Posted by Bel.C
We are busy packing this week because we are moving, I mean real moving to a new place, into a smaller apartment. Saying goodbye to our big rented house. Also, we are moving where the Lama Kitchen originated, to a new kitchen. Moving is not fun at all, the pack unpack load unload is going to be a long process. Not sure if I have so much time to cook in this kind of mess.
After all week of tiring work, I just wanted to cook something quick and easy, boil vegetables with oyster sauce seemed to be the right choice. It is one of the easy and simple dishes you can prepare in 10 minutes, yet delicious, great choice for a no timer. You can use any of your favorite vegetables, I usually cook with Kai Lan (芥蘭), Baby Bok Choy(小白菜/清江菜), Choi Sum (菜心/油菜) or Spinach (菠菜).
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Posted by Eric.N
Another seafood dish into my collection, this is one of my all time favorite prawn dishes, the Butter Oat Prawn (麥片蝦). In Malaysia, when my family dine out, sometimes Butter Oat Prawn will be one of the usual prawn dishes we order. If you haven’t heard of or tried this dish before, you might think this is so weird to cook the prawns or shrimps with cereal oats? No, of course. Let me introduce you to this delicious dish.
The specialty about the Butter Oat Prawn is to deep fry the egg yolk until golden and crispy, then stir fry with cereal or oats and add in other ingredients such as curry leafs, chili, butter and creamer. The whole complete mixture has a distinct taste of saltiness, sweetness and a bit of spiciness with a hint of curry leaves and chili. Toss in the prawns and mix in with the oat mixture, the golden color makes it real nice and you will be surprised that you are about to enjoy a delicious and special dish.
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Posted by Patrick.C
Cabbage is a popular leafy green vegetable that can be easily found in the food market. I like cabbage because of its natural sugariness and of course it has to be cooked or boiled in order to tenderize the leaves to release the sugar. Cabbage is broadly consumed raw but I am not so into eating it in this way except for coleslaw or maybe in salad occasionally. This is because I don’t like the sharp or bitterness taste that sometimes present in the cabbage.
Mostly I like to use cabbage to make soup but today I’ve cooked it with dried shrimps. Dried shrimps are commonly used in Chinese cuisine for its extraordinary flavor that covers the bitterness, saltiness, sourness, sweetness and savoriness (or so-called “fifth taste”). That’s the reason I used it to stir fry with cabbage to make an easy and pleasant homey dish. I loved it and you should try it.
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Posted by Eric.N
If you have checked out our blog, you will know that “chicken” is the most blogged recipe in Lama Kitchen. This is because chicken it is the most common dish to be prepared. I definitely love all varieties of chicken recipe because it is easy to be prepared and served for a comfort home meal. Therefore I am constantly looking to modify chicken recipes.
I have once tried the Braised Chicken with Mushroom and Dry Squid. It is a Cantonese style recipe and it has a quite distinct taste than the normal recipe. This recipe has a fresh taste that comes from the shredded dried squids, also adding the fried shallots gives it an extra fragrant which I really like.
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Posted by Bel.C
I must say Crab Rangoon (炸蟹角) is a Chinese fusion appetizer introduced to the American Chinese cuisine. Yes, Americans love Chinese food too, but not all of the traditional Chinese food. Therefore a lot of Chinese food in the States are modified to catered based on the Americans’ taste. Crab Rangoon is one of them. I never had these before in Malaysia until I came to the United States. I was studying in Lincoln, Nebraska and there are two or three traditional Chinese restaurants I can recall, the rest are American Chinese restaurants such as Panda Express, Pick Up Stix, or other local ones like Golden Wok and China Wok. So I was able to try these delicacies in these Americanized restaurants.
Don’t get me wrong, I actually think the Crab Rangoon is a break through from the traditional Chinese cuisine in adapting to the American culture. The Crab Rangoon is filled with cream cheese (I like mostly anything with cheese), imitation crab meats or canned crab meats, scallions, garlic or other seasonings. They are wrapped with wonton egg wrappers or egg roll wrappers and deep fried until golden. Here in the States, some restaurants serve the Crab Rangoon with sweet and sour plum sauce or mustard for dipping. I just like mine plain and simple.
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