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Bought 1/2 kg of diced pork from the butcher last Sunday at Victoria Market (The butchers slash their meat prices every Sunday, though not all cuts of meat are available). This is the first time I bought diced pork, usually I bought a whole piece of pork neck or shoulder and divided them into portion myself, but then the diced pork was cheap this time. I haven’t thought about what to cook with it until I got it out of the freezer yesterday. The meat is already cubed (which means I shouldn’t sliced it further) and I had no idea what part of the pig it’s from (more likely from the leg which is not as tender). I decided the only way to cook the pork is to stew it so I can assure the meat will be tender and juicy.
This is the first time I cooked this recipe using diced pork, but it taste as tender as using belly pork or spare ribs…
We went to Daniel’s parents house for the party. Since most of the people attending were family relatives, the party felt a little like the family gathering we had during Chinese New Year 
. Daniel asked me to prepare a salad, so I brought along vegies and oils and vingear. Most of the people has already arrived when we got there.
We couldn’t decide what to get for Samantha and Daniel’s engagement. The engagement party is on a weekend, so I thought I can bake something as a present (haha I know that’s a little 姑寒). But what to bake? I want to make something sweet, something special (not just an ordinary cake or bread)… and remember I saw on one of my bread book a “figure” bread, but that one uses a simple white bread dough. Then I remember the hazelnut plait I made few weeks ago, the aroma and sweetness is just the right thing for such an occasion, and the plait looks decorative! So with the help of Mr. Pig, we made a bread “plaque” using the plait recipe. *Thank you Mr. Pig :p
Baking baking:
After baking and glazing:
I hope Sam and Daniel like it…
The last few breads I baked we didn’t finished them all before they started to turn moldy, Mr. Pig didn’t seem to be too interested in them. So this weekend when I do my baking again I made sure to ask him what he want to eat, and he told me he wants 雞尾包. I went looking for recipes for 雞尾包 on the internet and saw one listed by Kae. Her 雞尾包 looks absolutely professional so I decided to use that recipe.
Mine didn’t look as well as Kae’s, I forgot to knock back the dough properly (I sort of just cut out the proportions and left them to rest and shape :p). Taste wise the buns are fabulous! Both Mr. Pig and Little Kid said the bun has just the right sweetness and filling. I think I’ll make this more often since this is one of guys’ favourites.
I don’t know what to call this, this steam cake is inpired by the ingredients of 齊糕 and the texture of 白糖糕. Honestly I don’t recall eating 白糖糕 before :p, and never heard of 齊糕 until I saw it on a recipe book I borrowed from the library. 齊糕 is a snack from 浙江 (also known as 八珍糕, sounds better). What attracts me to this cake is the 8 chinese herbs that have been used. I wanted to try that recipe, but I had no idea what the cake looks like, the book doesn’t have any illustration, and according to the instruction the cake is more of a biscuit texture than a sponge (having flour and herb pressed in layers and streamed). I didn’t really want a dry shortcake without shortening, so I decided to adapt another cake recipe that is moist and spongy, one ideal choice was 白糖糕 (also known as 倫教糕). Unfortunately I didn’t have 2 of the herbs listed on hand, so the cake has 6 chinese herbs:
党參：補中益氣，和胃養血
山楂：健脾開胃，消食化滯，活血，有抗癌作用
白朮：健脾燥濕， 利水， 止汗， 安胎
芡實：能益腎固，精健脾除濕，又收斂止瀉
蓮子：有補虛損，養心安神，健脾止瀉效果
薏米：健脾利濕，清熱排膿消癰
I think I didn’t add enough rice flour to the batter, the cake is a little soggy, and the air bubbles doesn’t look like the ones I saw on a 白糖糕… well, this is the first time I tried a 白糖糕 recipe. I’m not sure whether I overproofed the batter of not, it tasted a little sour and alcoholic, the batter was supposed to proof for 5-6 hours but I reduced to 2 due to hot weather. It’s need a little more sugar too, next time I’ll add up to 170g sugar, plus the 2 other herbs .
Or punchured or cut or whatever one calls it. Clement skyped me yesterday at his office and told me he’s driven the pulsar back to work because his car is undrivable. He said, “My car’s tyres has been 咭穿 比人”, “two 尾tyres 無晒氣”.
I went with him last night to see if we could move the car and saw how bad it was (we didn’t want the remaining tyres to get slashed too by leaving the car at the same spot). The slashed tyres were FLAT. Bro bought an auto air compressor kit before and we tried it to see if we could pump up the tyres and then move the car, 
but we could hear the air gushing out as soon as the air start pumping, useless (that’s how we concluded the tyres were punchured deliberately but not by some accident, the holes are on the side). At the end we spent over an hour changing the flat one with our spare ones.
A lot of people passed by us and asked if we needed any help. When we told them what happened all their first reactions were “Oh, f$#k!”. We also spoke to the people living on that street and been told this has happened to someone else before. This is just one block further from where Clement usually parked his car (which is currently having roadwork and thus no parking). This is the first time we parked there over night, and this happened. ai…. so sad….
Yesterday we had vegetarian meals, today we had plenty of meat! No holiday here in Melbourne, so I only prepared dinner today (or tonight?). We had 南乳燒雞, 五柳魚, 發菜蠔豉 and 魚肚羹 for dinner.
Originally the chicken should be deep fried (I think), but I didn’t want oil splashing everywhere, so the chicken was baked instead. The grill burnt the syrup coated skin very quickly… the chicken looked brown instead of red. The 五柳 I came up with my own version, which was pickled carrot, pickled onion, celery, green pepper and gerkin. I haven’t eaten any 五柳 dish before, so I don’t know what it should taste like. The 五柳 sauce I made was pretty sour, which went well with the fried snapper. It’s been a long time since I last bought a whole fish, yum~
It’s just my habit, not influenced by religon or anything else. Different people define vegetarian different ways, for me is just anything non-meat, nothing that’s considered “sinful”. Some vegetarian eats anything as long as it has no blood, which means it’s ok to eat food like dried oyster or dried scollop (which is pretty much like a must-eat food during CNY); some people consider eating chive or garlic is “sinful”, so they are not used by some vegetarian restaurants.
For lunch I made 羅漢齊炒年糕, it’s a shanghai dish with a vegetarian twist. Initially I wanted to use deep fried gluten, but the chinese grocery I went was out of stock, so I replaced it with japanese sweet fried beancurd. It’s a little too sweet in my opinion, but the dish tasted OK nonetheless.
I read an article on the web sometime ago that the Japanese eat something call “7 grass congee” during new year. It turns out the Chinese also have a 7 vegie soup (七菜羹). It’s supposed to be eaten on the 7th, but it matches my vegetarian theme, so that’s the soup for dinner, plus 3 mains, and sweet 年糕 for dessert.
The dinner mains were quite a challenge for me, because I wanted to make 3 attractive dishes using pretty much the same ingredients (vegie, bean curd or gluten). Most of the vegetarian dish I know are deep fried in some way, and that’s something I tried to avoid. At the end we had 生菜包, sweet sour gluten and 法海蒲團.
Everybody liked the 7 vegie soup, it’s green… and it tasted “healthy”. All in all I used 15 kind of vegetables for my vegetarian meals, and that did not include the various fungus and seaweed I also used. My fridge is now packed all of vegies, I don’t think I need to do anymore vegie shopping for the rest of the week .
The first day of the year of the pig (or boar !?) !! Dad bought me this piggy bank last time he visited melb, it fits the theme of this post so much, especially when it’s bought by someone born in the year of the pig!
I didn’t prepare anything special for this year, only made some steam citron cake which I had them shaped like a ball , add a few leaves steam and they become 大桔蛋糕 …hehe… wish everybody 大吉大利!
Today is the last day of the year of dog. Since it also falls on a weekend, the Ho family invited us to have 團年飯 together. I was supposed to buy salmon sashimi for one of the dishes, unfortunately the shop I used to buy sashimi is closed down (over 1/2 year ago! That tells how little I eat sashimi). Tonight we had 5 dishes, and one of them I haven’t tried before.
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