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Year of the Dragon

2012-01-17T23:21:22Z

Kung Hei Fat Choi! As Chinese New Year (CNY) fast approaches, you might overhear this 'Happy New Year' greeting exchanged between others or you might even be saying it yourself! It's how the phrase is traditionally said in Cantonese but ever wondered how to say "Happy New Year" in other dialects and languages? We sure have. Lucky for us, there's a list on how!

While 2012 may seem like the end of the world in some societies, in Chinese culture, it's a particularly good year. It's the year of the dragon and for the superstitious community, 2012 is a period for change and new ventures. The dragon is the most revered of all the Chinese zodiacs for its qualities of nobility, generosity and reputation for legendary power. As the most auspicious sign, weddings, babies and new businesses will be abound in 2012! This forecast is pretty general, however, so click here to learn what cautions your sign might need to take in the coming year!

As we herald in the year of the dragon, you may notice red to be the colour of the season. Symbolising the fire that wards away dark spirits, many households can look forward to new red clothing, lucky red pockets (full of even luckier money) and red couplets (auspicious sayings written on red paper) on doorways.

Long strings of red firecrackers line the streets to be set off at the approach of the cacophonic music and furious movement of a lion dance. These flashing lights, abrupt sounds and ferocious creatures are thought to ward away evil spirits and pave the way for good luck.

Ensuring luck is the theme of CNY celebrations that continue over a 15 day period. But what kind of celebration would it be without food? Amongst the spring rolls and wontons consumed during this time, fish is also eaten as it symbolises an abundance of wealth and fortune in the coming year. A surplus of fish means a surplus of wealth and a bit of leftover fish is usually stored in the fridge for a later date. Why not try some more interesting ways to prepare fish this New Year? Check out some of AHG's fish recipes!

Wherever you are in the world, AHG wishes you the most prosperous and happiest of years!

Chinese New Year 2012

2012-01-13T03:12:12Z

Now that the ongoing leftovers from Christmas and New Years are polished off and the freezer is empty, it's time for the next holiday and some exciting new dishes.

Chinese New Year (CNY) falls on January 23 this year and our HQ is alive with buzz of who's going where and more importantly, what they'll eat when they get there.

Whether you're having a quiet one or a festive to-do with everyone from Aunty Jasmine to her great grand nephews twice removed, HQ has devised some easy recipes to help your celebrations run smoother.

As family and friends arrive, lay out trays of easy to eat finger foods like some crunchy spring rolls and potstickers. Guests can grab as much or as little as they like and the delicious smell will waft through the house, whetting everyone's appetite before dinner begins!

It's definitely not an Asian event without rice and we've polled HQ to reveal two staff favourites: AHG's chicken fried rice and fragrant sticky rice. Although rice dishes can be eaten on its own, it's also a great dish to accompany your other veggie or meat mains and fill everyone up before...

Dessert! In addition to fresh fruit, cookies are usually served at the end of a Chinese feast and our peanut cookie recipe is bound to be a crowd pleaser! And if you're definitely more fruit inclined, AHG's banana fritters because let's be honest, anything deep fried is entertaining gold.

We always love to know when our amazing customers try any of our recipes so let us know. Send in your pictures to be featured on the site or leave a comment below to share what you're planning for Chinese New Year at your home!

Until next time: keep safe and eat well!

Yearly Wrap-Up

2012-01-08T22:25:58Z

Can you believe another year has come and gone? It seems only yesterday that AHG was busy ushering in 2011 and now it's 2012!

We've had a whirlwind of a year and looking back, we can pick out some definite highlights!

The most recent of which has been the Singapore pop-up store in the busy district of Lau Pa Sat. In December, some of our most beloved dishes were prepared on-site with Asian Home Gourmet pastes and sauces to feed thousands of people over the 3 week run!

Hundreds of plates of Pineapple Rice, Claypot Rice, Hainanese Chicken Rice, Pineapple Rice, Tom Yum Soup and a plethora of Thai curries were served up daily to feed some local hungry mouths. (Pictured above: The Singaporean pop-up store and some representative dishes)

A great success that AHG is hoping to reproduce in other regions as it was fantastic to have some one-on-one time with our loyal customers and chat about their daily lives.

Have you noticed something a little different about us recently? Well, that's because in 2011, AHG rolled out rolled out a great new look! Sleeker than before, the new packaging displays more information about the spices in an easy-to-identify way. Just check out the image below!

You might have noticed this sleek new package in more places too! AHG's retail presence grew immensely in 2011- particularly Korea, China, Thailand and the Philippines. This means more flavours in more stores- including each nation's leading supermarkets and retailers.

And in retail stores in New Zealand...congratulations again to Richard, winner of our New Zealand 'Bringing you to the Sauce' competition.

Richard and his wife have been long-time fans of Asian Home Gourmet and amongst his $NZ15,000 winnings is a trip to Asia to visit the source of AHG!

2011 was a stunning year that we feel has been all about our customers. We got to be on the ground with you guys in our Singapore pop-up store, heard what you had to say about our product and incorporated it into a new package design, rewarded our long-time users and even reached out to some new ones!

Can't wait to see what 2012 brings! For now...get ready for the year of the dragon with Chinese New Year!

Kung Hei Fat Choi!

2011-02-03T08:25:49Z

Kung Hei Fat Choi!

Happy Chinese New Year! It's one of the most important dates in the calendar for AHG, and at HQ, we've been getting ready to welcome the New Year - the Year of the Rabbit. For what it's worth, people born in the year of the rabbit are meant to be gentle and kind, quiet and polite, even to their enemies. On the other hand, they can think their own wants and needs are most important and they at times disguise their real traits when facing others making them quite deceiving. If you're not sure what your Chinese zodiac animal is, click here to find out - it makes for an interesting read when you get some down time.

Chinese New Year is always exciting for AHG, the food of course being the main reason, but what's not to love when there's a seemingly endless banquet of delectable food? From the ultimate good luck dish of braised fat choy (a dried vegetable that has the appearance of black hair) dried oysters and lettuce, whose name in Chinese sounds the same as the Cantonese words for "striking it rich", "good market conditions"and "generating wealth" respectively to dishes like suckling pig and steamed chicken, which are part of the ceremonial offerings to the gods and forefathers, our Chinese new year dinners are always delicious and most importantly, plentiful. My mouth is salivating right now, probably not the best to be writing this a couple of hours before dinner time.

With the trend of people eating in on the rise, you don't need to be Chinese to get involved in the celebrations. Try cooking some Chinese dishes at home, or infuse a few Asian cuisines together to make your own creation? Now that's impressive for the next dinner party. To get you in the mood for New Year celebrations, try our san choy bows (lettuce cups) and golden pineapple fried rice recipes. Both are easy to make Chinese dishes containing "lucky" ingredients that, we hope, will bring you good fortune in the year ahead.

Good luck cooking and looking forward to spending another happy, successful year with our AHG fans!

Try for FREE one of our new Simmer Sauces

2010-11-03T22:52:22Z

It's been pretty busy at Asian Home Gourmet HQ as we're just launching our new range of Simmer Sauces! We have been able to find a way to prepare all the fresh ingredients into a Simmer Sauce so that it only takes a few simple steps to recreate flavoursome meals you would commonly find in restaurants, without compromising flavour.

If you're in Australia you can get an easy recipe idea if you pick up the current issue of MasterChef, Dec/Jan issue of Super Food Ideas and the November issue of Good Taste. Also make sure you click here to get your FREE sample on taste.com.au when you enter the competition to win an Asian inspired cooking set.

If you try one of our new Simmer Sauces make sure you let us know what you think on Facebook!

Curry - Comfort Food in Winter

2010-06-17T05:41:12Z

Every winter that comes around we have conversations about the cold chill in the air, how much colder it is compared to last year and the shorter days, it's as though the winter season catches us by surprise each year. In a country where warm weather and sunshine is celebrated, winter is generally shunned and calls for hibernation.

But one of the greatest things that winter brings for foodies is the array of hot, comfort food. Spicy or not, a curry is a typical comfort food and the best part is that there can be so many variations your taste buds won't get bored. Go to any Asian cuisine restaurant around the world and there will usually be a curry on the menu - Indian, Thai, Indonesian, Malaysian, Japanese and Singaporean just to name a few, all have their version they call their own.

But for any new home cook, many dishes eaten at a restaurant are put in the 'too hard' basket for replicating at home. Curry shouldn't be one of them - curry is a great dish that you can begin experimenting with and get your creative juices flowing. Although the balance of flavours can be seen to be difficult to replicate at home, there are hundreds if not thousands of combinations of spices, vegetables, meats and seafood that can change the flavour of a curry to be suitable for your palate. If you're new to making curry, one tip for you when you're cooking: Less is more. You can always add more of an ingredient to intensify a flavour, but it's harder to remove once you pour them into the pot. So if you haven't been game yet to make a curry, be up for the challenge over the next few months - try something new. If you have been cooking your version of curry for some time, make it new again by adding a twist to it or try a completely new curry that a restaurant you've been to has inspired you to cook. It will make the hibernation period that much easier to bear.

Welcome

2010-06-01T01:13:29Z

Firstly, welcome to our all new global website. If you are new to Asian Home Gourmet, we hope you like what you see here. And for those of you who have known us for a while, I hope you like our brand new look.

At this website, you will find all the usual stuff: an introduction to our company, our products, etc. etc. But on top of all that, what we are also looking to do with this site is to share our passion for food and cooking. So you will also find a collection of more than 100 recipes we have developed over the years, with a simple search tool to help you navigate through them all. We are also decorating the site with images from our home in Asia showcasing the beautiful colours and textures of fresh Asian cooking ingredients, which we will look to refresh as seasons change. And just to make sure that you will always find fresh new stuff to see on this site, we have also decided to start blogging.

With this blog, we want to share all things on food and cooking that are on our mind. We will talk about our favourite recipes, share cooking tips that will bring a unique and exotic twist to well loved Asian dishes, and let you in on all the great restaurants, markets and hidden gems we discover during our travels. To make sure that there's something fresh and different every time you come onto the site, the blog will feature posts, photo essays and videos from various members of our team as well as guest bloggers who loves Asian food and cooking as much as we do.

We blog mainly in English, but once in a while someone from our global team and network of partners may also chip in with something in a different language. When it happens we will put up an English translation on the site - just so that you wouldn't have to decipher the gobbledygook that inevitably comes out of Google translate or Babelfish.

Once in a while, we will also talk about things that are happening around the world on this blog. With a presence across 6 continents and 19 time zones, there's always something happening and we'd love to have you in the loop. And if you happen to be close by, please do turn up and say hi - the more the merrier.

We'd like to think of this site as our home online: feel free to come into the kitchen and check out all the goodies we have in our pantry and our favourite recipes, or head to the lounge and check out our collection of travel photos. But what we'd really love for us to do here is to have a conversation. So please, make yourself comfortable, comment away, share your thoughts and swap stories. And if you think we'd make good friends, then please also join us on facebook where we will share random thoughts on delicious food and cooking tips in bite sized chunks as they come to mind.

So once again, welcome, and we hope to see you often. As the great Chairman Kaga of Iron Chef would say, "Allez Cuisine"!