The Shanghai Style Vegetable Rice

The Shanghai Style Vegetable Rice originally was just the dish for low paid male workers around the Shanghai area. Wife at home used the left over Pak Choi, add some oil and combined with the rice, to make the traditional vegetable rice for their hard working husband.


Gradually, this dish is widely spread and become one of the signature dish in Shanghai Cuisine. The dish is very simple and delicious. You can also use your own creativity to make the one and only Shanghai Vegetable Rice.
Ingredients (4 Servings)

800g "Pak Choi" (or some may call "Bak Coy"), cut into 2cm length
3 cups of uncooked rice
4 Chinese Sausage (or you may use Bacon instead)
2 Cloves of garlic, finely chopped
800ml of stock
Salt
Dried small shrimp
Oil

Steps:

1. Cut the Pak Choi and bacon. Soak the dried small shrimp for about 10 minutes and leak dry. Add oil, garlic, bacon, and dried shrimp into the cast iron casserole and saute for about 2 minutes. 



2. Add the Pak Choi into the casserole and cook until the stem is mildly soft. Season with salt.



3. Add the washed rice and stock into the casserole. Bring to boil with small heat and cover the lid for 15 minutes.








4. Uncover the lid after 15 minutes and check whether the stock is almost reduced. If it is, turn off the heat and cover the lid, using the temperature within the cast iron casserole to cook the rice.



5. Uncover when 20 minutes pass and it's ready to serve. 

Steak with Mushroom and Red Wine Sauce

 

An easy but tasty steak recipe for home cooking. Now you don't need to go to the fancy restaurant for steak anymore. Your kitchen can simply make the wonderful steak that will blow your mind!

Ingredients: (2 Servings)

2 Steak (Rib Eye)
1/2 Onion, chopped
5 cloves of garlic, chopped
3TB Red Wine
1TB Tomato Paste
1TB A1 Steak Sauce
1cup Broth (or water)
1TB Flour
Salt
Olive Oil
Mushroom

Steps:

1. Add the olive oil into the pan and saute the garlic and onion until they turn brown.

 

2. Add the mushroom, A1 sauce, tomato paste, red wine, broth, and flour. Stir the mixture well for about 2 minutes. Then the sauce is done.













3. Prepare a cast iron grill pan. Add the oil on the surface and heat the pan with medium heat until it is very hot. Put the steak on the grill pan and saute each side for about 3~4 minutes. (The cooking time may vary because of the different size and thickness of the steak) This should bring the steak to medium. (You can use the panini press to make the steak wonderful with the burn mark.)









 

Easy Duck Confit

Duck Confit is a French dish made with the duck leg which preserved in natural duck fat.
Confit is a term for various kinds of food that have been immersed in a substance for both flavour and preservation. Sealed and stored in a cool place, confit can last for several months to an year. Confit is one of the oldest ways to preserve food, and is a speciality of southwestern France.

Ingredients: (For 4 to 6 servings)

6 Duck Legs
1kg Duck Fat
36 Unpeeled Garlic
Salt

Steps:

1. Wash the duck legs and dry them with paper towel. Sprinkle the salt evenly on the legs and rub on the meat and skin. Wrap them with the food wrap and place in the refrigerator for 2 days. 





2. After 2 days when the legs are ready. Render the duck fat with low heat.

3. Cool the rendered duck fat to around room temperature. Place the duck legs into the fat. Make sure that every leg is soaked into the fat. Add the unpeeled garlic into the pot and cook with very low heat for 2 hours. After 2 hour, turn off the heat. When the pot is cooled, place the pot into the refrigerator.

4. When you want to eat the leg, remove the leg from the fat. Take a pan and saute the leg with medium fire until the skin turns gold. The meat should be done since it is cooked in the duck fat for 2 hours. Spread some fresh parsley for serving.

Sichuan-Style Spicy Orange Beef

 

Sichuan Province of China is one of the largest province in China, and the home of most savory and spicy food in the world. The most famous Sichuan dish is probably Mapo Tofu, a bold, spicy, and distinctive tofu cuisine. The Sichuan cuisine is famous for its bold combination with Sichuan peppercorn, garlic, peanuts, sesame, ginger, and chili pepper, etc, together they have created more than thousands of delicious dish. 

But today we are not going to teach you a traditional, super-spicy Sichuan cuisine, but a mild, flavorful spicy orange beef. This special beef cuisine perfectly balance the spicy taste of chili pepper and the sweetness of the orange, making it a different choice for everyone who would like to enjoy the Sichuan style cuisine.

Here are the ingredients: 

3 Hot Chili Pepper (This is not the usual chili pepper in the supermarket. It is smaller and spicier.)
1tb oil
Orange zests from one orange
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 carrot
500g of beef
1/2 cup of broth
1/3 cup of soy sauce
1TB Cointreau
1TB Honey
Potato starch
water

Steps:


1. Cut the carrot, chili pepper, garlic, and orange zests. Set aside.

 

2. Add oil into the pot and heat the oil. Add pepper, garlic and orange zest into the pot and stir fry for 4 minutes.

 

3. Add the carrot and beef and stir fry for about 2 minutes to brown the beef.

 

 

4. Add the water, broth, soy sauce, honey, and Cointreau. Give it a good stir.

 

  

5. Bring to boil and turn the heat into low. Cook for a hour. (You can check the softness of the beef for yourself and decide the cooking time. If you would like to have a softer beef then you should cook for more than an hour.)

6. Mix the potato starch and water in a small bowl and add the mixture into the pot for another stir.

7. Serve with rice, bread, or noodle. You can also take it as a main dish.

 

Wabi-Sabi: the art of living.

Wabi-sabi is the most striking of what we can define the traditional Japanese culture, and is the most remarkable philosophy that embrace every aspect of Japanese cultural identity. Most people may not even heard of this word, but you must have experience it somehow in your life. The Japanese architecture, industrial design, visual design, zen gardens, pottery, or even life style, are all deeply affected by this philosophy. The importance of Wabi-sabi for Japan, is as the Perfectionism to ancient Greek and Europe. To be general, Wabi-sabi is a form of lifestyle, but to be specific, it is a special kind of aesthetic concept.

Wabi-sabi characterize the beauty of imperfection, transience, incompletion, simplicity, and unconventionality. In fact, in Japan, there are also few people who can explain the meaning of Wabi-sabi. This is because Japanese never put this philosophy with theoretical concepts into the formal education and lectures. Some Japanese experts claim that Wabi-sabi should retain its mysterious characteristic, since this will make it more fascinated. The word Wabi-sabi is the combination of two Chinese characters "侘寂", however, the direct explanation of these two words cannot explain the true meaning of Wabi-sabi at all.

"Wabi" refers to a taste for quiet, vague suggestion, and simplicity, and incorporates rustic beauty, such as patterns found in straw, bamboo, clay, or stone into it. For example, when a traveller explore the wild, at dusk, he needs a shelter to spend the night, so he uses the straws on the ground to make a shelter for his temporary stay. On the next morning, he untie the straws and the shelter vanished. The straws he used return to the original position as it was, undistinguished, as a whole. However, if you look into the details, the crease and bend on the straws suggest the existence of the shelter last night. 

"Sabi" refers to the patina of age, the concept that changes due to use may make an object more beautiful and valuable. This incorporates an appreciation of the cycles of life and careful, artful mending of damage, such as the aged leather bag and the damaged tea cups.

The spiritual value of Wabi-Sabi comes from the continuous observation and confrontation with mother nature. For Japanese, they have tried all their best to fight the nature–the long rainy season, earthquake, flood, tsunami, fire, etc, but they have failed just like all of us did. Therefore, this creates the fundamental, core message of the Wabi-sabi, which are transience, imperfection, and incompletion.

Transience

They learned that life is short and transient, so everything, including those that are hard, rigid, inert, are not eternal. Therefore, everything’s life is short and will come to the end someday.

Imperfection

Everything has defects, especially when we pay close attention to small details. If we use microscope to look into the shaver blade, you will find that the blade is not a smooth surface but has many depression and defects. The end of perfection is imperfection.

Incompletion

Everything is changing and moving, but we always subjectively some time to be "completed". When is the completion of a flower? when they blossom? or when they bear fruits? or even when they withered? In wabi-sabi, there is no theoretical base for completion.

One of the interesting point is how wabi-sabi defines beauty and ugly. 

Wabi-sabi claim that beauty is an ongoing event among you and others at any one time, that is to say, beauty may suddenly appear. If the time, situation, objective condition, subjective condition, etc are correct, something that is regarded ugly in the past may become beautiful now. For example, for some wealthy businessmen to enjoy the tea ceremony, the Wabi-sabi style teahouse should looks like a medieval farmhouse that is without pretension, and boring. However, in an appropriate environment and appropriate condition, the cottages might become extremely stylish.