Stir Fry Lotus Root and Chives 韭菜花炒蓮藕

Ah! The lovely lotus!  That delicate flower that rises gracefully from the dark still waters of Chinese lakes.  What a wonderful flower!  Not only supremely beautiful (inspiring Chinese painters to masterpieces for thousands of years) but also a giver of life and sustenance.  Every part of this flower can be used for food, from the roots to the flowers to the seed and the leaves!  How cool is that?!  

I am always constantly amazed by the lotus flower, seemingly so delicate and fragile, yet so strong and resilient underneath.  We use the delightfully crunchy sweet lotus root to make this easy stir fry vegetable dish, Stir Fry Lotus Root and Chives, or 韭菜花炒蓮藕.

Chinese Boiled Jiaozi Dumpling 白菜豬肉餃子

These little Chinese Boiled Jiaozi dumplings 白菜豬肉餃子 are the best thing to have around the house!  You make these little beauties in one go, then freeze 'em right away.  Then, whenever you're hungry for a bit of a snack, you just pull it out of the freezer and boil for ten minutes and wowsers!  Tender, hot, juicy homemade dumplings to completely satisfy your hungry belly!  

We are making these a lot these days because it's a great go to snack for my little girl who always seems hungry these days (growing spurt!).  And it makes me feel great to be able to offer a quick, easy to fix, homemade snack for her.  We've been making these dumplings so much I've been tweaking the recipe to make various improvements.  

I finally got the golden stamp of approval with this last batch when my little girl said that these were the best Chinese Boiled Jiaozi Dumpling ever!

Chinese Style Chicken Liver Pâté 中式雞肝醬

I love getting a bit of organ meat into our meals if I can, they are just so power packed full of vitamin goodness.  One of my favorite ways to do this is to make liver pâté (with a Chinese twist of course!) which we then have in the mornings for breakfast, smeared on a bit of toasted homemade bread.

Yummy!  I love liver!  It's just so tasty.  It is definitely one of my favorite organ meats.  And if you make this Chinese Style Chicken Liver Pâté, it's super easy to make, very yummy, pretty to look at, and a little pate goes a long way!

Little Girl's Chocolate Birthday Cake with Buttercream Frosting

You're probably thinking that this little girl's birthday cake is a bit different looking.  Well, this is not your usual birthday cake, that's why!  This here birthday cake was made by 媽媽 (that's me!) and decorated by my little (but growing up way too fast!) girl all by herself!  

We always try to have a homemade cake for birthdays at our house and this year my little girl begged and begged to do the frosting decorations on her own.  So I gave up all control (it was hard!) over the frosting and decorations and just let her have fun.  This delightfully topsy turvy Little Girl's Chocolate Birthday Cake with Buttercream Frosting is the result of our Mother and Daughter team effort!

Three Cups Four Flavors Chicken 三杯四味雞

In Hong Kong there is a small circle of venerable grey beards that are respected by all as the authorities on traditional Chinese food.  They eat and then they talk about what they eat.  What a great job, eh?!  My 老公 likes to check out what they have to say and decided the other day to try out a recipe by one of these famous Chinese food connoisseurs, a William Mark Yiu Tong, known in Chinese as 唯靈.  

This sophisticated food lover created this easy recipe for his daughter before she went off to university as both a way for his daughter to be reminded of her father and as a way for her to make new friends in a new place.  Because, as the old man stated so eloquently: memories of eating good food together is the glue that binds friends and family.  Very true, no?  

So we made his very easy to prepare recipe and we were bowled over with pure deliciousness! Seriously amazing!  These old guys really know what they are about!  We ended up eating (licking!) all of this savoury, perfectly balanced sweet and sour tender chicken dish all up just like that (and neglected the other dishes on the table!)  

This simple to prepare Three Bowls Four Flavors Chicken, or  三杯四味雞 is really out of this world!

Homemade Egg Pasta

We had this really cool pasta noodle making machine in our house when we were growing up.  You've probably seen it before, it's the type you have to clamp on the table and then insert a crank handle in and you were off making all kinds of noodles.  

The only thing my grandma ever used our pasta machine for was for making her own wonton skins.  I would always volunteer to help her, gathering the long floury sheets of dough as they came out of the shiny silver machine.  It was so fascinating to witness a dull lump of dough become something else entirely: smooth, sleek, uniformly thin, almost translucent sheets that got cut into perfect squares of wonton skins.  

I recently became obsessed with the idea of making my own noodles and kept bugging my 媽媽 to ship over our old (and heavy!) pasta machine to me in Hong Kong.  Which she, of course, as any sane person would do, completely refused to do.  

Then I realized (duh!) that they still sell these pasta machines, pretty much unchanged in design and function, and for a wonderfully reasonable price.  So here is the first product from our shiny new pasta machine, this wonderful Homemade Egg Pasta, or 自製雞蛋麵.

Refrigerate Eggs or Not?

I'm sure I've written before about my grumpy old egg man at my local Hong Kong wet market and, lo and behold, here is that old sweetheart again, creeping grouchily into my story.  Well, what happened is that one day a while ago I forgot (again!) to keep my mouth shut when I was buying my eggs (he has the best eggs!) and I asked a stupid question (stupid to him, not to me.)  

As I was standing there waiting for my egg man to wrap up my fresh free range eggs in a neat cone of newspaper, it dawned on me that all his eggs were just sitting out in the open air.  In other words, they were not refrigerated!  

In the old days before I discovered him, I had always previously bought refrigerated eggs at the supermarket and kept my eggs in the refrigerator at home.  So I asked my grumpy old egg man why he did not need to refrigerate his eggs.  

Boy oh boy, did I get a long lecture that day about the general lack of food culture, lack of food knowledge, heck, even the overall degeneration of society, before he would hand over the eggs that I had already paid for.  But the thing is, lecture or no, he never did answer my question: Refrigerate Eggs or Not?  雪蛋環是不雪蛋?

Green Bean Dessert Soup 綠豆沙

There is almost nothing so soothing and cooling to drink on a hot, hot summer's day than Chinese Green Bean Dessert Soup.  My grandma used to make big pots of this wonderful soup for us, store it in the fridge and we would help ourselves to big delicious bowls to cool ourselves off after a hot day of play.  

So just as this really hot summer typhoon weather has settled in on us in Hong Kong, I suddenly remembered, (duh! strikes forehead),  the perfect thing to rustle up for taking the edge off this heat is this wonderfully body cooling Green Bean Dessert Soup, or 綠豆沙 or 綠豆湯.

Haw Flake Candy 山楂餅

You know how there are certain things that you loved when you were a little kid, things that to everyone else was just a 'meh' sort of thing, but to you (and you alone!) this thing was so cool and so special!  Well, the other day I stumbled on a package of Haw Flakes, or 山楂餅, and it was like deja vu right to that little kid state of mind.  Haw Flakes was one of my all time favorite treats when I was a still a wee lass!

Fish Maw Creamed Corn Soup 粟米魚肚羹

This classic Cantonese soup, Fish Maw Creamed Corn Soup or 粟米魚肚羹, is a great general favorite with all, both young and old.  Not only is this Chinese soup easy to make, Fish Maw Creamed Corn Soup is delicious, filling and comforting, a thick velvety broth full of a variety of pleasing textures and tastes.  

The creamed corn gives a delightfully sweet crunch while the spongy fish maw absorbs the soup in a lusciously juicy way.  And then there is still the tasty bits of Jin Hua ham and the tasty tendrils of delicately swirled egg.  What a treat for dinner time!