Silvia’s Italian Masterclass (2024)

Silvia’s Italian Masterclass is the new cooking show from food writer Silvia Colloca. The new show premiered on February 17, 2024 on Channel 10 (every Saturday at around 12.30pm) and 10play.

Loveholic 撲火 – A-Lin

New song from A-Lin, another beautiful ballad. Only audio version available at the moment, waiting for MV…

【廚娘香Q秀】Daikon Puffs 蘿蔔絲酥餅／天蠶酥

This is a Cantonese dim sum pastry made with Chinese or Japanese white radish, or luobo 蘿蔔 in Chinese, daikon 大根 in Japanese. There are basically two variations of the dish, pan-fried (蘿蔔絲餅), or deep-fried (蘿蔔絲酥餅). The deep-fried variation can also be baked if you so desired. Traditionally they are just shaped into rounds when homemade but in the following videos we are seeing the deep-fried version with the fancy shaping sold commercially as 天蠶酥 or Divine Silkworm Pupa Pastries as they look like silkworm pupae. This type of pastry shaping is known as 直酥 or parallel layering (please see my post on Chinese Flaky Pastry) and they also happened to demonstrate the 大包酥 large-scale laminating method (in the first video) and 小包酥 small-scale laminating method (in the second video) respectively which are very useful if you want to learn how to wrap Chinese pastries using the 直酥 parallel layering technique.

【料理美食王】Taiwanese Mooncakes 蛋黃酥、滷肉綠豆椪

The Mid-Autumn Festival this year falls on September 10, 2022. What do you eat on this festival? Mooncakes, of course! The Cantonese mooncakes are very common commercially and much more difficult and also time consuming to make at home and you also need a mooncake mould to shape the mooncake. However the Taiwanese versions are much more easier to make as they are made with the Chinese flaky pastry. Below are two cooking videos from 2016 demonstrating the making of two traditional Taiwanese mooncakes, one sweet (red bean filling) and the other savoury (mung bean filling) by Taiwanese food writer/instructor, 蔡季芳 (阿芳老師).

【Gardening】Aroids

I have been getting into aroids recently. In the past, I did have a fruit salad plant, Monstera deliciosa, but I have to get rid of it as it was getting too big and took up too much space in my little balcony. Another reason was there were already a couple of this plant in the garden beds around the courtyard downstairs in my apartment block, so I can still enjoy this plant without having another one taking up space in my balcony. I also had a rabbit’s foot plant, Maranta leuconeura ‘Kerchoviana’, for many years but it rotted last Spring which was sad…

【廚娘香Q秀】Taiwanese Savoury Sponge Cake 經典鹹蛋糕

This is a type of old fashioned Chinese-style savoury cake filled with a thin layer of pork floss or minced pork, soy sauce and fried shallots that is steamed traditionally as Asian kitchens don’t have ovens in the old days. However this type of steamed savoury cake is now rarely seen. I came across this cooking video with a new version that is baked and rolled up into a Swiss roll…

Ways of Shaping Different Kinds of Bread 麵包的各種塑形方法

Came across this video of shaping different kinds of bread demonstrated by the co-owner and head baker of Runner & Stone in New York, Peter Endriss. Very useful for beginners!

【料理美食王】Spring Onion Pancakes 蔥油餅

Came across this video of making the savoury Spring Onion (Scallion) Pancakes from Taiwanese food writer/instructor, 蔡季芳 (阿芳老師). The episode was from the Taiwanese cooking show, 料理美食王, in 2016. However no English subtitles available for the video but very good demonstration of how to make the pancakes, so I’m posting it here for references…

Temporary Bodyguard 臨時保鏢 (Audio Drama OST) + Folding Napkin Bunny

I am reading a couple of new Chinese BL novels currently, one of course is the latest on-going 188 series, Alpha Predator 頂級掠食者 by Shui Qian Cheng 水千丞, and the other I’ve just finished reading is the newest novel San Fu 三伏 by Wu Zhe 巫哲. San Fu is another campus BL, and to be honest I really did not like the spoiled rich brat Jiang Kuo 江闊 in the beginning but luckily warmed to him by the end! The reason I started to read San Fu was because I found out that Jiang Cheng 蔣丞 from her other novel, Saye 撒野, would make an appearance as a lawyer in it, and happy to say Gu Fei 顧飛 also appeared briefly at the end!

The Light Within 初心的向陽 – Chen Linong 陳立農

A new song by the up-and-coming Taiwanese singer, Chen Linong 陳立農, with the music composed especially for him by JJ Lin 林俊傑. JJ also produced the song so you can hear that the song is very JJ-style. After a few listens, I’m liking the song more and more…