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!

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!

Chinese Basic Congee 粥

What's the Chinese equivalent of "chicken soup"?  Why congee, or 粥, of course, that delectable, nourishing and soothing rice porridge cooked by the Chinese since time began. Recently I've been making a lot of chinese pickles, both the rice vinegar pickle and the soy sauce or hua gua pickle and, duh, suddenly realized that having tons of chinese pickles means congee heaven.

So I've started making congee a lot and it's not only easy and fun to make (you can throw most everything in and make delicious congee)  but also a serious nourishing the soul kind of food as well as being very, very good for babies, kids and persons feeling under the weather.  Did you know that Chinese moms always feed their babies congee?  

Little old chinese ladies used to stop us on the street and in the shops to ask us if we were making pork bones congee for our little girl when she was one or two years old.  And when we replied ashamedly "Umm, no...", those poor ladies always appeared very distressed and anxious.  Ah well, it's better late than never.