Chinese Red Cooked Pork 紅燒肉

I must confess to love, love, love chinese red cooked pork, or 紅燒肉.  This is meat cooked to fragrant, mouth melting perfection.  It is an all time favorite comfort food from my childhood, never failing to elict oohs and aahs from happy eaters.

Whenever my dearest grandmother, my 奶奶, decided to make her famous red cooked pork using the ham hock I would hover anxiously near the simmering pot on tiptoe, peeking in, fascinated to observe the beautifully huge round of thick skin, luscious fat and dark meat circling the thick leg bone slowly transforming into melt in your mouth porky deliciousness.  Let me tell you that grandmother's red cooked pork was not just food...it was an event!  I remember we had to use our biggest deepest soup bowl to dish up the pork when done and bring it to the family table.  What a spectacular sight!  

And then finally, at the go ahead, everyone's chopsticks diving in and  coming away with a bit of the skin, a bit of the creamy fat and a bit of the tender meat for each bite. Yummy, yummy, yummy!!  And dearest 奶奶 made it all look so easy, just throwing things casually into the pot and watching with half an eye, but let me assure you that her Red Cooked Pork 紅燒肉 is still the best I have ever had.

Chinese Jinhua Ham 金華火腿

Published: 2013-02-25

This is the best cured ham in the world:  Chinese Jinhua ham, or 金華火腿.  Isn't it beautiful?  Look at that beautiful ruby color!  But wait til you taste it!  Wow! Kazaam!  There's nothing quite like it: dense, chewy, bursting with layers of subtle flavors behind the first hit of salty/sweetness.  We find it in our humble opinion to be even tastier than jamon iberico , that also very delectable and worldwide famous ham from Spain.

Alas the Chinese give up their secret culinary treasures with so much reluctance, even to their own people, as it is very easy to buy Jinhua Ham but much much more difficult to buy quality Jinhua Ham.  As it is with so many Chinese things, you just have to "know" or you have to "know somebody who knows".  Or you can also do it like we do: the time wasting way (according to the Chinese), in other words by a series of trial and error.  There's nothing better to inform you of food quality than your own tongue as long as your palate is in good working order!

Drunken Crab with Chinese Rose Essence Wine 玫瑰露醉蟹

When people talk of 鮮甜, or the fresh sweetness, of seafood, they might just have had this dish, Drunken Crab with Chinese Rose Essence Wine 玫瑰露醉蟹, in mind.  Wonderfully fresh ocean flavor matched only by the incredible rose scented sweetness of the delectable crab flesh.  Ummm, just thinking about is making me drool.

We, the family, have just now (after digging out these photos from the last time we had this dish) voted to have this dish tomorrow again, yeah!  These crabs are so yummy that I don't even mind the drudgery of getting the darn crab flesh out of the shells (which I usually do mind very much!)  And it's really simple and fabulously dramatic to make!

Chinese Tea Eggs 茶葉蛋 - Egg Art

If you love eggs and you love art, surely you will love making and eating Chinese Tea Eggs 茶葉蛋.  What other food could provide such a deep visual artistic satisfaction while at the same providing an eggy snack that is really delicious, filling and unique in taste?

You can find tea eggs in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and anywhere there are Chinese people as the age old folksy 'go to' snack for the traveler or the person on the go.  In Hong Kong they even sell them mostly at the convenience stores now.  How ironic yet fitting in a way.  But really, buying a Tea Egg is missing the point.  It is so simple and fun to make your own.

Note: this is a repost because I seemed to have killed the original post in one of my 'coding' experiments.

Chinese Steamed Eggplant 蒜蓉蒸茄子

The beautiful purple...the wondrous color of both poison and eggplants.  This chinese preparation of the humble eggplant is simple but really good, resulting in a flavorful, creamily tender vegetable dish that makes you go back for more and more.  And versatile too.  If you're not the garlic type or nervous of the chilis, just take em out, no problem and you will still have a fine lip-smackingly delicious dish.

Rabbit Fish Steamed with Tangerine Peel 果皮蒸泥鯭

I've always thought of these little silvery yellow fishes as fishes that should be painted.  So here is my photo version of a fish painting of the delectable rabbit fish otherwise know as the 泥鯭.  This fish is a scavenger fish and can even be fished from the shores of Hong Kong. 

Spiced Edamame Soybeans 涼拌毛豆

This addictive little spiced edamame dish is soooo easy to make and so yummy to eat that it's unbelievable.  You could make them as one of the dishes for a chinese dinner or you could boil up a pot full and have them around for snacks.  They go great with beer too!  And the little ones love popping the lovely green soybeans out straight into their mouths to crunch on (and it's a great protein source!).

So if you see these fresh at the market grab a bag; I guarantee you'll love eating these green pods as much as we do.

Homemade Playdough

I couldn't resist to throw this playdough recipe into the mix.  After all this playdough that you can make in your own kitchen in 10-15 mins is cooked.  And it totally kicks ass compared to the stuff you pay pretty big bucks to buy:  it's absolutely safe with no weird chemicals, it feels great, it lasts long and you can decide the colors.  If your kid eats it, no problem, it's just very very salty.  

My little girl loves to help me to make the playdough and then we spend long hours making colorful playdoughy cakes and pizzas for all the stuffed critters in the house. (The lil' zebra above is one of her favorites and we are having a birthday party for him.)  So why not try it?  It's so easy and fun and you can save a bundle!

Chinese Radish Salad 紅蘿蔔沙拉

Here's a cool, crunchy, vinegary dish for the hot Hong Kong summer.  And you can make this Chinese Radish Salad  紅蘿蔔沙拉 in under 5 minutes too.  Isn't it a pretty sight on the dinner table with it's blushing reds and delectable whites? What a charmer, eh?  If you need another dish for dinner during the hot summer, why not add a quick cold chinese salad dish like this?  

Radishes are great for you, lots of vitamin C as well as iron, magnesium and calcium.  My little girl loves this radish salad too!  Pink one, pink one, she says.  Don't worry about the peppery taste of the red radish eaten raw as it will be transformed into vinegary sweet mellowness when prepared into this radish salad.  Hope you like it!

Grandma's Zong Zi Meat Dumpling 肉粽子

Zong zi, I think, is love. A tender and lovingly wrapped package of pure love.  Find this hard to swallow?  Prove it to yourself by unwrapping and eating a zong zi, or 粽子, that is laboriously prepared by someone who loves you and see if you don't feel completely satisfied, happy, really loved after that deliriously aromatic, droolingly savory (or sweet) zong zi.  

I know that I had that feeling often enough in my childhood, while happily eating the 粽子 that my dearest grandmother made just for us.  I truly believe, as taught to me first by Tita from the wonderful story Like Water for Chocolate, that the feelings and love that you have inside can be transmitted into the food that you cook and thereby to the people who eat your food.