Category / Food

by Sharlene

Happy Lunar New Year#WeekendCooking

Happy Year of the Rabbit!

It’s been a busy few days preparing for the Lunar New Year.Spring cleaning is a must. The weekend before, we had vacuumed and cleaned the house, everyone pitching in. On Saturday, we put up some decorations like lanterns and red packets.

But perhaps some of the most important traditions revolve around food. In Singapore, Lunar New Year is a public holiday, at least for the first couple of days of the new year. This means you get to go visiting friends and family. And when people visit your home, you’re supposed to provide different treats and snacks. Common new year treats found in Singapore are:

pineapple tarts

love letters

bakkwa, a kind of grilled pork jerky

kueh bangkit, a crumbly cookie made with tapioca flour and coconut milk

When I was a kid, my mum would also make cookies like peanut cookies and checkerboard cookies. Last year, I posted about enjoying Yusheng in Singapore. This is a vegetable and raw fish salad that’s kinda unique to Singapore and Malaysia. For instance, it’s not easily found here in the Bay Area Chinese restaurants. And so I miss eating it during the new year!

This year, I made Chinese peanut cookies, as well as pork floss and sesame cookies (recipe here). Both cookies are the type that melt in your mouth, so they’re quite small.

It’s not easy being away from our families during these times that are about family and celebration. I often wish that we could go back to visit, so that my kids can get a chance to experience Lunar New Year celebrations too. I guess that’s why I try my best to keep some traditions going, like making new year cookies, even though we don’t have family visiting us!

This year, I also wanted to try making huat kueh or fa gao 发糕, which can be translated to fortune cake. It’s a kind of cupcake that’s steamed. They are often flavoured with brown sugar, but as we love the flavour of pandan leaves, I made this pandan coconut version (recipe here). The green color is from pandan paste. The batter is quite thick.

Steaming it in a pot. Make sure not to lift the lid until the 15 minutes are up.

Our other tradition is always having hotpot for our reunion dinner (tuan yuan fan 团圆饭). This takes place on Lunar New Year eve, and is meant for the family to get together for a meal.

It’s labelled “pudding” but nian gao is really not a pudding. It’s instead a rather firm sweet cake made with rice flour.

The best way to eat it is dip it in flour and beaten eggs, then pan fry it. The nian gao softens with cooking, and is delicious and sweet. I cook this for breakfast for the first couple of days of the new year, for a sweet start to the year.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog’s home page

by Sharlene

Pozole and Tortillas for a California Missions project #WeekendCooking

In California, fourth graders in public schools do a research project on the California missions. Coincidentally, my 9yo got assigned the same Mission as his older brother, the Santa Clara de Asís, located in Santa Clara University. His older brother did a diorama of the Mission, but honestly, that was such a pain to do, having to help measure and draw and cut and paint and glue etc etc etc…

So I gently nudged the 9yo towards something else on the teacher’s list. Luckily he was happy to try out the cookbook. The project was to research about the food eaten at missions and to write a cookbook with at least two recipes of the foods. We looked it up together and I realised that Pozole, a kind of meat and hominy soup/stew, is actually quite manageable. And he wanted to try making tortillas too.

This is the Pozole Roja recipe we used. We also watched this Youtube video together. The whole wheat tortilla recipe came from Isabel Eats, which was convenient because I didn’t have shortening and this one just used oil.

I picked up about 3 pounds of pork shoulder from the supermarket. Luckily, managed to order the dried ancho and guajillo chillies, as well as the can of hominy, from Weee!

As this was the first time cooking with these chillies, I wasn’t sure if it would be spicy. So instead of the four and five chillies used, I halved it. But these chillies actually weren’t spicy at all.

Cut the pork shoulder and put it in a pot of water to boil for about an hour. Skim off the scum and fat.
The chillies have to be soaked in boiling hot water for about 15 minutes, then blended. I had forgotten to add the garlic and shallots to the chillies. Some recipes call for the chilli mixture to be added straight to the boiling pork. But others say to cook it down a bit for 30 minutes. I decided that I might as well cook it a bit more before adding to the pork. After adding it to the pork, cook for another hour.
I was curious about hominy but it turns out to be dried corn kernels treated with alkali to strip and soften the corn. We drained the can and rinsed the hominy before adding it to the pot and cooking for 45 more minutes. Finally the pork was super tender after some 3 hours of cooking.

Kneading the dough for tortillas.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog’s home page

by Sharlene

Eating Singapore 2022

Well, this post is several months late, but I wanted to chronicle some of the great food I ate when I was in Singapore in July and August. We were there for slightly over a month!

Singapore style seafood at Jumbo at Dempsey Road. Chili crab, deep-fried baby squid, Hokkien mee and more.
I have no idea what this place is called but it’s under a block of flats somewhere, and is a really good place for Singapore local food called “zichar”. There’s sweet and sour pork, beef horfun, butter crab, prawn paste chicken, and more.

Sushiro is a conveyor-belt sushi joint from Japan and seems to have sprung up so many branches in Singapore over the past few years. The variety and quality of the sushi is really good and we ate there several times.

The kids’ favourite Singapore food is satay.
Another Singapore treat is kueh pie tee. This is a cooked mixture of thinly sliced turnips and carrots inside a crispy tart shell. We had ours topped with half a prawn and some chili sauce.
This is roti prata which is eaten with curry.

Haidilao is a popular hotpot chain from China. It’s always crowded and when you wait for your table, you can sit outside the restaurant and have snacks and drinks.

While we have several Thai restaurants where we live, I find that Thai eateries in the US tend towards the sweeter side, except for those in Thai town in LA. I love Thai food and my friend recommended this one called Nakhon Kitchen. The food was delicious!

I love eclairs. This is a bakery that sells only eclairs and aren’t they such beauties?

Left to right: Lemon meringue, Earl Grey, Lychee white peach, dark chocolate

I met my friend at this place called Rhubarb. It had a lovely omakase lunch that started with these scallops and grapefruit.
Beautiful duck breast main.

And ended with this gorgeous tart

A fun restaurant in the downtown area called Holy Crab. Full of punny food names, like this one called Crabtree and Evelyn. Before the waiter cut up the broccoli, he said, ok you can all take photos first. It’s sitting in a beautiful crab sauce, hence the name.
But one of the best things to eat was surprisingly this salted egg yolk corn dish. So addictive.

by Sharlene

#WeekendCooking Spam Egg Rice Sandwich

So I’m not entirely sure what the official name of this is. I’ve seen it called a “folded kimbap” as well as “onigirazu”. Essentially it’s a “sandwich” of sorts made with seaweed, rice, spam, egg, and really, whatever filling you might want to put in that works well. The 9yo and I first came across this on the Cooking Haru YouTube channel.

The boys love spam and we ate so much spam musubi when we were in Hawaii, as it was quick and available at all the supermarkets.

Cooked some short grain rice. Cut a slit through a quarter of the seaweed (see the video for details), scooped rice onto the first bottom lefthand corner, added some sesame oil, green onions, sesame seeds, and kimchi. The quarter above gets two slices of fried spam, and some sliced cucumbers. I decided that was enough for me.

This one was for my son. He wanted to have it exactly like the YouTube video, so there’s rice, spam, some Kraft cheese, and a fried egg. The spam and cheese was salty enough so I didn’t season the egg. He later declared that it would be better without the cheese, and replaced it with cucumbers.

We wrapped up a couple of them for my 11yo, who has been at science camp in the mountains the past couple of days. It was a fun meal to try.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog’s home page

by Sharlene

Black Forest Birthday Cake #WeekendCooking

It’s November and that means we’ve been having our fill of homemade Black Forest cake. I make one every year for the husband’s birthday (this is last year’s).

I used this chocolate layer cake recipe from King Arthur. But this time, instead of boiling water, I made coffee instead. I used frozen cherries to make the cherry filling (recipe here).

I decorated with freshly whipped cream, shaved chocolate, and fresh raspberries.

It’s a five layer cake! Best consumed within the next few days.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog’s home page

by Sharlene

What to do with (almost) 20 pounds of cherries #WeekendCooking

Brentwood, CA, is full of cherry farms. And during weekends in May and early June, the farms are full of families who’ve driven up from the Bay Area to pick cherries. Along with some friends, we drove an hour to RC Farms one Sunday morning, making sure to get there when the farm opened at 9am. Our family ended up with two buckets full of cherries.

So besides eating them fresh, here’s what I did with the cherries.

Cherry pie. This was the first time I’ve made cherry pie. I’ve made other pies, like blueberry and apple. I used this cherry pie recipe from Sally’s Baking Recipes, as well as the all-butter pie crust recipe on the website. The recipe was well written and easy to follow. And it turned out really delicious! I like how the half the cherries are to be left in halves (the rest are quartered) so that we had nice large pieces of cherries in the pie.

Cherry turnovers.

I made a bit of a cherry compote with some cherries, cooking it down slightly with a bit of sugar and vanilla essence. Then added it to some cut out store-bought puff pastry (it was right there and easy!). Another layer of puff pastry goes on top, and the sides are crimped with a fork. Brush with some egg wash and bake. A quick and yummy breakfast!

We also ate the cherry compote with yogurt. My younger son thought I needed to put more sugar in the compote but it was sweet enough for me.

Chocolate cherry ice cream

My absolute favourite of all these cherry treats was the chocolate cherry ice cream. I based it off David Lebovitz’s Chocolate Ice Cream recipe from his book, The Perfect Scoop. But added the cherry compote, just chopped up finely. He has a Toasted Almond and Candied Cherry ice cream in the book, but I didn’t have almonds plus my kids aren’t fond of nuts, so I figured that chocolate and cherry ice cream would do just fine. In his cherry ice cream, he uses 1 cup of the chopped candied cherries but mine was quite a bit more than 1 cup.

If you’re looking to make ice cream at home, I highly recommend The Perfect Scoop. His recipes are clear and easy to follow and more importantly, everything I’ve made from this book has turned out delicious.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog’s home page

by Sharlene

Tangzhong marble bread #WeekendCooking

I love tangzhong bread (also known as milk bread). If you’re not familiar with that, it’s a type of soft bread that’s made with a roux or tangzhong. It just requires an extra step of making the tangzhong but the end result is a very lovely soft bread. I first posted about tangzhong bread here.

For a few years now, I’ve been using this recipe from Christine’s Recipes. It’s an easy chuck it all the in bread mixer recipe (at least for the first part). It does result in delicious and soft tangzhong bread. But when I came across the book, Milk Bread and Mooncakes by Kristina Cho, I wanted to give her recipe a try.

So her Mother of all Milk Bread recipe is a little more involved than the one I’ve been using. Cho’s recipe asks for the milk to be scalded. Whereas, previously I had just been adding the milk in straight from the jug. Also, when adding the cut-up butter, it asks to add it piece by piece, so that the butter is fully incorporated before the next piece is added. With the other recipe, I would cut up the softened butter and just toss it all into the bread machine. The dough is a lot less wet and sticky than the recipe from Christine’s Recipes.

So when I browsed through the book, a version of the milk bread that stood out was the Matcha and Black Sesame Marbled Milk Bread recipe. I had matcha powder but didn’t have black sesame. But there was also a recipe for a chocolate version of the Mother of all Milk Bread, which was just adding 3 tbsp of cocoa powder to the dough. So I thought, I could do a chocolate marble bread instead!


It’s essentially making one loaf of Mother of all Milk Bread and then one loaf of the chocolate milk bread version. Then divide the dough into several portions. Roll one ball of regular dough out. Roll one ball of chocolate dough out. Then place one on top of the other, tuck in the sides, then roll it up, like when making regular tangzhong bread.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog’s home page

by Sharlene

Black Forest Birthday Cake #WeekendCooking

You may know that I’ve been making Black Forest Cake for the husband’s birthday for a few years now. (This is last year’s)

But this year, my older son decided he too wanted a Black Forest birthday cake. I made him a chocolate birthday cake last year.

Cherries still aren’t in season though, so I stuck with frozen cherries. But I still used my favourite chocolate layer cake recipe from KAF. The cherry mixture and whipped cream recipes are from from this blog.

I like to make the cake layers ahead of time and freeze them. So that way I won’t get too flustered by having to do too many things on one day! It helps that we have a large upright freezer in the garage.

I am of the opinion that cakes should be at the very least three layers of cake. But birthday cakes should reach for the stars with five layers.

This time I added some chocolate ganache to go on top.

To avoid bad icing handwriting, a Happy Birthday sign (that plays music) always is a better bet!

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog’s home page

by Sharlene

Pork rib and lotus root soup #WeekendCooking

I must be missing Singapore again, as I cooked some Singapore food this week.

Pork rib and lotus root soup

Lotus root is actually the stem of the lotus. I love its crunchy texture. Even after cooking it for a few hours, it remains crunchy. But it will start to discolour after peeling, so peel it just before cooking

This is one of my favourite Chinese-style soups. It’s easy to make but it does take a bit of time to cook. It would probably be faster if you have an instant pot, which I don’t.

Some recipes call for soaking the ribs for an hour. Others just require the bones to be blanched in boiling water. This helps to remove the blood from the ribs, and gives you a clearer soup.

But essentially, it’s a soup made from pork ribs, sliced lotus root (washed well and peeled), some slices ginger, and some salt and white pepper to taste. I simmered my soup on the stove for about four hours. And served it with some pan-fried miso-marinated salmon fillet, garlicky zucchini, and rice.

Pulut Hitam or black glutinous rice

My kids love this dessert. If you can find black glutinous rice, it’s really easy to make too. Please note that not all black rice is glutinous rice. So make sure the packaging states that it’s glutinous or sticky rice!

This is the type of black sticky rice I got from my local Asian supermarket.

It’s pretty much like making a porridge, just rinse the rice and then cook it with water, a bit of salt. When you rinse the rice, the water will remain purplish in color. That’s normal. This recipe uses 5 cups of water to 200 g of rice. Check on the water level regularly when it’s cooking and add more water if needed. I used my slow cooker and it took a few hours for the rice to break up and soften. Add sugar to taste. We like to serve it with coconut milk.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog’s home page

by Sharlene

Happy Lunar New Year! #WeekendCooking

Happy Year of the Tiger! 新年快乐！万事如意 ！

During our trip to Singapore in December and January, my mum ordered yusheng, a popular “salad” that’s supposed to be good luck when eaten during Lunar New Year.

It has lots of different fruits and vegetables like carrots, radish, shallots, pomelo, ginger, yam. Usually these are shredded into long strips. Raw salmon is a popular topping.

The different ingredients are symbolic. The fish (yu) sounds like the “yu” word in the saying 年年有余 (nian nian you yu), which means abundance through the year. The sweet plum sauce is supposed to represent 甜甜蜜蜜 that life will be sweet. In a restaurant, the server will utter all these various auspicious sayings as they place the specific item on the plate.

When the dish is ready, everyone takes a pair of chopsticks, and the “lohei” begins. It essentially is a tossing of the yusheng ingredients, while saying various good luck wishes. The higher you toss, the better.

As a kid, I never liked eating yusheng. There was too much ginger in it for me. I would grudgingly eat a few mouthfuls for good luck and look forward to the next course. But I love it today. It’s fresh and tasty and has a great blend of ingredients!

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog’s home page