Quay Po Cooks: Chinese wolfberries

Showing posts with label Chinese wolfberries. Show all posts

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Stir fry abalone mushroom with ginkgo nuts and wolfberries - featured in Group Recipes

When my mum cooks this dish, I cannot help but eat 2 bowls of rice. I love the combination of flavors and ingredients. Abalone mushroom has little flavor or aroma when they are not cooked. However, when they are cooked with ginkgo nuts and wolfberries, they develop an ‘umami’ of flavors no one can resisit. I love abalone and this mushroom has a texture similar to it. Definitely this is more affordable than abalone and I don't need to think twice or count my pennies when I crave for it.

Ingredients:

350gm abalone mushrooms

100 gm ginkgo nuts (remove shell and skin)

20 gm wolfberries

1 tb vegetable oil

2 tb oysters sauce

2 tb Chinese wine (hua tiao)

1 ts sugar

1 cube bullion chicken stock

½ cup water

½ ts ground white pepper

Method:

Dissolve a cube of bullion chicken stock in ½ cup warm water and set aside. Wash wolfberries and set aside. Soak gingko nuts for 1 hour. Cooks gingko nuts in boiling water till it is soft, drain and set aside. Blanch ablaone mushroom briefly, drain and set aside. Heat oil in wok, saute gingko nuts, add oysters sauce, sugar, chicken stock, and abalone mushrooms. Simmer for 1 min and add wolfberries and simmer for another min. Add Chinese wine and simmer for 30 secs and transfer all to a serving plate.

Friday, September 3, 2010

Kow Kei and egg soup

Mum make this soup very often for us believing it will improve eye sight. I do not know if there is any scientific truth to it but then I don't really care because it is our all time favorite soup and it is so simple to make. I like the taste of this soup and this is one of the few clear soup that pleases my Quaylo hubby's pallete. You know Westerners prefer creamy soup or soup with lots of "chunkies" inside.

Kow Kei Soup (lycium barbarum or Chinese

Wolfberries plant )

Ingredients

300 gms Kow Kei (leaf only)

1 or 2 bib garlic chopped

½ cup of Kei Ji (Chinese Wolfberries)

1 egg lightly beaten

1 tbsp vegetable oil

Chicken stock

A drop of sesame oil

In a wok, add vegetable oil. Add chopped garlic and fry till fragrant. Add Kow Kei and mix well with the oil. Add chicken stock and Chinese Wolfberries. Bring to a boil over a low heat. When the stocks starts to boil and the Kow Kei is limp, turn off the heat before streaming in the egg. Add a drop of sesame oil.

Another variation of making this soup is to add, 1 salted egg and 1 century eggs. You can even add fried anchovies if you do not mind a little fishy taste.

If you like "Pan Mien" you should try putting Kow Kei instead of other green vegetables in the soup. OOOO it is soooo GOOOOOD!!!

A LITTLE ABOUT THIS QUAY PO

Before I was married to my "Quay Lo" (Guaylo) husband, I did not know how to bake or cook. Subsequently I learned some baking and cooking Western cuisine from him, and providing his food for him launched an interest in cooking in general. Many of my Chinese friends and family told me that "Quay" is the wrong spelling for devil in Cantonese. The right spelling should be "Kwai" or "Guay". Well, somehow I like the spelling "Quay" better although I have to agree that it does not sound very Cantonese. Try asking a Westerner to pronounce "Kwai" and you will probably hear "Quay" haha. Whether is "Quay" or "Kwai" or "Guay, just know the devil woman is me when you see Quay Po Cooks. My hubby said if people pronounce "Quay" as "Key" is even better because I am the key to his heart. LOL!

Only now, have I started to learn the traditional Cantonese cuisine of my Mum. She cooks fabulously and all her specialties are divine. These two interests, my husband's Western food, and my mother's traditional food, prompted me to document them so they will not be lost.

Here, I wish to share my cooking and baking experience with my readers. I also hope to inspire those who do not know how to cook or bake to do so because, trust me, if I can, you can too.

Something I'd like to mention is that I find that many people are rather unwilling to share their recipes. However, for me, I think differently. I think good recipes should be shared thus allowing as many people to enjoy it as possible. Unless those recipes are for doing business, I don't see why we want to keep them all to ourselves. So if you are generous in sharing your recipes, you are welcome to share on my blog. Send the recipes to me and better still with pictures of the final products and I will be very happy to post them them with credits to you of course.

Our cuisine is a deeply embedded part of our culture. When two cultures come together under the same roof the results in the kitchen can sometimes be comedic, sometimes confrontational, but more often it is a journey full of surprises and discovery. There is joy in our food. If we think upon this, it is intuitively obvious. This blog is a journey of joy and sharing, reflecting what the French like to call "joie de vivre" (joy of living). No one could be more different from one another then my husband and my mother. Yet one thing they share in common is knowing intuitively that food, cooking, and sharing can be avenues of joy in life itself. So herein, help yourself, to a little joy and , if you like it, share it with your own family and friends. Joy is something that should be shared.