Homemade Red Bean Mochi 紅豆麻糬

I must confess, this little treat is something I'm deliriously, seriously in love with...ever since fateful day long ago when I wandered into that tiny mochi shop somewhere in Tokyo and tentatively bought one of the red bean mochi (expensive, I thought), bit into it and discovered...food nirvana.  

It was a revelation, the mochi soft, gooey, sexy, oh so fresh and smelling deliciously of fragrant rice, the red bean paste so light, fresh and tasty.  Really it was an OMG moment...what food magic was this?  I mean I had had mochi before this point but hadn't especially liked them that much...they were usually so-so, dense, chewy things with slightly stale too sweet red bean paste tinged with preservative.  But these, these tender sexy things were out of this world yummilicous!  And thus I discovered the joys of the freshly made japanese mochi.  

While we in Hong Kong have the luxury to buy freshly made japanese mochi, it is quite expensive so I have been thinking to try to make mochi at home for a while.  Finally got around to it and was tickled pink to discover that Homemade Red Bean Mochi 紅豆麻糬 is not only really, really easy to make but really deliriously tasty as well.  Almost as good as that first red bean mochi I ate standing in the streets of Tokyo, if I do say so myself!

Lychee Time of the Year! 荔枝 - 糯米糍

Hey everyone,  the Queen is back, it's lychee time of the year!  Those gorgeous, sexy, succulent, rose tinged fruits of the the Chinese summer.  Lychee is one of our favorite summer fruits, so juicy, so luscious, so distinctive in taste that 'lychee' has become a flavor in its own right.  

We have noticed the lychee's appearance for a couple of weeks, a bit small and green tinged at first, and we've been waiting for them to get bigger and rosier.  Well, we finally went for a batch yesterday and boy, oh boy, they were perfect!  It's Lychee Time of the Year!

Lychee Fruit Season is Here! 荔枝 - 糯米糍

Lychee season is here!  Yummy yeah!!  The glorious and sexy lychee fruit, beloved by Chinese emperors past, is the herald of real summer here in Hong Kong and the southern China regions.  When one starts to see mounds of these luscious red fruit around you know that 1) the heat is here to stay and 2) that you can start indulging in tasty revels of sun kissed summer fruits.

And of course the Queen of Summer Fruits here is none other than the lovely Lychee fruit, or 荔枝.  And...psst...my fruit vendor told me just the other day that its been a bumper year for the lychee fruit and it's the best crop in terms of sweetest that they've had in many, many years!