Three cup chicken 三杯雞

"Three cups" dishes are pretty common is Taiwan. It gets its name from the three major ingredients: 1 cup soy sauce, 1 cup sesame oil and one cup of cooking wine. (This reminds me of pound cake.) Anyway, you can always adjust the portion, which is the spirit of Chinese cooking -- no set recipes just go with your feelings. The weather is getting cold, and I love love love spicy food, so I added hot pepper.

Five color cold sesame noodles 五色麻醬涼麵

The temperature keeps in the 90s today. I heard that a heat wave is rolling in the United States; some places, like Houston, hold a record of more than 10 days in a roll above 100 F ! I work from home today, and Seymour (our cat) is such a sweet little company. He is rolling on the carpet in the sun room, making a stretch and yawning. One good thing about him is he responds to you when you talk to him, either he talks back (meows) or wiggling his tail. 

I saw this pretty cold noodle dish on Carol's website. It is so pretty and looks very professional (restaurant-grade). However, it's quite time consuming, especially you have to cut everything in thin slices. I pull the chicken breast by hand. Well, my husband likes it, so it's all worth it.

BBQ 烤肉

Today is the first day of the July 4th holiday weekend. I know everyone has a lot of activities planned for this long week, so today is the best time to host a backyard BBQ party. We have been busy for today's BBQ for the whole week. We were shopping for a new charcoal grill, planning the menu and making drinks and desserts. I also went to many websites to search for best BBQ recipes.

Pad thai 泰式炒麵

I love Thai food. Every time I move to a new city, I must look for a good Thai restaurant for sure, and I will become a frequent guest there. My love to Thai food started in a little Thai takeout place on the side of a street. It was owned by three brothers and sisters. The big brother was around 17 or 18 years old, serving as the chef. And the two sisters were so young and so cute, serving as cashiers. I will never forget the naive smiles on their faces, so simple and so cute. Surprisingly, their food tasted much better than the food in some fancy restaurants. Now I always use "Pad Thai" as my test to a new Thai restaurant: if they can't even do Pad Thai right, they probably can't do anything right. After a while, I try to reproduce it at home so that I can be more generous with the ingredients.

Szechuan style chicken with wood ear 麻辣雞片炒木耳

When I think about Szechuan (四川) cuisine, the first thing comes to my mind is the smoking hot flavor. The kind of spiciness is a little different from the one in Hunan (湖南) cuisine. Szechuan cuisine uses a lot of Chinese peppercorns (花椒) in addition to the hot chilli, which give you a numb sensation at the tip of your tongue. This is a great dish for the lunch box, very tasty even after re-heating. The spiciness surely boost one's appetite. Remember to grab one more piece of tissue!

Salty chicken coleslaw 涼拌風雞

Every culture has its own way of preserving food, and salt is almost always as the common ingredient. The way I am familiar with is to use salt (about 2% weight of the meat) and Chinese peppercorns (about 0.2% weight of the meat) to marinate the meat for 3 days. Then put them outside to let the wind and the sun dry it up slowly (usually 3 days is enough). After the meat becomes dry, they can be frozen for a long time. When you are ready to eat it, simply spread some wine on the surface of the meat and tiny bit of sugar and steam it.