Easy Chinese Steamed Snow White Rice Cake...

I'm dreaming of a whiiite... rice cake 🍚❄🎵🎶 Soft, bouncy and springy... oh my!! A snow white cake for a snow white kind of day 🌨

Traditional Chinese rice cake (aka white sugar sponge cake, Chinese honeycomb cake) is not made like your typical baked cake. It is steamed. White rice flour and white sugar is cooked over the stove with water, cooled then set aside to ferment with the addition of yeast until the batter surface is bubbly. The activated yeast creates a spongy consistency with a honeycomb look after steaming. It is very simple to make at home with four ingredients.

The flavour is mellow sweet with a bit of pleasant tang due to the fermented batter. The blend of rice flour and yeast is similar to nostalgic sweet Chinese rice wine and a taste I love. But the real beauty here is all in the bounce #beautybounce #squeezeworthy #whitedelicious #snowwhitebeauty

They say it is best served warm, but I love it cool- it has this refreshing flavour that makes your taste buds crave for more... bite after bite 😋

Chinese Steamed Rice Cake
Makes 1 size of 9" pie plate

200 g rice flour (not glutinous)
110 g sugar
350 ml water
3 g yeast
30 ml warm water

Prepare The Batter by adding rice flour, sugar, and water in a bowl. Whisk until smooth (the batter should be smooth and thin without any lumps).

Place the bowl in a pan with water and heat over medium-low heat for five minutes. Whisk continuously without letting the flour thicken on the bottom. The viscosity should be medium smooth. After heating, remove it from the pan and let it cool.

Combine the yeast with warm water in a bowl and mix well. When the batter is cool, add the yeast mixture and mix well. Then, cover the bowl with wrap. Let it ferment at room temperature for 1 to 2 hours until tiny bubbles are formed.

Pour the batter into your heat-proof safe plate for steaming. Steam for 14 minutes on high heat (DO NOT OVERCOOK or it will turn out dry and hard). After steaming, remove from heat and allow it to cool well.

Cut the rice cake into your desired size and shape. Enjoy! 🤤🥰

Chinese Steamed Rice Cake (Full Recipe)

Makes 1 size of 9" pie plate

200 g rice flour (not glutinous)
110 g sugar
350 ml water
3 g yeast
30 ml warm water

Prepare The Batter by adding rice flour, sugar, and water in a bowl. Whisk until smooth (the batter should be smooth and thin without any lumps).

Place the bowl in a pan with water and heat over medium-low heat for five minutes. Whisk continuously without letting the flour thicken on the bottom. The viscosity should be medium smooth. 

After heating, remove it from the pan and let it cool. Combine the yeast with warm water in a bowl and mix well. When the batter is cool, add the yeast mixture and mix well. Then, cover the bowl with wrap. Let it ferment at room temperature for 1 to 2 hours until tiny bubbles are formed. 

Pour the batter into your heat-proof safe plate for steaming. Steam for 14 minutes on high heat (DO NOT OVERCOOK or it will turn out dry and hard). After steaming, remove from heat and allow it to cool well. 

Cut the rice cake into your desired size and shape. 

Newcomer Kitchen Food Entrepreneurship Training and XP Food Incubator Programs...

 

It's been a very busy term since the start of school year 🍂. As quickly as another cohort at Newcomer Kitchen began, how quickly it is also coming to an end, with just three weeks left...

Do you know a newcomer woman who would like to learn how to prepare meals like this to sell to the public market, and meet other women from around the world to learn and cook together? Ask her to come and take part in our innovative IRCC-funded food entrepreneurship training program 'Willing To Work' where you "earn as you learn" with 100% revenue from real life food activities flowing back to the participants.

Prepping in the commercial kitchen at Trinity St.Paul's Church

Here, our current day group DISTIINCT (women from Iran, India, Nigeria, Cameroon and Turkey) completed 50 meals Friday in a sold out social impact event we partnered at Crescent School with teachers and staff. We were delighted to offer such diverse and delicious meals (both meat and non-meat) in our Prepared Meals experiential module as one of three market avenue teachings to take their food business. The outcomes introduce newcomer women to the social and economic aspects of living in Canadian society. Upon completion, they will be more prepared for employment, acquire more confidence, feel more connected to their community and develop more entrepreneurship readiness.

ANNOUNCEMENT: We are calling on participants for our next term that starts in January 2024 for 14 weeks in a hybrid online and in kitchen cooking format. Please see flyer for more details and share this to any newcomer woman who would benefit. Cheers 🤗!

To get a better glimpse of what to expect in our program, sharing our first event that starts with every term- Product To Market... Excited to pop up in The Evergreen Brick Works at their last outdoor market weekend late October before things moved inside. What a beautiful day out and what a busssy market 😁! We almost Sold Out on our lovely Sweets and "Tea" Box For Two to share with a friend or loved one loaded with fall flavours of pumpkin, apples, cinnamon and cloves.

DISTIINCT is a group of women who are passionate about cooking their own unique foods yet love the cross cultural fusion of flavours without borders. You can taste the spectrum of love in this sweet box of five treats and cookies #glutenfree and two "tea" blends #caffeinefree hand bagged from Cameroon- dried hibiscus petals, lemongrass, ginger and mint, and Turkey- dried apples, red dates, cinnamon stick and cloves.

And it all began in September with this ... What AmaZing women we have in both our day and evening programs from all over the world. We look forward to learning from each other, especially cuisines for our first time such as foods from Uganda and Cameroon 😋!

As part of a warm up exercise for the women to get to know each other with a lesson on what preparations goes into a food demo, participants in our 'Willing To Work' program took turns to prepare a live online recipe demo from their cultures.

A+ to all for their mise en place- set up, presentation, thoughtful and interesting storytelling and choosing a simple but delicious dish that was captured in the time limit given. The only miss was not being able to reach through that screen to taste. Bravo everyone 👏

AND... we have our second program, XP #foodincubator that supports entrepreneur-ready alums with deeper-dive resources, independent coaching and more business opportunities!

A weekend Storytelling and PR workshop at Newcomer Kitchen with seasoned storyteller and entrepreneur Jim Adams was part of developing market strategies for your brand. We have created additional enriched lessons and I have been involved in their coaching from branding to recipe writing and costing their individual menus to a deeper dive soon on target marketing to bring their ideas  to life. The next stage is promoting them to our clientele and anew- an opportunity to make money and test the market before they go at it on their own. 

"People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." -- Maya Angelou

Another good money generating avenue is conducting food workshops. This has been hugely popular and successful in our past pre-covid times and what better than to relaunch these 'demo and dines' than with these women who are ready for entrepreneurship with their cultural specialties right before the holiday.

To teach this and the complete package to present to our corporate clients, we held a Grilled Cheese workshop as an example of taking an idea, making it fun and educational, getting hands on interactive and sitting down together to eat afterwards.

It was totally enjoyable and totally delicious learning about the different kinds of cheeses, the history of the American grilled cheese sandwich and how to make the best with various gourmet fillings.

After a period of individual coaching on menu selection, recipe writing and costing, we were ready to host our first XP menu tastings of appetizers, mains, sides and desserts from each of the women from Morocco, India and Nigeria. Our goal was to share feedback, provide pricing input and marketability before we shared their completed menu with our clients for potential catering business opportunities! Everything was so tasty!!

So proud of these ladies💗!

Hugely honoured to be part of your entrepreneurship journey! You Can Do It 👊💥

Comfort Hayashi Rice (Japanese Hashed Beef Rice)...

Have you ever heard of hashed beef rice?...  not to be mixed up with corn beef hash. Basically, it's thin slices of beef cooked with onions and mushrooms in a beef gravy but not so basic as you will read... and it's Japanese 🇯🇵! Well, a yoshoku western-influenced stew called hayashi and after tonight, it will be on rotation especially with fall on the horizon and back-to-school easy weeknight meals... The recipe was replicated from Just One Cookbook, and it turned out beautifully! A must try 👌

I was watching a missed last episode of 2017 series Samurai Gourmet on Netflix, where the lead foodie character searched high and low for a relocated restaurant in Japan to reminisce his beloved childhood dish hayashi rice.

The close camera shots of the succulent glossy demi glace being prepared with a 1-1/2 hours cooked down espagnole sauce (onions, carrots and celery in beef stock and red wine with a bouquet garni of bay leaves, thyme, black peppercorns and parsley sprigs) and then poured to stir and thicken into a 15-minute cooked flour and butter roux to chocolate brown, thus the gorgeous gravy... had me weak at the knees 🤤. A bit of a caramel nose and further seasoned with garlic, tomato paste and juice, worcestershire sauce, catsup simmered with the onions, thinly sliced beef, and white & shimeji mushrooms 🍄🍄.

Use frozen thawed sliced beef for easy convenience.

 Ahhhh.... 15 minutes later, served with hot steamed rice... heaven on a plate 🍛😇!

All Sorts of Action At Newcomer Kitchen...

 

Pizza and Champagne... you bet 🍕🥂! To inaugurate our move into our new office at Centre of Social Innovation (CSI) Spadina three months ago (posting late, better than never)... thanks to a generous grant from @cityofto 🤗. I also started in my new role as Program Manager so woohoo to that too 🎉🎉🎊!

It was a hop, skip and a jump over (next door) to a much larger office (previously occupied by @nowtoronto magazine). Hardwood floors, exposed brick, light soaked, panoramic view of the skyline in a beautiful 1920s building on the top floor. We built an enclosed office space, have a large common area with a couch, big dining table (doubles as a work table) and a kitchenette that also serves as a demo cook station for various food workshops. 

Here I am with chef Mary Freij, our Willing To Work Evening Program Trainer and Sandra Lefebvre, our XP Program Coordinator in charge of our newly launched next level up program for selected W2W alumnis who have shown the most potential in starting their own food business. Over a few months, they will take various business-related workshops and take on farmer's market and catering opportunities from our returning clients and new.

Notably, in May CSI held a Career Pathways event which gathered more than 26 organizations working in newcomer and settlement services to strengthen our ecosystem and partnerships. Here with Tamara Chaikin, NK Director of Operations and Cara Benjamin-Pace, NK Executive Director.

Past graduates catered to the event who are now part of our newly launched XP Program💥!! 

The XP program were also part of the celebrations with Carleton University and their graduates, catering to a 10 years anniversary event with their Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership program at CSI Annex. We served a beautiful array of Taiwanese and Syrian finger foods, dips and petit fours with the showstopper Ukrainian honey cake from my past group Taste Elle's Liza 💗! 

Catering for film 📽🎞! 

A joint effort with both Willing To Work Food Business Program and XP Program women!

The 14th edition of The 8 Fest @the8fest (July 28th to 30th) celebrated and presented films from Toronto, across Canada and from small-gauge creators (8mm, Super 8 and 9.5mm, as well as works in installation, loops, handmade, experimental, animations, diaries, etc.,) and communities around the world. Their first annual festival was held in February 2007.

Punjabi Kala Chana Chaat (Black chickpea salad)

Moroccan Vegetarian "Candy" Cigars

We offered on their opening night an International menu of appetizers ranging from deep-fried vegetarian South Asian bites and chana chaat to Turkish meat skewers to Eritrean agelgil (injera layered with shiro chickpea stew) and meat sauce to chocolate baklava. We heard we had the loudest raving cheers when they announced us as part of the credits at the end of the night. YAY 🎬😋!

Meet chef Mary who works with me! She is the owner of Tetaskitchen.com- notably recognized on @torontolife's best 20 restaurants to eat in Toronto 2023. Who better to learn from than a food entrepreneur who did just that, coming from Dubai seven years ago. Incredible 👊💥!

Catching a glimpse of her mouth watering and economical mixed grilled platter for 2 #halal on insta, I had to give it a go. One of the highlights is “Pandan Kebab,” fusing the Southeast Asian herb with their popular customer Middle Eastern mainstays- sheesh tawouk, beef kafta, sumac fries, fresh salad and sauces (toum and tahini) atop spiced rice 😋. I also picked up their Beirut chicken wings with a spicy coriander garlic glaze and more potatoes- battata harra mixed with a spicy pomegranate sauce. Moist and flavourful all the way!

One of the fab perks of having our office at the CSI Spadina is being close to the regular action cultivated to bring members together- Tuesday community kitchen salad lunch bar, Wednesday community coffee chat and so much more 🥗☕..

Here at the first of two annual CSI laneway summer BBQ connecting members in work that supports people and planet- environment impact innovation, social injustices and empowering newcomers to name a few! Great networking event and walked away learning something new and inspired 💡🥰! 

“Every woman’s success should be an inspiration to another. We’re strongest when we cheer each other on” ~ Serena Williams

14 weeks from the very start of our 'Willing To Work' program and both evening and daytime program women graduate 🎓. Not only did they gain food savvy business skills and learn to punch out production as a team for three real life food events some have grown their language skills, confidence and fellow networking- an integral part of what we strive to do #empowerment 💥

Newcomer Kitchen trains newcomer women food preparation and entrepreneurship funded by the Immigration Refugee Citizenship of Canada (IRCC). This "learn and earn" program helps prepare their food ideas to market with all revenue generated going back in their hands. It was so incredible to see these ladies awarded with their certificates of completion alongside the money they generated (prepared take out meals, product to market and catering)... for some, it was the first time they earned money... ever! The proud look on their faces, made me so proud 🥰!

Congratulations Tasty Cultures and Sisters Multicultural Kitchen! Wishing you all the best 💖!