BAH KWA woohoo!
the past few days have been very cook-y.
on monday. the husband and i decided to celebrate CNY by ourselves instead of sunday night which was when everyone else of course had reunion dinner. i must admit it was a very small deal here, CNY i mean, and we unite all the time, him and i, and having no telly we didn't know the chinese gardens had some kind of celebration which we missed, so only inspired by talking to my mum who told me all about all the lovely food my parents were having despite being only the two of them, i/we decided not to be so lazy and be more festive. after all, it's as important as christmas and new year!
(that is such a long convoluted sentence and i don't care!!! i feel very english no power at the moment, so...)
since we always have lovely meals together we thought for CNY we wouldn't do the typical huge spread, (plus we spoiled our appetites just before dinner time by having snacks from the bakery) and instead decided we'd make bah kwa (indispensable and unavailable here), mock shark's fin soup (real shark's fin? are you crazy? animal activist alert!) and ondeh-ondeh (not very CNY but inspired by a kueh-making friend we met up with recently).
there were some mishaps and suffice to say the soup was unauthentic, but yummy, while the bah kwa lacked the charcoal BBQ touch. we had looked for charcoal earlier but there wasn't any to be bought. Humbug! Ondeh ondeh didn't materialise because the glutinous rice flour was sold out. oh well.
here is a picture of the bah kwa, version 3 (in all i made about 5 sheets of bah kwa, all turned out different. i'm going to practice until i figure out how best to do it. can't blindly follow recipes, you know!) i don't think it's very unhealthy at all, not the way it's made at home anyway. there's little if any oil (guess you only need that for BBQing) and only as much sugar as a typical cake or batch of cookies, so no trouble at all!
From LJ pics
last night we had pie for dinner. lik had made the filling ages ago and boiled and simmered and stewed it to perfection while i was responsible for defrosting the pastry, putting the pie together and baking it ha! had it with a local hot sauce (from Kaitaia, northern most bit of NZ lucky people can grow chillies) and it was lovely!
anyway more updates on the garden and knitting front later! i'm off to annihilate my to-do list before we leave friday morning!
on monday. the husband and i decided to celebrate CNY by ourselves instead of sunday night which was when everyone else of course had reunion dinner. i must admit it was a very small deal here, CNY i mean, and we unite all the time, him and i, and having no telly we didn't know the chinese gardens had some kind of celebration which we missed, so only inspired by talking to my mum who told me all about all the lovely food my parents were having despite being only the two of them, i/we decided not to be so lazy and be more festive. after all, it's as important as christmas and new year!
(that is such a long convoluted sentence and i don't care!!! i feel very english no power at the moment, so...)
since we always have lovely meals together we thought for CNY we wouldn't do the typical huge spread, (plus we spoiled our appetites just before dinner time by having snacks from the bakery) and instead decided we'd make bah kwa (indispensable and unavailable here), mock shark's fin soup (real shark's fin? are you crazy? animal activist alert!) and ondeh-ondeh (not very CNY but inspired by a kueh-making friend we met up with recently).
there were some mishaps and suffice to say the soup was unauthentic, but yummy, while the bah kwa lacked the charcoal BBQ touch. we had looked for charcoal earlier but there wasn't any to be bought. Humbug! Ondeh ondeh didn't materialise because the glutinous rice flour was sold out. oh well.
here is a picture of the bah kwa, version 3 (in all i made about 5 sheets of bah kwa, all turned out different. i'm going to practice until i figure out how best to do it. can't blindly follow recipes, you know!) i don't think it's very unhealthy at all, not the way it's made at home anyway. there's little if any oil (guess you only need that for BBQing) and only as much sugar as a typical cake or batch of cookies, so no trouble at all!
From LJ pics
last night we had pie for dinner. lik had made the filling ages ago and boiled and simmered and stewed it to perfection while i was responsible for defrosting the pastry, putting the pie together and baking it ha! had it with a local hot sauce (from Kaitaia, northern most bit of NZ lucky people can grow chillies) and it was lovely!
anyway more updates on the garden and knitting front later! i'm off to annihilate my to-do list before we leave friday morning!