I always eat fresh raw cucumbers, it never occurs to me that I would eat cooked cucumbers.
I tried the Vietnamese style cooked cucumbers today and to my surprise, they taste delicious.

Cooked stuffed cucumbers

2 persons

1 cucumber (I used Dutch cucumber, it was huge compared to small cucumbers in Vietnam)

50g minced pork

1 ear wood mushroom

6 small dried mushrooms

500ml  chicken broth

500ml hot water

salt, pepper to taste

5g glass vermicelli  (optional)

Vietnamese fish sauce

Methods:

Soak vermicelli in water (normal temperature) for at least 30 minutes.

Soak dried mushroom, ear-wood mushroom in 500ml hot boiling water until they soften enough (about 30 minutes to 1 hour or so). Keep this water to cook with chicken broth later.

Finely chop both vermicelli and all types of mushrooms.

Mix ground pork with all the other ingredients until they blend by chopsticks or any other kitchen utensils. Add a tsp and a half of fish sauce, pepper.

Use a spoon to scoop out the inside of the cucumber, stuff it with the pork mixture above.

Bring a big pot of chicken broth and mushroom water to boil over high heat, reduce to medium heat, gently put the stuffed cucumbers in the pot. Cook for about 10 minutes.

Serve cool so that the crispiness of cucumber remains the same while it was added with the extra taste from the filling. This is a cool summer dish to me.

A happy ending between bourbon biscuit and whoopie pie

Though Bee, a blogger I recently made friends with and I eagerly planned to bake a pear tart together last Saturday, we both did not manage to find proper pears for the cause. Bee ended up baking some pretty strawberry tarts instead while I was busy holding a wedding party for bourbon biscuits and whoopie pies. I was craving for bourbon biscuits and was interested in the whoopie pie stories.

An article from the Sunday Times titled “The cupcake is dead. Long live the whoopie!” had funny interesting descriptions of the whoopie pies. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/real_food/article7097540.ece