Category Archives: Recipes

Hainanese Chicken Rice

Hainanese Chicken Rice

It must have been the moment that I saw Flickr friend anakorpa’s photo of Hainanese Chicken Rice from Cafe D’lite in Vancouver that the cravings began.

Hainanese Chicken Rice is one of those seminal foods that I distinctly remember from my childhood. Silky slices of tender chicken, fragrant rice, clear gingery soup and the accompanying dipping sauces — this dish stands out as an early taste memory so pleasurable that it can make my mouth water even today.

It was a treat to go to the restaurant in Tradewinds – one of the Manila hotels in the upscale business district of Makati. Unfortunately, hardly a trace of this hotel, its restaurant or its menu can be found on the Internet today – but it existed, a while ago – back in the early 80s. I found one blog post that confirms it here – its author reminisces about the dish and her commenters also confirm the name and existence of the hotel and restaurant.

So why was Tradewinds so special? One went to Tradewinds just for the Hainanese Chicken Rice.

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Arctic Queen Nectarine Galette

3-ingredient galette

In my quest for fast and easy desserts, I loved stumbling upon this amazing 3-ingredient recipe for a fruit galette, posted by Smith and Ratliff on Marcus Samuelsson’s blog.

As I’d mentioned before, I often tend to focus on the savoury, giving short shrift to sweet things. In my family my mom and I were the cooks, my little sister (with the sweet tooth, naturally), the baker. But DD has that sweet tooth, and less of an inclination to bake, and is more like to coerce me into emerging into the dark streets in our pyjamas, in search of dessert. We luckily live by a great Gelato shoppe a scant 1/2 block away and a cafe that offers crispy waffle bits and Bi-Rite ice cream catty-corner to the Gelato shoppe.

But with this recipe there’s really no excuse to not make dessert at home.

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Scallop, Uni and Mentaiko Pasta

Uni, Scallops, Mentaiko and Tobiko

This is a crazy luxurious dish, containing some of my most favourite seafood in the world, and cream and butter. I’ve had uni sauce for pasta before, mostly in fancy restaurants and the like, but not to this degree at home. Well, ok, we did attempt an uni cream sauce once, with actual fresh uni, but this dish, this dish nails it just so. Just the right amounts of cream and uni and other goodness (mentaiko was definitely the key) to turn something fantastic into something orgasmic.

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Summer Vegetable Gratin

Veggies are good for you!

It’s that time of year. The time when farmer’s markets abound with a profusion of summer produce: eggplants and pattypan squash and green zucchini with their bright yellow cousins. Ears of corn call to be shucked and eaten raw, right off the cobb. An abundance of tomatoes and basil sends one rushing for the good olive oil and oozy burrata. Beautiful golden squash blossoms call out to be stuffed and fried… Even at work, one of my coworkers with a prolific garden brings in trayfuls of her extra produce, to be snatched up by the garden-slackers (i.e., me).

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Albondigas Soup

Mexican Meatball Stew

As I’ve mentioned before – I love one-pot dishes: entrees that incorporate proteins, starches and vegetables all in one. I’d never made Albóndigas soup in the past, probably because I thought that having to make all the meatballs would be time-consuming. And while it did take a bit of time, the end result was pretty rewarding – you can even enlist loved ones in forming the little round spheres.

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Honey Lavender Panna Cotta

Easier than Pie

I’ve probably mentioned this before – baking/ baked goods and desserts of all kinds get short shrift at our house. If given a choice between making something savory or something sweet, I almost always will choose the savory appetizer, entree, vegetable side dish, etc.

But of late I’ve been trying my hand at after-dinner treats more – DD’s sweet tooth demands it. So – to avoid the late night forays to Holy Gelato in our pyjamas, I’ve been making panna cotta. I didn’t realize how easy it could be until I tried making my first batch, using David Lebovitz’s recipe for a vanilla version here.

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Chanko Nabe

Not just for sumo wrestlers

Chanko Nabe

Somewhere around the fall of last year, I went on a Japanese cooking jag, inspired by and anticipating our upcoming trip to Japan. We were taking Japanese language courses and I was shopping at Nijiya, weekly. The Japantown neighborhood suddenly became familiar, where it hadn’t before. My mania for Japanese cooking reached somewhat of a turning point when I took a Japanese Kaiseki cooking workshop through the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Northern California in December, and cooked up a multi-course Japanese holiday dinner. Continue reading →

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Kiam Pung, Salty Soy Rice

Kiam Pung

I cooked my mother’s dish on mother’s day.  I was not able to make a trip to Southern California then, but loved that she had made it on the past 2 occasions when I visited last. Kiam Pung translates into Salty Rice, with “kiam” being salty in my parents’ fukienese/ fujianese dialect, which I’m told is very similar to Hokkien, or Taiwanese.  Basically I like to think of this easy dish is a Chinese Paella — it’s open to an infinite number of variations, but should always contain 3 essential ingredients (besides the rice, which is a given):

  • Soy Sauce
  • Some kind of green vegetable
  • Some kind of meat or seafood or meat substitute

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Wild Mushroom Crostini

Wild Mushroom Crostini

DD rambles far and wide in his search for edible wild mushrooms, but he takes every opportunity he can to find them close to home as well.  This past Saturday, he spent 8 hours up north in a rather fruitless search save for half-a-dozen or so candy caps.  On Sunday, a 90-minute ramble through the park with the puppy yielded some nice Agaricus Augustus and Agaricus Lilaceps, which he turned into some beautiful mushroom crostini.

Say what, you mumble… Agaricus what? You were expecting something with chanterelles perhaps? Continue reading →

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Caldo Verde: Portuguese Greens Soup

Caldo Verde

Another old but excellent and easy one-pot standby, this hearty soup makes a regular appearance at our table every couple of months or so.  As with many of these kinds of peasant soups and stews, there are an infinite number of variations.  I believe at a minimum, the soup calls for some sort of green (kale, collards and cabbage are most common in the recipes I’ve seen cited); some sort of starch – usually potato; some form of allium – onion and or garlic; and finally, sausage.  This time I used broccoli rabe (for the first time ever) and while it turned out delicious, perhaps sticking with sturdier greens is preferable.   I also add tomato (which is not classic) since I like the acidity that comes from this component; other recipes that don’t include tomato sometimes call for the addition of a few spoonfuls of vinegar.  Finally, in this last go-round I eschewed potatoes and included a cupful of pearled (fast cooking) farro. Continue reading →

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