My Dream Chocolate

So, this is the picture i saw on my favorite blogger's microblog, with a simple comment saying "I just bought a chocolate model and made some unsweetened ones for my daughter", but i couldn't help thinking about this even though i knew it would be really difficult to find the same mold here since she's living in Tokyo!

But I'm a girl who's always stick to online shopping, and I came to open a promotion email from Amazon and checked the recommended items there, u know what, I found it in the kitchen section!!!

Then I thought, well, i got the right mold, and I got the right dark chocolate, so I would get the perfect product! Sadly, this dream has come true, since the chocolate couldn't be melted totally, and i couldn't put it into the mold to form the pattern, and after cooling in the refrigerator for one hour, all the cutties looked like monsters! :(

So i talked to one of my friends, who's really good at cooking, and he told me that i should have used cocoa powder and vegetable oil to make the mix instead of melting the already made chocolate bars... 

Well, I will try the next time, and take a picture for them by myself!

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Cranberry Jam

This weekend seems to be so stressful since i've got lots of reading to deal with before writing my assignment... So I got up early in the morning and opened the refrigerator to grab something for breakfast, and i noticed a little jar... OMG that's the cranberry jam i made several months ago!

By opening the little cute thing, my memory was recalled from October 2010. At that time i just arrived here as a foreigner, and I was so curious about some traditions here, one of which is making fruit jam at home, haha~

So I bought a bag of cranberries home and tried one, soooo sour and bitter as a snack, so i washed them and put all into a small pot with hot water and sugar... When the water started boiling, these cranberries broke like small bombs! And i was so scared that i used a pot lid just as a shield in case they would jump out of the pot, that's really stupid i have to admit, haha~

After all the fruits were totally melted in water, I put these liquid into a small jar, and the second day when i opened it and got some as spread on my toast, the taste was amazing!

Maybe that's the beginning of my way to the kitchen, haha~

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Stewed Hock Feet

Don't blame me since my roomies have already done that, and recently i've been soooo passionate about making dishes that i got up at 8AM in the morning to prepare for this dish as our lunch.

Here's the ingredients that i used: 6 pieces of hock feet, a pack of dried bamboo, some dried mushrooms brought from China. I put them altogether into a huge pot with lots of strange Chinese seasonings, and kept them broiling for almost 3 hours before adding some soy and cube sugar to make the look even more attractive... 

So when each of us got a piece in our plate, we held it carefully, and bit it carefully... But We couldn't help yelping! That's exact the flavor we expected for Chinese food! Even one of my roomies, who is not at all interested in meat,  said to me seriously, "Well, i think u can consider about opening a restaurant after going back to China." U know that's the most honorable words for cooking! :P

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Home Made Muffins - by Ephraim

Purely to support my good friend Shirley, I wrote this article. Recently I found that she's been learning to make weird food all the time, so I started to doubt what she is studying in the US, MS program or cooking? But being a good friend, I have to make some contribution to her blog. BTW, actually I wonder if she can post this one with my name.

The things you need to do before everything is to prepare your tools and materials.

OVEN - normal for the American families but not for us Chinese!

CAKE MOLD - the mold itself is like muffins, I know you know that.

EGG BEATER - I'm not sure whether I'm using the right word or not, but don't you agree the name is cool? Beat eggs! Oh, another thing, I strongly recommend an electronic one to beat your eggs, unless you want more muscles.

FLOUR - there is a name in china called "Di-Jin" flour, I confuse how to tell in English. Just "U-KNOW- WHAT" flour! (Shirley: IT'S CAKE FLOUR MAN...)

HONEY - honey! Honey! Honey!

BUTTER - It is said that New Zealand produces the best butter, but I insist the Irish is the best.

OLIVE OIL - I dunno if this is a right thing, I just think it's cool to be added into muffins.

SUGaR - have u heard Taiko sugar? Choose it for no reason but the high price.  LOL

EGGS - chicken eggs. I use the egg we call it "Cao egg" or "Tu egg". I won't explain...........OK, I can't explain.

MILK - fresh milk, water will be OK, but I want the best taste.

Yeast Powder - I'm not sure if this is useful, I haven’t tried. But I'm sure without it your cake will be a little too wet inside.

Let me see..........OK that's all.

Now let's start to make muffins.

First I used 2 eggs; I planed to make about 6 muffins. Use some special technique to separate egg white and yolk, put them into bowls. There's two ways to separate them, all technical, so I'd rather not to say.

Second, we need to prepare the yellow bowl (You know, the bowl you just put yolk in). Don't touch anything IN the bowl, just remember what you need to put in.

a. Honey. Not too much. Honey is basically different from sugar, it's not too sweet, so more honey will be OK.

b. Flour. I found a spoon and I believe, without any doubt, one spoon flour is one muffin. LOL

c. Butter. Butter is complicated, because you have to melt it first. Luckily I have a microwave oven, unluckily I forgot to use cling film. Trust me, you don't need it but your microwave oven do. Then it put in.

d. Milk. The amount of milk or water is totally art, it is based on how much four you're using. I don't know how to control actually.

e. Yeast powder. This is complicated too. You must put a little, and very little powder into a smaller bowl (you see I like bowls), let's call it yeast bowl. Then mix the power with 15℃ water. Then put into yellow bowl. After putting all these stuff together, mix them like a creep, not too sweaty (is this adj right?), and then we put the yellow bowl aside and wait.

Then, we need to prepare the white bowl.  It's easy, put enough sugar into it, more than you think it would be. OK, here is our hero the great electronic EGGBEATER comes! High speed beating until everything in the bowl becomes bubble, and then turn to low speed to BEAT big bubbles into small oness. After all these done, we are ready.

Next, slowly mix white bowl stuff into the yellow bowl, remember SLOWLY. You will feel that the stuff in the yellow bowl will be fluffy and wet. So we combine yellow bowl, white bowl and yeast bowl into one bowl, let's call it the ULTIMATE bowl, cool!

OK, now we turn to molds we prepared. On my experience (tried twice, the first failed), we can make 6-8 muffins. Just a few drops of olive oil, drip into mold, use your finger, make them around your mold.

Here come the Ultimate bowl. Just fill mold with the stuff in Ultimate bowl. Remember 70% full will be quite enough.

Then, pre-warm your oven without anything to 200℃ for 5 minutes. The we put baby muffins into it, another 5 mins in 200℃, then turn to 160℃ for 16min. When you feel it's all right, it's what I bought yesterday, it's OK.  BTW, I'm very unconfident in the temperature and the time, so Google it first before you do it.

OK, we are done.  Hope you enjoy. I myself enjoy the cooking but not the food I cooked. You don't want to know why!

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Mango & Sago in Coconut Milk

Feeling guilty that I haven't updated my blog as frequently as the beginning, I decided to make a really good dessert and share it with you!

But... I never expected it to be soooo time consuming that I spent almost one hour on this little bowl...

This is a quite Chinese style dessert called Mango & Sago in Coconut Milk, and most cafes and restaurants in the southern part of China are really proud to serve it as a chief's recommendation!

So I had some problems in making this dessert, the biggest trouble is that the baby sago is too difficult to control, i mean, if I just broil it in the hot water, then the outside becomes transparent as expected but the inside stays rare! Then i tried to find some tips online, and successfully solved this problem. Another problem was the mango, I chose a ripe one in the beginning, but the cubes looked soooo gross since the juice came out! >.< So I ate that up and used a rare mango and the cubes became normal, thank god!

Oh by the way, if you're considering making this dessert, please use coconut milk instead of milk as some of the recipes recommended, cuz the flavor would be soooo much better! :)

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Red Bean Rice Ball

Even my parents couldn't believe it when seeing this picture - in China we would celebrate Yuan-Xiao Festival by eating these sweet rice balls (Don't ask me why we Chinese have sooo many festivals, LOL), but we seldom made them by ourselves - so when we were video chatting after dinner, they asked me if I had this kind of snack, I said, "Sure, I made them and then had them!" They felt sooo surprised, haha!

Actually making rice ball is not difficult as expected, we just bought the red bean paste from the supermarket, and put them into small doughs that was made by flour, and then chop them into cute balls! 

In the northern part of China, people would also put one clean coin into the dough and mix it with other rice balls, so the one who got that would be considered as a lucky guy. Since the "luck" sometimes brings tragedy if someone just swallowed the whole rice ball without biting, we don't do that any more, haha!

Here's a bunny made by my friend using the dough... It seems to be so moody, we're not eating u up okay?! :D

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Friday Treat

Haha, the happiest thing I experienced today is that I went to Boston's famous free market, and bought loooots of stuff with only 20 bucks!
So after going back to my car, my hand was full with cherries, grapes, oranges, mangos, mushrooms and a HUGE salmon slice!
And I couldn't wait to make a fried salmon for myself as dinner, and I have to say it's sooo fresh and juicy with even little seasoning!
OMG i felt so satisfied that I was smiling when cutting the rest into 4 slices and seeing them in the fridge! :P

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La-Ba Porridge

Sorry that I didn't update my blog last night, since I was struggling in the statistic courses...

Well, this is what I wanted to share with u, a kind of Chinese snack called "La-Ba Porridge".

In Lunar calendar, the dates are divided into 48 seasons with different names, and many customs and traditions are attached to them, so does "La-Ba Festival", the day to memorize the harvest of the year as well as memorize our ancestors. 

So the porridge contains 8 kinds of ingredients literally, since "ba" in Chinese means eight, showing that we've archived so much t from the whole year's hard working.

Since I don't have so many ingredients here, I just put everything sweet into the pot - red beans, dried coconut slices, black rice, almonds, peanuts, raisins, black eyed peas, red dates and brown sugar of course.

After half an hour's cooking, i enjoyed it when video chatting with my parents, and it's quite amazing that we can enjoy the same food in two totally different countries, haha!

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Memory of Chinese New Year Party

Well, i felt so exhausted after yesterday's lunch preparation, so I decided to make it simple by having vegetable salad and fresh fruits for lunch and dinner for weight balance. :P

But i do miss these delicious dishes containing lots of calories, especially these tasteful Chinese food!

So here's a picture of our Chinese New Year dinner, which we had in one of our friends' house, and each guest brought one dish to share at the party.

The smashed potato with chopped meat was made by Bob,the Coke chicken wings were made by Evelyn, who's the hostess of the party, the Kong-Pao chicken was made by Tim, the double-skin milk Jelly was made by Yutong, the hock feet with soybean was made by me of course, and the broiled pork was made by Kailai.

Besides sooo many dishes, we had hot pot too, so that night everyone went home with a stuffed stomach, haha~

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