Dried Shrimp Spring Onion Cheung Fun 葱花蝦米腸粉

Silky, slurpable rice sheets entangled with chewy sea sweet bits of dried shrimp, accented with the sparkle that is fresh fragrant spring onions.  Dressed in a light sweet and savoury sauce that just accentuates it all.  Did I successfully tempt you yet, dear readers?  

This oh so yummilicious treat is the Dried Shrimp Spring Onion Cheung Fun 葱花蝦米腸粉.  This is one of the classic Cantonese versions of the steamed cheung fun 腸粉, delicate rice sheets wrapped around various yummy fillings, normally served at dim sum restaurants.  This might be my favorite cheung fun, actually.  So simple yet so darn marvelous.

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!

Shanghai Spring Onion Scallion Noodles 葱油拌面

This is my favorite Chinese cold noodle dish!  At first glance this noodle dish seems unbelievably simple, just fried spring onions topping noodles mixed with soy flavored sauce.  But when made right it's also unbelievably yummilicious!  

So much so that I always, always order this noodle when we go to Shanghai restaurants.  The sucky thing is that these days this noodle dish is badly made in the many restaurants and comes out tasting meh.  Which it shouldn't, cuz made right this Shanghai Spring Onion Scallion Noodles 葱油拌面 is absolute noodle perfection, the flavor of the fried onions intense, caramelized and delightfully chewy crispy and the al dente noodles just coated with heavenly flavor combo of sweetened soy and spring onion infused oil. 

So what is a girl to do if she can't get her noodle fix at the restaurants?  That's right, we make it at home now, just the way we like it!  It's actually a pretty easy to  make dish once you get the hang of it.

Stir Fry Crabs with Ginger and Scallions 姜葱蟹

This is the best crab dish.  Bar none.  Even better than the popular curry crab dishes that abound (which I think are overrated anyways).  Just fresh crab, ginger and scallions.  A simple trinity of three foods to create an absolute.  Absolute of taste, that is.  Simplicity and decadence on the same white plate.

For this Stir Fry Crab with Ginger and Scallion, or 姜葱蟹, we picked up from the wet market a mud crab which is a more meaty crab.  But any crab will do for this dish as long as it is fresh. And there are all kinds of crabs, an abundance of choice really, at the wet markets in Hong Kong.  

Ah, to live by the sea!  What a dream come true.  Of sorts anyways.  We have all the seafood we can possibly cook and eat but are stuffed like sardines into shoebox sized homes piled in towering, untidy heaps along a polluted harbor.  Sigh...