My Buddha's Feast, A Lotus Root Stir Fry

Traditionally, Buddha's Feast or Buddha's Delight is a vegetarian dish served on the very first day of Chinese New Year. The use of vegetables signify purity, therefore no meat or seafood is eaten on the first and fifteenth day of the New Year celebration and no animals are killed on those two days.

During Chinese New Year, using shitake mushroom symbolizes the welcoming of Spring and the calling of opportunities in life, whereas using water chestnuts signify unity. The one mushroom I enjoy the most is the Bunashumeiji mushrooms. It adds a really sweet, smoky, mushroomy flavor to the dish.

Since today isn't the first or the fifteenth day of the New Year, I have tweaked my Buddha's Delight recipe using Chinese waxed sausage and lotus root. In the Chinese New Year tradition, cooking with lotus roots also carries the meaning of bonding and strong family ties. You can also find lotus root candies in many boxed candied fruit trays sold at Asian markets. Lotus root may enhance the sweetness of soups but after all the boiling, it ends up a little soggy and tasteless. Stir frying, on the other hand, preserves the crunchy texture and the sweetness of the lotus root for a really satisfying end result.

Chinese sausages and other waxed meats like duck or bacon are also prevalent in many Chinese New Year festive foods. The rose wine flavor preserved in the chinese sausage is really brought out and adds a mildly intoxicating aroma to any stir fry or clay pot dish.

Lotus Root Stir Fry Recipe

Ingredients :
1 piece lotus root, sliced
2 links of chinese duck liver sausage, sliced ( OR regular chinese sausage )
1 bunch bunashimeiji mushroom
chinese shitake mushroom, shredded
3 water chestnuts, peeled and sliced
green onions, shredded
sesame oil
white pepper
shaoxing cooking wine
2 tbsp oyster sauce
sugar and salt to taste

Method :

1) Cook chinese sausage in microwave on high for 2 minutes, and then set aside.
2) Stir fry the the green onions and mushroom until fragrant. Toss in the sliced lotus root and water chesnuts. Continue stir frying for 2 minutes.
3) Dash in some sesame oil, white pepper, oyster sauce, and cooking wine. Stir fry for 1 minute and add the sliced chinese sausage, sugar and salt to taste. Mix well and continue stir frying for an additional 2 minutes OR until cooked.

Claypot Chicken And Mushrooms

I was recently fortunate enough to pick up a clay pot for only USD $2.99 at one of the many popular "99 Ranch" Asian grocery stores here in Southern California. Since then, my regular pots have been collecting dust in the sidelines. My tastebuds, on the other hand, aren't complaining about the more tender and flavorful dishes produced with my new "toy".

Clay pot cooking is very much like a steaming process. Before cooking, soak the clay pot in water for about 15 minutes. That way, the water that's absorbed in the clay is released as steam during the cooking process, thus sealing the juices of the dish inside the clay pot while keeping any meat moist and tender.

Clay Pot Rice and Clay Pot Noodles are two of the more popular clay pot recipes in the Cantonese cuisine. I can't wait to whip both of them up anytime soon. But for today, since I'm short on Chinese sausage and salted fish, I'm going to stick with one of my mom's that I enjoyed growing up - Clay Pot Chicken and Mushroom recipe.

Other than shitake mushroom, I'm also going to use some "cloud ear" mushroom that I've been saving for this dish. The shitake mushroom is for the flavor whereas the "cloud ear" mushroom is for that interesting crunchy texture that I enjoy. The "cloud ear" mushroom may also be substituted with it's thicker cousin, the "wood ear" mushroom, like the ones you might find in hot and sour soups.

A final word on the clay pot before I move on to the recipe. Dish-washing detergent should not be used to clean them because it will absorb into the clay. I've read that scrubbing them with salt is the preferred cleaning method.

Clay Pot Chicken and Mushroom Recipe

Ingredients :
1 whole chicken ( about 2 lbs, cut into serving pieces )
green onion strips
ginger strips
3 tbsp shaoxing hua tiao wine ( OR any other chinese cooking wine )
cloud ear mushroom ( soaked and cut )
shitake mushroom ( soaked and sliced )
4 tbsp oyster sauce
white pepper
sesame oil
cornstarch solution
sugar and salt to taste

Method :

1) Saute the ginger, green onion, cloud ear and shitake mushroom in the clay pot until fragrant.
2) Add the chicken in, pan fry the chicken pieces on both sides until lightly browned.
3) Mix in the oyster sauce, chinese cooking wine, white pepper, sesame oil and water. ( up to your preference on how saucy you like it to be )
4) Cover the clay pot, and cook on medium-low heat for an additional 20 minutes.
5) Add sugar and salt to taste, cornstarch solution to thicken the gravy and mix well.

Tea Eggs With Chicken Wings

Cleansing tea, one of my night time rituals before bedtime is to brew a cup of water with green tea leaves, to detox all the fatty foods I consumed during the day. Besides, I love a good cup of tea :) However, yesterday night, I accidentally broke the tea bag, and did not want the leaves to squirm all over my cup, hence, I decided to use these flavorful tea leaves to cook some chinese tea eggs.

When cooking with tea leaves, this leads me to one favorite recipe, eggs cooked in crockpot with chicken wings. I am not sure about the origin of this tea egg recipe, but mom had used tea leaves in her meat stews many times during my childhood, to coax us in consuming something cleansing by adding pieces of meat.

Tea eggs, one of the many flavors in chinese cuisine, is particularly famous in many Taiwananese cafes/ restaurants here in the US. This chinese tea egg recipe is prepared by slow cooking the eggs in their shell with tea leaves, some light spices, chinese cooking wine, and some soy. They are then peeled, and you can enjoy them over breakfast, as a snack or appetizer, OR eat them with hot steamed rice OR tossed in your leftover egg noodles with the stewed sauce.

This tea egg recipe cooked with chicken wings makes a great one-pot-meal, pungent flavors, refreshing and simply irresistable. Another great welcome dish that compliments the friendly weather here in Southern California.

Guys and gals, time to dig up your crockpot or claypot. First thing tomorrow morning, enjoy the aroma of tea leaves, sit back and relax, tea eggs for breakfast, and tea flavored soy chicken for dinner. Sounds good to me, how about you ?

Tea Eggs With Chicken Wings Recipe

Ingredients :
4 eggs
5 chicken wings
1 star anise seed
2 cloves
sliced ginger
1/4 a cinnamon bark ( optional )
5 tbsp low-sodium soy sauce
1 tbsp thick sweet soy sauce
1 tbsp chinese rice wine
2 tsp green tea leaves ( OR Black tea leaves )
2 pc rock sugar ( OR small crystalised sugar )
1/4 cup water
salt to taste

Method :
1) Put all the ingredients in the crockpot.
2) Set crockpot temperature to high, and slow cook for 2-4 hours, OR if crockpot settings on low, slow cook for 4-6 hours.

Watercress Soup : No.1 Cleansing Soup

There really is nothing like a big bowl of hot soup to drive away the "cold weather blues". Surfing the net for some ideas, I stumbled upon a certain Soup No. 5 "Viagra Soup". Haha ... I wonder if that's how they make the infamous pill from scratch. Using beef penis along with other chinese medicinal herbs like "dang shen" aka "tong-shen" and chinese yam "wai san" and whatnot. For my own anti-"chill pill", I thought I'd stick with the basics, the No. 1 "Cleansing Soup".

Infected by Simscooks's detox diet, I wasted no time in getting some watercress myself. I also rummaged through my fridge for some known anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory ingredients to enrich my watercress soup. I found some goji berries, figs & dried longan - ingredients that should provide the necessary nutrients to start my cleansing process after a week-long battle with the flu. Goji berries (wolfberries OR gogi berries), are raisin-like dried fruit which are evidently known to improve cell communication among other health promoting properties. Figs, yet another one of my sweet discoveries, are rich in fiber and healthy minerals. I don't particularly enjoy eating the figs, I just like the way just a couple of them can enhance a whole pot of soup with a mild sweet fruity flavor. As for the dried longan, I read somewhere that they are "brain food", which is good, for I am quite forgetful nowadays :( To further make up for my protein deprivation, I added a couple of chicken feet and meaty pork bones. Oh what the heck, let's get a little crazy and throw in another one of my favourite ingredients for any kind of soup .. fish balls :P

Final verdict : One beeeg bowl of a sweet, hearty, and "interior"-cleansing soup :)

Watercress Soup With Asian Herbs Recipe

Ingredients :
4 pc. chicken feet
2 pc. meaty pork bones
6 fish balls
3 figs
1 tbsp goji berries
1 tbsp dried longan
1 bunch watercress
salt to taste

Method :
1) Dump all the ingredients (except the watercress and fish balls) in a soup pot, and cook to a boil. The watercress turn soggy fast and the fish balls are pre-cooked so you can add them in later.
2) Let it simmer for at least 20 minutes in medium heat.
3) Add watercress and fish balls in and simmer for an additional 10 minutes before serving.