Siew Mai from Scratch and My Loot from Beijing…

Gosh, my last post was liked 3 weeks ago ! I haven’t been lazy though. I make my 2013 resolutions, packed my luggage, headed to stone-cold Beijing from 29 December to 5 January, and fallen real sick during the trip and now that I have been back for a more than a week already, I am still not fully recovered. Sigh. My friend chided me that I am mad to go to China at this time when it’s the coldest in 3 decades ! And yes, I heard of a few Singaporeans who headed to China at this time, could not withstand the chill and came back quite immediately without even completing the trip.

My reasons : 1) I wanted a snowy place. 2) My budget only allows me to travel that far at this point in time. 3) I haven’t been to Beijing before lor.

The doctor whom I visited told me something which I reckon to be so true. That Singaporeans tend to get more stressful when we go holidays because many often than not, we try to maximize our time when we are overseas, by travelling and visiting many places in the restricted amount of time that we have on hand, thereby stretching ourselves unconsciously, resulting in stress and insufficient rest. Because we have the mentality that since we already paid so much for the trip, inevitably we would want to fully utilize it by making the money spent worthwhile. A kiasu lot of Singaporeans, aren’t we. But hey, can’t really blame us also. We are a hardworking lot of pple whom had limited paid leave to consume and whatever we had, we had to make good use of it. Sigh, just too much of an irony.

But nevertheless, though cold and sick, I still enjoyed Beijing very much. And for sure, my greatest joy will be to lug back these whole lot of baking tools at a fraction of the price here. No words can describe the joy spree-ing at this little shop in Beijing :

Ziwei Baking Store 滋味烘焙屋 
Ground floor merchant, Bldg 6, Andingmenwai Dajie
(150m south of Anzhen Qiao on Third Ring)
Tel: (010) 8427 0715
Hours: Mon-Fri 10.30am-7pm, Sat-Sun 10.30am-6pm
安定门外大街6号楼底商
(安贞桥向南150米,路东,江苏饭店斜对面)

And as you can see, the mess still remains as I have yet to unpack my baking loot till date !!

Well, before I pin down all the pictures from Beijing together, here’s an almost forgotten post. I made these Siew Mai aka Steamed Pork Dumplings with Prawn sometime before the trip and haven’t found had a good time to post it up yet.

Not sure how you guys fare this dish, but it’s a certain must-have for me whenever I go for dim sum. With the exception of some very good Chinese restaurants who serve really good Siew Mai, those that we bought from stalls or the supermarkets,, no matter how fresh they are being consumed upon, generally had a stale taste which I reckon comes from the frozen pork that were used. Therefore, these Siew Mais that were made from scratch at home, allows for the freedom to use all fresh ingredients from the wet market and with the addition of prawns and lotsa water chestnuts, gives a good crunch and sweet taste.

I made like 30 pieces of these at one go, and they were finished within a day by 2 persons ! Hahaha. Can imagine our mad obession with this dim sum !!

My few nights in Beijing post is in edited mode and should be coming up soon !! Stay tuned…