Grandma's Spring Onion Egg Pancakes 蔥油蛋餅

Dearest readers, I've been feeling really homesick for some of my beloved grandma's 奶奶 wonderful cooking and was ever so pleased when I discovered this recipe in one of my favorite Chinese cookbooks, The Key to Chinese Cooking by Irene Kuo, an absolute treasure trove of authentic Chinese recipes first published in 1977.  

I was casually flipping through this book the other day and reading here and there and suddenly I realized that this was it! This was the recipe for my grandma's delicious after school pancakes!!  I had never quite been able to recreate it and couldn't find a recipe through research, probably because it's such a humble homey kind of food that no one ever thought to put it in a book.  Well, no one except the talented and very smart Ms. Kuo, that is.  

Let me just say, y'all in for a treat!  My grandma's humble little Chinese Spring Onion Egg Pancakes, 蔥油蛋餅, are super duper yummilicious!

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 煎焗雞髀 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.

Grandma's Red Bean Paste 紅豆沙

Red Bean Paste 紅豆沙 is a real favorite Chinese sweet pastry and dumpling filling.  I love this stuff!  And my grandma's homemade red bean paste was soooo lusciously good!  (Chinese chocolate!) And it sure got me hooked on this stuff for the rest of my life.  

I sometimes will get urges (out of nowhere) to go out and find something with red bean paste in it so that I can stuff my face.  Nom, nom, nom!  But sometimes I get a bit sad and nostalgic here in Hong Kong cuz, to be honest, it's hard to find good red bean paste pastries and dumplings here.  I think the reason for that is that red bean paste is not a favorite in this southern region, lotus paste and black sesame paste being more preferred.  

(See our posts on Black Sesame Walnut Mooncakes Recipe 黑芝麻核桃月餅 and Homemade Lotus Seed Paste 白蓮蓉 for our yummy recipes for black sesame paste and lotus seed paste.)  

However, we solved that problem by making Grandma's red bean paste ourselves now.  It's not hard, just takes a bit of time and then you can enjoy the deliciousness of homemade red bean paste for filling all your buns, pastries, dumplings, or just for sneaking secret unctuous midnight spoonfuls. (OMG, my first Nigella reference!)