White Chocolate Lemongrass Cookie

Recently we've been dipping our toes into the wonderful flavors of Vietnamese cuisine (see our posts on Vietnamese Beef Vermicelli Noodles and Vietnamese Deep Fried Spring Rolls...yum!)  and so quite naturally have been using a lot of lemongrass.  You have seen it before of course, that green yellow stalk that looks for all the world like the dried twig of a tree.  This humble looking woody stick has flavor magic inside it though, giving the cuisines of Vietnam and Thailand some really awesome and unique flavors.  

Well we had a wee bit o' lemongrass left over and one day, while poking around an old chocolate cookbook, what did I discover but a recipe that uses lemongrass and white chocolate together in one cookie!  Strange combination but it caught my imagination.  So we tried it.  

And what do you know, these White Chocolate Lemongrass Cookies were really quite good, the sweet mellow creaminess of white chocolate and aromatic butter complemented by the exotic citrus ginger notes of lemongrass. A definite must bake for any fan of lemongrass!

Vietnamese Deep Fry Spring Rolls Cah Gio 越南炸春捲

I have a weakness for spring rolls. Well, only the fresh ones.  And, really, who wouldn't?  When freshly deep fried spring rolls are crunchy on the outside, hot and tasty on the inside treats are so gosh darn it yummilicious!  Whenever we go to have dim sum I always just have to get a dish or two of the spring rolls.  

Since we have started (finally!) to deep fry at home for ourselves (which has turned out to both easier and more fun than we had imagined,) we naturally very quickly thought of making some spring rolls!  These are our homemade spring rolls, the Vietnamese Deep Fry Spring Rolls, also known as Imperial Rolls, Cha Gio, or 越南炸春捲, a very tasty tidbit indeed, juicy meat and veg bits all wrapped in rice paper and deep fried til super crunchy on the outside and flavorsome on the inside.  And it's pretty easy to make these!

Egg Flower Water Chestnut Dessert Soup 蛋花馬蹄糖水

I must confess to a weakness for Chinese dessert soups, known generally under the title 糖水, translated literally as "sugar water."  Simple to make yet most remarkable in their classic, enduring combinations of textures and tastes, reminiscent of home and hearth, of grandma's gentle scolding, mama's sweet kisses, warming in winter, cooling in the summer.  

As we in Hong Kong are sweltering presently under a more intense than usual summer, (it's sooo hot!) I decided to treat the family to one of my favorite Chinese dessert soup, the simple to make, delicately beautiful, cooling and crunchy Egg Flower Water Chestnut Dessert Soup, or 蛋花馬蹄糖水.