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.