Shining Garden

Came here for dinner with the family. The "kids" table ordered hot and sour soup, two plates of salt and pepper chicken wings, fried pork with mayonnaise, Chinese sausage with gai lan, enoki mushroom and tofu on broccoli, ginger gai lan, and ginger scallop fried rice.

I guess we were a little hyped because it was sooooo busy. It was a good thing we made reservations.

The food came quick and the service was good enough for a Chinese restaurant.

The soup was only okay. The broth tasted like sausage and too salty. Definitely the weakest dish of the evening. Not our favourite soup.

The chicken wings were a little too salty and not spicy enough despite the mound of peppers on it. They were also abnormally big. It was crispy and the batter was nice and fluffy.

The pork was really good. It wasn't crispy, but it was nice and tender and the sauce went well with it. I don't have a picture of it because it went really quickly.

All three veggie dishes were well seasoned and cooked perfectly. They gai lan and broccoli had a good crispness to it. The Chinese sausage really added a lot to the balance.

The rice was also very well seasoned. There were baby scallops in every spoonful.

As dessert, we had pumpkin tapioca sweet soup. It wasn't too sweet and the shredded coconut added some good texture to it. Pretty tasty. Enjoyable.

Overall a decent experience. Would recommend making reservations before your visit.

Thai Glass Noodles

This is our second Asian meal of the week. It was taken from About.com, Thai Food. I chose this because we had stocked up on glass noodles and I didn't know what to do with it.

Ingredients:

• 8 oz. glass noodles
• 1 package firm tofu
• 2-3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 shallot, minced
• 1+1/2 cups chopped mushrooms
• 1 red bell pepper, diced
• 2 bunches bok choy
• generous handful fresh coriander/cilantro
• 2 Tbsp. vegetable oil

Stir-Fry Sauce

• 1/3 cup stock
• 3 Tbsp. soy sauce
• 1+1/2 Tbsp. fish sauce
• 1 Tbsp. hoisin sauce
• 1 Tbsp. brown sugar
• chili flakes to taste

Method:

1. Slice tofu into bite-size pieces and set in a bowl.

2. Combine STIR-FRY SAUCE ingredients in a cup and drizzle 2 Tbsp. over or tofu. Stir and set in refrigerator to marinate until ready to stir-fry.

3. Bring a large pot of water to boil and dunk in the noodles. Cook for 5-7 minutes or until glass noodles are transparent and soft enough to eat.

4. Drain noodles and rinse with cold water. Drizzle 1/2 tsp. vegetable oil over noodles and toss to keep from sticking.

5. Heat a wok or large frying pan over medium-high heat.

6. Drizzle in vegetable oil and swirl around

7. Add garlic and shallots. Stir-fry 1 minute

8. Add the tofu. Stir-fry until tofu is braised, about 2 minutes. If pan dries out, add 1-2 Tbsp. stir-fry sauce.

9. Add mushrooms, bok choy and bell pepper and 2-3 Tbsp. stir-fry sauce. Stir-fry 1-2 minutes.

10. Add noodles and 3/4 of the stir-fry sauce.

11. Use two utensils to lift and toss the noodles with other ingredients.

Tip:To make this easier, use a pair of clean kitchen scissors to cut glass noodles in a couple of places, as they get very long and hard to turn.

12. Serve immediately with fresh coriander sprinkled over.

Ginger Tofu with Mushroom

Today's recipe was from Taste, chosen because it promised it would be quick to make.

Ingredients:

• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1 brown onion, thinly sliced
• 2 garlic cloves, sliced
• 4 cm piece fresh ginger, peeled, cut into thin slices
• 700 g firm tofu, cut into 3 cm squares
• 100 g brown mushrooms, halved
• 200 g enoki mushrooms, trimmed
• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 1/3 cup stir-fry sauce (of choice)
• 4 bunches bok choy
• 400 g udon noodles

Steps:

1. The first thing to do is boil water for the udon and squeeze out the water from the tofu.

2. While the water is boiling, slice the onions and garlic, then the mushrooms and ginger. Wash the bok choy, and while it's draining, slice up the tofu.

3. When the water boils, put the udon noodles in and let it cook for 2-5 minutes. Drain and coat in oil. We tossed it in sesame oil. This way, it doesn't stick.

4. Heat the oil in a pan and add the onion and garlic. Cook on medium high until it's a little brown, then add the ginger and tofu and cook for another 2 minutes. Add the mushrooms, cook until it gets a little soft, and lastly the bok choy.

5. Once the bok choy and mushrooms are cooked. Remove from heat and serve with the udon.

6. Top with sriracha.

Tofu Stir Fry

We had a bottle of General Tao stir fry sauce sitting in the fridge so we decided to put it to use tonight. These stir fry sauces from Superstore are great for a quick meal.

It's the first Tuesday of the month and Safeway has a 10% discount so we saved all our grocery shopping for tonight. Since we had to do the grocery shopping tonight, we had to make a quick dish - stir fry.

Ingredients:

• 1 pkg fried tofu
• 1 small head of broccoli
• 1 leek
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 inch ginger
• 1 clove shallot
• 1 carrot
• handful of mushrooms (about 4 large)
• half a bunch of cilantro
• 1 bell pepper

Steps:

1. If you want to serve it on rice, start the rice now.

2. Chop all your ingredients up and drain the tofu.

3. Cook the onion family first (garlic, shallot, and ginger). Then add the vegetables that take longer to cook (broccoli and carrot). Last, add the vegetables that don't require too much time to cook (cilantro, mushrooms, and bell pepper). Mix in the tofu and sauce.

4. Serve on rice and you're done!

5. Of course for me, no dish is complete without a bit of chili sauce.

Spaghetti with Leeks and Tofu

Tonight's dinner was supposed to be Martha's Fettuccine with Leeks and White Beans. Unfortunately, we didn't have enough time, so we threw together our own version.

Ingredients:

• 250 g whole wheat spaghetti
• 1 leek
• 1 jar pasta sauce
• 1 package fried tofu
• 3 stalks of green onion

Steps:

1. Heat enough water to cook the spaghetti.

2. Chop up the leek and green onion, wash.

3. Drain the tofu.

4. Cook the leek and green onion for about 10 minutes.

5. Add the tofu and cook for another 5 minutes.

6. Mix in the sauce and serve with spaghetti.

Of course this site wouldn't be called "Dash of Chili" if we don't have some chili on our spaghetti.

Speaking of chili, we recently read a news article about our favourite hot sauce maker, Sriracha.