Japanese Okonomiyaki Savory Pancake

In our last post we wrote about the wonderful Japanese pancake, the okonomiyaki, that we enjoyed so much on our trip to Tokyo.  These tender and moist savory pancakes are packed with all sorts of delectable seafood or meaty bites, topped with umami packed toppings and zigzagged with all kinds of delicious sauces.  Just one of the best comfort foods you can find!

We wanted to share with you about how to make these totally yummilicious savory pancakes at home.  It's not that hard but does require you to source some Japanese ingredients to get the job done.  But it's so worth it, cuz your homemade Okonomiyaki Savory Pancakes are gonna taste so darn good!

Seafood Udon Soup Noodles

A simply scrumpious bowl of seafood noodles to slurp and gobble down!  What could be better than a few select treasures from the sea afloat a comforting bed of thick and chewy noodles all tucked into a hot savory soup?  Hummm...not much that I can think of!

Noodles for dinner is always lots of fun cuz it's easy to put together a pretty well rounded and spectacular looking bowl of noodles fast.  Minimal effort for maximum yummiliciousness, amirite?  Plus noodles are so scrummy to gobble down!  Try our easy Seafood Udon Soup Noodles and see if it doesn't make you happy!

Chaoshan Raw Pickled Seafood 潮汕生腌海鲜

More traveling eats!  We’re still got more to talk about the absolutely marvelous food we had on our trip to Chaoshan 潮汕 area of Guangdong 廣東.  Oh dear readers, it was so fabulously food fulfilling!  It’s always so lovely to find yourself in a place where everything you eat is delicious, amirite!?

Pssst...check out our other traveling eats posts from this trip, Shantou Street Food 汕頭街頭美食 and Chaoshan Beef Hotpot 潮汕牛肉火鍋.

So this post is about the Chaoshan speciality, Raw Pickled Seafood 潮汕生腌海鲜.  Fresh, fresh seafood pickled in soy sauce, wine and aromatics is a rare delight.  It’s a straightforward process to make, requiring only soy sauce, aromatics, a touch of oil and a bit of time.  The only and important! trick to raw pickled seafood is that the seafood has to be super duper fresh.

We had heard about the famous Chaoshan raw pickled seafood of course.  Oh, how I had drooled away when watching the first season of Flavorful Origins documentary series featuring Chaoshan cuisine.  Omgoshdarnnitall!!  Pickled crabs!  Pickled shrimps!  Pickled every kind of shellfish!  So amazing the raw pickled seafood of Chaoshan!  

Stir Fry King 小炒皇

I have heard tell of certain dishes that Chinese chefs use to test the culinary skills of applicants to their kitchens.  This classic Cantonese stir fry dish with the rather cheeky name of Stir Fry King 小炒王 is one of them.

This dish originates I believe from the famous Chinese city of gastronomy, Shunde 順德 of Guangdong 廣東 province, where the chefs aspire to enhance the natural flavors of fresh ingredients and strive toward a taste that is light, fresh, crispy, tender and smooth.

If done well, this Stir Fry King 小炒皇 demonstrates these traits to perfection,  the stir fry working it's hot and furious magic to cook the seafood and vegetables just enough and no more while melding the flavors of all to form a delightful unified stir fry incorporating all differents kinds of tastes and textures.  And that is why the name for this dish is Stir Fry King 小炒皇!  If you want to truly test the skills of the Chinese kitchen, order this dish next time you are at a Cantonese restaurant and test for yourself how good the chefs are.

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!

Dragon Well Green Tea Shrimp Stir Fry 龍井炒蝦仁

Humm...besides making our lovely savory meat Zongzi and Grandma's red bean paste ZongZi for Dragon Boast Festival this year, I thought I would also make the traditional Dragon Well Green Tea Shrimp Stir Fry 龍井炒蝦仁 to celebrate both the rivers and the dragon boats that the festival centers around.

First of all, full confession, we didn't use Dragon Well tea 龍井茶 this time.  We meant to use this special tea but, rushing around at the last minute, found that our usual Chinese tea shop was closed for the day.  But we had all our shrimp already!  That's what happens when you decide things last minute...  But, in the end, things turned out okay, very okay as a matter of fact.  We had some tea at home and decided to just use what we had.  

Our Dragon Well (sometimes) Green Tea Shrimp Stir Fry 龍井炒蝦仁 turned out just fine, juicy velvety sea sweet shrimp dotted with tea leaves, smothered with an aromatic, smooth, tea scented sauce.  We actually liked this version better than when we made it with Dragon Well tea.

Chinese Stir Fry Eggs with Flaked Crab Meat 蟹肉炒蛋

This deceptively simple looking egg dish is a fancy dinner party dish in comforting disguise.  You start with a familiar Chinese comfort food, the tenderly folded stir fry egg (see our Tomato Egg Stir Fry 蕃茄炒蛋 recipe and Shrimp & Eggs Stir Fry 蝦仁炒蛋 recipe for more traditional takes on egg stir fry) and pair with something fabulously posh like crab meat and WHAMMO!  You've got yourself a dish you could serve an Empress!

This Chinese Stir Fry Eggs with Flaked Crab Meat 蟹肉炒蛋 is one of those food matches made in heaven: tender just set egg perfectly complemented by the delectable bits of sea sweet, soft crab meat tucked gently into the golden folds.   A royally yummilicious dish to treat family and friends to!

Steamed Baby Geoduck on Vermicelli 蒸象拔蚌

What luck for those of us in Hong Kong to live next the the sea!  The weather's been so nice lately that we have been making a point of making time to go the wet market more and searching out the fresh seafood specials that are just waiting to be discovered.  

Our latest find are these humble looking bivalves that, to be honest, we passed by many a time before discovering that they were a species of the fabulous geoduck or 象拔蚌, that weird and very expensive clam with the huge long protruding elephant trunk.  Have you ever tried the geoduck?  It's divinely yummilicious sliced thinly and served raw.

Crispy Batter Fried Oyster Burger 蠔漢堡包

If you love fresh succulent oysters as much as we do, then you're in for a treat!  This is our version of the fabulous oyster burger, a rare sight, I'll admit, but much loved by those who have met and been utterly charmed by this culinary delight.  

I had my first in Vancouver, at a greek restaurant of all things.  It was love at first bite, really, I just couldn't believe how tasty the oyster burger was, crispy on the outside, juicy and tender and oh so oyster-y on the inside.  Pure heaven!  SO...zip to the future and we have discovered the joys of first rate frozen oysters and naturally decided we had to try to recreate that long ago sea kissed delight.  

It took a few tries, cuz you've just got to get the batter just right, but we do believe that we have nailed it with our Crispy Batter Fried Oyster Burger, a crunchy yet succulent tartar sauce touched seafood burger, or the 'Sea Burger' as we call it around here.

Sea Snails Simmered in Sake Soy Sauce 清酒鼓油煮花螺

Here's an super easy to make, cool and refreshing sea fresh dish for shellfish lovers to dream about for the hot months ahead!  We first had these lovelies in a neighborhood restaurant and were so enchanted by these tasty savory sweet tidbits that we decided to try to make it ourselves.  

Lucky for us that we live in the harbor city of Hong Kong where the fabulous local wet markets supply the intrepid shopper with endless varieties of super fresh seafoods.  And thus we were able to source out these shelled treats and make our version of Sea Snails Simmered in Sake and Soy Sauce 清酒鼓油煮花螺, the perfect summer seafood treat to prepare for a dinner or, even better, to have with as a snack with a chilled glass of wine.  Ah...those lazy summer days!

Fragrant Pan Fried Squid Paste 香煎魷魚滑

Ah, the mysterious creature of the deep, the delicious squiggly squid!  The stuff of legends, sailors of old telling tales of ginormous squid rising wrathfully from the seas to shallow them whole, boats and all.  

Did you know that the giant squid is a real creature, growing up to the size of 30-60 feet (13-20 meters)!!  It's true, they really exist and I'll bet they're super yummy too, if ever I get a chance to snack on a bit o' giant tentacle.  

For now , though, I'll have to be content with the wonderfully fresh squid that we can find at the wet markets in Hong Kong and especially, especially with our latest yummilicious discovery, the amazingly scrumptious freshly made squid paste that one can find at selected wet market stalls.  

It's really fabulous that they did all the hard work of making the squid paste already (so fresh too!) and you can just pick some up and TA-DA!!, just like that, a drool worthy, super easy to make and yummilicious dish, the Pan Fried Squid Paste 香煎魷魚滑!

Steamed Dungeness Crab and Egg White 蛋白清蒸珍寶蟹

A bit of silky egg white and a bit of luscious crab meat!

We love all kinds of crab in this household, especially Dungeness Crab.  It is one of the few crabs that preserves sweet succulent tenderness while also being quite meaty.  Unfortunately it is quite expensive in Hong Kong.  

Luckily for us, however, my 老公's mother recently arrived from Vancouver, bringing with her two beautiful Dungeness crabs, still alive and kicking!  Since we had two of these lovelies we decided to prepare them different ways to settle an old argument we've been having forever: is it better to boil or steam crab?

Oil Poached Salmon - Simply Tender

I don't know about y'all (as they say in Texas), but for me watching cooking shows is one of my favorite forms of relaxation.  It just always seems so interesting and...comforting, I guess.  Yes, I know that sounds kinda weird, but surely it is more relaxing than watching the endless blood and violence and perversity that seems to populate the usual TV shows these days.  

So anyways as we were watching all these cooking shows we noticed a cooking technique that, frankly, we had never heard of before.  Oil poaching.  It seemed so weird the first time we saw it but we quickly realized that the technique is similar to water poaching, which is commonly done to excellent effect in Chinese cooking.  

So one day we decided to do some deep fry (which we seldom do) chicken midjoints (which didn't come out so great) and as a consequence of having all that oil in the pot already we decided that we might as well try oil poaching the nice salmon fillet that we had also bought for dinner.

Chinese Steamed Crab 清蒸花蟹

Actually in a way there is nothing particularly Chinese about this Chinese Steamed Crab 清蒸花蟹.  It's a simple straightforward preparation that celebrates fresh seafood for its sea sweetness and tender succulence.  

Or maybe I should take that back.  Thinking about it, this dish is actually very representative of the manifestos of Cantonese cookery.  Freshness first, then simple yet subtle preparation to bring out the best of the natural taste of the fresh food. Anyways this is one of the many styles in which the Chinese eat crab which they love in general with a passion.

One of my earliest food memories is of having my mother, who loves crabs but for some strange reason will never admit it, absolutely astound me with the dexterity and speed with which she crunched her way through a mountain of crab shells with the utmost of ease.  I mean, from my youthful perspective, those crab shells were like iron shields and my mother was Superman or something.

Drunken Shrimp 醉蝦 - Easy Breezy

Ah, the humble shrimp!  Sweet and succulent crustacean!  How can one resist the call of the just cooked shrimp, so tasty inside its armor of shell, so beautiful to look at, so crunchy yet tender, so brimming of sea flavor!  Well, if one has a problem with eczema like I do, one has to should resist it most of the time, just to save myself from the scratching and itching.  But in the special case when the suggestion of making Drunken Shrimp for dinner is proposed; well, how can one possibly refuse to make this easiest and tastiest of shrimp dishes?

Marinated Kelp Salad - Manna from the Seas 涼拌海带

You're probably wondering what this is.  Why is the weird green curtain thingy showing up a food blog?  Well that's because we ate this weird green curtain thingy last night and it was delicious.  

This is Korean dried kelp, a recent discovery of ours and a now firm favorite with my 老公 who swears that it is improving his memory by leaps and bounds (a good thing too, that is.)  After tossing a handful of the dried kelp into a big bowl of water the resulting hydrated kelp was almost two feet long by a foot and some wide. 

Soy Sauce King Prawn Stir Fry 豉油王煎蝦

This simple yet sophisticated stir fry of the Soy Sauce King Prawn, or 豉油王煎蝦, is a dish that tests the wok skills.  It is one of those fast and furious stir frys where your skill makes or breaks the dish.  So be forewarned.  And be challenged.  If you succeed you will have the sweet reward of succulent King Prawn cooked and flavoured to perfection.

Pickled Mackerel - Fish in a Jar

In Hong Kong people don't like the mackerel. "Ah ya, too oily!" I overhear the ladies at the wet market cackle noisily amongst themselves. So whenever fresh mackerel appear they linger long atop the wet market's makeshift styrofoam tables even though they are priced dirt cheap. Shining fresh fish rows, glittering their silver gray stripes under hanging bare bulbs.