Osmanthus & Water Chestnut Kueh

Osmanthus is a highly perfumed flower, and it is well known that you can smell it nine miles away! It is a deliciously fragrant flowers which carry the scent of ripe peaches or apricots. In Chinese cuisine, the flowers are also used to produce osmanthus-scented jam (桂花酱), sweet cakes (桂花糕), dumplings, soups, and even liquor (桂花酒).


Usually when we went for dim sum during the weekend, my hubby will order the water chestnut kueh which he loves it alot. But then this is slightly different because of the Osmanthus fragrant infused into the kueh. It's rather a refreshing taste and it's up to individual whether you like that peachy or orange fragrant. Thanks Mandy from M4M to share with us this recipe.

Ingredients:
100g Water Chestnut Flour
1/2 Tablespoon Potato Starch
800ml Water
2 Teaspoons Dry Osmanthus
60g Chopped Water Chestnut(about 4)
200g Rock Sugar
1 Teaspoon Oil

Methods:
1. Boil water and add osmanthus flower reduce heat to simmer for 3 minutes, add in the rock sugar and stir till dissolved.
2. Cover and infused for 5 minutes.
3. Transfer about 250ml of flower tea(without the flowers) to a medium bowl and let it cool in a pot of ice water.
4. Before adding in chopped water chestnut to the pot of HOT flower tea, remove 1/2 of the Osmanthus flower in it and set aside.
5. After the bowl of flower tea and cooled down, stir in water chestnut flour and potato starch and sieve it into the HOT flower tea solution.
6. Keep stirring the mixture on low heat until slightly thicken like gluey form.
7. Stir in the oil and turn off the heat.
8. Pour into a 8" greased square tin and steam on HIGH heat for 20 minutes. (remove the cover and wipe off water every 5 minutes)
9. Cool it and put in the fridge to chill and unmould.
10. Serve it chilled.

Notes:
a) You can get the water chestnut flour from most of the supermarket.

Mango Cheesecake

Hello...all my blogger friends who had given me support for coming to and from to visit this Tea-time Delight blog of mine. So sorry that that I had being neglected it for so long. After a long break, I had decided to try out those recipes that I had being piling up for testing.....Hope we can continue to share and exchange our Tea-time experience.


I saw this recipe from one of the library books that I had got hold. Immediately, I had marked out a few interesting and tempting recipes which I would like to try them out. First of all, I choose to try this Mango Cheesecake because I simply loves the taste and fragrant of Mango. This cheesecake is sort of light without those strong cheesy taste, it's also refreshing with the mango fragrant and consists of chewy and Q texture because of the Gelatine.

Ingredients For Biscuit Base:
120g Plain Digestive Biscuit, crushed
120g Salted Butter, melted
Filling:
250g Philadelphia Cream Cheese
250ml Dairy Whipping Cream
2 Egg Yolks
160g Castor Sugar
150ml Full Cream Milk
1 Tablespoon Lemon Juice
2 1/2 Tablespoons Gelatine Powder
5 Tablespoons Of Water
2 Mangoes, peeled and diced

Methods:
1. Combine the biscuit crumbs and melted butter while it is still hot and mix well.
2. Pour into a 8"(20cm) round spring form baking tin, press till firm and put into the fridge to chill for more than 1/2 hour.
3. Beat the cream cheese at medium speed until soft.
4. In another bowl, lightly beat dairy whipping cream at medium speed for 3 minutes then add it into the cream cheese mixture and beat till well combined.
5. Mixed gelatine powder and 5 tablespoons water and double boiled until dissolved then set aside.
6. Double-boil Egg yolks, caster sugar, milk and lemon juice until sugar dissolve(stir while double-boiling, because not to let it boiled).
7. Add in dissolved gelatine mixture into the egg mixture and stir till combine.
8. Pour the egg mixture into the cream cheese and beat well with a whisk. (don't worry if you see some lumpy cheese in the mixture it will not affect the texture)
9. Arrange the mango cubes onto the biscuit base and pour in cream cheese mixture. Put into the fridge and chill for at least 2 hours or over night.

Notes:
a) I used 100ml Full Cream Milk + 50ml Fresh Mango Juice to enhance the Mango flavour.

Herbal Soup For Cough

I had being coughing badly for the past 3 weeks and it seems that all the medicine or herbs that I had used to take before all lost their effect. So after being drag for so long, I decided to give this Herbal Soup For Cough a try. You might feel...Err.... "Crocodile Meat", how does it taste like? Friendly speaking, this soup smells and taste fishy which i guess is because of the Crocodile meat. But after all it's really a good soup to relieves cough and strengthens function of respiratory system. Just like what they said in Chinese(良药苦口) although it's might taste awful or bitter but it is definitely good for health.


Ingredients:
2 Pieces(30-50g) Dried Crocodile Meat(鳄鱼肉)
20g Nan Bei Xin(南北杏)
6 Pieces Of Dried Huai Shan(淮山)
10g Chuan Bei Mu(川贝母)
1/2 Piece Of Chen Pi(陈皮)
5 Red Dates(红枣)
2 - 3 Dried Figs(无花果)

Methods:
1. Rinse all the herbs and place it in a double boiler.
2. Add in 1 litre of boiling water and double-boiled for about 2 - 3 hours and serve.

A Day Into Confinement Dish

Today I am in mood of cooking some confinement dishes because I had this craving of eating this Black Vinegar Trotter which I had never eaten during my Confinement period. I started this craving when I saw this dish on my best friend Beechoo's baby full month celebration. I was tempting to give it a try but then I was afraid of the vinegar fragrant and taste.

But after much struggle and convince from my best pal Tracy I decided to give it a go... Wow.. and it really turns out great, thanks Tracy for introducing me to try cooking on this wonderful dish. I knew there are a lot of different ways to cook this dish depending on individual. Some just add sweeten black vinegar, some use both sweet and black vinegar while other add water and rock sugar/brown sugar. But no matter what are the ways that you choose to cook this dish, I believed it sure turns out great. And old folks believed that Black Vinegar purifies blood and cleanses the arteries of stale blood while Old ginger drives out the wind in the body. In order to prevent the vinegar being too acidic & therefore weakening the stomach, the glutinous ligaments and collagen of the pig's trotters are to serve as a lubricant.

Ingredients:
1 Pig's Trotter(ask for the front trotter)
1 Big Piece Of Old Ginger(about 300g)
1 Handful Of Black Bean
1 Small Bottle Of Black Vinegar, 375ml
1 1/2 Bottle Of Water(use the same vinegar bottle)
2 Tablespoons Sesame Oil
1 - 2 Tablespoon Rock Sugar/Brown Sugar
2 - 3 Hard Boiled Eggs

Methods:
1. Peel, wash and cut the old ginger into big pieces then flatten slightly.
2. Rinse the black beans and pat dry then set aside.
3. Heat up sesame oil in the preheated large claypot to saute old ginger till fragrant then add in the black beans and stir for a few minutes.
4. Pour in vinegar and water, covered and bring to a boil. Reduce to low heat, cook for about 1 hour remove from heat and soak the rest for over night.
5. Rinse the pig's trotter and cut into convenient pieces, wash and blanch into boiling water.
6. Remove, rinsed and stir-fry with some sesame oil in a preheated dry wok for a while.
7. Lastly bring the soaked vinegar soup back to boil, add in pre-fried trotter pieces and cooked for 20 minutes then add in the hard boiled eggs.
8. Continue to simmer for another 20 minutes then add in sugar to taste.
9. Remove from heat, soak the trotter pieces until tenders and the flavour has be absorbed. Serve hot.

Notes:
a) You can choose to add in more or less Ginger depend on your preference.
b) You can choose to cook the Black Vinegar Soup 1 day ahead before adding the Pig trotter or you can cook all the ingredients together and eat on the day itself or next day.
c) The amount of sugar added also depend on individual taste, you can omit it as well.

This is another famous and must dish during the confinement, Chicken With Rice Wine Residue. The aroma was great and it goes well with white rice.

Ingredients:
4-5 Chicken Wings, cut into half
1 Tablespoon Of Shredded Ginger
2 Tablespoon Sesame Oil
1/2 Tablespoon of Red Grain Rice Wine Residue
1/2 - 3/4 Cup Glutinous Rice Wine
Marinade:
1 Tablespoon Red Grain Rice Wine Reside
1 Teaspoon Sesame Oil
1 Teaspoon Glutinous Rice Wine/Cooking Wine

Methods:
1. Rinse chicken wings and cut into pieces. Season with the marinade well and marinated for about 30 minutes.
2. Heat up 2 Tablespoons of sesame oil then add in shredded ginger and fry till fragrant then add in the wine residue.
3. Add in the marinated chicken pieces, stir-fry till well combined and aromatic then pour in the glutinous rice wine and stir well.
4. Then simmer with cover over low heat for 5 minutes or till cooked through. Remove and serve hot.