Spring is here (it better be!!)

One of the great things with having the year off with Tyler was being about to reconnect with old friends and meeting other new mommies.  This weekend, we were invited to a baby shower for one of the mommies we hung out with last year, it was as great party/playdate, great food and great company. It seemed like all the mommies were either pregnant with their second baby, or already had two kids! I wonder when hubby and I will be ready to do it all over again, all I know is at this very moment, we are really enjoying life with just the 3 of us.

Anyways, to celebrate the upcoming arrival of their baby girl, I decided to make some super girly, and perfect for spring flower cupcakes! I was actually a bit nervous about making these, since I really haven't decorated much with buttercream lately.  All of my "creations" lately have been done with fondant, which is in my opinion, a bit easier.  Buttercream icing is harder to work with because if the consistency is wrong, it can look like a real mess.  So I dig up my old Wilton cake decorating books and went to work.  I think the end results weren't bad, some of the flowers didn't really turn out the way I was hoping for (like the pink and orange rose...yuck), but I hope everyone enjoyed them! 

I can't wait for spring to arrive, can't wait to kick start the gardening season!!!!

No more Go For Tea!

Us Markham/Richmond Hill folks are no stranger to Go For Tea Restaurant, in fact, Tyler and I have spent endless hours hanging out in this Taiwanese teahouse with other mommies and babies during my year off. Hubby's favorite thing to order there is the Popcorn Chicken, which is more appropriately called the "Salty -Peppery chicken" in chinese.I was so excited when I came across the recipe from one of my favorite blog - Momofuku for 2,and made it right away!

Taiwanese Crispy Salty Peppery Chicken Recipe adapted from Micky’s Fav. Taiwanese Recipes
4 boneless chicken thighs, diced into 1 inch pieces
1 egg yolk
1 cup sweet potato starch (Can be found in any chinese grocery store like T&T)
1/4 cup corn starch
1/2 cup soy sauce (reduce this to 1 tablespoon, see note)
2 tablespoons mirin
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon garlic powder
1 tablespoons 5 spice powder
1 teaspoon white pepper
frying oil

In a large bowl, mix minced garlic, soy sauce, mirin, sugar, 1/2 tablespoon of 5 spice powder, and white pepper. Marinate the chicken overnight.

The next day, add the egg yolk and corn starch into the marinated chicken and mix it well.

In a bowl,  mix the sweet potato starch, the remaining 1/2 tablespoon of 5 spice powder, and garlic powder. This is the coating for the fried chicken.

Coat each piece of chicken completely with the mix. Let it sit for about 5 mins before frying so that the sweet potato starch has time to stick onto the chicken.

Heat a pot of frying oil over medium heat to 350˚F. Fry the chicken in batches until golden brown. Remove from the oil and drain on a cooling rack. Turn the heat to high so the oil reaches 375˚F.

Fry the chicken pieces for a second time in the oil for about 10 seconds to make it extra crispy.

Toss in any herbs you are deep frying.
Drain the chicken on a cooling rack and serve hot.

Because I had intended to make this for a weeknight dinner, I did "cut some corners", I didn't marinate the meat the night before, I actually did it when I got home at 6pm.  The chicken meat sat in the marinade for 30 min, while I cooked rice, got myself and baby changed! I also didn't let the chicken sit for 5 minute before frying, I coated each piece and fried it right away (Too lazy to get an extra plate for the coated chicken), and I didn't fry the chicken pieces for a second time, since the chicken pieces were pretty small, they were already fully cooked, brown and crispy after the first fry, so I didn't think there was a need to deep fry it again.  The result was amazing and got my hubby's stamp of approval!! I served it with rice and some chinese vegetable, and surprised to find that the chicken was still crispy and tasty the next day!

I know that a lot of home cooks don't like deep frying because they don't know what to do with all the left over oil, and I used to be one of them.  But for this recipe, I didn't really have to use that much oil at all, I deep fried the chicken using a small and deep pot.  I filtered the leftover oil through a coffee filter and into a glass jar for deep frying next time.

So I highly recommend this recipe and can't wait to make it again, maybe next time I will try to make some bubbletea to go with it too! And I don't REALLY mean NO MORE GO FOR TEA, I love hanging out there with my friends and ordering the paper hot pot (maybe I should attempt that too.....)!

I LOVE my slow cooker

As all busy working mommies know, the key to getting dinner on the table after a long day at work is planning ahead. I am no different than the average mommy, I'm exhausted at the end of the day, and is often tempted to open a can of soup and call it dinner. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, but from time to time, I don't mind putting in some extra prep time, if the outcome is a delicious dinner that is oh so rewarding!  And this recipe is exactly that, it requires a little bit of prep time the night before, but the finished product is well worth the time!

Hubby and I are both meat lovers and I'm always looking for different cut of meat to experience with! And beef short ribs is definitely my new love, I have been seeing tons of food network shows featuring this cut and have been seeing it on tons of restaurant menus as well. The key to making this recipe is the slow cooker, it's a true time saver and I try to use it at least one a week!

This recipe is actually a mishmash of a few short ribs recipes, I've made some tweaking over the years, hope you will enjoy it: 

Slow cooker Beef Short Ribs
3 tbsp olive oil
2 package of beef short ribs
1/4 cup flour
1 chopped onion
3 chopped carrot
1 package of white button mushroom
2 1/2 cup beef broth
2 garlic cloves
1 bottle of strained tomatoes sauce
1 tbsp tomato paste
1 tsp thyme
1 bay leave
3/4 cup red wine

The recipe is pretty simple, all I did the night before was tie each piece of beef ribs with kitchen string (this is to prevent the beef ribs from falling apart because I intended to serve it with the bone. But this step is optional)

 Beef short ribs from my favorite Foody Mart!

Optional step











Cover each piece of beef rib with a flour, salt and pepper mixture, and brown each piece in pan, once browned, they can be placed in the slow cooker. 

The next step is to put the carrots, onions and garlic in the food processor, pour the chopped mixture along with the tomato sauce, mushrooms, tomato paste, beef broth, thyme and bay leave back in the pan to get heated through.  Pour the heated mixture on top of the beef ribs in the slow cooker. And viola! All done! Turn it on low for 8 hrs. I usually do this the night before, so we can wake up to the aroma of beef in the morning! hahah...no actually, the reason I do it the night before is because the ribs release a lot of fat, I separate the ribs (which is fall off the bone tender after a night of cooking) and the sauce, put both containers in the fridge and scoop out all the harden fat before serving.

Ta-da! This is a very easy weeknight meal, and very satisfying.  All I had to do when I got home was to heat everything up and make a quick mash potatoes to go with it.  Another way to serve this is shred the meat and serve it over pasta with the sauce.  The sauce is really really good, very flavorful.

For another night, I used the leftover meat for a yummy beef rib grilled cheese! This was inspired by the pot roast grilled cheese at Turtle Jack restaurant. It was the perfect Friday night dinner, quick and simple, for those Friday nights where I don't feel like cooking but was also too tired to go out for dinner!

So with the $10 I spent on the ingredients, and an extra 30 min prep time, I ended up with dinner for 2 on Tuesday night, packed lunch for 2 the next day, and dinner for 3 (My son loved the grilled cheese sandwich too!) another night! Not too shabby!!!! =)

R-oreo

Loving my new spring blooms....

Besides all the great food we had in NYC, we also visited a few bakeries, and the first one we hit was Bouchon Bakery! Bouchon is opened by fame chef Thomas Keller, his bakery is well known for their french macarons. We went to the bakery on Columbus Circle after we arrived to NYC, but by 4pm, they were out of macarons!! I was so disappointed, but the yummy chocolate croissant made it all better. Hubby chose the TKO instead, which is the "Thomas Keller Oreo", and it was equally good. I mean, who doesn't like oreo? But the TKO is different, it was way less sweet, and a lot more satisfying!

So when we were invited to our first St. Patrick's Day party by our dear friend Judy, Yong and baby Rebecca, I thought this would be a great opportunity to try making my own version of this oreo cookie! (And make my friends be the guinea pigs!) I found the recipe from this awesome blog - That Winsome Girl. I started working the moment Tyler went to nap! The recipe is pretty simple, a white chocolate ganache sandwiched between two pieces of chocolate cookies.

I actually don't really like to bake, I hate having to be so precise with measurements, and I absolutely hate washing greasy bowls!!!

But off I go..... making the cookies were pretty easy, the only hard part was keeping the dough cold. The moment the dough warms up (probably because the dough is mostly butter!!), it's impossible to cut the dough with the cookie cutter. I first started using the pretty fluted cutter (, but I got lazy and ended up using a round cutter instead.

The white chocolate ganache was even easier to make, but I only ended up with enough filling to fill 8 cookies! The finished product was no where as pretty as the ones by Thomas Keller, but I thought they were pretty tasty. I especially love the cookie, it's deep in chocolatey flavor, very delicate texture and the salt really balanced the sweet filling.
(Yes, I'm cheesy, I stamped the cookie with R -it's my version of oreo - Roreo! And the filling was dyed with green coloring for the St. Patrick's day party!)

New introduction

Okay, I'm finally back!! It's been a long time since I've sat in front of the computer to update this blog. I guess you can call it writer's block, or just plain lazy. When I first started this blog, I wanted to share my experience of being a new mom with my friends and family, it was really fun at first, but I often wondered if anybody is actually interested in our ordinary life? I struggled to come up with interesting topics, so I just stopped writing all together. I was actually planning to end this blog, but a light bulb went off during my recent trip to NYC!

Hubby and I recently took a trip to NYC, leaving our baby boy behind with the grandparents. The trip was great (but we did miss Tyler like crazy), and it fell good to know that we can still have fun as a couple! We have been to NYC before, so we skipped all the tourist area and made this trip into a culinary tour! One of the places we went to was Ippudo, a super popular japanese ramen restaurant. That bowl of ramen was amazing, and it totally ignited my passion for food again. I am determine to make my own bowl of ramen, so I ordered the Momofuku cookbook the moment I got home!!

This cookbook is crazy intense, the average recipe takes around 6 hours to complete, which is interesting and challenging, but I doubt my hubby and son would want to have dinner at midnight every day. So my plan is to use this blog to share some of my quick weeknight dinner solutions and also how I tackle the recipes momofuku and my other cookbook collection (which have been collecting dust)....



So come along for the ride!! But don't laugh if any of the recipes are too simple or if I miserably fail trying to attempt the Momofuku 48 hr beef short ribs!

We are changing....

I have big plans for this blog...ok...not really big plans, more like a "relaunch". Yes, I have been very busy and have not updated this blog since September, which is when I went back to work. Life as a mommy is still great, and I'm actually really enjoying life as a working mom. But in order to keep this blog updated at a reasonable manner, I need to revamp this blog all the together! It needs to look different, talk about different things ....so we are (actually, there is no we, it's just little old me, but WE sound so much more professional! HA) under construction now, and hopefully will be ready for a "relaunch" in the upcoming weeks!!!!

STAY TUNED!