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Steamed pork cake with moi choi 梅菜蒸肉餅

There are so many types of Chinese pickled vegetables. If you have visited one of the larger Chinese supermarkets, you may be baffled with the array of dried or wet pickled vegetables: salt pickled, vinegar pickled, spice pickled, sweet pickled etc.. Everytime I go to those Chinese supermarkets in London I always find something I have never tried or heard before. So many to choose from and
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Red bean soup with chan pei 陳皮紅豆沙糖水

Red bean or aduki bean is a common oriental ingredient making into thick bean paste filling for buns/cake and also made into sweet soups or tong sui 糖水

We Chinese love sweet soups for dessert, there are numerous varieties. Red bean soup with mandarin peel (chan pei) is a common Cantonese dessert.


It's easy to make just take a bit of time to cook.

Here is how I make mine.

1 cup of red beans (
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Baked beans ala Chinese 茄汁豆炒豬肉

I love baked beans with English breakfast, on toast or on baked potato. Ever had stir fried baked beans? Since I was a kid I adored baked beans with pork ala Chinese style. I think many Chinese kids brought up in the far east are familiar with this. It's cheap and tasty, perfect comfort food with rice.


Ingredients:
1 regular tin size baked beans150 - 200g pork* a little soy saucepinch of
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Chan pei mui 陳皮梅 (Chinese fruit candy)

Anyone remembers and still eats Chan pei mui 陳皮梅? Chan pei mui is a traditional Chinese candy. I love it since I was a kid. It is a fruit candy, looks brown/black soft and chewy with a strong citrus peel flavour.

From the name chan pei mui 陳皮梅, you can guess the ingredients include chan pei or mandarin peel and the other is plum or in Chinese 梅 ('mui' in Cantonese or 'mei' in Mandarin).

I have
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Back to basics - dried mandarin or tangerine peel 陳皮


Chan pei 陳皮 directly translated as 'ancient old skin', it is basically dried mandarin or tangerine peel. The reason why it is called ancient old skin is because it is not freshly dried peel it must be aged for at least a year before used.

Towards the end the year to spring, many people will eat a lot mandarins, tangerines or satsuma. Have you ever thought of using the peel instead of chucking
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Tang yuan, fermented rice and egg drop sweet soup 酒釀蛋花湯圓

Tang Yuan 湯圓 are boiled soft chewy balls normally made with glutinous rice flour.

Today is the last day (day 15) of Chinese New Year called Yuan Xiao Festival 元宵節. It's also a full moon day today. CNY starts on the 1st day of lunar month and end on full moon. To end this festive season, many Chinese will eat soft chewy tang yuan. Most people will have the sweet type but savoury ones are also
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Taiwanese meat and mushroom sauce 台式香菇肉燥


台式香菇肉燥 - Tai Shi Xiang Gu Rou Zao

This is Chinese spag bog sauce Taiwanese style. The flavour is similar to this chunky style recipe.

Cheap, flavourful and very versatile, this sauce is great with plain rice, any noodles (dry or soup), stir fries vegetables or serve with plain rice cake. I normally make a big batch, store some in fridge for up to a week or freeze till ready to use. Hard boiled
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Pumpkin pudding 南瓜布丁


This is a refreshing pudding and easy to make. The mandarin peel makes the pudding quite fragrance.

Pumpkin skin is quite tough to peel. I cooked the pumpkin with the skin on, once cooked the skin will become very soft. For this recipe I cooked about 450g of de-seeded pumpkin with skin, wrapped in baking paper then put in the microwave on high for about 12 - 15minutes (time depends on micro
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Natural cat food, is it really all natural?

Many people seem to be desperately looking for all natural cat food for their cats by fear of possible bad side effects of chemical additions usually found in commercial cat food.

The question of whether the cat foods being consumed are natural is definitely a false question! what matters most is the quality of the cat food! some vitamin additions for example can indeed be very good for your cat, although it is not natural! my thought is that if you are to purchase commercial (canned or dry) cat food, quality should be your main concern as there is almost no such thing as all natural cat food in the market, unless you made it in your kitchen by yourself.

One additional remark is that you are a lot more likely to find near natural wet cat food than natural dry products!

The best natural cat food you can make will be something using meat and meat byproducts, rice, cooked eggs, probably some cheese, ... etc. You can find a lot of natural cat food recipes in this blog! Once you are familiar with the basic natural ingredients that we use the sky is going to be your sole limit.

Since we are talking about natural cat food and cat health, there is also something you might be interested in! you can check out this link to know more (right click -> open in a new tab to stay on this blog as well!)

If you liked my advises and recommendations you can feel free to subscribe to my low traffic newsletter and get periodically a selection of the best all natural cat food recipes right in your mailbox.

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Back to basics - Homemade five spice powder 自製五香粉



Chinese five spice is a classic flavouring in many Chinese cooking. I have bought and used many different brands of five spice powder. I noticed they all smell different and some didn't have much aroma at all.

Though it is called five spice, it is not a concrete rule to use only five type of spices. Five spice powder can contain 5 or more spices in any proportions. Common spices used can be
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Homemade sweet fermented rice 甜酒釀

Fermenting cooked rice is a very old Chinese, Japanese, Korean and other S E Asians tradition, the main use is to make rice wine. Fresh partially fermented rice is very sweet, great to eat as it is like a rice pudding or use for cooking.

In Chinese sweet fermented rice is called 甜酒釀 'tian jiu niang' or 醪糟 'lao zao'. This is not rice pulp after rice wine is filtered. The cooked rice is only
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CNY 7th day

Happy Birthday to all!

It's the 7th day of CNY again. In Chinese tradition it's everybody's birthday. We called today 人日, reads as 'Ren le' in Mandarin or 'Yan Yak' in Cantonese, literally means 'people's day'.

See previous post and some recipes related to today celebration like yu san and 7 ingredients soup and the reasons why they are selected as special for Ren le.

For a change I am going
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Golden pumpkin cake


Golden Pumpkin Cake 黄金南瓜糕

One of Cantonese favourite Chinese New Year's cake is lo bak goh (turnip or mooli cake). This year I subbed mooli with pumpkin. The cake has a mild sweetness and lovely pumpkin flavour. It has a nice golden colour. Gold or golden colour is auspicious during CNY to symbolise wealth and prosperity. So why not try this to celebrate with friends and family. I know it's a
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