Cooking with Garlic Chives

When I lived at my aunt’s house during my first year in college, I had a tough time eating the food she made. The main reason was because she cut down on seasoning with sodium since my uncle has high blood pressure. But the one dish my aunt made that I really enjoyed was her garlic chive, pork, and shrimp wontons egg noodle soup. The wontons were usually on the salty side, which was a nice change, but it was watered down with the lightly-seasoned pork bone soup. To this day, I'm not sure if they were actually on the salty side, or if my taste buds were numbed.

So it’s been about three years since I last had a bowl of that yummy stuff. Actually, when I went to Toronto to cover the marathon, my cousin joined me for dim sum on my last day. I inadvertently ordered a bowl of chive wontons. When I took a bite out of the green-speckled wonton, memories of eating my aunt's garlic chive wontons came flooding back. It tasted pretty close to my aunt's version. But as my cousin pointed out, shrimps weren't used in the filling.

Smelly (But Tasty) Hot Pot

Maybe Mother Nature heard my complaints of Ottawa's recent hot and muggy weather systems. It looks like it will be a cool 20 degrees Celsius for the next week. Having spicy hot pot is a perfect way to feel better, regardless of the weather.

Using homemade pork bone soup, we turned it into a stinky and spicy hot pot dinner using the Little Sheep Mongolian hot pot soup base. We made sure we had the windows open for fresh air, though I’m sure our neighbours didn’t appreciate the body odour-like stench.

It’s the cumin used in the soup base. Okay, it might not smell that much when you’re eating it, but your clothes will smell like b.o afterwards. Nasty stuff. I’ve replicated the soup base before by using some chicken bouillon powder (we have Knorr), cumin, salt, sugar, and a few Thai chili peppers. We had some of the Little Sheep soup base in the cupboard.

The smelly soup base is like shawarma, in that it's satisfying when you eat one although you reek of garlic. However, it's gross when someone, who had just eaten a shawarma or two (possibly with extra garlic sauce), sits beside you on the bus.

Among the various things we had on the table for hot pot, there was wood ear mushroom, tofu puffs, bean thread noodles, thinly sliced eye of round beef, frozen homemade wontons, bok choi, pork balls, and corn.

We don’t usually eat hot pot with any sides, but we had some sweet potatoes and some tempura batter mix around. We had a plate of tempura sweet potatoes just as the hot pot hot was ready.

My favourite things to eat are the tofu puffs and wontons – especially when we use the spicy hot pot soup mix. They just absorb the spiciness so well. Mmm… smelly hot pot.

Dumplings, Spring Rolls, Sweets, Tea

Some friends from high school came over for a small dinner of dumplings and spring rolls a few days ago. The pork and napa cabbage-filled dumplings were, of course, made from scratch. The dumpling skin and filling were made prior to their arrival. Once we were in the kitchen, I taught them how to wrap the dumplings. We had a good time wrapping the dumplings. Despite the teasing, they did really well. Although they didn't look that great, all the misshapen dumplings were cooked up using the fry-steam-fry method. Some of the longer dumplings ended up looking like cooked intestines after I had to coil them in the pan. Hahaa!

As for the spring rolls, I just took out some frozen spring rolls (that were homemade) and deep-fried them in vegetable oil. We had four different dipping dishes of sauces. There were two plum sauces, one hoisin sauce, and one red vinegar-soy sauce mix. I also made a pot of chicken, daikon and napa cabbage soup to wash everything down.

I should’ve made tea while we were eating. Fail. We had a brief tea break after we finished eating instead. OP brought over some Melissa herbs (aka lemon balm) from her garden. We made some Melissa herb tea and a pot of jasmine tea to have a little variety. The Melissa herb was quite a refreshing lemony, and almost sweet, tea. OP mentioned that iced Melissa herb tea is more enjoyable, especially in the summer.

To finish off the meal evening, we enjoyed a variety of sweets that JS bought from the Nutty Greek Bake Shop. OP also brought over some brownies chocolate cupcakes that she made. Out of all of the sweets JS brought, my favourites were the almond cookie and the icing sugar-topped shortbread cookie. I can't forget about the moist and tender chocolate cupcakes that OP made.

First Banh Xeo Meal of the Summer

Lettuce was on sale last week so we made savoury fried pancakes called banh xeo. It’s a Vietnamese dish, but people also eat it in Cambodia too. We’ve written about the dish before. Making banh xeo is very time-consuming because each one has to be carefully made. After lunch, Mom started making them ahead of time so that we could all eat at the same time.