Deeeelish Cooking

Healthiness

2010-05-26T23:05:00.000-07:00

ya-a! stupid ass vancouver rainy weather screwing with my outdoor plans.. though I DID go biking this past week (but I fell as I got OFF my bike and now massive bruise on my knee dang) and hiking two canyon tommorow! I also plan on hiking the chief, kayak in mission/north van, and canoe and kite fly before I leave. I've also been hula-ing 1 hour/day.. hopefully raising it to 1 hr 1/2. Honestly I just listen to music and sing along and time goes by. it's really not that bad unless I have to pee. and seriously, it's been helping my weight plateau at something more considerable than a month ago.

I also decided to be extremely healthy couple weeks ago and cooked up two different types of salmon and 3 various salads. I made baked pecan honey salmon.. which unfortunately was in the oven for too long and burned the pecans.. and I made broiled yogurt cucumber salmon which was quite good. Broiling salmon keeps the moisture inside the salmon. I also liked how it wasn't overly spiced (I sometimes like my food bland...). Aside from the cucumber salad on my broiled salmon, I made a crab mango stuffed avocado salad and a mango cucumber avo salad. Yup... basically using the same ingredients over and over.. This is what happens when you have a over ripe cucumber and overload of mangoes in the fridge (friggin CHEAP last week at that supermarket that starts with "price" I always want to call it price water house cooper OBV not). Anyways. Avocado is honestly one of the best veggies to eat and even though it's 'fat', it's good fat and it helps unclog those arteries from the bad fat you eat. LOVE avocados. love love love.

beets and pork

2010-05-19T16:26:00.000-07:00

One of the best things I ever got to eat in Sweden was beetroot salad. Like potato salad for us, swedes love it and sell them in tubs at their supermarkets. Especially during christmas, I got a chance to eat this lots but it is reallyy bad for you (as in tons of mayo =( ).. Coming back, I was really craving it and found a recipe. It's funny because before this, I never even tasted a beet because the name turned me off so much (same with turnip and radish.) I bought a few beets and I honestly had no idea how to cook it and decided to cook it like a potato.. it took FOR-EVERRRR. and I don't even think it was fully cooked at the end :( I actualy quite like the taste of beets, it doesn't really have much of a taste and they are SO healthy!! Obviously my salad wasn't as delicious as in sverige (because I cut back on mayo and sugar significantly) but it was really good. I think I am going to eat more beets.. cept what a pain they are to cook ugh.

A friend recently gave me a slow cooker and I decided to make some pulled pork. I don't know why, but i Love pulled pork. Everytime I go to a bbq place, I always get a pulled pork sandwich. GOD. slow cooker really does live up to its name. the recipe took 8 hours. so by the time it was 7pm I wasn't even hungry to eat. Personally, maybe I made it wrong, but it just tasted like chinese "mung joo yoke" .. and it IS just "mung-ing joo yoke" so why do I love them so much at other restaurants? I think it was how I never had a chance to make it.. now I don't think I will order them anymore. too much meat..
I am also on a diet, so making a whole pot of pork was NOT a good idea.. but I recently found my hula hoop so I've been hula-ing everyday 30+ minutes (time flies when you are watching glee) combined with my p90x. I've lost 3 pounds and I wanna lose 4 more. people look at me and go wtf why. because i m going to chicity and there's beaches there. that's why. thus drinking water and tea and veggies (and a couple glasses of white wine and maybe one small dessert cookie) for the next 3 weeks. woop woop. I am also gonna try to make some homemade granola bars soon stay tuned.

I want to start my own bakery

2010-05-04T16:34:00.000-07:00

I just went to the Baker's Market and what I realized was that most of the vendors were private bakers who bake in their homes catering to specialized customers. I LOVE baking.. but I hate eating my baked goods, no it's not because I have dirty hands or drop things on the floor, it's because I become guilty of all the calories I am eating (I am currently on a sorta diet.. as in I still eat a fair bit.. but I just cut out the bad things like fried food and fill that with fruits and veggies instead). Whenever I come home, I can't stop baking. Yesterday I made a spiced cake (too much flour made it super dense) and at the moment, I am baking some white chocolate and almond cookies (which seem a little too oily/buttery..damnit).

Recently I made this coffee cake and it was DELICIOUS. I love apple coffee cakes, they are the best.
I really want to make a red velvet cake and peanut butter cupcakes but I can't eat it all (and my friends are all also health conscious folks so I don't think they would be happy with me if I gave them some). I need some cash but I personally can't see running a baking business can be profitable (for me) because 1) I don't know how to generate customers 2) I m only here for one month (CHICITY) and 3) I need some type of niche which I can't think of any at the moment. .

This idea will once again go into my possible money making cabinet (which is located in my mind.. along with private tutor and selling clothes).

Soup

2010-03-15T01:28:00.000-07:00

Coming from a chinese family, I grew up drinking hundreds of different soups. My house would smell like soup since it took like a day to make. There were always different health benefits to each soup and I honestly have no idea how my mother knows how to make so many different kinds. To this day, they still make me soup when they see me and are willing to drive an hour out to see me to give me some soup. People tell me I am lucky.. I guess it's not too bad :)
Although I don't generally like soup, I drink all the ones my mother makes.. there's really only two I don't like, with one that I hate and will refuse to drink. one is fa kay sum (American ginseng) yuck, and the one that I refuse is fish belly. UGH SOO GROSS. My favorites are usually very clear and just melon and dried scallops :)

Okay, anyways.. I have only made soups a couple times.. I tend to not make it so much because I don't find the joy in it. Having said that, I know that a great chef can always make a great soup (top chef when they made a simple soup and spent 30 minutes just seasoning it to perfectness) My favorite I've made is one called a shrimp bisque (I will put up recipe later). It's probably one of the first things I've ever made by myself and it's delicious ( no pictures). Here are two other soups I've made.. The first is a Sweet potato soup.. It was alright. the second one is very healthy blend of chickpeas, carrot, and sweet potato with a slice of cheese baguette. The baguette was great!

I love these mugs. We got them from NYC many years ago. They're great!

Sushi

2010-03-06T23:54:00.002-08:00

I used to be a waitress at a sushi restaurant in my town. I only worked during lunch time and was it ever busy!! In a town where there’s basically a sushi restaurant every block, it’s amazing how much people love sushi here. A lot of people say if you work around something enough, you will not want to see it or have it in your spare time... but not sushi! It is probably my favourite cuisine (tied with greek maybe) and I loveee trying new places in Vancouver and the lower mainland.

Actually, the only type of Sushi restaurants I don't go to are the All you can eat ones.. only because I do not think I can eat my money's worth and I like to try new things at different restaurants (even though my friends always try to drag me to tanpopo.. I refuse!!). I recall going to the old sushi restaurant that is now Tomokazu (I think??) and we ordered wayyy too much food we began to hide sushi rice in napkins, tea kettles, etc etc so we didn't have to pay extra.. even though I think we eventually had to. oi.

Coincidentally, my father has been a sushi chef and I thought who better to teach me than him? Let me tell ya, just like kneading dough and making pastry, rolling sushi takes practice! It is really hard to keep it from falling apart, having it lop sided, or making sure it’s tightly rolled. Years ago when I first tried, we made the normal California roll and also a “dessert” roll which turned out to be real gross. So much for creativity. We also made onigiri because we had these molds from Hong Kong. I’ve never had an onigiri and not sure if I will have another... it just seems like a lot of rice!

Flash forward to now and my recent motivation to try new things. Since I’ve only tried making sushi once, I thought why not try again? (just like me and squash.. what a hard sport but I have not given up). I was venturing around a Chinese supermarket and noticed they sold frozen unagi. I had nooo idea this existed (naive me) so I was even more excited to make sushi. I LOVE unagi. I also know a lot of people who hates it and makes barfing noises at me when I tell them it’s one of my favourite things. Gosh, live a little ;P

So this time, we made cali rolls again, rolls with unagi, and unagi sushi. Yay! Success! I want to go to Japan one day and have a traditional Japanese meal.. how amazing would that be??

Apple Pie

2010-02-24T13:23:00.000-08:00

I CANNOT make dough. This happened ever since the days of cooking class in high school where my dough was always so sticky/inept to be used even if I kneaded the heck out of it. My friend would always do it for me so my scary teacher would not yell at me (she made a girl cry in my class because she put the sifter into the wash). I think without my friends, I would have failed cooking class.. because I also had a fear of knives and refused to cut up anything and everything.

My love for apple pie is strong and I knew I had to [wo]man up and make my own pie crust. When I found the perfect recipe to make a lattice apple pie, I was ready to start. ughh my lattice was TERRIBLE, it broke midway through, 3/4 way through, BEFORE i started.. oI.
I don't know what I did but I somehow got it to work and it was quite possibly the Ugliest thing I've ever made, but I angled my photo so the imperfections were covered (sorta..)

Recently, I made a sweet potato pie after I found that pilsbury made ready to use pie crusts. Oh pilsbury you little dough boy, making life so much easier.. It was very easy to use. I just microwaved it to heat the dough up to make it more elastic, and draped it over my pretty red pie plate. Filled it up with sweet potato goodness and into the oven it goes!

It turned out quite lovely, but upon having a taste the pie crust is FOUL. It tasted off and ughh, I ended up throwing out the crust and eating the inner. Blech..

:( I guess I will just have to suck it up and improve my kneading dough pie crust skills..

Hummingbird Bakery

2010-02-23T23:04:00.000-08:00

My love for hummingbird bakery started back in August 09 when my friend and I ventured to the little bakery shop in London. We each bought a cupcake to enjoy while we walked around and at first bite, I almost got hit by a car from falling in love with the cupcake (well not really, but a car actually DID hit me because he was dumb and turned into a blocked road).

Flash forward to December. I was wandering around Chapters, waiting for my friend downtown and ventured over to the cookbook aisle when to my surprise, I found the hummingbird bakery cookbook. It was filled with mouth watering pictures, easy to follow recipes, and a variety of sweets and delights that I knew I wanted to bake. Having no real reason for buying anything back then because I was pretty low on money, I decided it would be my christmas present to myself :P

I was going to buy it on the spot when I realized I was running late and the line up was massive (why must people wait until the final moment to buy christmas presents? gosh) so I decided to "hide" the cookbook haha. Well I guess it worked because I came back the next day and it was still there :)

I've made a few things in the cookbooks.. the muffins, pound cake.. all having been real success. Today I've decided to try my hands on the coffee cake. Lemme tell ya, there were a hecka of a lotta ingredients!! 8 eggs?? 3 1/2 cups of flours? 2 tablespoons of bp? jeez, this is gonna be one big cake. and indeed it was. Funny how actually after making this, I have now ran out of butter, flour, and icing sugar.

Initially it did not turn out well, I think it was because I used the smaller oven, and it was very close to the top, thus the top of my cake was BADLY burnt.. like BLACK with the inside not cooked at all. So after 40 minutes, I took it out, cut off the thick burnt layer and put it back in the oven for 10 more minutes. Success!

The cake was BEAUTIFUL. A little sweet.. but deeeelish! :)

Hello

2010-02-23T17:34:00.000-08:00

I've been writing a lot about dining out in Vancouver but I love cooking as well, so why not start a cooking blog? I am so inspired by all the food blogs out there showcasing their recipes and new dishes, so I thought why not? This blog will chronicle what I make and possibly some recipes (aka links to other people's websites :]) I guess this blog will be a bit more personal as there will be more references to my life. I'll backtrack but for now, here is the list of things I must make one day. :)

Cinnamon Bun
Cream puff
A Whole Turkey
Chicken Parm
Coq au vin
beef stroganoff
Cioppino
Banh mi
beef wellington
mac and cheese
Gingerbread Cookies
Meatloaf
Macaroons
Souffle
Black Forest Cake
Deep Dish Apple Pie
Boston Creme Pie
Chicken Pot pie
Artichoke Dip
Pierogi
Cabbage Rolls
Stuffed Shells
Red velvet cake
Panini
Something with fire
Pho
Soup Dumplings