Golden Prawns with Salted Egg Yolk 黃金蝦

There are some foods that just have to be eaten with your fingers.  And then those fingers have got to be licked...slowly and thoroughly...  

This decadent seafood dish is definitely one of those dishes, it's so delicious that one can't stop salivating and licking fingers in anticipation.  Yum, yum, yum, yummy, yummy yum, yummy yummy, yummilicious!  This special little dish is just the thing for a proper Chinese New Year's feast, its golden yellow gorgeousness will bring you and yours golden luck all the year long.  

We present the very unique Golden Prawns with Salted Egg Yolk, or 黃金蝦, a stir fry of prawns coated with a lusciously clinging sauce made from the yolk of the Chinese salted duck egg, which, as my little girl knows, is the very best part!

Steamed Pork Patty with Salted Duck Egg 咸蛋蒸肉餅

A dear reader reminded us that we have not yet posted this classic Chinese dish, the Steamed Pork Patty with Salted Duck Egg, or 咸蛋蒸肉餅 (thanks H Gotts!)  We make this all the time!  

Actually this comfort dish is probably prepared in Chinese family homes of the South on a weekly basis.  A quick easy to make dish full of strong savory flavors, filling to the stomach, with the delicious treat of salted duck egg on top.  A taste of Steamed Pork Patty with Salted Duck Egg is a taste of home!

Spinach with Gold & Silver Eggs 金银蛋菠菜

Here is a delightfully tasty and easy eggy vegetable dish that you can make quick as a flash.  I guess that more properly this dish should be called Spinach with salted and preserved duck eggs.  But the direct translation from the Chinese name,  金银蛋菠菜, is so evocative with the Gold, or 金, being the bits of salted egg yolk of course and the Silver, or 银, being the bits of the preserved eggs.  

Though, rightly speaking, the preserved eggs are more of a black greenish color.  But the Chinese like to categorize their food into romantic, grand tangents which I find extremely delightful if rather inaccurate.  So we will go with the direct translation from Chinese :  Spinach with Gold & Silver Eggs it is!

Roasted Duck Salted Egg Bok Choy Soup 燒鴨鹹蛋白菜湯

There's nothing quite like soup.  Especially for the Chinese.  Soup is like life sustaining nectar to the Chinese.  When I was a little girl we had a soup everyday with dinner.  As part of a Chinese family meal of say four different chinese dishes and one soup.  We always had the soup last of all, as my 爸爸 did not like us to drink soup while eating.  When the rice was all done (and the rice had to be eaten down to the last grain!) we could then use the soup ladle to help ourselves to a bowl of lovely savory soup to finish our dinner.  

Yum, yum...  I can picture it right now: our little family tightly crowded around that dinner table...the three kids fighting over this and that...媽媽 telling us to be quiet...奶奶 bringing over dish after dish hot from the stove...爸爸 quiet and waiting for his rice to cool.  What a precious thing it is to have food memories!  

Nowadays, we're much more lazy about soup (even though in our hearts we long for soup) because, well, it's another dish, another stove going, etc.  So it is that this Roasted Duck Salted Egg Bok Choy Soup, or 燒鴨鹹蛋白菜湯,  has become a favorite soup for us.  It's easy, quick, super tasty and provides you with not only a deliciously savory soup but also a meat and vegetable dish for your Chinese family style dinner. Two dishes in one!

Chinese Salted Egg 鹹鴨蛋

You want to know why homemade food is worth your time and effort?  Because it tastes so incredible, that's why!  Since we have started making more and more things from scratch I have discovered that it's not really about money saving, but about super taste!  Which is great if you love food and eating like we do.  Very consistently homemade foods taste waaaay better than than the crappy commercial stuff you pay for.  

We recently tried making our own Chinese Salted Egg and 'Wow!' were we happy with the results!  The bright orange yolk was lusciously greedily oily while the egg whites were salty, yes, but also permeated with the scents of star anise, cinnamon and szechuan pepper used in the brine. Chinese Salted Egg is super easy to make, you just have to find a source for fresh duck eggs (chicken eggs can be substituted, I've heard), brine the eggs and then wait for 20-30 days.  What?! So long you say!  All good things come to those who wait...we promise!

Grandma's Zong Zi Meat Dumpling 肉粽子

Zong zi, I think, is love. A tender and lovingly wrapped package of pure love.  Find this hard to swallow?  Prove it to yourself by unwrapping and eating a zong zi, or 粽子, that is laboriously prepared by someone who loves you and see if you don't feel completely satisfied, happy, really loved after that deliriously aromatic, droolingly savory (or sweet) zong zi.  

I know that I had that feeling often enough in my childhood, while happily eating the 粽子 that my dearest grandmother made just for us.  I truly believe, as taught to me first by Tita from the wonderful story Like Water for Chocolate, that the feelings and love that you have inside can be transmitted into the food that you cook and thereby to the people who eat your food.