Homemade Dumplings

Homemade Dumplings

first of all we wanted to say, thank you to all of those who have commented and tweeted about our brunch matrix post. We love sharing our meals and look forward to sharing more!

So its been a while now, but we need to share what we did on Chinese New Year Day. Actually, its something May has done her entire life with her family and I'm certainly all in for. I got my mom interested too and soon enough had a dumpling-making lunch up in the burbs!

Being Cantonese, my family is used to many layers of flavours and dishes so naturally my mom asked "oh! so we're only making dumplings? that's it?" yes, that is how May's family does it on Chinese New Year day; nice and simple.


may made the dough from regular flour and water the night before. It sat in the fridge and it had to be kneaded.

then shaping the dough into a log shape for cutting up into individual peices.

after a one-punch flatten to each peice, using a small pin roller, we rolled softly while rotating the dough to get an even surface and circular shape.

while some of us flattened and rolled the dough, others were adding the filling and closing up the dumplings.

here is a photo of my mom filling and shaping the dumplings. the filling is made with ground pork, long bean, ginger, five spice powder, an egg and salt

we tried different ways to close the dumplings; everyone added their own opinion and traditions but the goal is to have it look like a delicate "purse" with a combination of gathering and pinching.

according to my mom, the one i made was the prettiest. -seriously, mine as in gabe's! wuhoo!

and here are the dumplings after they've been boiled in water! you know they're done when they float to the top. May told us that traditionally you drink the broth after your meal too. We had the dumplings with a simple dark vinegar.

so what do you think? we had a lot of fun and so did my dad, mom and grandmother. I have to say, its pretty awesome to cook with your entire family; all three generations. I admit, the palm of my left hand was kinda sore the next day but I did get into a nice rhythm while churning out the dumplings. But they were so tasty! and well worth it. We'll need to do this more often than just on Chinese New Year.

year of the rabbit

year of the rabbit

we wanted to share some chinese new year goodies! and I bet you didn't know May is a rabbit!


and how perfect is it to have some legendary white rabbit candies? Its the one right in the middle of our candy try. A soft/chewy condensed milk candy is a must for every year, not just the year of the rabbit.


the cookie dumpling is one of my favourites. my mom always knows the best place to buy them, they have a crispy cookie shell and is filled with sugar, peanuts, coconut and sesame! The yellow jello-like yummies are is a "goh" or cake, that is made of water chestnuts.


these are turnip cakes that i pan fried for lunch the other day. the Li family likes to dabble a little worchester sauce on it, we often get a weird look from dim sum ladies when we do that.


and finally, we have here "lean goh", which is the new year cake. It is pudding cake that is made from glutenous rice flour and a specific bar of brown sugar. It is then steamed in bamboo leaves and guess what? My grandma made this! unfortunately i was out of town, so i didn't watch her make it this year.

on behalf of May, we'd like to wish you all a happy chinese new year! Its going to be a great year! We know it.

oh and for those patiently waiting for the best of brunch post, its coming! its my fault, i'll post it next i promise! =]

mama's cooking

mama's cooking

Hi! Did I tell you I was in Beijing? Well I was, and I got to have my mom's home-cooking! Here, she made a Chinese dumpling-ish thing. Hmmm...

To make the dough, you need some flour and water. There's no measuring tools in Chinese cooking so you just need to feel it out; add a little bit of water at a time to see if it's enough. The dough should be mixed to a point when it doesn't stick to your hand, and there's no flour pieces flaking out. The stuffing here, we used ground pork and string beans; an egg, soy sauce and sesame oil was added in there too. When the stuffing is ready, roll out the dough, put the stuffing in it and secure the edges. To cook it, you need a flat pan. Remember to flip the dumpling after a few minutes till both sides are golden.

When it's done, it's crispy on the outside and soft and juicy on the inside!!

happy mooncake!

happy mooncake!

tonight is mid autumn moon festival. i remember when we were kids, my parents would take us outside and we'd put candles in paper lanterns and play with them on the driveway. I used to twirl the lantern on the stick, round and round.

lunch for three

lunch for three

At Richmond court w/ Richard & Anna. Club sandwich, garlic gailan, seafood fried rice, shredded duck vermicelli

a post to catch up

a post to catch up

I was sorting through some photos, and it hit me that there were so many great meals we had that hasn't been posted, so this is going to a rather long post.

We heard about Konichiwa from the Owner of Sanko when Gabe was looking for the sesame grinder. The owner said they have the most authentic Japanese ramen there. I've been craving for good ramen for ages! We finally went to Konichiwa with Celine and Jin a month ago. The food is really great. We ordered ramen and katsu-don, and both dishes tasted very authentic and home-y. The interior decorations are also quite cute. You can tell that it's a Japanese operated restaurant right when you walked into the place.

I love french crepes, but I've never had eastern european crepes before we went to Krepesz in Kensington Market. The crepe there is quite different from the french crepes, these ones are a lot thinner and lighter. I had a sour cherry crepe (pictured above), Amy had a fruit salad crepe with ice-cream, and Gabe had the chicken stew crepe, which I thought was the best out of the 3. I'm definitely going back to try more of the savoury crepes.


Scoop & Bean is just a 2 minute walk from where we used to live in the Annex. We wanted to go there because we read on Blog TO that they serve ice-cream in coffee (what's the proper italian term for this?) , it's my two favourite things combined together, how could I resist! When we got there, I decided to get a milk shake, and Gabe got a raspberry ice-cream with white chocolate and some sort of nuts, oh and a cookie plus a latte. I like the ice-cream there, but they only serve vanilla ice-cream in coffee, so I thought that's a little boring, hence didn't pick my original choice.

On a side note, I should really move back in the Annex after I graduate, there's too many good cafes and restaurants that I'm not willing to give up on.

The last thing I got to mentions is a home made breakfast, but I guess you can make it as a side dish/snack too. What's looking very peculiar in the picture above is chinese steamed egg (蛋羹), or what's known as chawanmushi in Japanese (茶碗蒸し). The basics of this dish is egg and milk, one egg would require 1.5 times of milk or water in volume. You can put in pieces of vegetables in there too, but here I made it for breakfast, so I skipped the vegetables. Steam for about 15mins. Sesame oil and soya sauce was put on top for flavouring.

cooking for our family

cooking for our family

well technically its my family, but may pretty much is like family at the Li house. I dont really know why but we decided to cook dinner for the family and it was definately a conscious decision to make it a chinese dinner, since that's my mom's preference, always. she's a lot pickier when it comes to western food, so i'd rather not take a chance.


so we decided to make things we know we can make. no risks, no gambles. if you have a chance to cook in momma Li's kitchen, you cannot take any chances. haha. here we've started to marinate the chicken wings with chopped garlic, green onion, ginger, soya sauce and honey. Following the short marinade, we coat with panko flakes to soak up the flavours and crisp up in the oven.


may is cutting the long string green beans to make her signature dish. pan fried together with ground pork and chili bean sauce, this is a classic dish and hands down, her favourite to make and to eat.


in addition to those two dishes, we had other dishes too of course 1) a crispy shrimp dish with bits of garlic, chili, green onion. 2) a spicy mushroom tofu stirfry 3) classic stewed tomato with scrambled egg.


here's the string bean and pork dish up close


and here's the crispy chicken wings


and arguably the best part, may made some awesome cookies. we've actually made them again this weekend too.. they are sooooo gooooood. recipe here

spring things

spring things

i know you are all pretty excited about spring and the weather. May and I have been going out to eat more often.. and have been buying flowers for our place too!



I stayed in markham for one night last week and came back to find this delicious lunch. vermcelli with bak choi and chinese sausage with a light spicy sauce. yay!



at the first sign of warmth, we bolted out to go try harbord's fish n' chips. we've heard good things before. my verdict is that the batter is amazing.. but everything could have been seasoned more. it was still a little too cold to be sitting outside.. but it was still fun =]



and in the continous quest to finish the bag of roti, we made quesadillias with leftover ham, red peppers, onions, sundried tomatoes and cheese



and we made our way to kay & young's for some fresh Ranaculus for our castle





happy spring everyone!

pancakes and rice

pancakes and rice

I like waking up early and giving myself more time to enjoy my breakfast in the morning. Gabe tried to wake up early too, when we were living together, because he knew having breakfast with me would make me very happy.

That morning I had pancakes and Nutella, so perfect together!


Shirley gave me some rice that she brought back from Amsterdam, (there's no proper Chinese grocery stores here in Rome) so I was really excited to make some fried rice! It's a quick fix of my Chinese food craving.

I've been making a lot of soup lately..it's too cold to have sandwiches for lunch these days : )

Got any soup recipes you could share with me?