Updates and My First Vlog!

Are you excited?

I’m mega scared to air this.  What if you think I’m crazy? It feels like a first date.  Although I don’t even remember what that feels like, so maybe a job interview.

I felt like the original one take vlog wasn’t good enough even after some little bits editing redundant parts.  I did film this in Old Montreal with some scenery, so the effort was there, even though I was super self-conscious..and I realize I never know where to look. It was a trial with the video recording functions on my phone.  The quality is actually pretty good.

I don’t own a tripod so please excuse the shake.  I tried my best to hold my notes and the camera in the other hand and not jitter around. I even tried to hide behind a tree and people still stared at me when they walked by…

Hope you enjoy it! Links mentioned will be posted below the video!

1) DIE HARD MARATHON:

Thanks to Chris @ Film Hipster for the mention here–> Ironman 3, 100% & Shitfest 2013

2) MEG RYAN MARATHON –> You’ve Got Mail

Drop me an email at Kim.tranquildreams@gmail.com if you want to do a review.  I’d love to feature you here.

3) NICHOLAS SPARKS MARATHON

Vote on the post below to tell me what you think about that idea 🙂 If you had additional comments, do leave me a comment 🙂

4) A BITE OF CHINA PROJECT  continues! If you’re interested click on the link and see which recipes would interest you then send me an email.  We’ll take it from there 🙂

SHOUTOUT:

Eric @ Isaacs Pictures Conclusions presents SHITFEST 2013: Announcement, Update, Update#2

ALSO: Forgot to mention an additional update! I’m going to be finishing up Pirates of the Caribbean marathon soon! Still not sure when.  But at least thats an idea of whats coming up 🙂

Thanks for enduring my horrible video editing and shaky camera and all that seriousness.  I was really nervous…I’ll be better the next time, if I don’t scare any of you away!

A Bite of China: Steamed Eggs

Yesterday I posted about making Braised Shrimps and as an aside, I made some Steamed Eggs.  The original A Bite of China recipe is with Sea Urchin.  Honestly, I have no idea where to find ANY sea urchin, not to even mention that I’m not really a big fan of it.  The chinese specialty to me is just the steamed eggs part.  So I matched it up with some slices of cucumbers.  It may not be right by the book but I think the most important part of cooking is to gear it towards what the people eating it would like. You know, making it my own.  So here we are with my Steamed Eggs with Cucumbers.

By the way, excuse the quality of the pictures.  Its a bit hard now, since on Valentine’s Day I dropped my camera and now my LCD screen is cracked.  But thank goodness mine is a bridge so I can use the viewfinder to take pictures.  I just can’t review them as much until I put them in the computer.  Hopefully, I’ll be able to repair it without it costing me an arm and a leg…

Back to the recipe, I’ve always liked steamed eggs.  Only deal is that this was a slight fail because its supposed to look smooth on the surface along with a smooth (is there another word) to the texture.  It didn’t taste bad.  You should add a bit of soy sauce on the surface for extra flavouring.  I did that afterwards when the plate reached the dining table.

Here are the ingredients and how to make it!

Ingredients:

2 eggs

Water

Cucumber (chopped)

How to make it:

1) Put eggs into a bowl, put the same amount of water as the liquid of the egg.  Beat the egg, cucumber and water together.

2) Pour eggs into a wide dish and steam at high heat for 5-7 minutes.

Voila! Here is the steamed eggs with cucumber! I will investigate on how to perfect it and give a take 2 after my mom comes back so I can learn the proper way.  Still, it is a very awesome recipe. What makes it better is to either use sea urchin as they say or what I usually use at my place is dried scallops.  However, they seemed to have vanished.  Next time, I’ll probably use that instead of cucumbers.  I’m looking forward to it!

Whats your favorite way of making eggs?

A Bite of China: Braised Shrimps

This weekend was really efficient.  Yesterday I managed to get 2 A Bite of China recipes made for supper and then managed to make a nice little dessert as well.

The first up was making this Braised Shrimps.  Shrimps is possibly one of the easiest foods to cook because its really all in the marinade.  It gets thoroughly cooked rather quickly as well.  As I got older, I slowly grew out of my seafood love but now and then it does pop up.  With my mom in Melbourne for my cousin’s wedding, I made it a point this time to maximize on what is already in the house, because my mom keeps tons of food in the freezer.  And guess what? I found a bag (or a few) of shrimps.  Perfect for a nice meal and to hone my Chinese cuisine skills.

 

Refer to my previous post about my cookbook for Poached Chicken to see what I say about the quantities and their cookbooks. I personally don’t understand who makes 6 shrimps.  I guess if you wanted to make a small gourmet dish, right? I’m Chinese and I don’t do fusion cooking so I don’t make 6 shrimps.  I’m not sure if that’ll even feed me completely, let alone I have to feed my boyfriend with the meal also. So I improvised a bit with the quantities to increase what was in the book.

This is how I did it.  I used about 20 shrimps instead of 6…

Ingredients:

20 Shrimps

3 tbsp Cooking wine (I used Rice Wine)

3 tbsp soy sauce

1 tbsp vinegar (I used rice vinegar)

2 tbsp granulated sugar

1/2 bowl water

2 stems green onions, chopped (used garlic instead)

3-4 slices ginger (I chopped them)

Salt

Directions:

1) Wash shrimps and devein if you  need to.   Put in a bowl and pour in the cooking wine and mix it together.  Set aside.

2) Combine soy sauce, vinegar, sugar and water and stir together.

3) Heat up some oil in the wok and put in the shrimps.  Cook shrimps until they are red on both side and they should have some oil that comes out.  Take out shrimp only.

4) Put in the onion and ginger into the pan with the oil and fry until its golden.  Pour in marinade sauce and heat until it boils.

5) Add in the cooked shrimps into the wok and put in desired amount of salt for flavor.  Cover the wok and set to low heat to simmer for 2 minutes.  Afterwards, set to medium heat to reduce the sauce a little.  And its ready to be served!

Here’s the recipe.  Don’t completely trust my quantities because I really played around with it till what looks right.  You will know when it looks right.  Just add in more or less as you see fit.  It turned out tasting pretty awesome! Actually, I didn’t even think it would taste good, because of all the guestimations.  Its very delicious dish.  You should definitely try it out if you are into seafood!

Are you a seafood fan? What seafood do you  like the best?

 

A Bite of China: Poached Chicken

Finally I have found the time to officially launch this project! Starting is the hardest time.  Since I don’t live in an Asian city, some times the ingredients are a bit harder to find.  However, its never too hard to get some chicken into our meal. I love chicken and so its the best way to start off this project.

This was part of my meal in celebration of Chinese New Year: Poached Chicken.  Either later tonight or tomorrow, I’ll be posting up my second part of my meal.

Forgive me though, the beginner chopping chicken into pieces…was really tough.  Anyone has any tricks..please enlighten me.

Here’s how it turned out:

If you want the recipe, I’ll give you an idea of what it is.  Chinese recipes have a certain obscurity to it…which is why I never really want to post them up or even follow them.  Because ask a housewife (say my mom) how she cooks, she’ll tell you its a general feeling, no quantity to it.

Ingredients:

1 whole Chicken

3 stems Green onions

4 slices Ginger

Sesame oil

1/2 spoon (table or tea, you decide..I used teaspoon) Salt

1 spoon soy sauce (yet again I assumed teaspoon)

How to make it:

1. In a big deep wok, fill it with water and put in the green onions and ginger.  Set it on high heat till it boils.

2. Put the chicken into the wok in the boiling water and let it cook for about 5 minutes.  After set it to low-medium heat and let it simmer for around 20 minutes.  It will be ready when you put a chopstick (or other utensil) into the chicken thigh and there is no blood.  When the chicken is ready, take it out out of the water and transfer to a plate.

3. Cover the chicken with sesame oil.  Let it cool and then cut it into small pieces.  Afterwards, mince the ginger and onions and put it into a separate small bowl.

4. Heat up a bit of oil and pour it over the minced ginger and onions and add salt and soy sauce.  Finally, add in a teaspoon of the chicken broth (from the wok) and add a bit of sesame oil.

If anything doesn’t make sense, just ask me.  I’m translating this from my Chinese cookbook.  Its a relatively straightforward recipe.  My old stove decided to go crazy and not work halfway through cooking it, so my time on the 20 mins is not exactly certain. It might have taken me a bit longer.  I also think I didn’t add enough onions and that would help with the taste absorbed in the chicken.

However, the verdict was good. You have to have it with the sauce for it to taste good because by itself, it is a very plain chicken with hints of onion and ginger and sesame oil.  The sauce brings out the essence of it.

Here it is! The first recipe from A Bite of China Project.  Yet again, if you haven’t checked out the page, you can find it on the bar on the top or I have linked back to it.  I know that for me to do this by myself could be challenging and if any of you are interested, just drop me an email with what you’d like to try and I’ll send over the recipe to you.  An official guest contributor here on my little blog! It will be fun. If you have any suggestions, please do tell me in the comments or whatnot.  I’m still working on how to make this project into a great experience for everyone as much as its a journey to learn more about Chinese cuisine.

A Bite of China Project and some updates!

Welcome to stepping onto my first post of 2013!

With a fresh start, I want to introduce to you my NEW project: A BITE OF CHINA!

You will notice up on the top I’ve added a new page for my new project mentioned in a previous post asking for your help. That project is A BITE OF CHINA PROJECT.  You can check out the details HERE. However, let me introduce to you what this is.  Its going to be an ongoing cooking project.  Cooking isn’t my forte, baking is.  You’ve all probably noticed that…if not, go through my Baking and Cooking section and you will see what I mean.  For one, this will help motivate my cooking and second, it’ll help me dig into the eating cultures of China.  I was born in Canada, what some would call CBC (Canadian born Chinese), so I have this (old-fashioned, perhaps) thinking that people should understand their own culture.  I love the history and the architecture and of course Chinese food.  Living outside of China, everything is a bit different.  Some ingredients may even be hard to find.  I’m not worried though, I want to learn and I’d like to share this experience with everyone.  It’ll not only be sharing Chinese cuisine but hopefully, I’ll share some interesting facts about the ingredients we use or the part of China in originates from.  Sound fun? I think so and I’m excited to start.

On the link up there, you will see the list of recipes from the A Bite of China cookbook.  This is based on a 7 episode documentary about Chinese dishes and the significant dishes that are renowned in China.  I haven’t seen the completely documentary but I do have the cookbook and I’m ready to dive into it.

Also, details are on that page also, if ANYONE out there is skimming through the recipes and have something they want to try, don’t hesitate to send me an email.  I can post up a guest post for you on that recipe.  I’d love to collaborate with all the wonderful cooks out there.

As stupid as some of the recipe names are, I had to translate everything into English and sometimes, it can sound a bit weird.  So head on over there and check it out.

WHAT ELSE IS NEW?

Movie reviews are coming back and I had asked a few days ago to vote as to what direction I should take.  I’ll see how I turns out but I’m giving that poll a week so by next Monday, there will be a final decision as to how I’ll proceed.

The new addition is BOOK REVIEWS.  You will have to bear with me on this one.  Its completely new to me.  I write little reviews on Goodreads but I’m going to try to work on those analysis skills and do that. I also posted up a poll (with the movie one) asking for your help. I will do an update for that at the same time as the movie next Monday.

IF YOU HAVEN’T VOTED, please head over to HERE and do a quick vote.  It’ll really help me out. If you’d like to drop me a recommendation for a book or movie that I should check out, I’m taking those also.

Thats it for now!

What do you think about A Bite of China? Anyone have anything they’d like me to share along with it regarding culture, geography, etc? You tell me and I’ll try to work it in.