Tea Smoked Salmon

Ingredients
Smoking mix:
2 cups (250g) soft brown sugar shopping list
2 cups (250g) long grain rice shopping list
2 cups (85g) jasmine tea leaves shopping list
vegetable oil shopping list
4 salmon fillets, skin on
salt, to season

Put the sugar, rice and tea leaves into a bowl and mix together. Line a deep pan or wok with silver foil and pour in the mixture. Fit a trivet or rack on top.
Place onto the hob to heat up.
Season the salmon with salt
Then once smoking a little, add the salmon to the trivet or rack.
Drizzle with a little olive oil and cover with a tight fitting lid. Leave to smoke on the hob for 8-12 minutes depending on the size of the fish.
Tips
Tea-smoking generates a lot of smoke. Be sure that you open the windows and get as much ventilation as you can.
You can use any tea or any herbs for the mix.

I am thinking this weekend :D.

Hunan Style Lemon Chicken

Super easy, will try this weekend!

3 large chicken breasts, boned and
skinned, cut in half
1/4 c. flour
1 egg
1/4 tsp. baking soda
2 Tbsp. cornstarch
2 Tbsp. canola (or other vegetable) oil
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. soy sauce

Mix flour, egg, baking soda, cornstarch, oil, salt and soy sauce. Dip chicken into batter and fry until golden. Drain. Cut chicken crosswise into 1/2-in. slices. Arrange on a heated platter. Keep warm. Pour Lemon Sauce over and garnish with lemon slices.

Lemon Sauce
1/2 c. water
1/2 tsp. lemon zest
1/4 c. lemon juice
1/4 c. honey
1 Tbsp. catsup
1/2 tsp. chicken bouillon
1/2 tsp. salt
1 clove garlic, minced
1 Tbsp. cornstarch
1 Tbsp. cold water

Heat water, lemon zest, lemon juice, honey, catsup, chicken bouillon, salt and garlic to boiling. Mix cornstarch and water and stir in. Cook and stir for 30 seconds or until thickened.

(Shrimp) Dumplings! With Love From China

I returned from a trip to Beijing last week. The entire experience was exhilarating, but the food experience completely blew me away :D. Upon my return I of course had to do quickly try out some recipes before I forgot how wonderful it all tasted. First in line was dumplings!

Super easy!

I made about 6/7 dumplings.

Buy spring roll wrap thats available everywhere if you dont want to go through the trouble of making the dough and cut into relatively small squares.

Take some shrimps / chicken / minced meat (or a mixture of them).

Add soy sauce to taste.

Add sambal oelek (hot sauce with whole chile flakes in it still) to taste. This is the south asian in me, to make it taste more like a Nepali momo.

Add fresh cilantros.

Little bit of onion if you like, very small amount.

And a little bit of garlic.

Put all of this into the food processor (moshla machine I call it) and pulse it untill its all mixed and everything is in small tiny pieces. Its better if it isnt a total paste because the consistency I feel is better if its smaller pieces than a paste.

All done in 50 seconds!

Then take one table spoon of this mix and place it at the centre of the square spring roll wrap. If you want a thicker skin you can make it with 2/3 wraps if you like.

Pick up 2 diagonal corners and fold them in. This is somewhat like you how make paper fans or in case of South Asian girls, how you do the front kuchi of the saree.

Youll need your fingers wet to make it all stick and stay.

Put them all in the steamer now and its ready in 10 minutes! I used the regular bamboo steamer bought from a Chinese grocery here in Stockholm.

Heres the photo. Dumpling away. Its soo good.

Next in line, Hunan tea oil chicken - but I have to find tea oil first for that :D, Xinjian BBQ lamb and chicken wings - I have all the materials for the marinade for this already :D!

And I just found a recipe online right now for lemon Hunan chicken that will also be tried soon.