taiwanese delight for the night

Despite the DEHP issue thing that has been going on around the world, me, bubble tea lover, has already given up my favourite drink, let's keep our fingers crossed that the ingredients I have used for tonight's delight would be safe~

I and my man are in love with Taiwanese food, especially the spicy beef noodle, and it's been a pain to find one that's actually taste decent in Hong Kong.  We actually found one place here in Toronto that's ooooookay........ not exactly great but at least it's good to have it here!

So instead of dreaming about the spicy beef noodle that we had in Taipei at Yong Kang Street day and night, and drool all over my keyboard, I decided to give it a shot and try to make my own!

I browsed through a few recipes online, mostly similar, I then decided to combine all of them into one and see what I have.

I chose beef shank, or beef brisket will do too, and you need tomatoes, carrots, onions, green onions (yes... green onions again....... -_-!), garlic, ginger, chili.........

You do need a lot of veggies, but you can totally adjust it on your own.  I mean if you like to have the carrot kind of sweet in the soup, add more carrots; and if you like the garlic spice, then add more garlic, and if you like the soup to have a stronger tasty colour, add more tomatoes... it's all up to you!  Just boil it up and stew for at least a few hours, best if you have a pressure cooker or thermal magic cooker.

Some other important things you need for your soup is the chili bean sauce and satay sauce, and Taiwanese marinated pack, also you need beef broth instead of water!

Lastly,  you need a pack of shanghainese noodles or udon.  My advise is to pick some thick noodles, to get the soup soak into it!

Since this is a spicy delight, I also marinated a chilled dish to cool it down.  All you need is salt, white vinegar, sugar, sesame oil, soy sauce and chili.

extra fresh cut green onions for my man!

preserving it for my man

Other than preserving my love, my youthfulness, my hotness... I also preserved black pepper & sea salt chicken for my man today!

My man passed me this recipe that he found on a magazine by Jacky Yu and asked if I can make that for him.  The ingredients and steps are simple, you only need black pepper, sea salt and chicken!  That's it!

The key is to "preserve" it in the fridge after marinating it for 2 weeks... yes it's 2 weeks...

So will let everyone know how it taste after 2 weeks time... stay tune!

pan fry freshly ground black pepper and sea salt before marinating the chicken

my man prefers dark meat!

make sure you "massage" the ingredients into the chicken!!!

cooking something you hate for the man you love

After cooking some junk for myself, I made something I hate for the man I love to start his day fresh!

But don't get me wrong, in fact, what I hate is what he loves -- green onions!

Green onions are actually evil, nasty and disgusting... it smells bad, taste bad and just makes you non stop shivering after having just one single small bite; but my man loves it.

So here comes my stinky fingers typing up writing this blog after chopping nasty green onions, I'm sharing my very secret "love recipe" that I hate.

~~~fried udon with nasty green onions~~~

Ingredients:
1 pack of frozen Japanese made or Korean made udon (do not use cheap udon as it taste bad and doesn't give you the chewy texture)
3 or more stems of nasty green onions (preferably using the stem part, because that's the most fresh and smelly nasty part that green onions lovers like)
some sliced onions
1 king oyster mushroom, sliced
100g or more (if you're a meat lover) sliced pork, marinated with soy sauce, sugar, salt, sesame oil...

Steps:
- dump the pack of frozen udon into a pot of boiling hot water to loosen it out and drain the water immediately, because you do not want to soak the udon for too long to make soggy
- heat up a frying pan at the same time when you're handling the udon
- as soon as you drain out the water from the udon, leave the udon in the pot
- begin to fry your veggies first, just remember to pour enough oil into the pan for better "lubrication"! (remember to lower the power in your stove, so that you don't burn yourself with the heated oil)
- then dump your sliced pork into the pan and mix it with the veggies; do not add any seasoning or sauce into it yet, since your pork have already been marinated!
- as soon as you see your pork start turning beige or whatever colour that indicates that it's almost cooked, add the udon in and make sure to turn up the power in your stove!
- now quickly mix and fry everything together and in the end, add your favourite soy sauce into it and mix it quickly.  (if you fancy the dark colour, add some dark soy sauce into it!)

Tips:
- chop and slice the meat and veggies into smaller pieces so that you can mix with your noodles easier
- turning up the power in the end allows you to "dry up" the water content so that you will have nice and dry fried noodles but not mushy nasty porridge looking flour
- if you are a fan of chili, add some chili too and there gives you a colourful dish!

Happieee cooking and yes, it does take a lot of effort to cook something you hate for the one you love!

And I added a glass of freshly squeezed honey lime juice too!

junk breakfast

Instant noodles + luncheon meat = not exactly the ideal breakfast for a mom-to-be...

But sometimes you do get strange cravings, well more precisely, unhealthy cravings.  In the past few months, I have a very strong cravings for spring rolls and pizza, and I'm suspecting that my little one is so much in love with deep fried junk food.  And here we have, instant noodles and luncheon meat to begin with on a cloudy Thursday.

First thing as soon as I was going through the fridge, I saw the remaining two pieces of luncheon meat and eggs... well eggs are good but with just eggs and luncheon meat is a bit too dry... so I then explored the kitchen cabinet on the left hand side and found, Japanese made Nissin instant noodles!!!

And of course, I did step back and thought, well egg is good but maybe the excessive sodium intake from luncheon meat and instant noodle isn't such a great idea when I'm trying to control swelling and leg cramps and unhealthy weight gain.... etc........... but well, I mean, once in a while is not so bad, I guess.

Wait a minute... when I took another look at my ingredients... and please do check out what's printed on the package!

Eggs are Omega-3 Canadian eggs, luncheon meat are high quality Canadian made can food and instant noodles are Japanese made (and expiry date is 2011 August, so I do assume that it was definitely made prior the quake!)

Ok, so we have nothing Mainland and Taiwanese made, I suppose that should make this a better junk breakfast.