Category Archives: Yahoo

How to make tangyuan (glutinous rice balls)

by Qin Xie | Leave a comment

Published on Yahoo Lifestyle UK & Ireland on 4th February 2013:

Tangyuan, Qin Xie

The name sounds rather strange even before you translate it (the Chinese characters for “tang” and “yuan” mean “soup” and “sphere” respectively) but it’s really just a sweet filling wrapped in a glutinous rice flour pastry and served in its cooking liquid.

In China, the most popular flavour for tangyuan is black sesame but it’s also commercially available in flavours such as rose, peanut and red bean.

There are lots of theories about when to enjoy tangyuan, which varies according to the part of China that you’re from. Some have it at the turn of midnight for Chinese New Year while others have it on the 15th day of the festival.

Either way, the most important part of the tangyuan tradition is about family. Not only is it something to be shared with family during New Year celebrations but, in Chinese, tangyuan also sounds like “tuanyuan”, or reunion.

Here’s a recipe for easy peanut butter tangyuan:

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Food blogs to inspire your inner chef

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Published on Yahoo Lifestyle UK & Ireland on 28th January 2013:

Also published on Yahoo! US News on 28th January 2013:

Finding a good food blog is tough business. They say that the majority of blogs fail within the first three months but even long running ones are often abandoned. It’s not hard to see why.

You need a good idea which, with regular and careful tending, will hopefully blossom into something worth reading that keeps people coming back. It can be a very time consuming project that’s not always rewarding. As the keeper of two blogs, In Pursuit of Food and Culture Explorer, I can certainly attest to that.

A good food blog though, can afford much pleasure to the reader. The openness of food means that there are blogs out there covering everything from restaurants and recipes to special diets and gourmet destinations.

As a blog-surfer, I like the excitement of finding something new every time I go back to my favourite blogs. Blogs morph from one subject to another according to the changing interests of their owners so I also like the comfort in knowing that, in some respects, I will always find the same thing.

So after much whittling down, here are seven food blogs that have inspired me over the past year, and I hope will continue to do so:

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Beginners’ guide to whisky for women

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Published on Yahoo Lifestyle UK & Ireland on 29th November 2012:

Pouring whisky at Glen Garioch

If there’s one distillate that’s thought of as the man’s spirit, it’s whisky. Its high alcohol content and unyielding distinctive character creates a very masculine profile. Throw in cigars and poker and you have the ultimate boys’ night in.

But whisky is something that can and should be enjoyed by men and women; and not just on Burn’s Night either. Want to know why? Here’s a guide to get you started:

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