Quay Po Cooks: count blessings

Showing posts with label count blessings. Show all posts

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Less is More

There were two special cod dishes I made in November 2010. One was Grilled cod with orange sauce created by me. It was a dish that I was very proud of, because it was featured in Group Recipes, Petite Chef and made it to the Top 9 at Foodbuzz.

Another is Crispy Code Fish with Mango and Sweet Chilli sauce also being featured at Group Recipes and selected for the Top 9 at Foodbuzz. The recipe was adapted from Chef Sam Leong's cookbook.

I suspect that some of my new blogger friends and readers have missed these two posts. These two dishes are an easy way to impress your guests this Chinese New Year because they are visually stunning and taste luscious. I also like the idea of offering a little more healthy and delicious seafood during a time when we tend to overeat red meat, roasted fowl and other more rich and fatty proteins during Christmas. Get ready for lots of compliments, oohs and aahs when serving, to the last delicious bite.

For a long time, I have used the photo of the Grilled Cod with orange sauce photo to be Quay Po Cooks’ blog header and I have received lots of compliments, some said the dish looked like a piece of artwork. I will gladly accept the compliment. Come to think of it, this is a perfect dish for Chinese New Year which is just around the corner. The ingredients used were Bean sprouts shoots, (豆芽; dòu yá, literally "bean sprout/germ" 芽菜; yá cài, literally "sprout vegetable" or 银芽; yín yá, literally "silver sprouts") - 'to your heart's content', positive start into the new year, Orange (柑橘; gānjú) - wealth, good fortune, gold and Fish, the word 魚 (yú), meaning "fish", has the same pronunciation as the word 餘, which is "remain or surplus", i.e.'having surplus money' in a more modern connotation but generally; an increase in prosperity. Have I convinced you to try either of the cod dishes for Chinese New Year reunion dinner? If yes, please click on the photos to get the recipes.

Yesterday, I made another dish with cod but this time an extremely easy-to-do dish, and not quite as fancy. The recipe calls for only a few ingredients but with a little careful attention, you can create a very impressive and tasty dish. The caramelization makes the cod looks gorgeous. It is a slightly braised cod in superior light soya sauce with honey. So simple to do right? Simple is the BEST and SOMETIMES LESS IS MORE. This phrase reminded me of someone extraordinary.

Nick Vujicic has so much less but see how his less is more? As the holiday season starts and the end of the lunar year approaches, it’s a good time to take stock of what we have and count our blessings. When I count my blessings, I count my family, my relatives and friends, my readers, my blogger friends and my pets, TWICE!

Braised Cod in superior light soy sauce
Adapted from Chef Sam Leong’s recipe

Ingredients:
200gm Cod fish fillet

Marinade:
    8 tsp Light soy sauce
    8 tsp water
    4 tsp dark soy sauce
   2 tsp sugar
    2 tsp Maggie seasoning

Egg White Garnish:
    1 tsp cooking oil
    40 ml. chicken stock
   ¼ tsp salt
    a dash of ground white pepper
   1 tsp corn starch mixed with 2 tsp water
    1 egg white

Method:
Combine marinade ingredients. Place cod into the marinade for 30 mins before transferring to baking tray. Bake cod in an preheated oven at 150C or 300F for 10 mins. Reduce to 100C or 200F and bake for another 8 mins. To prepare the egg garnish, heat oil in pan and add chicken stock, salt, ground white pepper and then thicken with corn starch mixture. Pour in egg white and stir until cooked. Serve cod with the egg white garnish.

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.