Chinese Rice Flour Cookies with Date Filling 紅棗泥炒米餅

The best thing about the celebration of traditional Chinese festivals are the traditional style eats, amirite?  And as it's Mid Autumn Festival time (oh the moon tonite!) we thought we'd make some traditional style cookies for those who are not so much into eating mooncakes.  

These Chinese Rice Flour Cookies with Date Filling 紅棗泥炒米餅 are wonderfully light and satisfying traditional cookies, slightly crispy yet crumbly with a lusciously sweet date filling besides packing a visual wallop with their graceful molded shapes.  Plus they are easy to make!

Walnut Sesame Tang Yuan 核桃芝麻湯圓

Mid Autumn Festival is just around the corner and we've been dithering about which mooncake to make.  Will it be our Double Yolk Lotus Mooncakes, our Five Nut Mooncakes?  Or perhaps our Snow Skin Mooncakes will do the trick.  

Not only that but, as my little girl is reminding me, we must buy all the glowing paraphernalia that is needed for Mid Autumn Festival celebration, a night of moongazing and mooncake eating.  Let's see...we have got glowstick glasses, glowstick necklaces and rings, glowstick bunny ears and there's still our annual trip to pick up lovely Chinese lanterns to carry while moongazing.  

And not only all that but we are also making other festive treats such as homemade tang yuan rice dumplings, those luscious little sweet treats whose rounded shapes make it the perfect moon tribute.  This year we made Walnut Sesame Tang Yuan 核桃芝麻湯圓, with a buttery nutty decadent sweet walnut sesame filling that is the perfect foil to the smooth and chewy rice flour wrap.

Preserved Lime Black Bean Steamed Fish 咸檸豉汁蒸魚

As promised, a yummilicious way to use your homemade Chinese preserved limes 咸檸檬 in a savory dish!  We usually use our Chinese salt preserved limes to mix up the refreshing Chinese Preserved Lime Tonic Drink 咸檸 7 (see our recipe at bottom of page here), which magically soothes sore throats like nobody's business. But these luscious salty tangy limes can also be used in savory dishes as a tart yet salty counterpoint.  

We added the salty preserved limes here to a traditional black bean steamed fish and it transforms an old comfort dish into something new and ultra yummy.  Try our Preserved Lime Black Bean Steamed Fish 咸檸豉汁蒸魚 and taste the difference!