Chinese Candied Ginger 薑糖

The Chinese love ginger when they cook and rightly so.  A bit of ginger makes everything taste better.  Another favorite use of ginger for the Chinese is to expel the cold and inject warmth in the body.  A traditional chinese medicine concept of keeping a certain balance in your body.   

Another favorite way to reap the benefits of ginger is to eat Chinese Ginger Candy, or 薑糖.  A spicy, hot, and sweet treat that is good for your body. (But don't eat too much if you are a "hot" natured body!  It's better for "cool" body types.)

Chinese Steamed Pork Patty with Dried Anchovies 小銀魚蒸肉餅

It's one of those simple homey Chinese dishes that, in theory, seem like a breeze to whip up.  Which it is, really. I mean how hard is a dish like Chinese Steamed Pork Patty?  You just add some seasonings to the ground pork and steam it, right?  How easy is that?  Well, it turns out that Chinese Steamed Pork Patty is one of those tricky little dishes that is easy to make in a so-so sort of way and hard to make in a really good, tasty, lusciously melty sort of way.

Chinese Spiced Beef Shin Shank 滷牛腱

We were thinking about roast beef sandwiches and naturally, this being Hong Kong, could not find any roasting type of meat cuts available. Though it does appear off and on on the supermarket shelves.  Just never when you actually want to buy it.  

So, being frustrated, I had a 'light bulb' and thought of my Mom's delicious Chinese Spiced Beef Shin Shank, or 滷牛腱, that she always makes for us on our visits home.  It is a slow cooked soy and spices flavored shin of beef that becomes deliciously tender and fragrant with beautiful stripes of translucent melty tendons patterning the sliced beef.  Ah, the pleasures of the Chinese kitchen!!

Lychee Popsicle 荔枝雪條

There's nothing that can cool you down on a hot summer's day like a icy cold popsicle.  I remember traveling in the earlier days in China when there was very little in the way of proper air conditioning (actually not just little but none!) but there was always the red bean popsicle vendor just around the corner.  

Adults and children both would sit in what shade they could find and cool their whole body down by eating the delicious icy treats.  Yummy!  What a fun and natural way to cool down!

Hong Kong Mooncake Molds 月餅模具

Published: 2013-05-13

Just to share my joy at the latest cool stuff found digging through old dusty boxes at old dusty stores in Hong Kong.  You can definitely still find a treasure or two if you don't mind to taking your time and getting your fingers dirty.  Here are some old wooden mooncake molds, or 月餅模具.  Actually the two on the left are mooncake molds and the two on the right are wooden molds for other chinese pastry/cookies.  They had probably been sitting in that same old box for the past 15-20 years or something.

The store owner, an old man who frowned at me at first but was very nice later on, spoke of the old days of supplying the big Chinese Emporiums in Hong Kong and the eventual die down of demand, etc.  The store itself is done the old fashioned way, with the merchandise piled high in a untidy, seemingly random way.  A lot of rattan and bamboo craft.  Old Hong Kong craft.  Very fascinating stuff.  But, warning, quite dusty!!  I may have to go back for more browsing soon.

Black Sesame Ice Cream 黑芝麻雪糕

The summer's coming and it's time for lots of ice cream!  We tried a recipe for black sesame ice cream that is just out of this world delicious!  It seems even to have supplanted our blueberry ice cream as the family's favorite ice cream flavor.

I think the reason it is so good is that you make the black sesame paste yourself.  We tried this before, roasting and then grinding our own black sesame for Black Sesame Tang Yuan 黑芝麻湯圓 that came out fantastic.  The black sesame is so fragrant this way!  Nothing that you buy or that you get when eating out can compare to it.  Well,  here is something just as yummy with this freshly made paste - the fabulous Black Sesame Ice cream!

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.

Chinese Soy Sauce Hua Gua Pickles 花瓜

This chinese Hua Gua pickle is just so easy and delicious that it's ridiculous.  Inspired by the success with our chinese vinegar pickle I was gripped with a nostalgia for the Hua Gua pickles, 花瓜 or 醬瓜,  of my childhood.  These are delightfully crunchy Taiwanese soy sauce pickled cucumbers that Mom bought in little glass jars to go with our congee.

It was such a tasty treat that we used to fight over these little suckers when the Grandma and Mom weren't looking.  There was never enough to go around with three hungry little chinese girls and just a little tiny jar of pickles.  And, just to be clear, hungry little chinese girls can eat alot of food!  Well, now all these years later I have discovered that, as I mentioned earlier, these pickles are just ridiculously easy to make and taste just like the (actually better!) store bought kind (minus the yummy (not!) flavours of chemical preservatives of course.)

The Pleasures of Chinese Cooking

Image from Jeanyee Wong website

Published: 2013-04-15

I was checking out some old Chinese cookbooks (a favorite pastime of mine) and happened upon this great old video made as promotion for a Chinese cookbook called The Pleasures of Chinese Cooking by Grace Zia Chu that was published in the 60's in USA.  

Had to share it, what a cool video!  Check out the big can of "Glutate" at 0:17 (MSG, anyone?) and the little monster heads arranged around the stir fried peas at 1:00!  Oh my gosh, what the heck kind of Chinese food is that!  Hee, hee...

Chocolate Cookies

This is the perfect chocolate cookie to go with the little cup of hot chocolate that I posted about the other day.  It's so nice to have home-baked cookies and these are especially easy and convenient in that you can stick them in the freezer and then bring'em out, slice and pop'em in the oven and ta-da!  Fresh, heavenly cookies!  

But these are not your ordinary chocolate cookies.  Oh, no, not at all. These are Mercedes Benz of chocolate cookies.  So chocolately, double chocolately actually with the chocolate chips, but not too sweet either, slightly crumbly, meltingly just moist and then there's the deliciously unexpected sea salt flavor that blooms on your tongue after a few moments.  What a wicked taste sensation!