Happy Chinese Mid Autumn Festival

Hi everybody,

After an absence of a couple of months, I am back to wish you a happy moon festival :).
Please forgive me for neglecting this blog. I'll post some new pictures and recipes soon.

Cupcake-mania

First time making cupcakes.. Made them for my friends birthday (born in the year of the piggy). I'll be honest, they were not that tasty, but damn cute! There were more people taking pictures of them than actually eating them. Good thing I also brought mango loh mai chi.

Doh!... Oh at least I tried..

I watched "The Simpsons: The Movie", and it made me crave for donuts. :-D We don't have dunkin' donuts or crispy creme here, so I wanted to try to make my own donuts. It didn't turn out as a succes, but at least I tried.. The dough turned out to be too solid and not light and soft, but heavy. At least I had fun decorating.


Mine Homer-Simpson-Donut

Sugar Coated

Chocolate with peanut

Anyone with a fool proof recip and would like to share with me?

Konnyaku Jelly a.k.a. Konjac a.k.a. gonyak

In Asia people recognise konnyaku as an health food. They also make noodles of it, which are high in fiber and low in calories. A misunderstanding is that konnyaku is a product from seaweed, but it actually is made of Konnyaku potato's. You can make it will all sorts of fruit and best of all, it's not an animal product, and suitable for vegetarians/vegans.

These jelly's come in different flavours like: lychee, melon, guava, mango or plain natural. Unfortunately it is not sold very often in Asian supermarkets in the Netherlands. I bought mine packages in Oriental Wholesale Supermarket in Amsterdam. I prefer this jelly over gelatine or agar agar jelly. They have a different texture and are firmer, but make sure kids chew it before they swallow it! These don't disolve in your mouth. Hope it will become more popular here!


Like all sort of jelly's, it's a matter of boiling water, disolving powder and sugar, let it cool and you have your refreshing snack. These lychee flavoured jelly hold a lychee inside. Easy to use canned lychee, but you can also use fresh fruits ofcours.


They also make beautiful mango flavoured jelly koi fish!! ^_^

Things I wanted to blog, but didn't had time to do..

Have you been wondering what I was up to? Well, I did continue baking and stuff.. but blogging takes up quite a bit of time. I'm learning Mandarin these days and just started a diet (four letter word) and I have been asked to write recipes in the local Chinese newspaper. I will post some recipes again soon :-).

For the time being, let me show you what I've been making:

Hello Kitty 3D Grape Flavour Jelly Candies

This was my valentine forest berry cheesecake with jelly topping. Very yummy!

Instant Miso soup, we've found in local Japanese supermarket

Home made pizza with mozarella filled crust (YUM!) and mushroom, spinach, cheese toppings

Mini wife cakes (lo poh peng). Flaky crust and chewy filling, very yummy.

Classic chocolate chip cookies! Crunchy on the outside, chewy on the inside. Original Nestlé Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe.

Pandan Kaya Bread loaf, very fragant

Simpel White Bread Loaf

Nice bouquet

Well I didn't receive this bouquet. I gave it away :).. Still, I love this arrangement. So if you ever have the chance to get me flowers.. I want an exact copy of this!

Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Icing

This was the first time I actually had carrot cake and I didn't expect that I would like it so much. Initially I thought of making carrot cakes, because I bought shredded carrots from the supermarket to make eggrolls, but I changed my mind. So what to do with all the carrots? I made little cupcakes and handed them out to my colleagues. The cake was so populair that three of my colleagues asked for the recipe.

Ingredients (makes 12 cupcakes, double ingredients to make one 22cm round cake)

Carrot cake

• Brown Sugar - 140 grams
• Vegetable oil - 90 grams
• Eggs - 2
• Flour - 125 grams
• Baking powder - 2,5 tsp
• Cinnamon powder - 1 tsp ( I used "Speculaaskruiden")
• Ginger powder - o,5 tsp
• Pinch of Salt
• Shredded Carrots - 150 Grams
• Grinded Almonds - 50 Grams (subsitude with Walnuts or Pecannuts)
• Raisins - 50 grams

Cream Cheese frosting

• Cream Cheese - 200 grams
• Icing Sugar or Castor Sugar - 60 grams
• Lemon Juice - 1 tbsp

Preheat oven at 180C and line the muffinpan with paper cups. Beat the oil and sugar in the electric mixer for 3 minutes. Add the eggs one by one and mix into a smooth batter. Shift the flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon powder and ginger powder into the syrup. Add the carrots, nuts and raisins, mix well. Fill the papercups 2/3 with batter and bake for 35 minutes (bake 60 minutes when making the 22cm round cake). Let cakes cool.

Beat all ingredients for the cream cheese frosting till smooth and use it as topping for the carrot cupcakes!

Enjoy!

Happy Chinese New Year - Kong Hey Fat Choi

Majority of the Chinese community in the Netherlands have celibrated New Year with the Western calender. The laisi's and wishes have been given last month, but you'll find activities organised in the Chinatowns (Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam), like performances from Chinese singers, the familiar dragon, lion dance and don't forget the firecrackers.

Sausage buns II

Here they are again :-), but these were better than the ones post earlier. Softer bread and they look prettier ofcours. I used this recipe for the bread.

Instead of sausage buns, you can also make baked-charsiu buns, cocktail buns, red bean paste buns etc. with this bread dough.

Yes the one in the middle had a little too much ketchup. I had to figure out how hard to squeez the bottle of ketchup.

Hong Kong - in a recap

Hong Kong

Shopping

Food

Waiting impatiently for the wonton noodles

Hui Lau Shan (Dessert/Herbal Shop)

Vegetarian dishes

Random

腸仔包 Chung Jai Bau - Sausage Buns - Piggies in a blanket

Edit: Never mind this recipe. I have found a much better recipe on a foodblog.

I'll post pictures later this month ( I'm in Hong Kong the next week).

Check the recipe here. Mine turned out beautifully. I made Cha Siu Chaan Bau with the same recipe! Great great great, I love it! And with the kitchenaid I don't have to knead the dough! Life can be so good..

Enjoyed the Holiday Season :-)

Hoped every one had a great Christmas! I love December :) .. best month of the year. We nearly had a white Christmas. Unfortunately the snow melted a day before Christmas.

The coolest Hello Kitty Christmas tree is the coolest Christmas card I received this year! It deserves a spot on my blog :D. Thank you Sylvia!

Dinner I made for my family: Bell peppers stuffed with fishpaste, Bah Kut Teh

Oyster with Roastpork claypot and the left roastpork I didn't use in the claypot :P

Baby Paksoi with Oystersauce and Mango Pudding (I think I didn't use enough gelatine.. the fish didn't want to come out of the mold). I also had a Curry Claypot and Stingray in Banana leaves, but the photographer (my sis, Shan) was eating when it was served. A girl needs to have her priorities, huh?

My Christmas present from Kelvin is somewhere in this picture.. :D.. no it's not the plant.. Guess again.. It's red, it's shiny and it's MINE!! Envy me :P

HAPPY NEW YEAR! WISH YOU A YUMMY 2008!!

Gingerbread Men

Okonomiyaki - Japanese Pancake

This savourish pancake was invented in Japan during the second world war when the stock on rice was low. To still have a nutritious meal, they made up this pancake made of (yam) batter, cabbage and a lot of sauce. "Okonomi"means "what you like" in Japanese, as you can almost use whatever ingredient you like.

Ingredients (makes 4)

Pancake

• Flour - 300 grams
• Water - 150 ml
• Cabbage - 400 grams, Shredd without the hard white core
• Eggs - 4 eggs
• Chicken stock powder
• Green onions, bacon, onions, carrots
• Or whatever you like (squid, minced meat, noodles, cheese)

Topping

• Okonomiyaki sauce (Jap Worcestershire sauce, buy in Japanese Supermarkets)
• Japanese mayonaise
• Benito flakes (dried fish flakes, buy in Japanese Supermarkets)

Mix the flour, water, eggs into a smooth batter. Add shredded cabbage and green onions in the batter.

Use a soup ladle to scoop the batter. Heat some oil in the frying pan. Fry one portion of batter in the pan. Keep the heat on medium. Wait till the bottom is cooked. Add some ingredients on top and flip the pancake. Fry the other side of the pancake.

Serve the pancake with the sauces and fish flakes.

French Toast - 西多士

How did the French toast (西多士) snack become one of the ultime fav in the Hong Kong 茶餐廳(tea lunchroom)? I bet the Brits introduced it, but like the milk tea, the HK people have made it their own.
Funny thing was that I always have thought this to be a Chinese snack and discovered later with great suprise that it's actually known by the rest of the world as French toast or "wentelteefjes"for the Dutch.

Ingredients:

• Bread - 2 slices
• Egg - 1
• Peanutbutter
• Sweet Condensed Milk
• Honey
• Butter (for frying)

Beat the egg.

Remove the crust if you like. Smear a thick layer of peanutbutter on one slice and top it with the sweet condensed milk. Put the two slices of bread together.

Soak the sandwich in the egg. Heat some butter in the pan and panfry the sandwich golden brown. Some Chinese restaurants fry the French toast, I prefer panfry, as it uses less oil/butter.

Serve with honey or light syrup, add butter if you like.

Enjoy!

Starbucks in the Land of Tulips, Mills and Clogs

The time has come. The moment we all have been waiting for.... Our first Dutch Starbucks!! Ok ok.. so this one does not have Matcha Frappuchino, they do not ask for your name at the counter and they added a little bit of Dutch service flavour to it, by letting customers repeat their (once with the order taker, and once with the cashier). It's still my place for a piece of cheesecake and a cold frap.

For me a nice piece of rasberry cheesecake. I love and hate cheesecake. I love it because I am an addict. I hate it because I am an addict.

Big chunk of chocolate cake for my choc-a-holic boyfriend. The cake was a bit too rich for me. It was like eating solid chocolate.

Java Chip Frap for me *big smile* and the Caramel Frap for Kelvin (who is the choc-a-holic now?). Reminder to self: Order the tall size next time - it is big enough!!

Welcome Starbucks in our humble small cold country, establish and multiply yourself!! Ooh for the people who are wondering where this coffeeplace is, it is in Schiphol Airport.

Mexican Restaurant Los Pilonos - Kerkstraat Amsterdam

Los Pilonos is rated as one of the best Mexican restaurants in Amsterdam. Not sure if that means alot as the Mexican population in The Netherlands is as much as non existing and the taco's are not made of corn flour, but wheat flour. We visited on a Tuesday and the place was packed. So full actually that we had to share our table with another party of two.
The place is decorated so colourfull (with a miniature statue of a Mexican wrestler behind the bar), if you were having a bad day, you will forget about it in seconds.

Before ordering you get a complimentary basket of nacho chips and three kinds of salsa dips. We were chatting and nibbling along, almost forgot to look at the menu card.

My friend (T) had the Taco Alambres. Not sure what that exactly is (beef with cheese and vegetables), but it looked very nice.

My dish was recommended by mine Mexican colleague (J): Taco Bisteck con Queso. The food was good, non complex and comforting. I chose for a mild dish, as I am a Mex food newbie. Do not come here if you are on a diet! (Seriously, the oil almost dripped out of the taco) By the way, I love quacomole!

We also ordered a very nice high calorie chocolate cake to share as dessert. Too bad by then our table was joined with another party and I felt so silly to make pictures of our dessert. I can only share with you how good it was... IT WAS GOOOD!!

Sweet Papaya White Fungus Soup

My mom bought me papaya's, since she knows I love them so much. Now I have not blogged for a while so I owed you this recipe!

This sweet dessert soup is one of the more nourishing Chinese desserts. One of the main ingredients is the white fungus and it is believed to be beneficial for the lungs.

Ingredients

• White Fungus - 20 grams
• Ripe Papaya
• Chinese Almonds - 2 tbsp
• Red Dates - 5 (stoned)
• Rock Sugar - 50 grams
• Water - 1 litre

Soak the white fungus in cold water. Put the sugar and the almonds in the pot or pan (ideally to use a crockpot).

Peel the papaya, unseed the fruit and cut it in even pieces. Add them in the pot with the white fungus and red dates. Add the water in the pot and put the pot in a large pan with cold water.

Bring the water to boil and let it simmer for an hour. If you do not have such large pan, you can use an ordinary pan to bring the soup to boil and simmer for an hour.

Serve the soup with the ingredients. Enjoy!

Berlin, Berlin, and Berlin again

We spend 3 days in Berlin, which is approxamitely 700km away from Amsterdam (6 hours driving). I have been in Germany enough times, but never been to Berlin. With no expectation at all, we got totally suprised. The history of this city is so recent. The fall of the Berlin Wall, the story of the Brandburger Tor, the romantic streets like Under den Linden, but also the modern Potsdamer Platz with their amazing Sony Center.

Yes Berlin has Dunkin' Donuts (and Starbucks!). It keeps reminding us how small Amsterdam is.

The fried spring rolls are from the popular restaurant Monsiour Vuong. Unlike Amsterdam, Berlin has little Chinese residents. Almost all the Asian restaurants were either Vietnamese or opened by Vietnamese people. I guess they do not see alot of Chinese people as they thought we were Japanese tourists. ICHIBAN! I like Viet food! Where are the Viet restaurants in Amsterdam?

The photogenic ceiling of the Sony center. I just kept looking up. Good thing I did not bumped into anyone. Between the modern architecture is Legoland. A 7 meter tall lego giraffe instead of a billboard.

That's me when we just arrived eating our first Currywurst mit Brötchen (fried sausage with ketchup/curry sauce mix with a bun). The first day was a bit rainy, the other two days were sunny and dry.

The United Buddy Bears project left lifesize bears all around Berlin. Every bear is painted by a different artist. At first I thought the bears were only in Berlin (there is a bear in Berlin's flag), but it is a global project and you can find them too in Sydney, Tokio, Hong Kong, Jerusalem. More info here.

You can find these crêpes anywhere in Berlin. I had one with Nutella (chocolate) and banana.. Yummy... nice breakfast. We had a very German lunch, with meat, potatoes, Saurkraut and a beer. I usually do not drink alcohol, but my thought was "a little bit of Octoberfest feeling and we are in Germany". I just had half the glass and it was the smalles size I could find. Brrr.. I really do not like beer. The guy sitting next to us had a 1 litre pint! They even sell 2 litre pints! Well, CHEERS :-) !

We went to the Jewish museum the last day. The museum tells the story of the prosecution of Jewish people from the dark ages until now. The stories of the WWII are unforgetable. Realisation hits hard, I have much to be thankful for.

Sao Bao - Longevity Peach Buns

Instant Coconut Curry Rice Stick

I found this instant rice stick bowl in the freezer section (on of the bigger Chinese supermakets -Beverwijk). I never seen instant bowles in the freezer before. Wonder what would be so different about it.

The instructions tells you to add 200ml water and put the lid back on and microwave it for 4 minutes on 900watts. I couldn't taste the coconut actually and besides that the soup was spicy, there was no taste to it. The only positive was that it had fish cakes in them, but I would prefer instant ramen and add my own fish cakes.

I found these fried dough in my soup after I was half way through. It really sucked up the soup.. HOT HOT HOT!!

I was never really fond of rice sticks.. Ah well.. back to ramen :-)..

Nem Chua - Vietnamese spiced sausage-like pork

Yes I know.. the title is a bit funny, but I didn't know how to describe it. First time buy, first time try.

I always have seen these funny pink pachages in the Chinese supermarket, but never knew what they were. So one day I asked someone who worked there.."Excuse me, sir? Can you tell me what this is?" "Ehm.. sorry. I don't know either". Well, there was nothing left than buy and try!

I read the label and it was in French. My French is good enough to understand that it is pork meat with spices. It also had a tip how to serve it on the back of the label. "Cook for 15 minutes on low heat, serve with vermicelli. Add Nuoc Nam too taste." Doesn't sound too hard to prepare, huh?

I can't say that I liked it or hate it. The meat was a bit sour and funny was that I expected it to change in colour after it was cooked. Added some fried tofu and fishballs, incase I didn't like them and had nothing to go with my vermicelli.

Have you tried them? Is there a different way to eat them?

Let's see what my next grocceries shopping trip will get me..

Coconut tart - Yer Tat

Coconut(milk) is one much used ingredient used in Chinese snacks and desserts. The coconut tart is one of the fixed selling items in the Chinese bakery. The recipe is very simple, try it out if you like!

Ingredients (makes 10)

Crust:

• Flour - 100 gram
• Sugar - 40 gram
• Butter - 70 gram
• Vanilla Essence - 1 tsp
• Milk Powder - 1,5 tbsp
• Egg - 1 large egg
• Baking Powder - 5 grams

Filling:

• Desiccated Coconut - 150 grams
• Condensed Milk - 100 ml
• Egg yolk - 1
• Butter - 50 grams

Glaze

• Egg Yolk - 1
• Butter - 1/2 (half) Tbsp melted butter

Mix the ingredients for the filling together.

Shift the flour, milk powder and baking powder into a bowl. Add the vanilla extract, butter and sugar to the bowl. Knead the dough smooth and divide into 10 portions.

Press the dough in the mould. Fill it up with the coconut mix. Do not press the filling together to hard. Bake them for 25 minutes at 175C.

Take it out of the oven. Glaze it with the egg yolk/butter mix. Decorate with the candied cherries.

Ready to serve!

Mooncakes - Mid Autumn Festival

Chinese people celibrate Mid-Autumn festival on the 15th of the 8th month of the Chinese Lunar Calendar (falls on September 25th of the Western calender this year). On the day of celibration, family would come to gether to eat, drink enjoy mooncakes and gaze at the full moon. Click here to read the story behind this festival.

The Cantonese mooncake is like a very big heavy cookie. It has a thin cookie layer and filling could vary, but most populare is the lotusnut paste and the white lotusnut paste. Usually it would have a salty duck egg yolk in the center to represent the moon. Nowadays people like to put up to 4 yolks in them and other versions as ice cream mooncakes, jelly mooncakes, snowskin mooncakes have made their introductions.

It is quite some work to find everything you need before making mooncakes. I have been looking for mooncake moulds, but could not find any in the Netherlands. I bought mine online at the wokshop. The people are so nice there and I even got 2 pairs of nice chopsticks as a token. Then I had to hunt for Lyle's Golden Syrup to make the skin. Ofcours it was only available in Expetriats stores. The hunt for the filling was not that easy either. There is only one Chinese Supermarket in Amsterdam Chinatown that holds selfmade lotusnut paste (and they also sell the white one!!!!). All the other Supermarkets only sell the ones in a tin (I really do not like them). I could just buy the salted duck eggs from any store in Chinatown, but I think I will salt my own eggs next year.

I will not be posting my recipe for mooncakes, because I followed the recipe of Florence. Of the couple of recipes I tried, this is the most workable one.

Tips:

• Make sure to give new mooncake moulds a 24 hours oil bath treatment.
• How much filling and skin dough you need, differs with every mould you use. If you have too much or too less, the mooncake will not take the print of the mould nicely.

My favourite Mooncakes are with white lotusnut filling and 2 egg yolks. What mooncakes do you like?

Centro Oberhausen - Germany

I found my camera again :-D!!.. Silly me.. I misplaced it, but my handsome boyfriend found it fortunately. There were still pictures on it from a few weeks ago when we were in Centro Oberhausen (suppose to be the biggest mall in Europe).

We went to Karl Grill after a day shopping. I ordered the smalles plate. It's called "Gypsy meat ball" and it came with big fries. Just like I like them. People in Holland, Belgium, Germany eat their fries with mayonaise. Very yummy. Kelvin ordered "Schnitzel mit Kartoffeln". The famous German Schnitzel is a thin slice of meat coated in breadcrumbs and fried. Kartoffeln is potato in German. People in Germany and the Benelux like their potatoes, like the Asians like their rice. It is not uncommon for people to eat potatoes daily.

After our German meal we needed some dessert! I noticed the Mövenpick ice cream shop immediately. This ice cream brand with Swiss orgin is quite famous and unfortunately not available in the Netherlands. I normally have my ice scream in a paper cup instead of a cookie scone, but I saw that they make the scones fresh! We litteraly watched the lady make our scone! I have never seen that in ice cream shops. The papaya taste was excellent and the rasberry yoghurt ice creams was great. Not too sweet, not too sour, just perfect!

Forgot to pick up some bradwurste (German sausages). For the next time.

Loh Mai Chi a.k.a. Muah Chee - Snow ball with Peanut filling

This chewy sweet snack shaped as a snow ball can be compared with Thong Yuen. Like the Thong Yuen, the dough is mainly maid with glutinious rice flour and the filling can vary. My favorite filling is the peanut sugar mix, but sweet red bean paste and milk/egg custard are also commonly available in Chinese bakery shops.



Ingredients (makes 12 pcs)
Dough

• Glutinour Rice Flour - 200 grams
• Corn Starch - 2 tbsp
• Water - 300 ml
• Peanut oil - 2 tbsp

Filling

• Peanuts (roasted, not salted) - 100 grams
• Granulated Sugar - 35 grams (Dutch, kristalsuiker)

Dust

• Desiccated Coconut - 50 grams (Dutch, cocosrasp)
• Glutinours Rice Flour - 50 grams

Mix the glutinous rice flour, corn starch and the water untill you have a smooth batter. Add the peanut oil and mix untill the mixture is blended and smooth.

Steam the batter over high heat for 15 minutes. Meanwhile, prepare the filling by grinding the peanuts fine and mix it with granulated sugar.

After the steaming the batter should be turned into a sticky dough. Use a pair of chopsticks to stir the dough a bit. You will feel that the dough is very sticky and solid.


As the dough is very sticky, you will need some glutinous rice flour to dust the dough off. This way the dough will nog stick to your fingers, while you try to form it.

Use a tablespoon to scoop a big spoon full of dough into the flour.


Cover the dough with flour. Form the dough into a cirkle as big as your palm.


Fill with 1 table spoon of peanut mix. Close the opening kneading.
The ball is formed.

Dip the ball in water and cover with coconut.

Ready to be eaten!

Tokyo Cafe

Tokyo Cafe, on Spuiplein Amsterdam, was one of the first Japanese restaurants to introduce the all-you-can-eat formula in The Netherlands. Some call it "just stomach filling", some think the restaurant is a parody on Japanese food. Whatever you may say, the place is always fully booked.

The tables are as small as they come, 100cm x 100cm is a table for 2. This makes sense as they earn per filled seat. So the more seats, the better.

They just added some new items on the menu. Thought we should check it out! The picture below does not show the new items yet.

These are the items you can choose from. They call the Thursdays "deluxe" as you can order things like sashimi, fried oysters, which you cannot on other weekdays. Though you pay a couple of euro's more ofcours. Here a couple of dishes that we ordered.

The sashimi was not that fresh in the first "rounds". It got better as the evening went by. Funny chicken dumplings/balls (?). Guess they were desperate thinking of new dishes?

Yummy fried oysters, they were holding back on the lemons. The miniature Katsu Curry (my fav at Wagamama) was not too bad. The little green dish is the Ginger Pork, not very special. The seaweed salad tasted a bit like the dimsum jellyfish dish.

I liked the gyoza's though Kelvin is not too fond of them. The season special was mussels, not bad. Another new comer is the vegetable roll. Vegetable rolled in (nappa?) cabbage. Ooh well, we do need our greens right? So green tea ice cream for dessert :-) They actually serve the best green tea ice cream I had in Holland. Too bad they do not have red bean ice cream.

The food is not spectacular, but it makes a nice casual evening out. Hope they have a non smoking area soon. As the tables are so close to each other, it is very disturbing when the table next to you is smoking, while you are trying to eat.

The bill was €60 including tips for two.

Kue Mangkok - Steamed Coconut cup cakes

I sit in the office together with Sylvia and we share a room. A few weeks ago I asked her what her favourite snack is. So I would try and make it for her. She told me that she loved Kue Mangkok (kue=cake, mangkok=cup)when she was little and I had no idea what it was. She explained that her mom comes from Indonesia and she used to make it for her and she would be sent to the store to buy coloured soda water. They used the soda water to colour the cakes and it suppose to help the cake to rise.

I promised I would try to make it for her.. But I couldn't find a recipe that used sodawater for the cakes. The only recipes I found that used soda were in Malay language. So I made the recipe without the soda instead.

Ingredients (makes 8)

• Flour - 200 grams
• Sugar - 150 grams
• Baking Powder - 2 tsp
• Salt - 1/2 tsp
• Warm Water - 200ml
• Coconut rasp - 100grams
• Strawberry flavour/colouring - 1 tsp (optional)

1. You need sandtart cups, line them with papercups. Start to boil the water for the steampan.
2. Mix the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar together in a bowl. Add the water and the colouring and mix well.
3. Fill the cups for 2/3 and steam over high heat for 15 min. The cakes are ready when they open up like flowers.
4. Sprinkle some rasped coconut on top of the cakes.

Easy as that! Piece of cake!
You can eat them either warm or cooled!

Sylvia loved them and ate two in one go. She said it tasted just like her mom's. Isn't that the best reaction you can get?

Tip: I think that if you want to use sodawater, you should use 100ml boiled water and 110ml coloured soda.

Hardrock Café - Amsterdam

Not that long ago that we were in New York. I have to say that I had the best bacon cheese burger there! Where would you go for a good buger? You can only eat an American food in American restaurants.. We went to the Hardrock Café on the Max Eeuweplein in Amsterdam.

Kelvin ordered the "Legendary 10 oz Burger". That should be about 250 grams of meat. That is a pretty big burger. I ordered the "HRC Bacon Cheeseburger", but as you see on the pictures.. There was no bacon. They forgot. The waitress went back to get the bacon for me. So my burger was kind of cold before I assembled my BCB. I liked the fries a lot though. And you get free refills for the softdrinks (which is quite rare in the Netherlands).

The warm apple cobbler with warm caramelsauce, walnuts and the vanilla icecream! We shared it as we were pretty full already, but the dessert looked so good and it was really great. The bill came up to about 50 euro's including tips.

Vietnamese Fresh Spring Rolls

We unfortunately do not have many Vietnamese restaurants in the Netherlands, but I have been in a Viet restaurant in Hong Kong and in Chinatown NYC. As they are hard to find here, I thought I could make some fresh spring rolls myself.

And a little note. I lost my little hand camera. So I have to be creative with making pictures now. Sorry for the late update!


Ingredients (makes 12)

• Ricesheets - 12
• Glassnoodle/ Vermicelli - 150 grams
• Unshelled Prawns - 18
• Bean Sprouts (Taugé) - 150 grams
• Carrot (shredded) - 80 grams
• Cucumber - cut off to a lenght of 15 cm
• Mint, Cilantro (Coriander), Thai Basil (not in picture)

Before you start rolling up the spring rolls, there is some preparation work to it.

• Soak the vermicelli for 10 minutes in warm water and then cook it for 1 minute and drain for use.
• Clean the bean sprouts and remove the ends. I cooked the bean sprouts as I do not like to eat them raw, but I believe that the original Vietnamese recipe would use them raw.
• Cook the prawns untill pink. Cut them through the middle in lengthwise. So you will have 36 pieces of prawn.
• Clean and cut the carrots in matchstick size or buy them already prepared.
• Clean the cucumber and take out the seeds. Cut the cucumber in matchstick size.
• Mince the mint, cilantro/coriander. The basil does not need to be minced. Use the leaves only.
• Have a bowl of warm water ready, so you can soak the rice sheets in.

Take one sheet and allow it to get soft in the warm water. It sould only take 30 seconds at most.

Place some mint, cilantro/coriander and basil on the sheet. Place it a bit lower than the exact middle.

Place some vermicilli on the greens. Add the bean sprouts, carrots and cucumber.

Place 3 pieces of shrimps on the rice sheets apart from the other filling.
Fold the bottom of the rice sheet, then fold the sides carefully. Now roll it up thight.

Dip in some nuoc cham or peanut sauce (recipe coming up).

Enjoy!

Tip: You can vary the filling. Use cooked pork instead of shrimp. Or crabsticks. Add Chinese mushrooms if you like or add slices of omelet.

Sago/Tapiocapearls dessert with Taro - Wu Tao Sai Mai Lo

This dessert soup is made with coconut milk for creaminess, tapioca pearls to tickle your tong and taro to have something to munch on. If you like a crunchy bite you can add shredded water chestnut to this dessert. What else do you need?

Ingredients

• Taro - 250 grams
• Sago/Tapioca Pearls - 100 grams
• Rock Sugar - 175 grams
• Coconut Milk - 1 can (200ml)
• Water - 750ml

! Soak the sago/tapioca pearls in cold water for 6 hours. The pearls should be totally covered in water. Drain the pearls after soaking. The picture shows the pearls after 6 hours.

Peel the taro and dice them. Then steam them over hight heat for 20 minutes.

Bring the 750ml water to boil and dissolve the sugar. Add the sago and taro and stir until it boils again. Remove from heat and add the cocunut milk. Stir it well and serve.

I don't like it too hot, so I let it cool down a bit.

Hope you like this dessert!

Picture Impression

I'll let the pictures do the talking..

New York

I will be in New York the coming week for my holidays!
Ofcourse I will make pictures of the food there!

Ooh and the recipes I promised.. Coconut tart and Sago dessert soup (Stacey) I'll make them and blog it when I'm back. Didn't get a chance to buy taro yet :).

See you next week!