Quay Po Cooks: brinjal

Showing posts with label brinjal. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

After Christmas

After such a big feast at Christmas, I don’t want anymore rich Quay Lo food. Please give me something simple. Steam white rice with any simple dish will do. I feel the same every year. After Christmas, I crave for food like steam pork with salted fish (click on the picture to get the recipe) ....

... or stir fry brinjal with taucu sounded so good. A thought came to my mind. Hey, this is the best time to try out the special rice from East Malaysia called the Bario rice. The rice were given to me by my blogger friend Arthur of Still Crazy after all these years. Thanks again Arthur for the thoughtful Christmas gifts. I have yet to use the wine to make a nice dish and brag about it.

The Bario rice tasted different from the fragrant rice from Thailand that we are used to. They got a unique taste but I can't find the word to describe it to you (my vocabulary is limited, I get 2/10 for my English test most of the time). If I am not mistaken, it has attributes of organic rice too. Please correct me if I am wrong. If so, people who are health conscious should consider this type of rice in their diet.

I am sure many of you know how to stir fry brinjal with taucu. But, for the benefit of those who don't, I would like to share my mum's recipe.

Stir fry brinjal in taucu (fermented soy bean paste)

Recipe from my mum

Ingredients:

2 tbs oil

3 garlic cloves, chopped

1 lb eggplant, sliced

3/4 tbs sugar

1 tbs taucu paste
1 tbs water

Method:

Lightly stir fry brinjal with oil and scoop off the wok and set aside. Add oil, garlic and tauchew paste and stir fry till fragrant. Add water and sugar and stir fry till sugar dissolved. Add brinjal and stir fry until softened about 8 to 10 minutes. Remove from wok. Serve with steam white rice.

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.