Chicken a la king with biscuits- May 17th

Sifting through our pile of unblogged pictures, I came across one that had contained pictures of tasty biscuits that we made.

The lunch menu for that Sunday: Chicken a la king with homemade butter biscuits.

Starting with the butter biscuits...

We cut the cold butter (it has to be cold) into some flour. Then we beat the eggs into some milk and mixed with the flour and butter. We had to press the biscuit dough together quickly to prevent the butter chunks from melting. Once the dough rested for 45 minutes, it was gently rolled out to an inch or two thickness and then cut into circles.

Since we threw them in the oven right after we rolled them out, the butter wasn't as cold as it should have been. That meant that a lot of the butter melted onto the pan which made the biscuits lean a bit. The next time we make these biscuits, we'll make sure we let the butter in the dough chill in the fridge before we bake it.

Once out of the oven, the biscuits were gobbled up (no matter what they looked like) with some chicken a la king that Lucy and my mom made. (Click here for the chicken a la king recipe) What a heavy, heavy lunch! Yum!

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More Ducklings!

I took a few short video clips of the ducklings last week, and figured I should share the uber cuteness of them all.



Enjoy!

Suuuuuuuper Steamed Pork Buns – May 11, 2009

Now, we’ll jump back to two months ago to my first few weeks in Ottawa. My mum made steamed pork buns, otherwise called 包子 baozi, one night after work.

First, we prepared the fillings.



My mum used leftover spring roll fillings mixed in with ground pork, diced onions, oyster sauce, salt, pepper, and sugar.



We sliced the Chinese sausages thinly and diced the hardboiled eggs.



I sliced the rehydrated shiitake mushrooms and fried them quickly with soy sauce, oyster sauce, and sugar. Yummy!



Earlier in the day, my mum made the dumpling dough. It’s important to give the dough time to rest and rise before you use them to wrap. Otherwise, the baozi will turn out pockmarked and lumpy looking.

Here, I’m mixing another batch of dough because we ran out. The buns we made using this batch were lumpy and gross looking. Not an attractive batch at all.



Here’s the steamer. I’m pretty sure we’ve had this one since I was a little kid.



The finished product!



Here’s a shot of my first bite of the baozi I wrapped. Yeah, I didn’t wrap it so well. There’s way too much dough. Oopsies! These bad boys filled me up a lot faster than the ones that my mum wrapped.

But I’m quite proud that my buns were edible. Next time will be better!

Canada Day Chilli – July 1, 2009

On Canada Day, my aunt brought over some homemade chilli. Since none of us were in the mood to cook, this solved our little problem nicely.



I heated up a bowl of chilli and toasted a sesame seed bagel. Spread the bagel with a little butter (or in this case, “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter” margarine), and you’re set!



I also sprinkled shredded cheddar and nuked it in the microwave for 30 seconds.



As you can see, I savoured the chilli to the last spoon.

Earlier in the day, I took some pictures of the flowers in our garden, playing around with composition mostly.





It was nice, low-key way to spend Canada Day. No crowds, no drunkies, no sardine-packed busses on the way home from watching fireworks from Parliament Hill.