Best Banana Bread

If you're anything like us you'll know what I mean when I say that you've got to keep the cookie jar supplied.  I don't like to buy sweet treats from the stores, preferring to make them myself.  But the family eats the sweet treats as fast as I can make them!  And oftentimes when I'm busy doing this and that it always feels like I don't have enough time.  

That's why I love, love, love this banana bread recipe so much!  It's really easy, quick and, best of all, this Best Banana Bread 香蕉麵包 comes out tender and moist and super duper yummilicious every time!

Steamed Chicken with Cordyceps Flower and Lap Cheong 蟲草臘腸蒸雞

The cool seems to blow in around this time of year in every other place that I've lived except Hong Kong.  In Hong Kong we have turbid summer heat until somewhere near the end of October up to mid November.  I think, anyways.  The coming of real autumn weather seems to shift every year so I could be inaccurate on this point.  My point is that one really starts to long for the soothing winds of calm after a long hot summer.  

Especially this summer, a real hotbed of dissension for Hong Kong, chaos and madness everywhere in a usually restrained and orderly dense city life.  (I'm sure you must have heard about it in the news.)  School has been cancelled in our area for a whole week already!  (And my little girl's loving it!)   The rest of us oldies (with principles and responsibilities) are stuck in the strange ditch of understanding the monumental problem but also knowing of the eons old wily dragon that breathes behind it.  

So, for the meantime, we decided to simply celebrate the hope of the coming of the fresh, free breeze of autumn with an easy, delicious and healing recipe for Steamed Chicken with Cordyceps Flower and Lap Cheong, or  蟲草臘腸蒸雞.

Homemade Salt Preserved Vegetables

This tale of Homemade Salt Preserved Vegetables, or 自製干腌菜, started one sunny Hong Kong afternoon when we decided to take my little girl to a park (which shall remain nameless for reasons you will soon understand) which was not our usual neighborhood park.  A small trip for our small family.  A fun, though still hot and muggy, day spent in a magnificent old park.  A refreshing sojourn amongst the green trees for us weary city dwellers.  

As the twilight fell we were resting and eating ice cream on park benches when my 老公's sharp eye spotted something strange nearby.  We sauntered over in the quickly fading light and discovered to our surprise, where once had been flower beds was now a bed of vegetables!  How, you ask, did we know it was a vegetable bed?  

Well, dear readers, there were little melon/cucumber looking vegetables snuggled amongst the vines!  Why on earth these vegetables were growing in a prime spot of a Hong Kong park I know not, but I will admit (Sh! Don't tell anyone!) that two of these melon/cucumbers were tucked into our pockets as we left the park that day!

Fish Tail Rice Soup 魚尾泡飯湯

Here's a great two in one Chinese seafood dish that will make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.   For the Chinese there's nothing like fresh fish and super duper nothing like hot, aromatic, milky white fish soup!  

So if, one of these days, you thinking what to make for dinner, but humm...you're feeling a little lazy, plus you've got a sudden craving for fish and soup and have some leftover rice in your fridge, why not try this yummilicious and easy to make Fish Tail Rice Soup, or 魚尾泡飯湯, and get two (and a half, really) dishes for the effort of making one!

Homemade Peanut Oil 自製花生油

The glistening golden liquid in this delicate porcelain dish is something that y'all have probably never tried in your life!  Actually, until very recently, we had never tried it either!  

My 老公's mother had an old friend of hers from her home town of Xinhui 新會區 (near Macau) bring down a bottle of her 媽媽's homemade peanut oil!  This homemade peanut oil was lovingly prepared from the peanuts all the way thru the process of cleaning and crushing of the peanuts to the long wait of extracting the oil.  You would not believe how easy it is to make and how divine this peanut oil smells and tastes!

Chinese Pan Fried Fish with Sauce 煎紅衫魚

This simple and easy to prepare pan fried fish dish is a favorite in our house for the rare times when we decide not to steam a fish for dinner (usually our favorite way to prepare fresh fish!)  

Deceptively simple to look at and make, we find this fish dish incredibly tasty: a firm white fish meat cooked to golden crispy skinned perfection, then, at the last minute, inundated with a multi flavored sauce that permeates every bite with dash, zip and multiple layers of tastiness.  Try this Chinese Pan Fried Fish with Sauce, or 煎紅衫魚, and see if you don't find it just as yummilicious as we do!

Five Nuts Mooncake Part II 五仁月餅

We're finally ready to assemble our deliriously nutty and yummilicious Five Nuts Mooncake!  Only we seem to have missed Mid Autumn Festival!  Ooops!  To check out our excuses for posting late and our detailed and crazy Five Nuts Mooncake ingredient sourcing and pre-assembly phase, please see our previous post Five Nuts Mooncake Part I  五仁月餅.  

So, at this point we have all the ingredients sourced, toasted and roasted, chopped and bopped into the right configurations.  It's time to put this Five Nut Mooncake together!

Five Nuts Mooncake Part I 五仁月餅

Okay, so first off, I know this post is kinda late.  No, no, you're right, it's not kinda, it's totally late!  (And I apologize.)  Mid Autumn Festival is over and done with, lanterns are doused, etc., but, darn it all, I'm going to post this traditional Chinese Five Nut Mooncake 五仁月饼 recipe anyway.

I think I have a couple of pretty good excuses for my lateness, the first being that this wonderful, amazing, fragrant to the heavens, nuttily delicious, soul gripping Five Nuts Mooncake was a b***h to make and the second being that it took us forever to source some of the really traditional ingredients that are supposed to be in the Five Nuts Mooncake.

Boiled Water Caltrop 鮮煮菱角

Nope...these things are not the deadly bat shaped ninja weapons that you're thinking they might be.  Rather, these are Water Caltrops, or 菱角, which are probably some of the funkiest, strangest nuts that ever existed.  I mean, who would know that these are 1) made by Mother Nature herself and 2) that one could actually eat these?!  It looks way too dangerous to eat!  

But it turns out that these mysterious nuts from an aquatic plant similar to the water lily has been cultivated and eaten in different countries for centuries.  The water caltrop even shows up as a motif in one of my favorite books of all time, The Dream of the Red Chamber, where one of the minor characters is even named Xiang Ling 香菱, translated to mean Fragrant Water Caltrop. (You have to read this novel, it's so amazing!)

Wuxi Spareribs 無錫排骨

This is my dish, this is me:  Wuxi Spareribs!   Hee, hee!  This is a famous dish from my hometown, Wuxi 無錫 in the province of Jiangsu 江蘇, where my 爸爸 was born and grew up and where my ancestors lived peaceably for generations before the upheavals of the twentieth century tore them up and threw them, topsy-turvy, all over the place.  

The famous cuisine of Jiangsu is known for its wonderful red braising, a star combination of soy sauce and sugar, slowly cooked down and caramelized into sweet, meltingly tender meat dishes. I grew up on this stuff!  Pots and pots of delicious red braised meats...yummilicious!  (uh, oh homesick now!)  

The star of the meaty bunch is this absolutely delectable Wuxi Spareribs, or 無錫排骨, tender, almost melting off the bone meat enrobed in a glossy thick gorgeous herb infused soy based sauce.