Hong Kong Noodle Dishes - Food Toys

Published: 2011-10-23
I got hooked on these bubble toys when our baby was just walking and one of our favorite outings was going for a short walk around the neighborhood in the evenings when the usually chaotically traffic choked streets got quieter.  These bubble toy dispensers have always been around in Hong Kong dropping forth all sorts of cool toys packaged inside the 'bubble' and are usually located at the local convenience stores or in stores that only specialize in bubble toys.  

It was just that I never really took much notice of them before.  At first it was just a diversion for the baby, something to interest her and have fun together with.  But then I discovered that they also dispensed really cool food toys and from that moment on I secretly became just as obsessed with them as my little girl and nowadays we argue over who gets to choose the machine we buy from that day.

Tomato Egg Stir Fry 蕃茄炒蛋

By Ellen L. Published: 2011-10-21

You know how there are some foods that, when you smell, see or taste them, take you straight back to when you were just a wee girlie or laddie and were just tall enough to sit in the 'real' chairs and eat with the big people?  Ah, life was good then!  I didn't have to do a thing back then, just sit in my wee chair and eat to my heart's content all the yummy food that Grandma cooked each day.  Oh dear, I'm getting a tear in my eye...  How I miss Grandma and her wonderful cooking!  

She's the real reason that I have all these strong food memories for real Chinese home-cooking.  Grandma cooked proper delicious Chinese meals everyday of the year.  One favorite dish of mine that she made a lot was Tomato Egg Stir Fry 蕃茄炒蛋, a homey dish that, when well done, is a perfect combination of tastes and textures as well as being simple and quick to make.  

Nowadays, whenever I gobble down the first couple of bites of this delicious Chinese comfort dish, I swear I can almost hear my dearest Grandma pottering about the pots and pans in the kitchen.

Hong Kong Honey - Wing Wo Bee Farm

Published: 2011-10-17
You probably wouldn't believe that a 'Blade Runner' city like Hong Kong has its own local honey, I sure didn't at first. I was doing some research on honey as an alternative for sugar and looking for places to buy some quality honey.  We wanted to find alternatives to sugar so we could sweeten food for our little girl without too much worry what with all the bad tales about refined sugar these days. 

To my amazement I discovered that there is a little bee farm, Wing Wo Bee Farm, or 永和蜜蜂場, right smack in the middle of Hong Kong, in Shatin in fact, run by Beekeeper Yip Ki-hok since 1983. A real bee farm in the land of skyscrapers! Amazing!

Berry Tart - Summer Dreaming

By Ellen L. Published: 2011-10-15

There is always the magic of unknown pleasures inside the covers of any cookbook as you hold it in your hands for the first time.  And then if you do commit to the cookbook and try the recipes inside, you may find that you are punished for your hopes, merely satisfied, or amply rewarded.  

We found a little cookbook of Italian dessert recipes at a used book store one day and bought it out of curiosity (even though there were no pictures inside which is kinda weird for a dessert cookbook) and, honestly, because it was quite cheap.  And this time around we were very well rewarded with the sublime pleasure of the Summer Berry Tart.

Drunken Shrimp 醉蝦 - Easy Breezy

By Ellen L. Published: 2011-10-13

Ah, the humble shrimp!  Sweet and succulent crustacean!  How can one resist the call of the just cooked shrimp, so tasty inside its armor of shell, so beautiful to look at, so crunchy yet tender, so brimming of sea flavor!  Well, if one has a problem with eczema like I do, one has to should resist it most of the time, just to save myself from the scratching and itching.  But in the special case when the suggestion of making Drunken Shrimp for dinner is proposed; well, how can one possibly refuse to make this easiest and tastiest of shrimp dishes?

Hong Kong Late Night Snack 食宵夜

Published: 2011-10-12
In Hong Kong there are the usual standard three meals a day: breakfast, lunch and dinner; and then there is the special Hong Kong style forth meal: late night snack or 食宵夜.  You don't have to 食宵夜 but the opportunity and the luxury is always there.  

So there we were one late, late night, hungry as wolves for some reason and looking for some good hot satisfying food.  We ended up at our local late night Hong Kong style roasted meats eatery, or 燒味舖, which sells the classic Cantonese roasted meats atop of rice or noodles or a la carte.  This little eatery is open until 4 am every night, proving the 'Oh So Seriousness' of the Hong Kong people towards 食宵夜.

Chinese Festival Cake - For Tea Time

 

Published: 2011-10-12 

It is always fun, if you have a sweet tooth, to discover new delicious pastries, cookies and cakes that you can bring home.  In this we are lucky as Hong Kong has more than its fair share of yummy pastry shops and bakery shops that sell all kinds of sweets from Chinese style to Western style.  

My relatives (usually female and always on a diet) always go berserk when they come here and see all the yummy pastries presented so nicely in the store windows.  And the sweets here are not over-sweetened like they are in the States.  Recently we picked up this Chinese Festival Cake at the wet market where they were selling all kinds of goodies for the Mid Autumn Festival.

Marinated Kelp Salad - Manna from the Seas 涼拌海带

By Ellen L. Published: 2011-10-07

You're probably wondering what this is.  Why is the weird green curtain thingy showing up a food blog?  Well that's because we ate this weird green curtain thingy last night and it was delicious.  

This is Korean dried kelp, a recent discovery of ours and a now firm favorite with my 老公 who swears that it is improving his memory by leaps and bounds (a good thing too, that is.)  After tossing a handful of the dried kelp into a big bowl of water the resulting hydrated kelp was almost two feet long by a foot and some wide. 

Durian Ice Cream - No Machine Needed 榴蓮雪糕

By Ellen L. Published: 2011-10-06

Hard on the heels of our Durian Taste Test, I decided to make 榴槤雪糕, or durian ice cream, with the leftovers of this fruit known as the King of Fruits. I had never made nor tasted durian ice cream so I was very curious to see how this would turn out.  In concept it seemed a perfect match, given the creamy and sweet nature of the durian and the cold creamy sweet character of ice cream.  

The only thing was that there was not that much durian left over after my daughter and I had munched on it that first day I brought it home; the 熱氣, or heat to the body, from the fruit causing me an slight outbreak of my ezcema and my little daughter to have her very first wee pimple, right in the middle of her perfect little nose.

Durian King of Fruits - Taste Test

Published: 2011-10-04
Durian, or 榴槤, is one of the most fiercely hated and at the same time one of the most fiercely loved of fruits. Enrobed in a prickly armour that defies all unprepared suitors, tearing shreds through any material silly enough to get close (like my skirts), it finally opens through skilled knifework to expose golden, tender, meaty and very smelly globes of fruit.  

My ex brother-in-law politely held down his bile at the appearance of this fruit, even though he is from France and surely must have suffered similar sensory traumas in his introduction to French cheeses?!

Those who love it can delicately dispose of great amounts of this fruit which I always view with awe since a tad too much causes me to wake up with pimples the next morning.  And I never get pimples!  So how to put durian, this King of Fruits to a real test of the human palate?  I finally realized the solution the other day when I brought some durian home from the market and my little girl began jumping up and down with her wee hand clamped over her nose.  'Smelly, mom, smelly!' she cried.

Soybean Sprouts Tofu Stir-Fry 清炒大豆芽豆幹

By Ellen L. Published: 2011-10-01

The apparent simplicity of the Chinese stir-fry often deceives the uninitiated.  I remember an Australian woman, passing through Hong Kong, who, when asked how she liked the local Chinese food, made a face and said, in a haughty tone, 'Oh, you mean all those stir-frys?'  

Yes, we do mean all those stir-frys, for there is nothing on this earth quite like them.  A few ingredients, simply and freshly prepared, a good wok, a hot hot fire, a few basic condiments and a brief few minutes of frantic cooking time will present you with a dish to remember.  Bright fresh flavors simple and true, the special wonderful aroma of wok hay, or 鑊氣.  A sophisticated cooking style that seems deceptively simple yet produces results that can wow.

Guide to Choosing Tofu 豆腐

Published: 2011-10-01
Personifying simplicity and minimalism.  Yet so obliging and ready to please.  Oh wonderful Tofu!  What other food stuff could compare to you, so coy and sculpturesque on my little kitchen counter?  Tofu, or 豆腐, is indeed a magical food.  It is so yummy and versatile that you can find it everywhere and in everything.  In order to choose what type of tofu best suits your needs, here is a simple guide.