The Food We Called "Dumpling"

Dumpling is one of the most popular food in the world, it originally comes from China, but you may see it everywhere but not only in the Chinese restaurant, also in Japanese and Korean restaurant.

About the dumpling, there are several different folk stories explaining the origin of dumpling.

Traditionally, dumpling was called jiaozi which were invented during the era of the Eastern Han (AD 25 - 220) by Zhang Zhongjing who was a great practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine. Jiaozi were originally referred to as "tender ears" because they were used to treat frostbitten ears. Zhang Zhongjing was on his way home during wintertime, when he found many common people had frostbitten ears, because they did not have warm clothes and sufficient food. He treated these poor people by stewing lamb, peppers, and some warming medicines in a pot, chopped them, and used them to fill small dough wrappers. He boiled these dumplings and gave them with the broth to his patients, until the coming of the Chinese New Year. In order to celebrate the New Year as well as recovering from frostbitten ears, people imitated Zhang's recipe to make Jiao'er.

At the same time, dumpling look like gold ingots used as currency during the Ming Dynasty, and as the name sounds like the word for the earliest paper money, serving them is believed to bring prosperity.Many families eat these at midnight on Chinese New Year's Eve. Some cooks will even hide a clean coin inside a jiaozi for the lucky to find.

Mostly, dumpling was a symbol of reunion in a family, because when you make the dumpling, the stuffing was wrapped that means the family members who can not come back to home at the year time. the wrapper equals the family and the stuffing equals the family member. That is why Chinese have the dumpling at the Chinese New Year's Eve. In the meantime, dumpling is recognized the best food with an adage in folk " No food will be more delicious than dumplings", you can find different varieties of dumpling restaurant in anywhere of China.

Also, there is no any limit for enjoying, it could be served in breakfast, lunch and dinner, and also be eaten as appetizer, side dish or main course.

For dumplings, there are 3 ways to cook, boiled/steamed/pad fried, in North America, boiled and pan fried dumpling is known everywhere.

Dumpling is important for me because no matter where I go in the world, I could always get dumpling for meal. And I can purchase the fast-frozen dumpling in the supermarket and save it for a long time at home as a very convenient food. Furthermore, the stuffing is variety, no matter what ingredients I want, maybe meat, seafood or vegetarian, it will be found in the market.  

Farmer's Story

Located on Ontario, Murray and his families operate a mushroom farm.He is the fourth generation from Holland, and only the extended family to carry on the farming business.

He likes to rise the kids in the farm even if the work in farm is hard for children, but he though this is a good experience for kids.

Actually he prefer to run an organic farm, but the organic product have to spent more time on it and part of the product will dead before harvest, because the planting environment in farm is not like a wild place, sometimes the plants are hard to take care. He has to chosen the normal way to planting, but he said, if possible, he will invest a organic farm in the future.

I like farm life, since I was a child, I always went to farm for playing, that was the one of the best memory in my life. Within the society development, farmer is working harder and harder to provide safe and good product for the public. If possible, you may plant your own small farm at your backyard, it will be a good way to know your food.

Coca chicken wings

Chicken has been claimed (based on paleoclimatic assumptions) that chickens were domesticated in Southern China in 6000 BC.However, according to a recent study, it is unclear whether those birds were the ancestors of chickens today. Instead, the origin could be the Harappan culture of the Indus Valley. Eventually, the chicken moved to the Tarim basin of central Asia. The chicken reached Europe (Romania, Turkey, Greece, Ukraine) about 3000 BC. Introduction into Western Europe came far later, about the 1st millennium BC. Phoenicians spread chickens along the Mediterranean coasts, to Iberia. Breeding increased under the Roman Empire, and was reduced in the Middle Ages.Middle East traces of chicken go back to a little earlier than 2000 BC, in Syria; chicken went southward only in the 1st millennium BC. The chicken reached Egypt for purposes of cock fighting about 1400 BC, and became widely bred only in Ptolemaic Egypt (about 300 BC).Little is known about the chicken's introduction into Africa. Three possible routes of introduction in about the early first millennium AD could have been through the Egyptian Nile Valley, the East Africa Roman-Greek or Indian trade, or from Carthage and the Berbers, across the Sahara. The earliest known remains are from Mali, Nubia, East Coast, and South Africa and date back to the middle of the first millennium AD. Domestic chicken in the Americas before Western conquest is still an ongoing discussion, but blue-egged chickens, found only in the Americas and Asia, suggest an Asian origin for early American chickens.

The meat of the chicken, also called "chicken", is a type of poultry meat. Because of its relatively low cost, chicken is one of the most used meats in the world. Nearly all parts of the bird can be used for food, and the meat can be cooked in many different ways. Popular chicken dishes include roasted chicken, fried chicken, chicken soup, Buffalo wings, tandoori chicken, butter chicken, and chicken rice. Chicken is also a staple of many fast food restaurants.

Chicken wing is the normal food for north American, the traditional way to cook the chicken wing will be roasting, grilling or deep frying. But today I will talk about a new way to cook the chicken wings which is cooked by coca-cola.

No matter how much you spend on the chicken wings,  you will not waste any of the meat.

For the Coca Chicken Wing, we will use pan frying and simmer to cook the chicken wing, because the wing part have the hard connected tissue, it can be cook for a longer time but no any damage for the meat.

First, boil the chicken wing to remove the blood and make it as pre-cooked. Then cut 2 lines on each side of the wings.
















Prepare the ingredients include leeks, ginger, bay leaf and coca-cola, if possible, some pieces of star anise will be better for the dish.

Add some oil in the pan and fried the chicken wings until both sides are golden

Remove the wings, add star anise, when smell the flavour of the anise, add leek and ginger, after 5 seconds, you will smell all the flavour come out.

Put back the chicken wings to the pan, stir a little bit, then add the coca in the pan until it covers all the wings. Bring to simmer until the sauce become thick. The mushroom is optional, add if you like.

Serve the dish as required.

Recipe:

Chicken wings 500g
leek 20g
ginger 20g
star anise 5g
bay leaf 1pcs
coca 1-2 cans
dark soy sauce and light soy sauce as taste.

About Fish soup

Fish is always a good substance to cook soup, the fish soup is also very popular around the world. However, not all the fishes are good for the soup,  you have to choose those can make the soup very tasty and fresh, those fishes have the same common is contain more fish bones than others. 

So, we will cook the Crucian Fish Tofu Soup for today. This is a another traditional Chinese food and it is health for women who just giving a birth.

For prepare the soup, fish is the keyword, please make sure the fish is alive, this will let your soup much more tasty than those with the dead fish

Trim the fish until without any scales, prepare some tofu, it is better to cook the soup with the marinated tofu. And also some other substances you want put in the soup such as mushroom, carrot, etc.

Pre-heat the pot, rub the ginger on the bottom of the pot that will avoid the fish stick on the pot. After that, add oil and wild pepper, fried the fish until both side getting brown. Then add water until the fish is covered. Put the ginger, green onion and star anise.

Cut the tofu to small cube, add into pot after the water boiled. 

You will see the soup is getting white and white, after 20-30 minutes, the soup is done. The colour has to be very white and you can seasoning it as you like. I just recommend you add some ground white pepper and salt, also some sesame oil.

Recipe:

Crucian fish: 1-2 piece

Tofu

Mushroom

Carrot (optional)

Ginger

Green onion

Star anise

Wild pepper

Traditional Chinese Pickle

Today we are going to make the traditional Chinese pickle, usually, Chinese style pickle have different ways to make, sometime it wad made as light colour with normal ingredients and sometimes it was dark colour with bean paste.
 

Follow my recipe, the pickle is light colour and quite easy to do with the general ingredients.

Recipe:

Carrot: 1 piece
Kale: 1 piece
Celery: 1-2 pieces
Cucumber: 1-2 pieces
Sea salt
Fresh chilli
Szechuan pepper

Trim the ingredients into same size, then put all of them into the bottle, add salt, chilli and pepper on the top. Pour the water until it cover all the ingredients.




Seal up the bottle, then put it in the space where avoid the sun light in the summer, in the winter, you can set up under the sun light but in the room temperature.

After 4-5 days, you will see the little bubble on the top, whisk for a while, then seal up again, you will smell the pickle's flavour but need to wait for another couple of days.



Waiting another 3-4 days, the pickle is done, you can enjoy it anytime, and if you still have some food that need to be made as pickle, just put them into the bottle and wait for some days. Please remember, every time when you put the fresh ingredients, cut them into the different size or shape.



This pickle I made was good, mix the salty and sour together, it is great to come with the rice congee or millet congee.

Hope you will enjoy it!

Fruit Weekend

Fruits are always important in our life, especially in summer. Choose a proper fruit in summer will make you feeling calm down and stay cool.

Today we went to the market located in SPADINA and DUNDAS, we chose this place because there are different markets and we can compare the fruits and its price.





Today we are going to cook mango,  since the summer came, mango is one of the best fruit to make to different drinking or dessert, also, the mango in summer will be more fresh than other season.

The mango is a juicy stone fruit (drupe) belonging to the genus Mangifera, consisting of numerous tropical fruiting trees, cultivated mostly for edible fruit. The majority of these species are found in nature as wild mangoes. They all belong to the flowering plant family Anacardiaceae. The mango is native to South Asia,  from where it has been distributed worldwide to become one of the most cultivated fruits in the tropics.


When you choose mango, you need to identify the how hard it is, if you want to eat the mango in one day, choose the soft one that a little bit jelly when you press on it. If you want to keep for several days, choose a hard one that the skin is cyan.

Except touch, smell is the another way to measure the mango is fresh or not, smell the mango, the flavour should be faint scent, if the flavour is heavy, do not take that.

When you cook the mango, do not heat it, I prefer to pour the seasoning sauce on it to make a dessert, such as Mango and Coconut Milk Sticky Rice.

Mango: 1 piece, diced
Sticky rice: 1 bowl
Salt: 1 teaspoon
Sugea: 1 teaspoon
Coconut milk: 1/2 bowl

1, Steamed the sticky rice, when cooked, put it in the refrigerator.
2, Then heat the coconut milk with low heat, after the coconut milk boiled, add salt and sugar, and stir properly.
3, Put the diced the mango on the sticky rice, pour the coconut milk from the top, the half mango should be poured with the coconut milk.

This is the one of the famous dessert in Thailand!


IF you want, add some nuts will make it flavourful.

Portuguese Grilled Fish (Sardine)

Today, I want to talk about the delicious grilled fish from Portugal, I like Spanish food, so I think the Portuguese food will not make me disappointment. We went to a Portuguese restaurant and ordered this food - a grilled the sardine.

We planned to ordered the grilled the codfish, but when we smelled the grilled sardine which from a grilled booth was settled in front of restaurant, we decided to replace to the sardine.

The first look was every refreshing, the fish were served with steamed potato, grilled pepper and onion, also with olive. I can smell the flavour of sea because the fish was not trimmed that is the best way to lock the original flavour, even if the outside environment is changing, the inner of the fish body is still the original flavour as they were in the sea.
















The fish were grilled without any extra seasoning except the salt, head taste more salty than tail. Fish meat were very tight (compaction). When I bite the fish, the first flavour went into mouth was the taste of sea. This reminded me when I did fishing on the sea in my hometown, we directly cooked the seafood with seawater. That will make the food as their original taste.

I asked the chef whether they grilled the fish with sea salt, but actually they used the normal salt. For me, I prefer the sea salt instead of the normal one.

Anyway, it was still a good dish for me. I will go back to there and try some others.