Chicken Corn Soup

Chicken Corn Soup

Sweet & Sour Eggplant

Tok-Misti Begun

One of our favourite dishes to order in an Indo-Chinese restaurant is this sweet and sour eggplant. The recipe was inspired by one that was posted on Facebook. It's quick to make, light and delicious!

Surimi in Black Bean Sauce

Surimi in Black Bean Sauce

"Surimi seafood, often called “Imitation Crab”, is real seafood made with Wild Alaska Pollock, a mild whitefish related to cod, which is flavored with crab or lobster. To make surimi seafood, Wild Alaska Pollock is finely minced and then blended with other ingredients such as starch, salt, natural crab meat, and egg white. It is then formed, cooked and cut into the various shapes and styles you find at your local grocery store." This description was taken from the Louis Kemp website.

Louis Kemp Crab Delights

I like to have a package of crab delights on hand for busy days when we're too tired to dress up to go out for dinner. My sister-in-law who is a whiz in the kitchen shared a version of this recipe with me, but it was so long ago that the details have become fuzzy. From what I remember, she made it in the microwave oven and it was ready to eat in under 15 minutes.

Lee Kum Kee Chili Black Bean Sauce

For Chinese dishes, I like using Lee Kum Kee sauces. For this recipe, I mixed their Chili Black Bean Sauce with Premium Oyster Sauce and Mirin or rice wine for the sauce. Both the sauces are salted, so no extra salt was required. A sliced onion, minced tomatoes, some sliced garlic and oil combined with the sauce mixture and crab delights were microwaved for 5 minutes, stirred and microwaved for another 2 minutes. This was served over steaming, hot rice for a sumptuous dinner. The leftovers were heated in a skillet the next day for breakfast, a little oil drizzled around the edges and fried with beaten eggs that were left undisturbed to cook without stirring and served garnished with green onions over toast. That's two meals for the price of one package of crab delights.

Tofu Eggs Akuri - Indian-Style Scrambled Eggs with Tofu

Tofu Eggs Akuri

Eggs Akuri is a common Parsi breakfast dish that is served all over India. 

The Ingredients

Beaten eggs are combined with diced onions, tomatoes, green chilies and cilantro for a very tasty accompaniment to buttered toast. In Bengali households this style of scrambled eggs are given a bright golden colour with the addition of turmeric powder.

Extra-Firm Tofu

I figured tofu would taste great with the scrambled eggs because of its firm and silky texture. To give it an Indo-Chinese twist, the diced cubes of tofu were tossed in chicken bouillon powder to give the tasteless tofu some punch. After allowing them to sit for 10 minutes, the cubes of tofu were soaked in beaten eggs before scrambling. No salt was added because the bouillon powder was salty enough.

Chicken Bouillon Powder

These scrambled eggs taste great with buttered toast or hot chapatis or even steamed long-grain rice. I can imagine them stuffed inside egg parathas or bread pakoras...the possibilities are endless!

Chili Chicken

This is a popular dish on Chinese menus at restaurants in India and Kolkata in particular. When I was pregnant, I craved Chinese food and couldn't get enough of it. Pickles and other tart condiments, which are a common craving for women who are pregnant, have never appealed to me. I must have been addicted to the ajinomoto (a.k.a. MSG) used in Chinese cooking. Anyway, Chili Chicken had a special place on our order at Chinese restaurants. The more hot chilies there are in the dish, the better, so use as many as you and your family can handle.

Chicken Corn Soup

The little red dot is a drop of Sriracha chili sauce

This is one of my family's favourite soups to order at a Chinese restaurant, so here is my take on it. It is a popular item on Chinese menus in Kolkata, India and can also be found at Indo-Chinese Hakka restaurants in Toronto, Canada, where the signs often call out 'Calcutta style Chinese food'.