Archive for the ‘- Fun’ Category

Chinese New Year - Fortune Cooking

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

Celebrate Chinese New Year with a festive feast of symbolic Chinese dishes.

While most cultures around the world celebrate New Year as a time of resolutions, for the Chinese, the New Year means that and much more. It is a time to gather the family, honour ancestors and celebrate with a big banquet that symbolizes prosperity in the New Year.

Most of the dishes served during the two week Chinese New Year celebration are symbolic of something positive and hopeful.
•  Chicken for example, symbolize happiness and prosperity–especially when served whole.
•  Fish, or “yue” symbolize abundance and togetherness. At traditional Chinese New Year celebrations, the fish is never fully eaten to signify that the family will always have more than enough.
•  Dumplings or “jiaozi” symbolize wealth and prosperity; their crescent shape resembles ancient Chinese money.
•  Dishes made with oranges represent wealth and good fortune because they are China’s most plentiful fruit.
•  Noodles represent longevity: Leave them whole — an old superstition says it is bad luck to cut them.
•  Lettuce or “sang choi,” symbolizes prosperity because its name sounds like the word meaning “to bring about wealth and riches.”
•  Duck symbolizes fidelity, while eggs signify fertility.
•  Bean curd or tofu, however, is avoided because its white colour suggests death and misfortune.

Try some of these lucky Chinese dishes to bring you luck for the year ahead:
Chicken with cashew nuts
Chinese Ginger Fish
Noodles
Crispy Fried Duck
Spicy Lettuce Wraps
Fortune Cookie

Bake it Better- help Great Ormond St build the biggest collection of children’s recipes

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

MyDish are working with the Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity as part of the Bake it Better campaign to build the biggest collection of children’s recipes to cook for or have fun and bake with children.

The best recipes will be chosen and featured in a special recipe book with proceeds going to the Great Ormond Street Hospital Chairty . It’s all for a good cause and a simple way to raise funds for research into the cause and treatment of childhood cancer. Join up NOW!

It’s really simple to join the Bake it Better group - just click on the link and hit the ‘join group’ button - there is a simple and short registration and then you can add your own recipe to the group. Don’t forget to invite all your friends to help us create the biggest and best collection of children’s recipes. Please tell all your friends and family.

How did we get involved with Gt Ormond Street Hospital?

My Son Oliver was cared for at Gt Ormond Street with a Kidney problem – he was rushed to hospital when he was 10 years old and we stayed in the hospital for a week with Oliver on some pretty serious medicines.  When he was well and came back for a check-up he wanted to give something back to the hospital to say thanks and to help the other children.  So when we started MyDish it was Oliver’s initiative to create the recipe books as a way for people to raise funds for their own charity and today we are working with Gt Ormond Street to create a book of recipes for children.

Here is a guest piece from Oli:

Hey, You probably don’t know who I am, but my name’s Oli and I was a patient at Great Ormond street hospital for quite a while when I was younger because I was diagnosed with neufrotic syndrome, a rare urinary disease.

It was a very hard time in my life as the cure was to put me on steroids so I undoubtedly gained a lot of weight, but all of the staff at Great Ormond Street Hospital made what would otherwise be a terrible experience a reasonably pleasurable one (considering the circumstances).

In my opinion, you can never really appreciate the work which Great Ormond Street Hospital does until you are treated there. I had often been given a sponsorship pack at school which would mean that if I were to colour in a picture, my parents and people I know would give me money to give to Great Ormond Street Hospital, but from this, I just saw it as another charity, oblivious to the lives it saves and people it helps. I would happily hand over my money without a moment’s thought as to where the money was going and what it was to be used for.

For the first month or so of me having neufrotic syndrome, I had very few symptoms but after about a month, I began throwing up repeatedly and this is when my mum first decided to take me to the GP. The doctor asked me for a urine sample and, once she checked it, immediately told me I should be taken to a hospital. I was first taken to Barnet general hospital but was moved to Great Ormond Street very soon as that was where the most knowledgeable person for this disease worked. He started me on my course of steroids and I was out of the hospital within a week.

I did have quite a few relapses of Neufrotic Syndrome, but now, we hope that it has gone away for good. I could definitely not have got through this whole thing without Great Ormond Street and especially without my mum, who was with me through the whole thing. My mum is a very talented chef and is the CEO of mydish.co.uk . Check it out by the way, it’s like a website where you give other people your favourite recipes and I think it’s really cool.

Thank you mum and thank you Great Ormond Street!

Oli Savage

2009’s Favourite MyDish Recipes

Thursday, December 31st, 2009

We’ve dipped into the archives and discovered what your favouroye MyDish Recipes of 2009 were. And here they are. It’s based on the number of page views a recipe received and also dependent on a favourable rating from other users. Enjoy!

Basic Sponge Cake

Greek Potatoes

Thai Green Chicken Curry

The Best Apple Crumble

Stuffed Chicken Breasts with Mozarella and Parma Ham

Pumpkins Galore!

Friday, October 30th, 2009

My husband is a recycling nut and all our veggie waste goes to the bottom of the garden where he and the kids have made compost units out of pallets and bits of old wood. Last year we did the Halloween thing and all the waste as usual went to the bottom of the garden.
This spring, when Kenny was doing the front flower bed and he put his own compost onto the top soil and a few weeks later it grew into what we thought was a jungle of weeds. My dad came by and said he thought we should get our boys to do a bit of gardening and tidy up the front flower bed.  To our surprise Tom came back and showed us vine tomatoes, potatoes and about 20 pumpkins that had grown from the waste in the compost. The result has been a bumper crop of pumpkins we’ll be using for Halloween!

We have also made so much pumpkin soup for the winter with all sorts of different variations including ginger, coriander, turmeric and someone showed us a really nice finishing touch – you can fry a thin slice of pumpkin and then bake it to decorate the soup

So, if you’re carving out a pumpkin this Halloween, don’t waste the insides. MyDish has loads of pumpkin recipes for you and remember it’s very much like butternut squash so those recipes work for pumpkin too. Enjoy your pumpkins!

A curry beats a bunch of flowers

Tuesday, September 29th, 2009

You know when you have done something completely out of order? You are in the wrong and you can make many excuses: bad day at work, awful traffic on the way home, nothing in its right place at home. But really, I’d had a stressful day and I just went bang!

It happened to me last week and when I took it all out on my nearest and dearest (my husband) he rightly wouldn’t speak to me all night. So rather than getting into a big debate about it the next day, I decided to take some radical action.  I went home the day after (another long day) with a completely new recipe – and cooked his favourite, an Indian Curry.

I was looking through the MyDish recipes and different sections and couldn’t decide what to make and then I knew that the only thing that would work was a curry.  I like Thai curries but am only just getting into Indian Curries: I have never cooked an Indian Curry at home and have definitely never done one using all the spices from scratch. But I thought it was worthy of the apology needed – I chose Anitak’s Authentic Chicken Curry.

It wasn’t as tricky as I’d feared and the results were sensational, so I’m looking forward to trying some more Indian recipes. Thankfully my husband Kenny accepted my apology and it shows the way to a man’s heart – and forgiveness, is through his tummy. Mission accomplished.

Surviving the Summer Holidays

Monday, August 10th, 2009

I love being with my kids but even for the most organised parents, juggling everything during the summer holidays can be a nightmare. Firstly I work, which can be a bit of a relief, and I tend to split my time so that I can spend some real quality time with the kids every day and they can enjoy being with me as much as I can with them.

We book our family holiday (2 weeks somewhere sunny) in the middle of the holiday to break up the long stretch and when I’m with the kids I make sure work doesn’t encroach: I don’t take my laptop on holiday and I switch off my mobile during the day. When we’re at home, I make sure that I can take days off to be with the kids each week and the rest of the time is a complex logistical operation of playdates (usually working with other parents and returning the favour) and other activities. Luckily my husband works from home which makes it easier.

When the kids are at home we tend to arrange an event each day. They love picnics in the park and outings to events and fairs. The kids love bbqs and that’s also my husband’s speciality – my oldest is being taught how to lay the fire. Under supervision, of course!

I do get the kids to bake through the holidays – Tom’s birthday is in June and Oli’s is in July. Our favourites are fairy cakes, chocolate crispies, choc chip cookies and each year I make a different character cake for the birthdays. We do the baking all together.

What I really want are more local activities that don’t necessarily need good weather and I’d like to do more arts & crafts and physical stuff that don’t cost the earth.

Cake Chemistry

Tuesday, August 4th, 2009

Hi there. Dan here. Carol’s really busy this week getting ready for her imminent appearance of Dragons’ Den so I thought I’d share something really cool instead. Something a bit different.

A lot of food is about science. And the Chemistry department at Nottingham University regularly post videos about chemistry on YouTube. In fact, they’ve been doing it for exactly a year. So what better excuse for them to bake a cake?

The video’s here. It explores the science of baking a cake. I hope you enjoy.

What we’ve been reading

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009

At MyDish HQ we love to keep up with what’s going on with fellow food bloggers, chef, cooks and recipe gurus in Britain and all over the world.

Here’s some stuff we’ve really enjoyed and want to share:

Cook like Your Grandmother comes all the way From Ohio on the other side of the pond. We particularly loved this recipe for amazing Brownies.

We tweeted one of our most popular recipes last week: Thai Green Curry. Hollow Legs thought she had a superior recipe, and we agree it looks pretty good. Hollow Legs is a finalist in the Nom Nom Nom awards. Good luck!

Julie at a Slice of Cerry Pie has been celebrating the wonderful tastes of the British summer on her blog. We love the recipes and the pictures too!

Cooking with Amy is a blog based out of San Francisco (America again!). This Kiwi Fruit cake had us enthralled. But we reckon Kiwis must be cheaper over there.

Back to Britain for Reactive Cooking. There is plenty of inspiration for people who have a glut of summer produce ot just want to try something superbly seasonal.

What’s the worst that can happen?

Saturday, May 2nd, 2009

An old notebook discovered in a Texas antique shop may hold the secret to what’s in that mysterious fizzy drink Dr Pepper. Mandrake root and lots of syrup!

Love it or hate it, there’s nothing like it. Collector Bill Waters from Oklahoma found the 19th-century sales ledger in the old Wild West town of Shamrock. It cost $200 (£130). However when Mr Waters began reading, he found a handwritten recipe for a “D Peppers Pepsin Bitter”. The book is expected to get $50,000 at auction.

Why the fuss? Apparently Dr Pepper is made from a top-secret combination of 23 different ingredients and the exact combination is only made known to three senior employees of the firm at any one time. Their secret may be out!

What are spare ribs?

Friday, April 3rd, 2009

It’s always struck me as a rather strange turn of phrase: spare ribs. There’s no such thing surely? There’s nothing spare about them!

I have wondered if it was related to the Bible and the book of Genesis where Eve is effectively ‘grown’ from one of Adam’s ribs. But apparently that’s a red herring. (And where does ‘red herring’ come from now I think of it?) I thought it might refer to a lower, small ribs that aren’t particularly vital and no it’s nothing to do with that either.

It’s just one those quirks of the evolution of language. It comes from the Middle Low German language (which you’ll remember so keenly from school!) when it was customary to cook pig ribs around the fire on a spit or ‘sper’. These ribs cooked on a spit were called ‘rippspeer’ or ‘ribbesper’.

In the 16th century, when the term entered English, ‘ribbesper’ became ‘sparrib’. And over time, as happens often enough, it became ‘spare rib’ for reasons unknown. So, when your nibbling on your BBQ spare ribs this week, don’t forget to amaze your friends with your new found knowledge!