Osmanthus Chinese New Year Rice Cake 桂花年糕

An important part of the Chinese New Year is the making and eating of the Chinese New Year Rice Cake 年糕.  These perfectly round cakes symbolize the yearly reaffirmation of the whole, the union, the endless unbroken circle of family and life.  So you see how important a role these cakes take on?  This year I decided to add a twist on the usual sweet rice cake by adding flower blossoms to the mix.  This Osmanthus Chinese New Year Rice Cake 桂花年糕 is made with osmanthus infused sugar syrup, resulting in a cake that has all the wonderful chewy rice-i-ness of the traditional rice cake but permeated with the lightly floral, sweet and mouthwatering fragrance of the osmanthus flower.  

As I have mentioned before, osmanthus is one of my 媽媽's favorite flowers, so this one's for you dearest 媽媽!

Osmanthus Flower Tea 桂花茶

This post is for my dearest 媽媽.  She loves osmanthus flowers and has always planted an osmanthus tree wherever we lived.  When I was a little girl, our osmanthus tree was just outside my bedroom window and the flower's drifting scent would steal in on the night breezes to soothe me to gentle sleep.  There is something otherworldly about the delicate, enchanting fragrance from these tiny flowers.  

That is why it is my great pleasure to share this very simple to make Osmanthus Flower Tea 桂花茶, which uses the dried flowers of the osmanthus to make a truly wonderfully fragrant and uplifting tea which is 100 percent guaranteed to make your day that much brighter and better!

Osmanthus fragrans (photo by Laitr Keiows)

Chinese Winter Sun Dried Fish 臘鯪魚

Dear readers...it's been a hard year, hasn't it?  Well there's a new year ahead of us and here's hoping (fingers very seriously crossed) that the coming year is better,  much better.  Aristotle Onassis said "It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light."  Well said, sir.

As with everyone else all around the world, we've been staying mostly inside our homes for a while now.  I've noticed that limitations, at first seemingly restrictive, can in the end actually push you to exercise your mind in interesting and less used pathways.  Thus we present our slash of light in the darkness, an experiment born out of a bit of boredom (umm...still at home...) and a bit of necessity (umm...still must stay at home...)  Out of this time of 'limitations' comes my 老公's very successful attempt at Chinese Winter Sun Dried Fish 臘鯪魚: fresh fish, lightly salted, marinated and then hung dried in the winter sun, resulting in a preserved fish that tastes fresh but intensified, slightly salty yet still sea sweet with a chewy texture similar to very soft jerky.  This whole procedure, done in our tiny kitchen and hung to dry in our common stairwell is a simple yet strong reaffirmation back to our roots as humans with just the sun to preserve our precious food. 

Stir Fry King 小炒皇

I have heard tell of certain dishes that Chinese chefs use to test the culinary skills of applicants to their kitchens.  This classic Cantonese stir fry dish with the rather cheeky name of Stir Fry King 小炒王 is one of them. This dish originates I believe from the famous Chinese city of gastronomy, Shunde 順德 of Guangdong 廣東 province, where the chefs aspire to enhance the natural flavors of fresh ingredients and strive toward a taste that is light, fresh, crispy, tender and smooth.  If done well, this Stir Fry King 小炒皇 demonstrates these traits to perfection,  the stir fry working its hot and furious magic to cook the seafood and vegetables just enough and no more while melding the flavors of all to form a delightful unified stir fry incorporating all differents kinds of tastes and textures.  And that is why the name for this dish is Stir Fry King!  If you want to truly test the skills of the Chinese kitchen, order this dish next time you are at a Cantonese restaurant and test for yourself how good the chefs are.

Chinese Fermented Rice Poached Egg Soup 酒釀蛋

 

We made a big jar of Chinese Fermented Rice 甜酒釀 recently cuz my little girl loves the stuff and she's been bugging me to make some for her.  And it's the perfect thing to help boost our immunity for the oncoming winter weather.  This wonderfully fresh, sweet and slighty winey fermented food is packed full of all kinds of probiotics, amino acids, vitamins and minerals that your body needs to thrive.  The probiotics in particular help to balance the bacteria in your gut which is a key player in helping to boost immunity.  Now that we have a big ol' jar of this stuff, I've started making this homey but wonderfully satisfying breakfast treat, Chinese Fermented Rice Poached Egg Soup 酒釀蛋, a simple soup of sweet fermented rice mixed with hot water and topped with a poached egg.  Each spoonful carries the winey sweet taste of fermented rice and a swirl of bright creamy egg yolk.   This soup makes you feel warm and fuzzy and totally ready to take on a new day!

Chinese Cha Siu Bao Roasted Pork Buns 叉燒包

 A hot Chinese bun is a wonderful thing.  Hot, steaming and fragrant, each soft pillowy bun encases a delicious filling, sometimes just a bite of savoury meat, sometimes a yummy mix of meat and vegetables and sometimes just a sweet bit of something.  When I was little my dearest grannie 奶奶 would make buns for us girls all the time.  We were skinny chinese girls in the growing stage and boyo could we eat alot!  I loved the meat and veggie buns she made (I could eat 3 buns in one go!) but my favorites were the buns stuffed with red bean paste.  To my young taste buds red bean paste tasted as good as chocolate! 

This particular type of Chinese bun, the Cha Siu Bao Roasted Pork Bun 叉燒包, is not something my grannie ever made herself but, since living in HK, it's become one of my favorites.  Chinese roasted pork Cha Siu 叉燒 by itself is already soooo good.  But luscious roasted pork cha siu, diced into a deliciously sweet and savory filling as the secret heart of a warm and incredibly soft and hot Chinese bun?  Ammmaazing!

Chinese Sesame Candy 黑芝麻酥糖

For the upcoming Chinese Mid Autumn Festival, my most favorite festival of the year, we decided to make some traditional Chinese candy along with making mooncakes (we decided on snow skin custard mooncakes 奶皇冰皮月餅 this year!).   I've always loved these Chinese Sesame Candy, buying them by the bagfuls, but wowzers if homemade Chinese Sesame Candies don't beat em all for fresh nutty fragrance and a delightfully crispy crunch!  

Chinese Egg Fried Rice 蛋炒飯 - A Different Method

Here's a different and tasty way to make that old favorite, Chinese Egg Fried Rice!  This alternative method my hubby 老公 discovered makes for a gorgeously yellow hued and creamy version of fried rice.  It's super yummy and just as easy to make.  I haven't decided yet which version I prefer, the traditional way of making Chinese Fried Rice or this new creamier version of fried rice.  

White Bread

I'm so happy today!  Today I made and baked a bread using a new method and it came out really fabulous and was easy to make (mostly)!  

Sooo...confession first...I'm a bit obsessed by bread baking (and eating!) and have, over the years, baked bread time and again.  In the beginning my efforts resulted mostly in what I fondly call 'brick breads'...true story, I once almost broke a tooth foolishly bravely trying to eat a slice of one of my handmade 'brick breads'!

Wind forward to nowadays and many, many breads later and I can finally happily supply my little family with homemade yummy fragrant bread stuffs, yay!  (Check out all the way down for more about our other yummilicious breads!)  But the one thing that I could never be satisfied with was the making and baking of a basic white bread to use for, you know, basic things, like sandwiches or just a toast with some yummy butter.  Previous attempts required too much work for so so results.  Finally, however, I'm super pleased to announce that basic bread quest has been conquered!  My family are so happy with it, I'm so happy with it!  This Richard Bertinet White Bread is a bread that knocks it out of the ball park for flavor, has incredibly light super airy tender crumb, excellently crusty crust, it toasts like a dream and perhaps most surprisingly, this beautiful bread was pretty easy to achieve!

Chinese Crab Sauce Noodles 蟹肉醬麵

This Chinese Crab Sauce Noodle is a dish to impress, no doubt about it, and it's perfect both to amaze with its gorgeous sexy looks as well as its sublime knock it out of the ball park taste explosion of ultimate crabbiness.  Luckily for us the ones we most like to impress with good food is ourselves...meaning me... because we're making this for my birthday!  (I'm a summer baby.)  It's the Chinese custom, for those of you who don't know, to have a bowl of noodles to celebrate a birthday and what better celebration of my wonderful self (hehe) and our love of pure foody goodness than this bowl of sinfully decadent Crab Sauce Noodles 蟹肉醬麵, slippery chewy noodles smothered with a generous golden dollop of rich umami packed crab meat and roe sauce.

Macanese African Chicken Galinha à Africana 非洲雞

More yummy stuff from Macau!  And we've found that a fun way to travel during this home bound time (I feel like I've been in my house for a year!) is thru the cooking of foods from other places.  This one is the famous Macanese African Chicken 非洲雞, also known as Galinha à Africana, a fragrant spice infused chicken dish that's baked in a deliciously spicy, slightly sweet, nutty sauce. This dish also, amusingly enough, has barely nary a thing to do with Africa.  The name, I believe, comes from the fact that from the 1400s until just recently Portugal has had colonies in countries all over the world and one of the main things they procured early on from these colonies was spices.  

Chinese Sachima Soft Flour Pastry Cake 沙琪瑪

With the Dragon Boat Festival 端午節 around the corner, we're already dreaming of those aromatic, meltingly tender bites of savory pork filled zong zi and sweet red bean zong zi.  YUM!  I love festival foods!  This year, in addition to these traditional festival dumplings I decided to try making a personal childhood favorite of mine, the delectable Chinese Sachima Soft Flour Pastry Cake 沙琪瑪 (or 馬仔 as it is known locally in HK), a light, fluffy, tender pastry made of fried dough strips tossed with delicious caramelized syrup, dotted with raisins and roasted sesame seeds, then pressed and cut into delectable squares.  Kinda like a Chinese rice krispie cake in principle but uniquely different and even more delicious!  

I remember that my folks used to go all the way downtown to the Chinese bakery to bring back these treats, packed carefully in a beautiful pink box tied with a red string.  My sisters and I, the three of us, would fight fiercely over the biggest squares of sachima, which my sneaky older sister usually won.  Nowadays my little girl loves it as well and so we decided to make it together, it was so much fun!

Chinese Hot and Sour Soup 酸辣湯

This classic Chinese Hot and Sour Soup 酸辣湯 is always on the menu at Chinese restaurants, its bold contrast of sour and spicy and loads of delicious bits of flavors and textures in a thickened broth make it a perennial favorite with all Chinese food lovers.  I remember ordering it with my family when eating out at China town restaurants when I was a little girl and I'm still ordering these days whenever I see it's on the menu.  Since we've been at home A LOT lately, we've been missing its deliciously vibrant flavors so we decided to try making this soup at home.  Or rather my hubby 老公 decided it, he really loves this soup, has done so since in utero apparently.  (His mom lived off this stuff while pregnant with him!)  We discovered that this Chinese Hot and Sour Soup 酸辣湯 , while requiring a good bit of knife work, is actually quite easy to make at home and comes out just as good as the ones we've had in restaurants and maybe even a bit better!

Grandma's Chinese Steamed Brined Chicken 煎焗雞髀

I've been chatting to my mama 媽媽 a lot about food recently, as she's been both recovering from illness and stuck at home a lot ( and I mean A LOT! :) and thus doing quite a bit of cooking.  She reminded me of this special dish that my grandma 奶奶 (♥️!!) used to make and it's one of my childhood favorites!  

You know how there are certain foods eaten when you were young that you can clearly remember the taste, aroma, details of presentation and the eating of it, even all these long years later?  Well, this dish, for me, is one of those.  A simple, humble home cooked dish is all Grandma's Chinese Steamed Brined Chicken is, just salt brined chicken panfried to crisp up the skin and then steamed with ginger and spring onion.  Simple, but boy oh boy, the moment my mama mentioned it, it all came crashing into my mind,  how ridiculously tenderly delicious it was...and how I always secretly hoped my gran would make it for dinner that day...and how I tried to sneakily eat as much of it as I could before my mama would slap my greedy chopsticks away from getting more.

Macanese Shrimp Vermicelli Soup 澳門蝦湯米粉

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but my 老公 has some roots in Macau.  His mother's family lived there for a couple of generations before moving to Hong Kong.  So he has an ongoing obsession with the place which is really all too easy to understand as Macau is an altogether fascinating place.  It's a city with a history nearing 500 years, one of the first trading posts in the Far East, and was and still is exquisitely poised in between East and West.

This unique characteristic shows through in both the people of Macau, the Macanese, and the Macanese cuisine.  They are both a mix of all the different cultural influences that touched upon the tiny trading port, from Chinese to Portuguese, to Malay and Japanese, Sinhalese and even Indian.  The cuisine of Macau is really the world's first 'fusion' food, using and mixing elements of all these cultures together to form a truly distinct cuisine.  So fascinating and truly unique, a thing hard to find in the current 'global' world.

As part of his recent Macau obbsession, my 老公 made this deceptively simple looking soup noodles and it was SO YUMMY!  This Macanese Shrimp and Vermicelli Soup Noodles  澳門蝦湯米粉, or Sopa de Lacassá, is a traditional Macanese dish usually prepared as a light lunch or perhaps an afternoon snack and is, as traditional and truly tasty food ought to be, a bit more complicated and time consuming than your average instant noodles, but TOTALLY worth it!! 

Indomie Mi Goreng Instant Stir Fry Noodles

This delectable concoction, my dear readers, is my newest most favorite snack!  While I like my instant noodles just as much as any other Asian person does, it's not something that I crave everyday.  However my hubby recently introduced me to a plate of the fabulous Indomie Instant Noodle and I have fallen quickly and deliciously into deep food love!  I think I just about swallowed that first plateful of Indomie in one breath, it was so yummilicious!!  Hear me, oh noodle lovers, this is the perfect noodle snack you've been waiting for!  I had to make sure to spread the faith though it's probably not necessary as Indomie is already getting quite a cult following amongst the noodle lovers.  But just in case you missed it, here is Indomie Mi Goreng Instant Noodles, the most perfectly flavored sauce tossed instant noodle, in its classic preparation!  (Pssst...it's just the thing to stock up on these days when we're cooking and eating at home so much.)

Lavender Infused White Chocolate Cake

Dear readers, it sure has been a tough couple of months, hasn't it?  We, like many of you all, have been hunkered down at home, just popping out for groceries and a little walk once in a while.  It's been tough but necessary, and, now that we're getting more used to it, I'm finding that there is a space for a kind of meditation, a quiet place.  

I've been baking a lot, it soothes me. This Lavender Infused White Chocolate Cake is so incredibly tasty as well as being a comforting food for times like these, a tender and rich butter cake infused with the floral fragrance of immunity boosting lavender and the soul pleasing sweet creaminess of white chocolate.

Lemon and Job's Tears Herbal Tea 檸檬薏米茶

By Ellen L. Published: 2020-02-28

Wow...what can I say?  It’s been a really really rough month and really rough almost year here in Hong Kong, as I’m sure you all either have experienced yourself or have followed through the news.  First the protests and now the virus.  Sigh...it’s been crazy here in HK and now the craziness is spreading out unfortunately.  We were actually overseas on holiday when the recent viral craziness started.  As a result of the virus spreading the airlines started canceling flight after flight therefore resulting in us getting cancelled out of I don’t know how many flights and spending, literally, days on the phone trying to connect with airlines, to get on any gosh darn airplane, before, finally!, we snagged a plane home...only to face an eerie sea of masked Hong Kongers and sad empty supermarket shelves.  Kinda frightening at first but I think it's calmer now, there's a new normal, one might say, and folks are getting back to business of living and loving and, very importantly, the grocery shelves are filling back up as folks stop panic buying.

In this time of health awareness I've decided to do some tea therapy, making herbal health teas for my family to drink every day, strengthening our bodies as well as calming our spirits.  Our first tea is a Lemon and Job's Tears Herbal Tea, a refreshingly floral and tangy drink that works as a diuretic, boosts immunity, flushes out body dampness and helps to prevent common cold.  An overall amazing kind of tea!!

Red Fermented Bean Curd Buddha’s Delight Luohan Zhai 南乳炆齋

This vegetarian Red Fermented Bean Curd Buddha’s Delight Luohan Zhai 南乳炆齋 is a classic traditional Chinese New Year’s dish, generally to be served up to your hungry family on the first day of the new year.  We have posted before on the Buddha’s Delight 羅漢齋, another more common version of this dish, also made and served for the first day of the new year.  This particular version is a Cantonese twist starring the delectable fermented red bean curd 南乳, transforming an already tasty vegetable dish into something truly unique and, to me and my family’s taste buds, clearly the taste winner.