If I eat any more chicken wings I will probably take off in flight. My children love them so much that I do not know how to wean them from it. Some people, a few, do not like wings but I know that a LOT do. Some of the most popular posts on this blog are chicken wings. There was a time when chicken wings were so cheap because nobody wanted to eat them as they were fussy to eat. When the restaurants introduced them as a finger food, capitalizing on the fussiness of eating them as the plus factor, they became prized commodities.
It is time to prepare for the Chinese New Year and I want to use up the leftovers from the Christmas past. Frozen peas, frozen corn, frozen ham, frozen prawns spell fried rice. I would have made yang chow fried rice but we happened to have a pineapple so I decided to make pineapple fried rice for a change.
Dipping sauces are an integral part of Asian food. A simple, basic dish can be made spectacular by the sauce it is served with. Although some sauces go with specific dishes, there are sauces that are universal. They go with anything. One of the popular all around food perkers is chilli oil. When you get used to having chilli oil with your food, you can't go without it, no matter what you eat.
I have been planning to make butter chicken for some time now but I never could come up with the complete ingredients. My curiosity has been piqued since I've seen it in pictures and recipes. There is a bit of a hitch though. The list of ingredients is quite long and that challenges me a bit. As regulars here have probably noticed, most of my recipes have a short list of ingredients. It is quite a big task for me to shop for a lot of ingredients, let alone use them. Also, if I were to buy a lot of different kinds of spices (which the recipe calls for) and use a teaspoon of each, the rest is bound to get thrown away as I won't need them in the recipes that I usually make.
A trip to the Chinese bakery is always a delight. The sweet bread dough is always light and airy. The fillings are so different from Western breads and I can't make up my mind which to choose. I am quite partial to char siu buns but my husband and son love the custard filled ones.
We have been extremely lucky to have mild weather since the start of the winter. 11° C on Christmas is nothing short of a miracle. Alas, as we all now know, good things don't last. The cold snap has descended and I'm feeling the cold right to my bones.
The excitement over Christmas has completely died down. We have taken down the Christmas decorations and the house is back to normal. It usually feels a bit gloomy at this time. It takes getting used to not having as much flickering lights.
Baking apple pie has a lot of rewards. I like baking one on a grey, gloomy day. An apple pie is like free aromatherapy. I can't help but feel brighter once I start peeling the apples. The freshness of its scent just bring on the smiley face. The scent of lemons always bring visions of sunshine. Once I add the spices, I imagine a crackling fire. The heady scent of spices makes me feel warm inside.
In keeping with the cycle of life, we again usher in a new year. We bask in renewed hope that this year is better than the one that just ended. Not that it was not a good one, but there is always room for betterment and it is good to raise the bar each year.
