One very happy and excited customer after doing an 1 to 1 macarons making session with me at my kitchen. She had a very hands-on experience by working through the whole process from shopping for the raw ingredients, measuring all the necessary ingredients, technique of making and mixing the meringue. All turned out rather well. She has the determination and drive for perfection, and she did it so well.

We made 2 flavours macaron shells; intense vanilla and pandan. And 2 flavours for the filling; brown butter caramelised banana and blueberry jam.

We both agreed that the vanilla and brown butter caramelised banana flavour is the most delicious. 

For the brown butter caramelised banana filling, you need the followings:

1. 1/3 of a block of unsalted butter
2. 1/4 cup golden caster sugar
3. 3 large bananas (sliced)
4. 1tbsp banana essence 
5. 1 tbsp vanilla essence

First melt the butter and cook it until brown. Add the sugar and cook until the sugar is melted and  caramelised. Add sliced bananas and stir rigorously until they are well combined and mashy. Add the banana and vanilla essences. Continue cooking and stirring for another few minutes. 

Then remove the paste from the heat and set aside to cool down completely. It is ready to be piped as the macaron filling.

YUM!

New product from my home kitchen. Have a treat with this meaty pork liver biscuits. Just simply 4 main ingredients; Fresh pork liver, flour, free range eggs and water..without any preservatives...

The only problem is that these are doggie treats! (You can also eat it if you want..all human grade ingredients from Waitrose!) I know your dog will appreciate it. (Toby loves it!) If you look at the dog treats sold at the supermarket, you will notice most of the ingredients are something you will not even consider eating such as animal derivatives, ash etc etc...Why then it is ok to give it to your lovely dogs!

Finally found a reliable steamed bun recipe from MY Kitchen.  I have attempted to make steamed buns before, but the result was not as  good as I was expected, partly due the the type of flour I used. Western white plain wheat flour produced yellowish buns and they are probably higher in gluten, the buns were quite chewy. In UK, you should be able to get "Bao" flour (low-gluten wheat flour) from the Chinese grocer.

I am pleased with the original recipe. The buns looked authentic, especially the splits on the top of the buns, so much like those Char Siew Bao (BBQ pork buns) you will get from the dim sum restaurants. The texture and taste of the buns are both good. But I find the alkaline aftertaste left in my mouth was a bit too strong (probably the issue of the 10g baking powder called for in the recipe!) I wonder if there is anything I can do to reduce that aftertaste? Will using Alluminum-free baking powder as suggested by David Lebovitz reduce the aftertaste? I shall experiment next time round!

The temperature in Brighton is a bit low at the moment, so the proofing time for the dough was 30-45 minutes longer than what is being stated in the original recipe. 

Lesson learned from the original recipe: Lemon juice (acid) added to the dough and in the steaming water would make the buns whiter!

My flat was infused in the toasty fresh moss scent last night when these biscotti were baking in the oven. Almost like being in a forest by the camp fire. I imagine that would be the kind of feeling being in a transitional Japanese chanoyu (tea ceremony) in a rustic chashitsu (tea room). All these reminded me of my favourite book, The Book of Tea by Kakuzo Okakura. A book that has a big influence on my view on things/life and architectural designs. I should read it again!

The green tea powder for these biscotti is not just the colour, the 2.5 generous teaspoon of the matcha powder adds great toasty-ness and makes the biscotti just like a cup of green tea but in a crunchy way! I do really like the idea of "eating" green tea. The red of the cranberries and white of the macadamia nuts made this biscotti almost Christmasy! 

The basic biscotti recipe I always use is on here, just a few twists, you could create your special version! 

I have also made other unusual biscotti before..

1. Cheesy Biscotti! 
   
2. Caramel Bacon with Sesame seeds Biscotti

And I have even designed and handmade the packaging to go with the Japanese theme! The effect of the translucent parchment paper with red pattern goes really well the the silhouette of green contained inside..:-)

The second attempt of making these choux pastry and profiteroles. I am really quite pleased with the result. If I keep perfecting my skills, I should master it soon!

The reference of the choux pastry recipe was from The Cook's Book. One of my favourite comprehensive and informative cookbooks. I have learned a lot of new cooking techniques from this book. It has various chapters for different types of food and each recipe has it step by step instructions and accompanied by sequential photographs. Note: I don't get any commission by promoting this book! 

Something new for me about choux pastry making is that it should be made with equal amount of water and full-fat milk in order to achieve a smooth pastry consistency. Just using water will only result in rough pastry. I think the smooth pastry does give a more professional feel to the final presentation of the profiteroles.

For the pastry recipe, you could refer to any choux pastry recipes that you could get hold on from online or other resources, but maybe consider the equal water and milk formula (if the reference recipe only uses water).

For the refreshing raspberry cream filling, I simply whisked double cream until stiff, and then add few generous tablespoonful of mashed frozen or fresh raspberry to the cream. 

You can either pump the cream into the puffed pastry, but personally, I think a cut-top profiteroles with cream filling visible would add more visual excitement to the final presentation.

Lazy health-conscious or vegetarian food served in the restaurant annoys me quite a lot! 

I will always question the intention to serve the customers those bland and boring (unimaginative simply-just poach) looking health-conscious or vegetarian food that garnished with some raw green vegetable. Are they just being really lazy to make better food!?  Healthy or vegetarian food doesn't have to be bland and boring! They should stimulate both the Mind and our taste buds!

This salad is so easy to make, very little cooking (skills) involved (other than to poach the chicken breast), but rich in various appetising colours, textures and full of traditional healthy medicinal, hydrated Chinese ingredients such as goji berries, snow fungus, cloud ear fungus and chrysanthemum flowers. (Ingredients typically used to make traditional herbal soup). Super healthy!

Once all the ingredients are prepared and put into a large bowl, prepare the oyster sauce with fresh grated ginger (with some of my special home made mango chilli pickles). Then sprinkle the sauce all over the salad and serve cold.

Perfect for hot summer days (to come..soon!!)

You can read articles about the benefits of those Chinese herbal ingredients used for the dish.

1. Snow Fungus
   
2. Goji Berry
3. Cloud Ear Fungus
4. Chrysanthemum Flower

This is quite an easy tart to make. An impressive dessert for any potluck gathering. Or any day when you really fancy some decent dessert without having to spend a lot of money to buy them in a patisserie. Homemade tarts are always taste much much better (and cheaper) than those from the supermarket!

There are two stages to make the tart.

Stage 1: The Pastry.
Ingredients:

1. 225g Plain flour
2. 125g Unsalted butter
3. 55g Icing sugar
4. 1 zest of orange
5. 3 Large egg yolks
6. 2 tbsp Orange juice

Rub the butter into the flour until they resemble fine breadcrumbs texture and then mix in the icing sugar and orange zest. Add one egg yolk at a time to the flour mixture until incorporated. Finally add one tablespoon of the orange juice at a time to the flour mixture and mix until all come together as a dough. Wrap the dough with the cling film and refrigerate it for 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 180'C. Prepare the 22cm fluted loose base flan tin by rubbing butter all over the internal surfaces.
After 30 minutes, roll out the pastry to about 3mm thickness (big enough to cover the whole flan tin). Gently press the pastry in place within the flan tin and chill it in the fridge for another 20mins. 

Crumple a large piece of parchment paper (enough to cover the flan tin) and then carefully open it up and line it over the chilled pastry. Sprinkle ceramic baking beans over the parchment paper and blind bake the pastry for 15mins. Then set it aside to cool down completely before the next stage.

Stage 2: The filling
Ingredients:

1. 50g Self raising flour
2. 100g Ground almond
3. 100g frozen blueberries
4. 1 zest of orange
5. 1 tsp of orange essence
6. 80g Unsalted butter
7. 2 tbsp Thick double cream
8. 125g Castor sugar
9. 1 Large egg and 1 egg yolk

Preheat the oven to 180'C.
Use an electric hand mixer, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add the orange zest and essence and mix well. Add the egg and mix it until fully incorporated then mix in the egg yolk and beat until well mixed. Then add the thick double cream. Beat until everything is fully incorporated. Gently fold in the flour and ground almond until just combined. Spread the filling mixture over the cooled pastry case, the level it. Sprinkle the blueberries over the mixture.

Bake the tart in the oven for 30-35minutes or until the crust is golden colour. Insert a skewer to the middle of the tart, if it comes out clean, the tart is cooked. Remove it from the over to cool down. Allow the tart to cool down before removing it from the flan tin. 

Done! The tart tastes good if serves warm or cold! Simple!

The idea of foraging for food in the wild has always been a fascinating idea for me! Free food and all that..If I can stomach garden snails, I would have a lot of meat to eat through out the year! But those slimy creatures are nasty! 

But I found out that there is another wild thing that I can eat from my garden..WEED..onion! An edible Spring bulb plants. The whole plant is edible from the bulb, the leaves to the pretty white flowers. The plant has a hint of oniony smell plus a pungent fragrance that I can't put into words, maybe a bit too overpowering for my liking when they are raw. (Maybe that is why they are regarded as weed not vegetable!) It doesn't smell anything like spring onion, or young leek (as some people might suggest).

But since they are free food from my garden, I am happy to give them a try! Once cooked, they smell a lot less pungent, and very much like other complementary ingredients for a dish. 

I mixed the finely chopped weed onion to marinated minced pork to make some burgers. And also experiment using the whole plant as the substitute for spring onion for the pork liver stir fry. I think they work well with ginger and meat! But I don't think I will eat them in any raw salad! 

No longer a molten lava cake virgin! I am quite happy that I got it right for the first time round. So effortless to make these rich and tasty cakes. I wonder why they always make it seems so dramatic and difficult to make these on MasterChef! 

The processes of making these cake are rather straight forward and simple! 
Ingredients: (makes 3)

1. 50g (70%) Dark chocolate
2. 50g Unsalted butter
3. 75g Soft brown sugar
4. 2 Medium eggs
5. Few drop of Vanilla extract
6. 25g Plain flour.

Pre-heat the oven to 200'C. Grease the ramekins and dust it with cocoa powder.

Melt chocolate and butter together over a double boiler, and set aside to cool down for 15 minutes.
Then add soft brown sugar to the chocolate mixture and stir until well combined. Hand whisk one egg at a time to the mixture until well integrated. Add the vanilla extract then gently stir in the flour until combined.

Pour the mixture to the greased ramekins and bake in the oven for 10-11 minutes. 

Quickly, but gently tip the cakes to the serving plates and duct them with icing sugar or cocoa powder to decorate the plate. All done! 

Serve these cakes immediately while still hot. The cake will continue to cook until you dive in! If you leave it for few more minutes, the molten lava inside might gone solid by then! 

Very happy that this interpretation of the classic gingerbread "house" is amongst the Top 10 sweet design of Architizer's Gingerbread Competition 2013.

"Radical visuals of precisely engineered simple components & adventurous flavors: fresh wasabi and ginger. The design is anything but Grimm."  The fresh wasabi and ginger give this version of gingerbread a rather distinctive taste. The tiny bit of the heat at the back of your throat seems to lighten the heavy "butter-ness" and sweetness of the gingerbread. 

The competition rule was to use 140 characters to describe the project..which is not really enough to tell the judges the underlining "design" concept. (Other top 10 entries obviously breaking the rule of using more than 140 characters!! They should be disqualified! hahaha..)

Basically, the idea was to use the 5cm ratio as the guiding principle. A mixture of the 2.5cm, 5cm and 10cm volumes made up the inter-relationship number for each of the component. This gives "structure" to the design, but also allows the overall shape to be rather sculptural.

Rather difficult to precisely engineered each panels to be straight and right angle..And the dough harden rather quickly which make it even harder to produce the smooth panels for the components. It took me 7 hours just to make all the components and another 2 hours to put all those components to a shape that pleases my eyes!

Why we (Architizer) love it: The elegant simplicity really speaks to us after seeing so many gobs of frosting and kitschy candy canes. Also, this sounds like it would be the most delicious to eat afterwards.

This is an experiment. I have made salty/sweet bacon biscotti before, which wasn't bad the flavour. This new experiment is a refinement of my previous attempt. 

The crispy bacon first mixed with sesame seeds and then covered with thick caramel sauce and let cool down completely. Then cut the caramel bacon to small chunks and mixed it with biscotti dough.

It looked a mess in the oven with all the caramel oozing out from the dough, but it turned out rather nice, a bit of marbling effect when the dough is cut into slices. Happy!

This is an improved version of my "award winning" mango and coconut cake for Brighton "Bite Off". The order of the ingredients were totally re-shuffled to give these cupcakes a more elegant and contemporary look. These cupcakes also my first "official" order for a party! Still a lot of room for further improvement!

Really love the refreshing colours, rather attractive with those bits of freeze dried raspberry and mango. The drizzle of mango puree add not only colours, but also adding further intense flavour of the mango and a hint of fragrance passion fruit.

To make the coconut cupcake base, you will need the following ingredients: (to make at least 12! if you didn't over-fill the cups!)

1. 225g Self rising flour (sifted)
2. 275g Caster sugar
3. 110g desiccated coconut
4. 125g melted butter
5. 3 Eggs (lightly beaten in a cup)
6. 125ml full fat milk
7. 1/2 tsp coconut essence

Pre-heat the over to 180'C. Line the cupcake tin with your favourite cupcake lining. (I really like the overall colour coordination of these cupcakes! Pretty and refreshing!)

Combine flour, sugar and the coconut in a large mixing bowl, then stir in the cool melted butter, milk, eggs and the coconut essence until combined.

Fill the cupcake lining with the batter (just slightly 2/3 of the cupcake lining). Bake in the oven for about 25 minutes or until cooked. (usual testing method - insert a skewer to the middle of the cake, if it comes out clean, it is cooked!)

Once cooked, remove the cupcake from the tin and set aside to cool down completely before any attempt to decorate them.

For the mango buttercream, you will need the followings:

1. 180g Butter (soften at room temperature)
2. 3 Cups icing sugar (sifted)
3. 4 tbsp Mango puree
4. 1/2 Mango essence

Cream the soften butter in a large mixing bowl for 3 minutes, add the icing sugar and gently mix them to combine. Add mango puree and the essence. And beat the mixture further until light and fluffy. You may add some yellow food colouring to give the buttercream a more vibrant colour. Once done, put them in a piping bag and set aside in a cool place (or in the fridge, but make sure the buttercream is not too hard when decorating your cupcake)

To make the mango puree, just blend the mango flesh with some (a tablespoon or so) spring water in a blender until smooth. Then sift the mixture through to get rid of any lumps. Combine the puree with few drops of mango and passion fruit essences (to taste). 

To assemble the cupcakes, pipe the buttercream on the cupcakes, any design as your like! Then drizzle the mango puree and sprinkle some freeze dried mango and raspberry pieces on top of the butter cream. Done!

There! Fragrance with elegance for a sophisticate party...I hope there will be more orders soon!! :-)
If you are in Brighton or London areas and thinking to have a party with some beautiful and elegant cupcakes, please give me a shout, I might be able to help you there! 

Redeemed myself from last year's embarrassment! My timing for baking my bread was all wrong last year. The bread looked great externally, but it was under baked! I was gutted!

So I promised myself, I must plan my bake time well for this year's Brighton "Bite Off". The event happened 2 weeks ago at Hove Lawn, along the seafront. Many different types of food stalls there during the 2-days event. Some food looked appetising, but not as tasty! 

I submitted a sourdough bread and a cake for the "competition". I won first for the bread category for my red Leicester cheese with coriander and chilli and second for the cake category for my mango and coconut buttercream cake. IT was such a great fun to win 2 rosettes and not embarrassed myself!

It seems like brownies always get the first prize..2012 and 2013! I know what I have to do next year!! HAHAHA....

I have a couple of failed attempts of making croissants. It was quite some messy trials. Hence, I have never want to try to make puff pastry, they are kind of similar in the making process. Further more, those shop-bought puff pastry are much cheaper and easy to handle. But not as exciting as home-made ones.

I always refer to Delia's "Complete Cookery Course", when I want to learn some cooking techniques the proper way. This book was a Christmas present from someone whom I used to be quite close with. It is such a shame that we are now on different paths in our lives, and no longer in contact. He will always have a place in my heart.

If you can get on hold of the book, the John Tovey's Rough Puff Pastry recipe is on the page 520. Quite easy to follow.

For half of the ingredients stated in the recipe (Instead of using half margarine and half lard, I replaced them with just butter). I made 3 different types of pastries (for fun!). Few mini puff pastry croissants, few peach tarts, and some egg custard tarts. They are all quite tasty. The pastry is flaky, crisp, and light. 

Very good result for the first attempt I think!

***UPDATE! This recipe now featured at "Love Food Hate Waste" website. My first "award winning recipe"..hahaha..I got 2 tickets to attend the Cake and Bake (maybe it should be called "Cake Decoration") Show in London. It was a fun trip to the show, saw some familiar TV chefs and some contestants from previous year The Great British Bake Off...I think the cake show has too many cake decoration and cupcake stalls, not enough patisserie-type bakery stalls...********

The other day, I learned to make this delicious savoury cake. Originally a type of Malaysian Nyonya savoury snack, usually with turnip as one of the main ingredients. You can order this as one of the dimsum dishes in a Chinese Restaurant. This is quite a versatile "cake", you can eat it as it is once cooked or fry it in oil until the skin is crispy, or use the leftover to make a stir fry!

To make the cake, you will need the followings to make the batter:

1. 350g rice flour
2. 70g Tapioca flour
3. 700ml water
4. 1tbsp wheat flour (You can get this from a Chinese grocer, not the typical wheat flour you can get from supermarket)
5. 1tsp salt
6. 1tsp sugar
7. 2tsp five spices powder
8. 2tsp pepper
9. I piece of pork stock cube

Mixed all the ingredients together until a smooth batter and set aside.

Prepare the following ingredients to be mixed into the batter:

1. 500g Shredded butternut squash
2. 4 Slices (or about 150g) smoked bacon (cut into small pieces)
3. 60g Dried shrimps (soaked and finely chopped)
4. 150ml oil

First, heat the oil in a deep pot. Gently fry the the chopped dried shrimps and bacon pieces until fragrant and lightly brown. Add the butternut squash. Cook until the butternut squash soften (but not mashy). Remove the mixture from the pot and set aside to cool down.

Once the butternut squash and bacon mixture is cooled. Add it to the batter and mix well.

Return the batter mixture to the pot and slowly cook it until the batter is thicken. Stir the mixture continuously, it will be quite sticky!

Prepare the steamer over boiling water in a wok or a deep pot. Oil a deep glass steaming tray (that fit into your steamer) and put the thicken batter in. Smoothen and level the mixture. Steam the batter for about 30 minutes until it is stiffen. Remove it from the steamer and set aside to cool down.

For the toppings:

1. Caramelised few onions and few slices of chopped bacon pieces 
2. Some finely chopped spring onion (good feeling use my own home grown spring onion!)
3. Some finely chopped red chillies

Once the cake is cooled, cut it into serving pieces, and garnish it with the caramelised onion and bacon, sprinkle spring onion and chillies to add colours to the toppings. Ready to be served (warm or cold)! 

If there is some leftover cake, you can cut it into smaller chunks, and make a quick stir fry with some cabbage, eggs etc...Equally delicious!

Effortless cooking...Chicken marinated with ginseng powder. The slight bitterness from the ginseng powder awakening your appetite, make your saliva flows in your mouth to taste the simple and pure sweetness (with a hint of saltiness) of steamed chicken. 

Very simple to make but quite nutritious. According to Wikipedia..." Folk medicine attributes various benefits to oral use of American ginseng and Asian ginseng (P. ginseng) roots, including roles as an aphrodisiac,stimulant, type II diabetes treatment, or cure for sexual dysfunction in men"...Hahaha...Now you know what you have to eat to to make you a "STRONG" man!!

Ingredients:

1. 2 chicken legs 
2. Approximately 2 tbsp (I grind some ginseng root into powder for dish)
3. 1 tbsp sea salt (you can use more salt for this dish so then you can use the sauce to flavour your rice)
4. 5 tbsp sweet glutinous rice wine

Marinate the chicken pieces with ginseng powder, salt and the sweet glutinous rice wine. Set aside for at least 30mins or longer.

Once marinated, steamed the chicken over high heat boiling water until it is fully cooked.
This dish is best serves with plain white rice. Flavour the rice with the juices from the chicken...YUM! 

For the dipping sauce, mixed together the following ingredients:

1. 1 tbsp minced ginger, 
2. 2 stalks of finely chopped spring onion
3. Few crushed fresh coriander seeds (or few coriander stalks) for more intense flavour than using the leaves.
4. 1 generous tbsp light soy sauce
5. 1 tbsp sesame oil, 
6. 3 generous tbsp fried onion and the oil. (Slowly caramelised finely chopped onion in generous amount of oil)
   

Found a forgotten package of dried chrysanthemum flowers in my store cupboard. The cooling effect of the chrysanthemum tea is perfect for the summer. I wish I found it much earlier. The weather was rather hot (but nice) during the last couple of weeks. 

The initial idea was to make some chrysanthemum tea jelly, but once the jelly was set, I thought it looked rather like "Ice Jelly" - "愛玉冰". a refreshing cool dessert with lime juice syrup that you can get in Asia.  The slight bitterness of the chrysanthemum tea would make a perfect complement to the lime juice syrup. 

A very refreshing experiment of chrysanthemum tea jelly and lime juice syrup!

To make this dessert, you will need:

1. A large generous handful of dried chrysanthemum flowers. (Washed)
2. About 1 litre of water (to produce approximately 400ml tea)
3. 1 Sachets of gelatine (depending on how hard you would like the jelly to set)
4. Few large tablespoonful of sugar (to taste)

To make the tea, firstly wash the flowers and then boil them in a pan of water for at least 5 minutes until you get a beer yellow colour consistency.  Drain the tea with a sift. Add the sugar. Measure about 400ml tea and add the gelatine. Stir well until the gelatine is fully dissolved in the liquid. Pour the liquid to a container and let it set for use later. Then cool it in the fridge for 1hr.

For the lime juice syrup, squeeze the juice of one lime. Measure the lime juice. Add one portion of the juice with two portion of the same amount of water to the juice in a pan and add 2 large tablespoonful of sugar. Boil the syrup mixture for at least 5 minutes. And then set it aside to cool down.

When the jelly is set, cut or scope it out into a bowl and add few tablespoons of the lime juice syrup to the jelly. Done!

Excellent to serve this dessert cold during a hot summer day...

This a ch"easy"t way of making ice cream without ice cream maker. I actually can't see why do we need an ice cream maker. (*) The process of making ice cream is quite simple. Firstly, you have to prepare the custard whether you have an ice cream maker or not. Without an ice cream maker, you pour it to a freeze proof container and put the custard uncover in the freeze for an hour or so until the edge of the custard starting to harden. Take it out and put the semi-frozen custard in a large bowl, and whisk it thoroughly. Pour the mixture back to the container (**), cover, and freeze it until the ice cream is ready to be served.

Since starting to write this food blog, I have cooked many different types of food. I always know I have a passion in cooking, but I am quite pleased with myself when I put all these food pictures together. Such a variety of colours. I must have fed myself well these few years!

I am lucky to have the chance to learn from many people/ books about cooking.