Si Chuan (四川) Holiday - Culture (Part 2 of 7)

I'm not a great fan of the historically rich cultural scenes in China. However, watching them on television or reading about them in books, magazines or the newspapers is very different from seeing them with my own eyes. It can be truly fascinating - really.



Geographically, Jiu Zhai Gou (九寨沟) is located very close to Tibet so naturally, there's a good mix of both Tibetan and Chinese cultures being adopted by the minorities there. One such display would be the costumes wore by them.









Display of more traditional tribal costumes












The Three Kingdoms (三国演义) cartoon figurines - a creative way to rouse the younger generation's interest in China's rich history






Sugar Blow Art - The artist in the background heats up the thick sugar syrup and shapes it into various figurines by blowing into the hot sugar syrup. It is very much like glass blowing.





Paper cutting art - it's amazing to see how these intricate patterns are cut out from a piece of paper by using only a pair of scissors













Chinese Zither (古筝) musician playing at an outdoor cafe







Modern Chinese Calligraphy Painting (现代毛笔画)













Drinking Gourds (葫芦) on sale at a roadside stall at Jing-Li (古街锦里) Street in Cheng Du










Clay Moulding artist hard at work













Silk preparation













Chinese Archery roadside stall at Jing-Li Street (古街锦里)









This man who sells calligraphy brushes dipped the brush in plain water and wrote on a piece of paper. When the wet characters dries up, he writes over it again. Smart?










Er-Hu (二胡) performance at Cheng Du










Traditional Chinese Opera performance (京剧)













Hand Puppet Performance








Traditional Comedy Performance

Hand Shadow Performance





The art of Face-Changing (四川川剧变脸) is unique only to Si Chuan. According to our tour guide, the skill of Face Changing is regulated by the law in China such that only local Si Chuan residents have the right to learn this skill and it cannot be imparted to outsiders.



Intricate stone figurine forming the handle for one side of a large stone urn












Huge joss stick offerings to the deities















Large chinese knot used to decorate a building

Si Chuan (四川) Holiday - Food (Part 1 of 7)

I decided to make the Si Chuan province of China my last holiday destination for the year. This was quite a last minute decision so after much desperate call attempts to the various tour agencies, my friend and I finally found a tour from Chan Brothers with vacancies for the Jiu Zhai Gou (九寨沟) tour. With absolutely no prior research or reading up on the destination, we have no idea what are the must-see, must-do, must-eat or must-buy in Si Chuan. It's a 100% Rest & Relax holiday!

With hundreds of photos taken during the trip, I have splitted them up into seven parts, with the first part devoted to the various 'delicacies' I saw and ate in Si Chuan.

Without further ado:

First meal in ChengDu (成都) - Mushroom with Rice Crackers (锅粑)
Well, nice presentation but not exactly my type of food. The rice crackers should be consumed fast otherwise it'll get mushy after being soaked in the gravy for some minutes.

Deep-fried Fish in Sweet & Sour Sauce - Tastes so-so as I do not really fancy fried fish

Glutinous Ball with Meat Fillings - Looks totally gross but very nice! The glutinous rice soaked up the gravy nicely and the meat filling delighted the carnivore in me! As the saying goes "Never judge a book by it's cover"

Fat, Juicy pomegranate bursting with Vitamins B & C

Fresh fruits, nuts and preserved fruits on sale at a roadside stall

Cold noodles - one that tastes like Soba while the other like Udon

Fresh water steamed fish with lots of bones - anyone?

Literally a bucket of rice - 米桶

Fatty Meat - Woooo....looks totally fattening to me but it's one of the delicacies in China where meat dishes are uncommon

Plain Noodle Soup - From the looks of it, it's nothing special. But it's totally heavenly during the trip where we were served mainly rice which cooled down so fast once it was served and was already cold by the time it reaches our mouth

Emperor Chicken with Gingko nuts - Another heavenly dish featuring meat! The gingko nuts used in this soup is a bit bitter but it complements nicely with the chicken.

Chicken Feet Skin - We were that close to eating meat...

Pancake appetiser - Sweet (left) & Salty (right)

Mushroom Hot Pot (菌火锅) - It's essentially steamboat with many different species of native mushrooms. Simple? You are wrong. After this meal, I finally understood the art of eating steamboat. It's not simply to dump all the food into the steamboat, but mastering the technique of which food to put into the steamboat and tasting the soup first before adding more food into it. For every different mushrooms added, the soup tastes really different!

The different kinds of native mushrooms added to our hot pot

I only liked the long beans and carrot slices

Kong Bao Diced Chicken (宫宝鸡丁) - I can totally identify with this dish

Sauteed Lettuce - Nice to look at but somehow, not yet that tempting for me to want to taste it.

Aloe Vera Appetiser - This is a cold dish which proves to be rather refreshing

Sweet and Sour Pork Chop - Another dish which identifies with the Singaporeans

Crispy Duck Skin (脆皮鸭) & Bun (曼头) - The crispy duck skin is not the same as those served in Singapore. It is really fattening but I guess the locals like to serve fatty meat to their guests since meat is a rather rare food fare.

Steamed Raisin Buns

Herbal Buns (曼头) - Looks innocently nice but one bite into it and ohhhh....for those who hates the chinese herbal taste, stay away from it


Steamed Egg with Diced Ham - Two Thumbs Up!!

慈母锅 - It's steamboat with the inner round pot filled with hot & spicy soup (麻辣汤) and the outer pot filled with chicken soup





Hot & Spicy Beef Noodles (麻辣牛肉面) - For those Singaporeans who love to eat spicy food, don't ever brag about your tolerance level for spicy food in Si Chuan. My friend ended up with pulsating burning lips only after a few bites into this potent looking noodles which we found at a local food restaurant

Schokolade von Österreich

Do you know what is the "must-buy" from Austria or Germany?

Answer: Schokolade - also known as Chocolate :)

It was really fortunate for me to be still in contact with some ex-colleagues both from Austria and Singapore. For the former, they'll bring me newly launched chocolates or limited edition chocolates from Austria whenever they visit Singapore while the latter never fails to bring back my favourite chocolates whenever they are there on business trips.

Limited Edition Christmas Chocolates from Lindt

Italian Chocolate Cookies

Giotto - downsized edition of Ferrero Rocher without the roasted hazelnut inside, but completely addictive

My all-time craze: Hanuta (creamy chocolate with roasted hazelnut chunks in it, sandwiched between two crispy wafers ~ heavenly~)

I'm given strict instruction to mention the following "close friend" in this blog - Mr. Tan Ngee Hou for his generous contribution of Giotto. Vielen Dank!

More Nihon Snacks

Nihon Snacks 1: Following the treat with the limited edition Green Tea Pocky, I found the limited edition - Chocolate Cream Pocky at Bishan NTUC. It costs a whopping $4 but if it's as nice as the former flavour, it's definitely a worthwhile buy!


Full of anticipation, I opened the Pocky pack and found each pocky sticks wrapped in a thick coating of cream chocolate. A review I read in the papers claimed that the Chocolate Cream flavour is less sweet than the Green Tea flavour. But one bite into it and the verdict is clear - Green Tea Pocky win hands down, no doubt about it! The cream flavour is rather heavy and much too sweet. It would have been better if it's dark chocolate instead. At least the Green Tea Pocky has a tinge of bitter green tea flavour in it to sort of balance off the sweetness from the chocolate.


So the next time I make another purchase of $4 Pocky, the choice is clear.


Nihon Snacks 2: Some days back, my mum received a small box of Japanese Raspberry Chocolate Crunch from my friend. As always, the nice photos on the packaging box already tells a tempting story of what lies within. One bite into it and it tastes more like Raspberry Yoghurt Crunch. The rich raspberry flavour just explodes in my mouth and my tongue kept telling me that it's Yoghurt, not Chocolate. Considering that I'm a more Chocolatery person, this Raspberry Crunch is really not bad!

I Swear

Alicia has grown so much over the past few weeks. She has learnt to keep her gaze at one moving object, turn her head to look at the sights or respond to sounds around her, mesmerized by the colourful photos in magazines, blabber baby talk when encouraged and most importantly, gesture with her fingers. Of which her favourite would have to be:

I'm not so sure she knows what this gesture means yet....

Raspberry Kiwi Sponge Cake

I had originally wanted to bake a Strawberry Shortcake but ended up with Raspberry Kiwi Sponge Cake. It's unbelieveable that I could not manage to find strawberries at either the nearby fruit stalls or NTUC. Is it common to run out of strawberries by mid-afternoon in Singapore? I also had some difficulties finding the recipe online. The only recipe I got looks rather suspicious as the instruction asks me to pat some butter crumbs on the base of a baking pan before adding the whipped egg whites...hmmm...

In the end, I managed to merge two other recipes I found online and made do with the raspberries and kiwi in the fridge.

This is also my first attempt at making a cake with whipped cream. I started at 4pm and only finished at 7.30pm, a whopping 3 hours 30 minutes! Not sure if this is considered slow or fast or normal speed?

In case anyone has a recipe to a foolproof strawberry shortcake, please send me a copy. Thank you! :)

Raspberry Kiwi Sponge Cake

Ingredients:

(Sponge Cake)

4 eggs, room temperature

206g caster sugar i used only 150g of sugar

4g salt

140g cake flour

30g salad oil i used canola oil

30g fresh milk

(Raspberry Whipped Cream)
300ml heavy whipping cream
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbs granulated white sugar i used slightly less
1/2 cup lightly sweetened raspberry puree i used whatver i could squeeze out

(Raspberry Puree)

340g of frozen raspberries i only had ~100g and mine's not frozen

1/4 cup granulated white sugar i used slightly less

1/2 tsp of freshly squeezed lemon juice (optional)

(Fruit Fillings)

remaining raspberries from the box

1 kiwi

Method (Sponge Cake):
(1) Sift the cake flour, set aside. Line a 20cm round pan, set aside. Preheat oven to 180°C. Position rack at the lower bottom of the oven.

(2) With an electric mixer, whisk the eggs, sugar and salt on high speed for about 5 to 7 mins, until the batter doubles in volume and is ribbon-like. Turn to low speed and whisk for another 1 to 2 mins. Whisking at low speed helps to stabilise the air bubbles in the batter. (My handheld mixer do not have high and low speed. But for me to achieve the ribbon-like consistency, it took about 10 - 12 mins)

(3) Add sifted cake flour into the batter. With a spatula, gently fold in the flour until well blended.

(4) With a spatula, mix about 1/3 of the batter with the salad oil in a separate bowl. Fold in this mixture into the remaining batter. This method will help to ensure the oil will be fully blended and at the same time not deflat the batter.

(5) Add in fresh milk and fold in gently with the spatula.

(6) Pour the batter into the pan and bake for 35 mins or until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean. Unmould and cool completely. (The cake was still wobbly after 35 mins of baking. I decided to add an additional 25 mins of baking time to it and it turned out just nice)


Method (Raspberry Puree):
(1) Thaw the frozen raspberries in a large fine meshed strainer suspended over a large bowl.

(2) Once thawed, force the juice from the berries by gently pressing the berries with the back of the spoon.

(3) The raspberry seeds should remain in the strainer. Throw away these seeds.

(4) To the strained juice, stir in lemon juice (optional) and sugar.


Method (Rapsberry Whipped Cream):
(1) In a large mixing bowl, stir together the whipping cream, vanilla extract and sugar.

(2) Cover and chill the bowl and beaters for at least 30 mins.

(3) When chilled, beat the mixture until soft peaks form.

(4) Add the sweetened raspberry puree, a little at a time, and beat just until stiff peaks form when the beater is raised.

(5) Taste and fold in more sugar or puree, if needed.


Method (Assemble the cake):
(1) Slice the cake horizontally into 2 layers. Place one of the cut cake layer side down on a cake plate

(2) Spread the whipped cream over the layer.

(3) Arrange sliced kiwis to cover the whipped cream layer.

(4) Fill with some more whipped cream. Top with the other cake layer, cut side up.

(5) Spread the whipped cream over the top and side of the cake. Decorate as desired.





Verdict:

(+) The whipped cream tastes heavenly! As the cake is a little dry, the whipped cream complements the cake nicely.


(-) The whipped cream started to melt when I'm almost done applying it onto the cake. Perhaps I should have applied it in an air-con room or simply apply it faster. So you can see in the photos that the piped cream underneath the raspberries have already lost it's 'form'.
(-) The sugar quantity given in the recipe would be way too sweet! I was lucky to reduce it to 150g only.
(-) With absolutely no experience in applying the whipped cream on the cake, mine looks like one done by a child.
(-) I tried to sprinkle roasted almond flakes on the side of the cake and it proved to be quite a challenge to try to sprinkle the almonds and maintain my balance of the cake at the same time.


(=) Overall, I would say it's quite a successful attempt!
(=) I hope to get another recipe which gives a softer cake texture.

A Pacifier That Tells The Temperature

Which is your preferred way of measuring the body temperature of a baby or toddler?

(A) Stick the thermometer up their butt hole?
- OUCH!

(B) Place the thermometer under their armpit?
- can't stop them from fidgeting?

(C) Put the thermometer into their mouth?
- worried that they might bite and crack the mercury bulb?

(D) Place the thermometer into their ear?
- worried that they might jerk their head suddenly?

(E) Have them suck on the thermometer willingly without the danger of mercury poisoning?
- sounds too good to be true?


Tah-Dah! Presenting.......the 2-in-1 Thermometer Pacifier!




The usage is simple: pop the pacifier into the baby's mouth, press the red button at the back, the pacifier starts measuring the body temperature and when the temperature stabilizes, it'll issue a soft beeping sound.

Kiss those conventional methods of temperature measurement goodbye!