Tag: recipe

Shredded_Potato_strips_Stir_fry_with_vinegar
Recipes

Shredded Potato in White Vinegar (Cu Liu Tu Dou Si)

Potato is such a versatile ingredient – boil it, bake it, mash it, make chips with it… or shred it for this stir fry recipe. This simple recipe tastes just as good once the potatoes have gone cold, so it’s a refreshing one to try (despite the spice) now that the weather’s hotter. What gives this its refreshing nature is the vinegar. Usually in Chinese cooking, when you mention vinegar, you’d automatically think of black vinegar from Zhenjiang. However, here you should go for white wine vinegar instead. Continue reading “Shredded Potato in White Vinegar (Cu Liu Tu Dou Si)”

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Recipes

Tofu and Sweetcorn Soup – a Chinese Recipe

When you’re not feeling 100% or just want a light soup to start your summer meal, this tofu and sweetcorn soup is perfect – it’s so simple to make, and still nutritious. You can also stir in an egg (just beat it and stir it in right at the end, pouring while stirring so that it forms strings in the soup). There are only two main ingredients: sweetcorn and tofu. I prefer soft tofu for this, just because the texture goes down a lot easier, but firm tofu does make the soup look nicer, because you’ll get more even cubes! Continue reading “Tofu and Sweetcorn Soup – a Chinese Recipe”

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Strawberry_Prawns_Sweet_Pea_Stir_Fry_Savoury_Recipe
Recipes

Prawns, Sweet Peas and Strawberries Stir-Fry

There are plenty of delicious sweet recipes with strawberries,  but savoury recipes with strawberries are harder to find, usually in the form of strawberry salads. That’s partly because while other fruits such as apple and pineapple have made the crossover, strawberry changes taste so quickly when cooked. Just 15 seconds in the pan increases how sour it tastes by one fold, it seems! Continue reading “Prawns, Sweet Peas and Strawberries Stir-Fry”

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Recipes

Roasted Peppers in Olive Oil

The temperatures are as hot in London as in Singapore and it is that time of the year everywhere when fresh veggie recipes come to mind. Also, peppers are in season, which means they are sweet and tasty, what better time to use them than for a simple summer lunch?  In Italy we do conserves where we put roasted peppers in jars and fill them with oil so they can be used during the rest of the year. Continue reading “Roasted Peppers in Olive Oil”

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Fen_Zheng_Rou_Steamed_Broken_Rice_Couscous_with_Meat
Recipes

Chinese Steamed Pork with Couscous (Fen Zheng Rou)

This steamed pork with couscous recipe is both traditional and modern – in that it uses couscous instead of broken rice, but the taste is so similar to what you’d traditionally eat that it’s very difficult to distinguish between the two. Traditionally the broken rice is made from chopping rice (or whizzing it quickly in a blender) before it’s cooked, so that each bit of the broken rice is roughly the size of a grain of couscous. We chose to use couscous for this because it’s already the right size, and a bit healthier than white rice – or for an even healthier alternative, use wholegrain couscous! Continue reading “Chinese Steamed Pork with Couscous (Fen Zheng Rou)”

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Recipes

Chinese Corn and Pine Nuts Stir-Fry (Song Ren Yu Mi)

With spring in the air, we’re here to share another light and easy Chinese veggie recipe this week. Pine nuts are not only subtly fragrant but extremely nutritious, and make up the main ingredient of this week’s recipe, along with corn.

I’ve always got some frozen corn in the freezer as it’s so versatile and easy to store (not to mention tasty!), so this recipe is often a go-to if the fridge and food cupboards are looking a bit bare.

Continue reading “Chinese Corn and Pine Nuts Stir-Fry (Song Ren Yu Mi)”

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Recipes

Dry fried green beans with chilli (gan bian sijidou) – a simple veggie recipe

Now that spring has arrived, it’s time for lighter food, but still with a touch of warming spice. That’s why we’re sharing this vegetarian dry fried green bean with chillies recipe today. It’s a very quick and simple recipe, and you need very few ingredients to cook it – mainly just the green beans and chillies! Although you will need to fry the green beans twice, you will only need one wok, as the oil is recycled.

Continue reading “Dry fried green beans with chilli (gan bian sijidou) – a simple veggie recipe”

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Baking

Pancake Day Recipe: Zeppole Sarde (Zippuas)

Shrove Tuesday, also known as Pancake Day, is traditionally the day before the beginning of Lent. During this Catholic holiday lasting forty days, followers of Lent should avoid eating meat and other fatty or sweet foods, which is why Shrove Tuesday is the day they feast and treat themselves to a special meal. You might have guessed that we do not eat pancakes on this special occasion in Italy, as each region makes their own traditional cakes. In Sardinia we have zeppole, in dialect Zippuas, very tasty fritters that look like doughnuts and taste of saffron and orange. Continue reading “Pancake Day Recipe: Zeppole Sarde (Zippuas)”

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Recipes

Tiramisu – a classic Italian dessert

Valentine’s Day is approaching and this year we propose a simple but iconic Italian dessert: Tiramisu. We don’t know for sure where this dessert was originally created, but we know that it’s an all-time favourite throughout the Italian peninsula and all Italian restaurants abroad have their own version too. Just like any classic recipe, Tiramisu would be a perfect reason for an animated Italian argument about who has the best recipe amongst friends or family. Continue reading “Tiramisu – a classic Italian dessert”

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Recipes

Tiger Prawns with Sweetcorn & Chilli – a recipe from Ching He Huang

It’s going to be the Year of the Rooster in 2 more days,and as food is the main way to celebrate Chinese New Year, we tried out the Emmy-nominated TV chef Ching He Huang‘s tiger prawns, sweetcorn and chilli recipe. It’s a classic stirfry dish – very quick to prepare and cook – and really adds colour to the dinner table! In Ching’s words, “Prawns symbolise happiness as they are homonym for ‘laughter’ and their reddish colour is synonymous with ‘luck’. The yellow colour of the corn resembles small nuggets of gold symbolizing ‘wealth’.”

The prep time is only 5 minutes, as is the cooking time. It’s Ching’s ethos to use fresh ingredients, but all the fresh tiger prawns were sold out (probably in the scramble to buy prawns for Chinese New Year), and we had some leftover frozen sweetcorn left, so we’re cooking these from frozen, using 100g in total. You’d ideally need to defrost these before use, but when stirfrying, the ingredients such as sweetcorn can be added to the wok frozen – just add an extra minute to the cooking time. Continue reading “Tiger Prawns with Sweetcorn & Chilli – a recipe from Ching He Huang”

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