Today's menu at my home

Lately I have been through one of my newest book, The Breath of Wok and some of my old recipe books. I tried 3 new recipes each day. Mostly come from the Breath of Wok. I love that book! All of the recipes that I have tried so far always comes out so tasty! What I love about it the most is the clear instruction. Like how many minute you have to stir fry the garlic first then how many minutes you should not touch the meat yet while they are browning. Awesome book.

We normally eat Chinese food but off course there are days when I cook something else. Just yesterday I cooked a couple dishes from the breath of Wok also and the dessert yesterday was tutti frutti ice cream! I made that myself with my ice cream maker!

So, this is an example of our dinner in our home:

1. Stir-Fried Shrimp Strings


2. Sweet and sour ribs

3. Mu-Shu Pork
4. Slow cook Red Bell Peppers

You can get the recipes for Sweet and sour ribs, Mu-Shu Pork, and Slow Cook Red Bell Peppers from the Breath of Wok that is widely available in any book store. But for Stir-fried Shrimp Strings, I will give you the recipe here because unless you are very lucky to find it here ( I doubt it very much ), you have to get them in Taipei just like I did.

Stir-Fried Shrimp Strings

Ingredients
450g large size shrimp
2 Tbs ground pork fat
2 Tbs ham shreds
2 black mushrooms ( soaked and shredded )--wood ear mushroom?
2 Tbs snow peas shreds
1 Tbs green onion shreds

Seasonings:
1/4 tsp salt, 2 egg white, 1 Tbs cornstarch, 1/2 cup water
1/3 cup soup stock, 1/8 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp sugar, 1/2 tsp sesame oil, a pinch of pepper, 2 tsp cornstarch paste.

Methods:
1 Clean the shrimp with 1 tsp salt, rinse with water, drain, and pat dry. Mix with ground pork fat and (1) in a food processor or mixer. Place into a plastic bag, cut a tiny hole on one corner of the bag.
2 Heat 4 cup oil to 100C, squeeze shrimp mixture out form plastic bag hole into oil, make it into strings, deep-fry over low heat, when it raise up, drain.
3 Pour out the oil, use only 2 Tbs oil to fry green onion and black mushroom, add ham shreds, snow peas shreds and shrmip strings, add (2), stir evenly and remove to a platter.

NOTES:

1. The shrimp should be very fresh and have better quality to get better texture. You may use prawn of lobster.
2. You may smash the shrimp with the cleaver
3 Chinese ham have better flavour then western ham, since it's very salty, taste before adding salt.