Egg Omelet with Minced Pork & Preserved Radish 煎蛋角

If you love eggs you'll love this egg dish!  My grandma 奶奶 used to make this special treat for us sometimes when she had a moment to spare.  It was such fun to eat these little egg wrapped meat pockets...I would always use my hands to eat it when grandma wasn't looking!  

There's something so satisfying about the tender light texture of the egg wrapped around all that tasty meaty goodness...it's comfort food at its best.  This traditional Chinese Egg Omelet with Minced Pork & Preserved Radish 煎蛋角 is a simple pork filled egg omelet flavored with the unique sweet salty umami of Chinese fermented radish.

Maltose Crackers 麥芽糖夾餅

Here's a treat straight from the past of Hong Kong!  These simple to make and yummilicious snacks were sold from street vendors to children in the 50s and 60s of Hong Kong.  The conveniently sandwiched stick allows children to eat their snacks and run around at the same time.  A type of Hong Kong  lollipop, if you will.  

Both savory and sweet, these Maltose Crackers 麥芽糖夾餅 are unique snacks from Hong Kong's past!  Plus they're so easy to make that kids can do it themselves, with some supervision during the maltose part...you don't want to come back and find them ensnarled in a sugary web!

Thai Satay Skewers

If you're one of those folks like me who think that restaurant servings of skewers are waaaay too small and few and never enough for your deep skewer hunger then you're in luck cuz skewers are actually pretty easy to make.  And if you make your own you can have as many, many mouth wateringly lusicous skewers as you can gobble down and hide under your shirt for nibbles later.  (Ouch, watch out for the sharp tips!)  

These Thai Satay Skewers of thoroughly marinated meat grilled to caramelized charred perfection are a showcase for those famously startlingly contrasts that work so well in Thai cuisine, the sweet, salty, sour, bitter and spicy present and somehow all perfectly balanced in one dish.

Stir Fried Milk 炒牛奶

This traditional Chinese dish famously from Daliang Town 大良鎮 is simple and yet oh so elegant!  Stir Fried Milk 炒牛奶 uses fresh milk, egg whites, starch and a clever cooking technique to create a dish of delicate clouds of snowy white curds interspersed with sea sweet shrimps, buttery pine nuts and flecks of richly flavored ham.  A real showstopper kind of dish!

White Clam Pizza

For all of you pizza and seafood lovers, I'm super excited to share this!  I've been binging on food shows again (my favorite lazing about thing to do), this time enjoying 'Ugly Delicious' and they had this segment about this little ol' pizza joint in New Haven called Frank Pepe where they serve white clam pizza.  OMGosh...Clam pizza!  And it's sooo delicious that it's famous! 

To be totally honest I was really surprised to see that Americans were loving themselves something so wildly seafood-y, if you know what I mean.  Hmmm..actually, I'm not even sure what that means.  Anyways, I was so intrigued with the idea, I mean fresh clams, pizza, what could go wrong?   

We love, love, love fresh seafood and make homemade pizza every week so of course we had to try it.  And it was AMAZING!  This White Clam Pizza is simply made: freshly shucked clams, a bit of garlic and cheese and a swirl of olive oil combine to make this pizza a marvel of crispy golden cheese infused with the absolutely delicious briny sea sweetness of clam juice.  This white clam pizza is to die for!

Zha Jiang Mian Fried Sauce Noodles 炸醬麵

Here's a yummilicious and easy to make bowl of Chinese noodles that is an all-in-one kind of dinner.  I love making these noodles for dinner when I'm feeling a wee bit lazy or just plain ol' out of time.  

This Zha Jiang Mian Fried Sauce Noodles 炸醬麪 is a classic Northern Chinese noodle dish that is topped with freshly slivered vegetables and minced pork sauce fried with soybean and tianmianjiang paste until fragrant.  It's a comfort dish that will make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.  For such a simple to make dish, the rewards are super tasty and satisfying!

Corned Beef Egg Sandwich 蛋牛治

Here's something fun and easy to make for a snack as well as being a classic menu selection at all Hong Kong style cafes, also known as cha chaan tengs 茶餐廳.  One of my personal favorite late afternoon snacks at the local cha chaan teng is one order of the Corned Beef Egg Sandwich 蛋牛治 along with a tall cool glass of Hong Kong Style Iced Lemon Tea 凍檸茶.  

Ah...nothing better to satisfy those late in the day stomach rumbles!   It's also super easy to make at home and I like it to do that so I can make my Corned Beef Egg Sandwich 蛋牛治 exactly the way that I like it best: soft bread enveloping tender flavorful beef and just scrambled lusciously soft and buttery eggs.  Yumm...

Sweet Cow Ear Cookies 甜牛耳朵餅

As promised, here is my sweet version of that festive Chinese New Year treat, the Cow Ear Cookie. In our last post we discussed the recipe for the traditional Chinese Cow Ear Cookie 牛耳朵餅,  a savory cookie flavored with the exotic flavors of the Chinese red fermented bean curd.  I found the flavors of the red fermented bean curd in a cookie so intriguing that I decided to try to make a sweet version of the same.  

Here is the result, my version of a Sweet Cow Ear Cookie 甜牛耳朵餅, a buttery sweet pinwheel cookie swirled through with the distinct umami flavors of the Chinese red fermented bean curd.  Psst...tell you a secret...I think we like these sweet cookies even better than the traditional savory ones!!

Cow Ear Cookies 牛耳朵餅

This traditional Chinese New Year cookie that has a really good name.  An animal part name...a name that only the Chinese could think of, loving as they so do to name things in a strange ways.  Personally I could think of many other names for a cookie like this that would be as appropriate and definitely more pleasing to the ear (and the stomach!)  

Nevertheless the aptly named but strange sounding Cow Ear Cookie 牛耳朵 is a pleasingly pinwheel patterned deliciously savory cookie flavored and colored with the interesting and rather exotic flavor of the Chinese red fermented bean curd 紅腐乳.

Chinese Date Paste 棗泥餡

Traditional Chinese sweets typically use a couple of kinds of fillings like red bean paste (see my Grandma's red bean paste recipe), lotus seed paste, egg custard (see our custard recipe inside our Snow Skin Custard Mooncake recipe post), etc.  

Another traditional Chinese dessert filling paste is this yummilicious concoction made from Chinese dates also known as jujubes 棗, a sweet pulpy fruit that is often used to sweeten Chinese desserts.  The Chinese Date Paste 棗泥餡 is pretty simple to make and the end result is a rich, fruity, sweetly smooth and thick paste that can be used for stuffing pastries like Chinese Rice Flour Cookies 紅棗泥炒米餅 or for making candy like Chinese Date Walnut Candy 棗泥核桃糕.