Chewy Oatmeal Cranberries Cookies

Cereal - one of my many obsessions. I am like a cereal junkie, I can eat cereal for the whole day, for the whole week. Sometimes I like to eat cereal out of the box, other times I like to mix cereal with nuts and dried fruits. I like to use just enough milk to mix with cereal, making sure the cereal is well soaked with liquid without any trace of milk in the bottom of the bowl.

I love all cereal related stuff - oatmeal, granola, muesli.. basically I can always substitue lunch and dinner with breakfast food... probably it is the chewy and crunchy texture that I get addicted to. It may sound bland to most people, but I just love kids' food.

Out of all the cookies breed, chewy oatmeal cookies can be the easiest thing to make on earth. I don't think you really need the exact measurement for all the ingredients, you can always mix and match different elements to customize the flavor.. the failure rate can be as low as 5%, unless you really suck at using the oven or too bad of eye sight to read the scale. There's no reason the homemade cookies are not edible or even doesn't taste good.

This is a classic oatmeal cookies with cranberries recipe. I always convince myself that this is healthy food with lots of fiber and vitamins so that I wouldn't feel guilty of eating the whole batch. I can't stop myself tearing up the irregular shapes or ugly ones hence ended up devouring most of the batch..


what you need:

1 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
6 oz unsalted butter at room temperature
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup (packed) light brown sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 2/3 cups oatmeal
1/2 cup dried cranberries

How to proceed:
Preheat the oven to 190c.
In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
In a mixer, beat the butter and granulated sugar until smooth. Mix in the brown sugar, then the egg, and vanilla.
Stir in the dry ingredients, then the oats and cranberries.
Drop the batter by rounded teaspoons 2-inches apart on the baking sheets and use a fork to gently flatten the dough.
Bake the cookies for 12 minutes.

Chocolate hazelnut bites

Everyone knows I am a big sweet tooth, I can't survive a day without digging into my candy jar four times a day, eating dessert after lunch and dinner, and a midnight dose of sugar. Sugar is therapeutic, kicking up one's energy while consoling one's emotion, unfortunately it comes with a side effect of extra fat.... the amount of sugar intake.. totally depends on self control (which I have none) and how you evaluate the pros and cons (I rather work out fanatically to offset the cons).

I love cookies, bite size snacks, something one can nibble on while getting bored or enjoying a moment at ease. They come in simple ingredients of sugar, butter, and flour for a classic sables; or spice things up with chocolate, nuts, herbs, citrus, for more indulgence. Yesterday I made a batch of chocolate hazelnut cookies based on David Lebovitz's recipe.

what you need:
8oz or 225g bittersweet chocolate (I used half 72% Valrhona Araguani)
1.5oz or 45g butter
2 eggs
1/3 cup granulate sugar
1 cup toasted hazelnut
1/2 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
a pinch of fleur de sel
more granulate sugar and powdered sugar for coating the cookies

how to proceed:
Preheat the oven to 190c.
Chop the chocolates into small pieces. Melt the chocolate and butter together in a bain-marie.
Whip the eggs and sugar together until they turn pale and form a ribbon. Stir in the melted chocolate.
In a food processor, pulverize the nuts with the flour, then add the baking powder. Add a pinch of fleur de sel. Stir the ground nut mixture into the chocolate batter.
Chill the batter in the fridge for 1-2 hours.
Roll the chocolate cookie batter into 1 inch balls. Roll each ball first in the granulate sugar, then the powdered sugar.
Bake in oven for 15 minutes, swapping the top and bottom baking sheets about half way through the baking.

The recipe was amazing, crisp on the outside and soft and moist inside, full of intense flavor of chocolate and hazelnut. What else does a chocolate lover ask for if every bite is chocolate. Note that not to take short cut of using hazelnut powder because it is the tiny pieces of hazelnut that gives the essential texture. A little bit of flour and butter just to lighten things up.

Next time I probably would add some coffee powder to accentuate the flavor.. making it mocha hazelnut cookies.. I think it would be awesome!!

Japanese home cooking

Another day at cchw's apartment for a home cooking dinner, we transformed ourselves into japanese aunties making a home style japanese meal minus the curly auntie hair style, floral aprons, and slippers with white socks.

First we had the sake flavored pomfret. The sauce which was cooked with dashi was extremely tasty.

Miso soup with clams. Clams were very sweet with light miso taste. This is so easy to make.

Sauteed gobo and carrots in dashi sauce. I always like gobo because of its bitterness and crunchy texture. the dashi sauce did lighten some of the bitterness of gobo, it was perfect with a hint of sesame oil and lots of sesame seeds.

Instead of grilling the yakionigini we used a frying pan to sear the rice balls. We made two kinds of nigini - cured plums and miso paste. A bit tricky to make the miso rice balls since it was easily burnt with miso on the surface.

For dessert something quick and easy. Sesame shiratama with vanilla ice cream with kinako dusting.

What a successful cookout again.. we were becoming more efficient and managed to finish cooking within an hour... our skills were just getting better and better!

Summer Palace @ Shangri-La

I had a business dinner at the summer palace 夏宮 at shangri-la hotel tonight.. and pardon my ignorance.. I had no idea that it's a michelin star restaurant.. not that I care about the michelin ratings for chinese restaurants... is the fact that it's been rated as 2 stars made me pay more attention to the quality of food and services they got to offer.

Actually other than mandarin oriental I would say I visited the shangri-la hotel most often.. either for business luncheons.. for conferences... for coffee breaks. But I normally spent most of my time at Nadaman, and have only been to the summer palace for just a few times.

We were being placed in a small function room with a handful of people. A waitress was assigned to our dinner table. I was impressed by her swift and mechanical movement.. it seemed like she has been trained for doing the exact same thing for thousands times. With no mistakes, pouring tea and drinks at the same angles, placing plates in the exact order.

What we had for the night:

Barbecue pork and suckling pig

Winter-melon soup - this is my favorite item throughout the night, and it was just "lovely". the soup base was clear and light to taste, the ingredients are placed in tiers and filled up more than half of the bowl, including bamboo fungus, duck meat, winter melon, etc..

Scallops with spring onions - scallops are pan-fried to perfection.

Fillet of grouper with broccoli - big pieces of grouper fillets, floured and deep fried with a crystal sauce.

Mushroom and cabbage - to my surprise, mushrooms were crunchy in texture.

Crispy chicken - skin was thin and crispy. chicken was lean and tasty... I was really full at this point of the dinner...

Egg white fried rice - I actually like the fried rice a lot.. but I was too full to finish the whole thing.

Sago cream with mango juice and pomelo - I like they mixed in pieces of pomelo into the sago cream to add another layer of texture.

When you visit a western restaurant which has earned the prestigious michelin stars, you would look for innovation and surprise for your palette, something different about the chef's execution that make it worthwhile to wait for months and pay the big bucks. I don't really know if the chinese restaurants are that much defined by chef (considering chinese chefs tend to be very mobile), and not especially innovative with flavors. So... is summer palace michelin star worthy? I really doubted it, other than it is situated in a hotel and offers above average service, I can easily name multiple places that churn out the same quality of food with a lower price tag.

Macau

A trip to Macau doesn't always involve gambling and partying. We took a short trip over the left side of the harbor and found ourselves in the sinful city within one hour of boat ride. Our mission was to stroll around like tourists and tried out the most go restaurants recommended by guidebooks.

The city was not new to me at all.. especially if my memory is right i might have come to the city almost every month or so recently, doing the exact same thing, visiting the same restaurants since i always come with different groups of people, complaining the lack of cabs running on the streets, stuffing my stomach with local delicacies and dragging my exhausted body back to hk at the end of the day.

There is a lot of coverage of the macau local restaurants, praising how authentic and old fashion the food is... think about it.. there's really not much to do if you are not a big gambler, there are not that many site seeing places that can wow you, shopping is not that big of a deal you can now find the renowned almond biscuits in hk now. The only thing to do in macau is to eat....

We only had six hours in the city to stuff our stomach. Following our local friend's recommendation, here is the rundown of what define macau:

1st stop - 青州劉記 - most guidebooks would have told you to go to 大利來記 for pork chop bun, the place was so over-hyped now what you have lined up for doesn't live up to expectation anymore. Our local detective recommended lau gei instead, the restaurant was basically resembled a hk style street food stall with limited ventilation system and sense of hygiene, and quite different to locate. What should one order - the pork chop and fish ball noodles, and pork chop bun. The pork chop was extremely tender and fluffy and juicy, it didn't require a set of strong teeth to chew the meat. Pork chop with plain bun, something so simple can taste so good.

2nd stop - Lord Stow's bakery 安德魯 - I actually like portguese style egg tart more than the hk style, probably because the caramelized top of portguese egg tart adds another layer of smoky flavor and the egg custard is more creamy. They also come in smaller size so they're perfect for afternoon snack. Their serradura 木糠布甸 is very tasty as well. They are very generous with the application of 木糠, and the milk pudding is dense and smooth, and not so sweet. Does it worth the 100mod cab ride, hell yes!

3rd stop - 海灣餐廳 Restaurant Litoral - I did literally go to A Lorcha everytime visiting macau, for dinner we went to Litoral instead. It turned out all the walking in macau wasn't able to burn out all the calories intake within the day, we couldn't order that much food for our early bird dinner. The african chicken indeed tasted very good, the chicken meat was almost like super tender shredded beef and tomato sauce was a great compliment to the dish. The beef marrow in red wine was just so-so..the homemade quality.

It's not bad to visit macau for a weekend getaway.. especially the food is much cheaper than hong kong although the former generally lacks the entertainment element, but I think I should take a break from it for a short while.. at least to avoid stepping my foot into the city for the rest of the year.

Crazy for Sichuan food

I don't know when it got started. If yawning is contagious, I would argue food cravings can be contagious too. The devil living inside me has an increasing tolerance and appetite for Sichuan food ever since I moved back to Hong Kong. Albeit most sichuan dishes are excessively seasoned and oily, some said spicy food is good for skin but the unfortunate most would be more prone to massive breakout. Luckily spicy food doesn't stimulate acne for me or make my stomach turn, eating too much of it would still make my lover's handles more prominant.

As a typical taurus, I am not very adventurous with restaurant choices and tend to visit the same places incessantly until the restaurants screw up miserably. Whenever my friends ask where to go for dinner, I would always list my 3 choices: yakitori, sichuan food or hotpot.

For sichuan food, my favorite dinner place as gotten to be San Xi Lou 三希樓(滿江紅), even a chengdu born guy would claim this as the best sichuan restaurant in HK, although the spicy level has adjusted down a notch. I went there again, this time not for hotpot but for hot dishes.

Spicy chicken/ "saliva" chicken - chicken was lean and meaty. The sauce was adjusted just right and not too sweet. I always love the peanuts on top of the chicken to give a crunchy texture when combined. A must order item whenever I dined at the restaurant.

The cold dish - fun pai - I wonder if they make the fun pai themselves because these are thicker than the ones at other restaurants. The key is the sauce that's hot and flavorful enough because fan pai is basically tasteless. I just love the sauce that can burn your tongue.

Sichuan wonton in red sauce. Not the best that I have had, I still prefer the wraps to be the kind of dumplings rather than the guangdong wonton. I am still obsessed with the one at sichuan dai ping fou, where the skin is thick and chewy and absorb a great deal of hot sauce.

Dam dam noodles - basically noodles in peanut sauce.

Deep fried tofu cubes - great snacks for beer.

Fish in chili soup - Another must order item at any sichuan restaurant. because the soup base is so oily the fish fillets absorbed all the oil hence become very smooth and slimy. Inside the bowl you can also found the potato starch noodles and lots of beans sprouts.

Tofu and beef - the tofu was silky and smooth and is a great combination with the beef in chili sauce and peanuts.

For dessert, we had the pumpkin soup, red beans jelly and sweet dumplings in rice wine. I have to admit that the restaurant doesn't offer very good dessert. but still something sweet can moderate the flame after a spicy dinner.

I need to convince people that we all can train up our tolerance level for spicy food. I keep lifting my tolerance level for every visit to sichuan restaurant, and I am addicted to the excitment of burning my tongue off after a hot dinner. Call me crazy but that's my devil's calling....

Fook Lam Moon

LT has gone back to US for good. We had our farewell dinner at Fook Lam Moon 福臨門.

I would have never imagined myself dining at FLM since it's one of the tycoon's restaurant and I would have assumed the waiters are stuck up and it would be cheap and awkward to order non-abalone dishes in the restaurant.

I was wrong about the service. The staff there were very professional and didn't give us lousy service even we didn't order the expensive items on the menu.. although they did push for their shark fin soup when we asked for recommendation.

The food was good and delicious... but whether it deserved a rave review I really doubted it. I mean.. other than the more delicate items and extravagent ingredients which we didn't order, other dishes were normal cantonese food which was in par with a normal chinese restaurant. and a lot of the items we ordered I found inferior to many places I have tried before.

Cha siu - bbq pork - I think the one I had at Fu SIng tasted better, the meat was more tender and juicy at Fu Sing. But again, I am not a huge fan of bbq pork, the quality was good enough.

Fried frog legs - I haven't had frog legs in ages.. Chinese don't make good frog legs dishes.. but Thai does. I need this dish to be more spicy.

Sweet and sour pork - it was tasty, no surprise, but I wouldn't rate it high if comparing to the seafood place on lamma island, that one was awesome the pork was juicy and fried perfectly with the perfect sauce. This one was too average.

Vegetable dish - it tasted as normal as it looked.

Chicken - The skin was thin and crispy and the meat was tender and juicy and not fatty at all. interestingly the dipping sauce was lemon juice mixture unlike others which use white pepper and salt.

"Hong Siu" Tofu - The sauce was light and tasty, and the tofu was soft and silky.

Crab shell with crab meat - This is the most surprising item for the dinner. They stuffed the shell with lots of crab meat and covered with a thin batter that's not too oily to taste. It retained the light crab flavor every bite of it was crab meat. It was very nicey done although the presentation was just so-so.

Pan-fried sword fish - I found what my mom made would be better than this. The sword fish didn't come in one piece but in broken pieces. You would have thought the chef was experienced enough to not mess around the fish when it wasn't done yet. I was disappointed.

Fried rice wrapped with lotus leaves. This was the best executed dish for the dinner. The rice was chewy and not mushy, had very heavy taste of soy-sauce with bits of fried eggs inside. There weren't traces of many ingredients inside but the rice was packed with flavor.

Almond soup with egg white - Lots of egg white inside, above average quality.

Well.. I probably shouldn't set a high expectation for my first visit since the press commented it as a tycoon restaurant.. they should have very picky taste buds right?! I still felt the pressure of ordering the more expensive items on the menu, and I thought the pressure was not justified for the quality of food they offered.