Baked Chicken Rice in Creamy Sauce with Cheese Topping 白汁芝士雞皇焗飯

Haven't written an entry for awhile. I have been trying out different recipes recently. This is one of my sister's favorite dish that I have made so far. She told me to save the recipe for later as soon as she had a taste of it. I do think that it is a very delicious Hong Kong local dish. Hopefully, it will bring everyone a taste of Hong Kong.





Baked Chicken Rice in Creamy Sauce with Cheese Topping 白汁芝士雞皇焗飯
3-4 servings
estimated time used: 1 hour

Ingredients:

• 4 leg quarters
• ham
• 2 eggs
• 4 servings of rice
• 1 can cream of chicken
• 3/4 can of milk
  
• 1/2 block of Parmesan cheese

Marinade:

• 1 tablespoon soya sauce

Directions:

• Fry rice. Place it in a baking dish after it is done.
  
• Cut chicken and ham.
  
• Fry chicken and ham until they are cooked.
• Add in a can cream of chicken with 3/4 can of milk. Cook until it is thicken.
• Pour sauce with chicken and ham on top of rice which is in the baking dish.
• Shred cheese on top.
• Bake at 375°F for 10-15 minutes or until it looks golden.

Yes Indeed!

We can now confirmed that they are bak choi.  Apparently, they can grow from roots leftover from spring season, no seeds needed.  This is pretty amazing!  We may be able to put some home grown bak choi on the  dinner table during my parents visit. 

More Bak Choy??!

Finally pulled out our dead spring crops as we harvested the seeds.  Then I found some seedlings in the planters.  They look like they could be bak choy since some of them were attached to the dead ones I pulled out.  We would be super excited if that's the case.  And now we wait...

From Cooking Possibilities

Garden Update

It has been a LONG time since I blog about our garden. 
Check out our first tomato!  Learning from last year's experience, we harvested it before it became bright red, before the ants started eating it. 

And our bak choy seeds are finally ready!  We've been waiting for a long time for the pods to turn light brown (see pic below).  We collect a lot of seeds from our spring bak choy plants today.  Hopefully, they will grow into more bak choy plants for the fall season.  we'll probably start seeding at the end of July. 

Strawberries - half eaten...

and not by us! 
This tragedy happened yesterday.  We have waited so long for the first strawberry of the season, and came home just to find out someone else got the first dip!  Pretty sure it was a squirrel.  

New Vegetables In The Garden

We bought two types of tomatoes from Home Depot - Bush Early Girl Hybrid and Goliath Hybrid.  I hope they are delicious. 

From Cooking Possibilities

Transferred my yellow peppers to the planters this weekend.  I grew them from seeds and they were getting big!  I was a little worry since this past weekend was so windy and temp dropped like 20 degrees! 

From Cooking Possibilities

And finally, strawberries are coming along.  Still green, hope they turn red soon.  I heard home-grown strawberries are very sweet.  Can't wait to taste them. 

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Pub Dog

On Claire's birthday, we also eat out for dinner. We went to a place called Pub Dog. Just from the name, it is definitely clear that it is a pub. However, there is a section of the pub that dogs are welcome too. People can stay outside with the dogs and have fun. Dogs can get to know other dogs and play with them. It's a very nice place for people and dogs relaxing.




Old Yeller Pizza
Tomato Sauce, Mozzarella, Grilled Chicken,
Smoked Bacon, Tomatoes,
Red Onion and Spinach


Atomic Dog Pizza
Hot Sauce, Hot Cherry Peppers, Smoked
Gouda, Mozzarella, Smoked Bacon,
Pepperoni and Red Onion



address: 8865 Stanford Boulevard,Columbia, MD 21045
website: http://www.pubdog.net/

Honey Pig 꿀돼지 - Korean BBQ

Yesterday was my sister Claire's birthday. We went out and ate a birthday lunch instead of dinner since we thought it might be so crowd during dinner time. We went to a newly opened Korean BBQ on Route 40. It opens 24 hours. How great is that!!



I personally think that the Korean BBQ restaurant near our house has a better interior design, but the food here is a lot better than that one. Even my sister hates pork, she still think the BBQ pork tasted good. Also, we got more food with less money this time.



Furthermore, we don't have to do any cooking at all. The waiter/waitress would cook all the meat in front of you as being a good Korean BBQ restaurant. This is great.



Alright! It's time to eat. I was full after the meal. =]



address: 10045 Baltimore National Pike, Ellicott City, MD

Garden Update - Week 6

I couldn't believe I missed so many weekly updates!  OMG!  It's all b/c of the stupidity of my laptop.  So now, I'm blogging using Cameron's.  Since his doesn't read my camera's memory card, I'll have to upload the pics later on when I get a chance to borrow Karen's. 

Having your own garden is so great!  We have been eating from it for the past 2 weeks now.  It's really awesome to just walk out on the deck, pick your vegetables, and cook them within a few minutes.  We absolutely love the cabbage and lettuce family.  Our bak choy and lettuce keep multiplying!  It's insane how much greens we have in the small planters.  I guess we really should follow the instruction when it says, plant them x-inches apart.  (Yeah, we planted them way to close to each other.) 


You know how I was growing sweet yellow banana peppers from seeds?  They turned out so well, and I got so many seedlings to give away.  Today was the day!  I brought 10 containers to work, each containing two to three seedlings, to give to my co-workers.  It was an awesome experience.  I got to connect with my co-workers at a different level and talk to them about gardening.  I could seriously start a garden club at work. 

I hope everyone will get some peppers during the summer.  :)  Growing from seeds will definitely be on my list to do next year! 

Garden Update - Week 3

Sorry I didn't get to post this on Sunday.  I had a super busy weekend with lots of volunteering, 3 hours picking up trash in Howard County, 8 hours with dog rescue stuff for Lucky Dog Animal Rescue.

So, here we go, week 3 into gardening, and things are getting HUGE!  We actually harvested some lettuce and bok choy to eat.  They are so delicious! and organic too!  For those who are crazy about eating organic, my advise is to grow your own.  It's so much cheaper and you know they're 100% organic!

From Cooking Possibilities

From Cooking Possibilities

Sweet yellow peppers are coming along.  I think every single seed we put down are growing!  Well, obviously, we did not expect such a success as a beginner gardener.  If you want a pepper plant, let me know.

From Cooking Possibilities

Weekly Garden Update

Two weeks into growing our garden...

Here's our pathetic cauliflowers, located under the deck.  Some get more sun than the other, and I guess the soil isn't as good.  I gave them some plant food yesterday, so hopefully they will grow better in the next few weeks.  If you can't tell, there are six cauliflower plants in this pic.  They're really small :(

From Cooking Possibilities

Lettuces and bak choy, on the other hand, are growing fast and big!!!!  Being on the deck is a huge advantage!  with plenty of sunlight.

From Cooking Possibilities

From Cooking Possibilities

BIG NEWS in the garden this week!  Our pepper seeds are sprouting!  This is so awesome.  Cameron didn't think it would work, and was planning to buy pre-grown peppers from Home Depot in a month or so.  I read on a blog about making your own container using newspaper.  So I tried that out.  I also planted some in leftover yogurt cups.  I thought they were the perfect size for starting out.  It turns out, only the ones in the yogurt cups sprouted so far.  I think they retain water a lot better.  (Water escaped way too fast in the newspaper version.) 

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New to the garden this week:  We went to Home Depot to pick up a bag of mulch, and saw strawberry plants for sale.  So we picked one up, just to see how they grow.  I heard that home grown strawberries taste 100 times better.  So we're pretty eager to see how this would turn out.  The tag also says they're perennial, so if all goes well, we will have more strawberries next year too! 

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That's it for this week.  Happy Easter everyone!

Vegetable Garden

Thank goodness Spring has finally arrived.  Last year, our tomato and pepper plants brought us great joy and flavorful, pesticide-free produces.   With last year's successful garden, we are starting our vegetable garden early this year. 

Last weekend, we went to Ace's Hardware to pick up grass seeds for the yard (or so we thought!  we picked out a bag with fertilizer and kills crabgrass, BUT no grass seeds in it.  So we had to go back and get an actual bag of grass seeds.)  While we were there, we saw some nice vegetable packs at the entrance.  So we picked up a few of those as well.  We are now growing bak choy, lettuce, and cauliflower.  

For bak choy and lettuce, we planted them in planters on our deck.  Our deck gets a lot of sun.  We planed to do cauliflower on our deck as well, until we realized they take a lot of space to grow.  So we put those under the deck.  (I have yet to take a picture)

Here's what they looked like when we first planted them in our planters.  Top picture - Butter crisp lettuce.  Bottom picture - one of our 3 pots of bak choy.

One week later...(today)
They've grown quite a bit this past week. 

I plan to document the progress of our garden here on this blog.  I can't wait for the harvest, and the start of summer vegetables. 

Orange Pork

Yeah~~! I'm back. I had been gone for a while since my computer broke down. This is the most recent dish, Orange Pork (香橙豬排), that I made on Thursday. I really love this dish. I remember that I had this dish couple times when I was young; however, I couldn't find it in the restaurant now. It's so lucky that I found the recipe for this dish one day. =]





Orange Pork
3-4 servings

Ingredients:

• 1 lb pork
• 3-4 oranges
  
  

Marinade:

• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
  
• 1 tablespoon soya sauce
• 1 tablespoon corn starch
• 1 beaten egg
  

Sauce:

• 3 tablespoons sugar
  
• 1 teaspoon corn starch
  
• 1 tablespoon vinegar
• 150 mL fresh orange juice
  

Directions:

• Cut pork into cubes. Then marinade pork for at least 15 mins.
  
  
• Squeeze juice out of oranges. Then mix with other ingredients of the sauce.
  
  
• Fry pork until it is cooked. Then set aside the cooked pork.
  
  
  
• Cook sauce until it is boiled.
  
  
• Add in cooked pork and mix well with the sauce.
  
  
• Serve with rice.
  

Buffalo Chicke Dip

I was never a big fan of spicy food until I went to college, when I became fully immersed in American culture.  Americans seem to be really obsessed with everything spicy.  They put hot sauce in EVERYTHING!  I was pretty perplexed by this eating behavior.  Five years later, I find myself enjoying spicy food quite a bit.  One of my favorite dishes is buffalo chicken dip.  I'm going to share this recipe I got from Frank's Red Hot website. 
 

INGREDIENTS:

• 8 oz. pkg. cream cheese, softened
• 1/2 cup blue cheese or ranch salad dressing
• 1/2 cup hot sauce
• 1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese - most people use bleu cheese, but I don't like it, so I use mozzarella instead.  
• 2 cans (12.5 oz. each) of chicken in water, drained.  Or you can substitute 2 cups of shredded cooked chicken.

DIRECTIONS:

• HEAT oven to 350°F. Place cream cheese into deep baking dish. Stir until smooth.
• MIX in salad dressing, hot sauce and cheese. Stir in chicken.
• BAKE 20 min. or until mixture is heated through; stir. Garnish as desired. Serve with crackers or vegetables.
• Slow Cooker Method: Combine ingredients as directed above. Place mixture into small slow cooker. Cover pot. Heat on HIGH setting for 1 1/2 hours until hot and bubbly or on LOW setting for 2 1/2 to 3 hours. Stir.
  

Everything mixed in my baking dish.

I decided to try something new this time.  Instead of serving in the baking dish, I got a thing of bread, cut open the top and inside to create a bread bowl serving dish.  While the dip was baking in the oven, I prepped the bread. 
 

Spooned the dip into bread bowl.  The dip tasted pretty good with the bread.  However, the bread was too soft to really scoop the dip out.  I suppose if you toast the bread pieces, it would make it easier to eat.  While it looks nice serving in a bread bowl, it's not the most efficient way to eat the dip.  I probably won't do this again.

Honey Chicken

I planed to make Honey Mustard Chicken last night; however, I just found out that the mustard that I used for Honey Mustard Chicken is almost gone. So I decided to change it to just Honey Chicken. I'm glad that it still works out well. =]





Honey Chicken
3 servings

Ingredients:

• 3 leg quarters
  

Seasoning:

• 1/2 teaspoons sugar
• 1/2 teaspoons pepper

Sauce:

• 1/2 cup honey
• 1 1/2 tablespoons melted butter
  
  

Directions:

• Get the bone off and seasons with seasoning for about 15 minutes.
  
  
  
• Preheat oven for 350 degree.
  
  
• Pour sauce on top of chicken and bake for 45 minutes (or until it is done)
  
  
  
• Serve it with whatever you want.
  
  

Cheesecake

We were snowed in last Saturday, so I started baking away.  (and it looks like we will be snowed in again this weekend.  Ugh, enough snow already!)

Instead of making the good old cheesecake using recipe from Philadelphia Cream Cheese's website, I did a little bit of experimenting with this one. 


Basic Ingredients:

• 2 pkg of cream cheese (8oz each)
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup of sugar
• 1/2 tsp of vanilla extract
• 1 pre-made graham cracker crust

Experimental Ingredients:

• 1 lemon - zested and juiced.
• frozen raspberries

Here's how you make it...

• Beat sugar, vanilla, and cream cheese
• Add eggs and beat some more. 
• You would then pour this mixture into the pie crust and bake if you're making a basic cheesecake.
• I, on the other hand, mix in the lemon juice and zest. 
• Bake at 325°F for 40 minutes if you are making a basic cheesecake.
• I decided that I would top it with some frozen raspberries since we had some in the freezer.  So I took the cheesecake out after 30 minutes, and topped with raspberries, and baked for another 5-10 minutes.  (I couldn't remember exactly how long)

Here's the final product.  It doesn't look terribly pretty.  It actually tastes more like a lemon pie.  I love lemon, so I think it's delicious.  But the combination of lemon and raspberries are simply too tart for my sister's taste. 

Room for Improvement:
So I think I'm going to use a little bit less lemon juice.  And maybe add a little bit more cream cheese, or maybe a bit of whipping cream.  hmm...I don't know.  I will experiment some more in a month or so.


Any suggestions from all of you out there to help improve this cheesecake?

Well I have been pretty lazy with posting so I guess I should post some about what I have cooked since we started this blog. Most nights I guess I don't make much noteworthy I think so I don't take any pictures, so this post is only going to have pictures of the finished products. I haven't really planned either so the recipes are things that I just found around the house and put together.

Now for today I will talk about salmon with tomato and oregano. That is pretty much all it is. I started with salmon fillet and cooked it on a frying pan with a little oil and used low heat and let it cook for a while so that it wouldn't burn but cook all the way through. After it had cooked mostly I put diced tomatoes on top and shredded mozzarella cheese so that it would heat up and the cheese melt a little bit. I served it with some steamed vegetables and rice. That's pretty much all it was, thrown together kind of last minute and then I have dinner.


I think it turned out looking alright, but not really a work of art or anything.