpling recipe here).

Note the “store bought” skins in the background. That was for insurance in case we totally botched up the recipe. As it was, it turned out pretty well. We have to work on our technique, but we did use the ready made skins for the extra meat filling we had leftover.

I’d share our filling recipe, except we don’t have one that’s completely documented or consistent, yet. Just know that we use ground pork, napa cabbage, sesame oil, salt and pepper. I’m sure I’ll update this with a proper recipe sooner or later.

Tags: chinese food, cooking, eating, homemade, potstickers