Juyee's Baked Chicken Wing Crumbs 如意的烤雞翅

Many people have asked for my baked chicken wings' recipe.  However, it was difficult to tell people how to do something when I did it by eye.  There were no measurements, just all by eye. 

如意的烤雞翅

Then a brother from my community asked me during Christina's birthday party in 2012, and it took me months to make the wings again and measure what I have used.  Thanks to Nick Sim I am able to post this recipe.

I am marinating around 2 kg of wings today for my neighbour because Mohit has got straight A grades for his A levels and he is going to UCL to read Chemical Engineering and we are celebrating his success.  His mother bought the wings yesterday and I got up at 3 am to prepare the wings for tonight's party. 

You can just print this post out, go to China Town to one of the shops there and ask them to help you to pick up all the ingredients as a number of the sauces are written out in Chinese.  The Romanised letters are HanYu PinYin because I do not know Cantonese.

However, I just want to say something.  You know chicken wings is written as ji1 chi4 雞翅 in Mandarin but in Teochew it is written as goi1 sig8 雞翼 and do notice we use different characters for wings.  Our Cantonese cousins also use the same characters as Teochew people for chicken wings.  哈哈

If you do not have an oven, then just deep fry the chicken wings after coating the marinated chicken wings in flour.

Ingredients

1. 2 kg chicken wings - tips remove and cut each wing in half
2. 20 grams ginger paste
3. 20 grams garlic paste
4. 100 grams oyster sauce 李錦記財神蠔油 - Why? because there is no msg in the sauce and the sauce is not too salty 
5. 2 tbsp soya sauce 金蘭醬油 - Why? because the sauce is not salty and has no msg
6. 1 tbsp Teochew chilli oil 潮洲辣椒油 - because I am a Teochew and this chilli oil does give a special taste to the chicken wings
7. 130 grams cha1shao1 jiang4 李錦記叉燒醬 - chashao sauce [BBQ sauce] Why? because it gives it a wonderful finish and also a very unique taste
8. 28 grams [2 tbsp] honey - if you have no honey, then use golden syrup or just 28 grams of sugar - but honey does taste very good indeed - any brand
9. 2 tsp sugar - if you are a diabetic, then skip this 

I make my own garlic ginger paste

NO salt, no pepper, no sesame oil, no black pepper, no white pepper

enough flour for coating - any flour - rice or wheat flour 

I use Li JinJi's 李錦記 sauces because I trust that brand, except for soya sauce for I find Li JinJi's soya sauces rather salty.  And that is why I use JinLan's 金蘭 soya sauce.

Marinate for at least 6 hours in the fridge 

Marinate the above for at least six hours, overnight would be better.  Coat the chicken wings in flour [rice flour or wheat flour - makes no difference] and bake the chicken wings at 200 C fan assisted oven for 20 minutes. 

Spread the wings out and bake 1 kg of wings each time

Bake the wings in the middle of the oven, turning the chicken wings during the baking process.  Do only bake one tray [which is one kilogram of wings] at any one time or else the steam generated by two trays of chicken wings will not allow the wings to become crispy.  Serve hot while the wings are crispy.  

The second batch of baked chicken wings 

Do give it a go and let me know what you think of your cooking experience.  Thanks for viewing this posting.  

Dayu 大玉 [Dayo] came for lunch today 17 August

Dayu 大玉 is a doctor, a specialist in O&G and is a wonderful Jiejie 姐姐 for me.

Dayu 大玉 reading Tan Twan Eng's book The Garden of Evening Mists

We had fried Cai Tao Guê 菜頭餜 first with Teochew chilli oil 潮洲辣椒油  and diam zio 甜醬.  

Fried Cai Tao Guê 煎菜頭餜

We then had DioSua Hung Guê 潮汕粉餜.

DioSua Hung Guê 潮汕粉餜

And Japanese tea in English tea cups. ^_~

We then did Chinese calligraphy together until it was time to go to Sunday Holy Mass at 6 pm.

Ian came for dinner 16 August 2013

My long time friend Ian, a friend of over 20 years, came for a visit last evening.  Ian is now living in Kent and working as a Headmaster.

It is lovely when an old friend comes for dinner.

  
I have cooked many different dishes for him over the years.  When we first met, I was such a banana - could not read Chinese, could not write Chinese.  If God wanted me to be "white" He would have made me one!  I am pleased I am discovering my roots.

I told Ian I found the recipes of two of the dishes from the Chaoshan 潮汕 websites and thanks be to God, we have those websites.  Now - that was nearly 10 years ago and I could not remember the websites, even if you were to kill me.  

So we had Cai Tao Guê 菜頭餜 and this has already been posted in another blog about Chaoshan food called cooking with little Charlemagne. It is customary to fry slices of Cai Tao Guê 菜頭餜 and we ate it with diam zio 甜醬.  

It was my Teochew friend, Brenda from Singapore, we told me all about diam zio 甜醬.  She is not a banana like me and therefore could cascade some of our culture to me.  We cannot go out to the shops and get a bottle of diam zio 甜醬 in London and again I found a diam zio recipe from a website many years ago - and again, I cannot remember where.  It is very easy to make.  Just mix some plum sauce with light soya sauce and I added some Teochew chilli oil 潮洲辣椒油 to the sauce - that is because I like my food to have a little kick!  

Cai Tao Guê 菜頭餜

We also had Teochew Hung Guê 潮洲粉餜.

In the restaurants in London, it is called Chiuchow funguo 潮洲粉果

They use the wrong character for guo 果 and the character they use is for fruits. Some people use this guo 粿 character. What is interesting is that I cannot find this character 粿 in my large Chinese English dictionary 遠東漢英大辭典.

Teochew Hung Guê 潮洲粉餜

After the Hung Guê 粉餜, we had zabcai 什菜.  

zabcai 什菜

I just bought the vegetables in a supermarket.  I try to avoid getting vegetables or ingredients in Chinese shops for I think they have over priced Chinese goods and it is really a rip off.  

Then dessert and Japanese green tea.

綠豆凍 and cake

And we had Japanese tea in English tea cups.  Why not?  I gave away all my Japanese tea cups - part of my restructuring / reorganising for living a simple life.  The Japanese tea smelled like the matcha, which Brenda, my friend, sent to me.  This Japanese tea was given to me by my lovely AhMue 阿妹, whose husband had lots of business dealings with Japan and her family does not drink tea and I therefore benefited from this and got the lovely tea.  I nearly threw out the tea as part of my restructuring and thank goodness Christina, my other Chinese friend persuaded me not to and said Japanese tea tastes good too.

A final point. I have to remember Ian does not eat tomatoes as these do not agree with him.  Must remember that - I nearly added tomatoes to the zabcai 什菜 and if I did, it would be really zaogao 糟糕 !!

Can you spot the tomatoes? ^_~

China Town 15 August 2013 唐人街

China Town is said as Tang Ren Jie 唐人街, and I visited London China Town to have dinner with Christina and Fr Jose, yesterday 15 August 2013.

Tang Ren 唐人 means Tang people - Tang as in Tang dynasty.  Teochew people are descendants of the Tang Dynasty - like the Cantonese and Hokkien people.  So we call China Town Tang Ren Jie - Tang people's street. 

I visited two grocery shops first to buy stock items so I can continue my Chinese season.  However, I also wanted to go to my favourite cake shop - MingPin 名品 and have a look at their cakes and also to see if I can buy my birthday cake.  

My birthday will be on 19 September this year - on ZhongQiu Jie 中秋節 - Mid-autumn Festival - that is what ZhongQiu Jie means.  I was looking for wuren yue bing - not 無人月餅 - but 伍仁月餅. I came home and search my dictionaries for wuren and found none and I noticed some websites write it as 五仁月餅. 

From what I can see, people call mixed nuts as wuren written as either 五仁 or 伍仁.  Interesting and this word in not in any of my Chinese dictionaries.

So while in MingPin, I saw a number of very cute little cakes.  

Do you like the cat cake?  Lovely - perhaps little Charlemagne would like that cake too.

I also went to view some gongfu chaju 工夫茶具.  They have very cute tea sets nowadays in China Town.  I did not buy any, perhaps for my birthday next month. 

While at the shops, I really saw some hongmaodan 紅毛丹 and I have discussed this in my ChaoShan language blog.

Fr Jose and Christina invited a few of us to eat at WenXing 文興. WenXing in English is Four Seasons - famous for their roast duck. 

The food was not very good.  Their ChaShao 叉燒 was really dry and as if they have killed an old pig to feed us.  Their XO French beans was totally over cooked and the French beans shrivelled up.  As for their Gongbao prawns 宮保蝦 was like sweet and sour gone wrong.

However, thanks to Fr Eddie Wu, we got our soup free, a 10 percent discount and free tea which was worth around 25 pounds.

The three lads drink Tiger beer and that added up to 21 pounds and the total bill came to around 84 pounds for five people and Christina gave a 15 pounds tip for rubbish food.  I would not give a single cent.  LOL

I suppose when you are famous, you can give rubbish and get away with it.  I do not think I would be visiting 23 Wardour Street W1 for a very long time.  Bayswater Four Seasons is much much better - their original restaurant.

So what did we eat?

We also ate their niurou chaomian 牛肉炒麵 - beef fried noodles which was really zaogao 糟糕.  I would not feed my enemy with this niurou chaomian. 

So, the hosts were Christina and Fr Jose

Two seminarians - David and Carlos were also invited for dinner.

So, can we not eat at Four Seasons Wardour Street again, please? 

炸醬麵做法

ZhaJiangMian Recipe 炸醬麵做法

Ingredients 配料

1 kg of very lean pork like loin of pork - cut into small pieces - lijirou 里肌肉

Traditionally, Chinese people use very fatty meat like belly of pork 五花肉

However, I prefer to use lijirou 里肌肉 because it is tender, if you know how to cook this meat, it has a melt in your mouth texture

1 kg of meat will feed about 6 - 8 people

1 large red onion - diced 
1 Echalion shallot - diced
4 - 6 garlic - minced or finely chopped - depending on taste
2 inches of ginger - diced
1 leek - julienne
2 stalks of celery - julienne
3 medium size carrots - julienne
3 ripe tomatoes - segment

Sauces

tian mian jiang 甜麵醬

half a bottle of tian mian jiang 甜麵醬 - see bottle above

Huang Dou Jiang 黃豆醬

1 whole tub of Huang Dou Jiang 黃豆醬

Alternatively, you can use doubanjiang 豆瓣醬 - but I find this bean sauce very salty and I prefer using Huang Dou Jiang like people from BeiJing. 

If you want it chilli hot, then add two tablespoons of chilli bean sauce as well like the la-doubanjiang 辣豆瓣醬 above.

See picture above 

4 - 5 tablespoons of tomato sauce - 番茄醬 fanqie jiang - I learnt this from watching cooking shows from Beijing and I never used to add tomato sauce until I saw the cooking show and I never looked back.  

2 - 3 tablespoons of Chinese black vinegar

2 tbsp of sugar - when Italians make the pasta sauce with tomatoes, their secret ingredient is sugar.  Similar with zhajiangmian sauce, you too need this secret ingredient

stock cubes - I added two stock cubes

half a bottle of lager or cider 

No salt, no pepper if you adding the la doubanjiang.

sesame oil - as much or as little as you want - which is added at the end 

garnish - cucumber julienne

of course cooking oil

Noodles of course - I use YangChun Mian 陽春麵 but you can use any noodles you fancy - like lamian 拉麵 that is if you know how to pull noodles. The amount of noodles you require depends on your appetite.  I think two rounds of YangChun Mian per lady and for man, I would give them three rounds each.  The packet in the picture has 8 rounds of noodles.   

WoW! I got through all the ingredients

Method

sauté the ginger, then add onion and shallots and continue to sauté until the onions are soft

Then add the carrot, celery, leek and garlic and continue to saute

When the above vegetables have softened, then add the tomatoes and continue to sauté

When the tomatoes have melted, add the sauces and cider or lager

Add the stock cubes and sugar and give it a good stir

This sauce suppose to be salty! 

When the sauce is ready, then add lean pieces of pork loins and turn the heat down to gentle simmer.  Cook the pork for a short while, cover, switch off the heat and leave it until you are ready to eat.  Add a few dashes of sesame oil before you cover your pot.

Cook the noodles as per the instructions in the packet.

On each bowl, add some noodles

Then ladle some zhajiangmian sauce + meat on top of the noodles

Then add some garnish - in the North of China they add julienne of cucumber.  You can add shredded lettuce too!

I really do not mean to blind you with Chinese.  However, I have been thinking about these blessed bean sauces.  In English, there are all bean sauces.  However, for Chinese people we have lots and lots of different types of bean sauces.  Whatever you do, do not buy Southern Chinese sauces to make zha jiang mian.  This is a northern Chinese dish and we need sauces from the north.  The guest today said could she use yellow bean sauce.  Well - if you buy Southern Chinese yellow bean sauce like those from Amoy - they it will be really zaogao 糟糕! 

You can google and find out what zaogao 糟糕 mean! ^_~

This is a really delicious noodle dish and now all my friends who have eaten this dish in my home can go away and cook this dish.  

I have watched lots of Chinese cooking shows, read lots of Chinese recipes and reviews to come out with my own version.  I mainly copied Beijing recipes because I think they cook very delicious zhajiang mian.  

Enjoy!  Bon appetit!

Fr Jose and Christina came for lunch today

We had xianbing first.  However, it is Ruyi Xianbing 如意餡餅  because I have changed the xianbing's shape. Ruyi Xianbing allows for all the wrapper becomes lovely and crispy - no hidden bits of wrapper inside the xianbing - which is like uncooked dough. 

如意餡餅

We then had zhajiang fan 炸醬飯 and Koreans call this Jjajang bab.  I found I only took a picture of a partially cooked sauce with the pork on top of the prepared sauce.  I wanted to serve this Italian / Spanish rice with the sauce instead of the normal noodles.  The rice is really delicious and I love it very much - the grains are short and fat!  

I plan to write up a recipe for this zhajiang mian sauce so you can try it out yourself, in a future posting.  I need to think about the bean sauces.  We Chinese use lots of different types of bean sauces and they all have different Chinese names.  However, in English, we call all of them bean sauce.  So you will just have to get ready to learn HanYu PinYin to name these sauces in Mandarin.  I cannot just say this bean sauce and that bean sauce.  LOL

We then had a chocolate marble cake after the meal.  Apparently, I found out that this was originally a German cake.  Fr Jose loves chocolate and I add a lot more than usual.  This is an adapted mum's recipe.  Fr Jose asked me which cake do I like the best and after thinking about it - it must be my mum's marble cake! 

Chocolate Marble Cake

Then gongfu cha 工夫茶 . 

工夫茶

And finally pictures of my guests - Fr Jose and Christina

Christina's second birthday cake

We are celebrating Christina's birthday again today at lunch time in a restaurant.  These are pictures of a chocolate cake which I have made for our lunch time party.  It is a gluten free, eggless cake and the recipe can be found in my gluten free blog.

The birthday girl - Christina 

Happy Birthday Christina

Today is my friend's birthday - Happy Birthday Christina

Here is your birthday cake - Matcha Mousse Cake

生日快樂

萬事如意

Xianbing 餡餅

Li MeiXian 李梅仙 is very good at explaining how to make xianbing 餡餅.  You can watch these videos and you too can make xianbing.

Li MeiXian is making a vegetarian xianbing.  The principle remains the same.  There are many types of xianbing and I made a baicai rou xianbing 白菜肉餡餅 which you have seen in the previous posting. 

1. http://youtu.be/W10LyTr7TjE
2. http://youtu.be/O5ymA-BB684
3. http://youtu.be/6j0l_D0LZNw

If you do not understand Mandarin [She speaks in Fujian MinNan Hua 福建閩南話 as well], then find a Chinese friend and get the person to translate the videos for you.  You can also search for Li MeiXian's videos and you will enjoy her teaching you how to cook Chinese food.  She is really excellent.  

Fr José Hernández Castellón's 40th birthday

It was Fr José's 40th birthday yesterday and we had lunch together.  Here are some of the food pictures.

We had xianbing 餡餅 first.  However, xianbing 餡餅 is always round.  So technically, I cannot call this xianbing 餡餅 and I therefore am going to call this Ruyi Xianbing 如意餡餅.  

Ruyi Xianbing 如意餡餅

To the left of the Ruyi Xianbing 如意餡餅 you see the filling and the wrapper is made from the Polish flour you see in the back of the picture.  

I used to make xianbing 餡餅 the size of a scone - round in shape.  However, Fr Dominic from Xian 西安 told me that xianbing 餡餅 ought to be big.  I like it big because one can put more filling and eat less wrapper.  However, the problem with round xianbing 餡餅 is that the excess wrapper is hidden in the middle of the bing 餅 and it is very difficult to get that part of the wrapper to be cooked before it starts sizzling.  So, I came out with this shape like kali

sujiao 咖哩酥餃 to solve this problem.  Now, all the wrapper is cooked when I serve this xianbing 餡餅.

It is a standard xianbing 餡餅 recipe and you can google the recipe.  However, if you want the recipe, you have to ask me nicely.

We then had Ruyi shicai 如意什菜 Ruyi's mixed vegetables. 

Ruyi shicai 如意什菜

I used vegetables in season to give a very colourful dish.  My mum often added cashews in her shicai 什菜 on special occasions and I followed her this time. 

I prepare the ingredients first and waited until the guests arrived.  I used lijirou 里肌肉 - loin of pork to make this dish.  Many people use jiding 雞丁 - chicken cubes to make this dish. I use lijirou 里肌肉 because I have learnt how to make melt in your mouth lijirou 里肌肉 from a Taiwan cooking show I saw years ago.  

The ingredients for shicai 什菜

The cashews and meat are cooked first and all set aside.

So what did I add to this shicai 什菜.  From the above picture - from right to left - bottom to top - one onion sliced, sliced red chilli [half], 3 cloves of garlic sliced, fried cashews [about 100 grams], 1 red bell pepper sliced, 200 grams French beans, 3 stalks of celery sliced, 3 carrots sliced and lijirousi 里肌肉絲 julienne of pork loin 500 grams.  I just stir fry these together in very high heat. 

We ate this shicai 什菜 with rice.

Fr José 40th birthday

And this is Fr José who is from Valencia, Spain and now the birthday cake.

The recipe of the chocolate cake is found in my other blog except I replaced the rice flour with cake flour.  

We had a wonderful birthday lunch and it is a blessing that Fr José is willing to celebrate his birthday with Michele Matthews, Dr Marie Wilson and myself.  

May God bless Fr José and give him many more 40 years.