Homemade Chinese Pork Jerky Bakkwa 自制猪肉干

Kung Hei Fat Choy!!  恭喜發財!! Welcome to the Year of the Sheep!!  I don't know about y'all but it's been a busy few days of cooking for us.  Lots of delicioso type of traditional Chinese New Years dishes that we make once a year to celebrate the coming of the New Lunar Year!  

We've been a-making new year treats like Chinese Sweet New Year Cake 年糕, Steamed Radish Cake 蘿蔔糕, and the Braised Dried Oyster with Black Sea Moss 髮菜蠔豉燜燒肉.  

One of the things we made for the first time this year is Homemade Chinese Pork Jerky, also know as Bakkwa,  or 自制猪肉干.  The reason we attempted to make our own jerky is because we received a most beautifully illustrated cookbook to review, Chinese Feasts & Festivals: A Cookbook, by S.C. Moey, and we were delighted to discover what looked like a pretty easy recipe for making this delicious treat at home.  

I love chinese jerky and never realized you could make it yourself at home!

Chinese New Year Flowers 中國新年花

The one thing you have to do every Chinese New Year if you live in Hong Kong is to visit the Chinese New Year Flower Market, or 中國新年花市.  

This huge, chaotic market located yearly at Victoria Park in Causeway Bay began as a flower market to sell New Year's flowers to all the households preparing for the New Year (one must have flowers in the house for New Year!) and has evolved over the years into not only an amazing flower market but also general fair or market, where anything and everything is sold, from toys to gadgets to political literature and t-shirts.  Everything with strong emphasis on preparing and celebrating for the upcoming Chinese New Year, of course.  

We go every year to enjoy the very festive (though very crowded) atmosphere, to buy a balloon (a giraffe balloon!) and a toy or two for my little girl and, most importantly, to pick up our Chinese New Year's Flowers 中國新年花.  The Chinese New Year Flower Market is just so gorgeous and fun, with festive and colorful New Year's flowers as far as the eye can see!

Happy Valentine's Day! 情人節快樂

Happy Valentine's Day from all of us at The Hong Kong Cookery!

We think there's no better way to celebrate the holiday of love than to spend some time making and decorating cookies to give as Valentines to your sweethearts and friends.  So here is my little girl's funny family of heart cookie valentines (there's Mommy and Daddy Heart, Baby Heart, Sister Heart, and Grams and Gramps Heart.)

Our Valentine to you, dear readers!   情人節快樂!

Chinese Candied Kumquats 糖漬金橘

This Chinese New Year recipe is a delicioso combination of a couple of things I really love: candy and fruit, and something really lucky for the Chinese New Year, the kumquat, or 金橘.  金橘 translates as "gold orange" which symbolizes that good fortune (which for the Chinese always means MONEY!) will find you in the upcoming year.

Which, to be honest, is always a good thing, right?  More money means more yummy food, amiright?  What people usually do is to buy big pots of kumquat laden trees (tying on lucky red pocket envelopes all over it) to put in their house and invite in the luck for the new year.  

This year we decided to not just decorate our house with kumquat trees but to make some 'golden' food to ingest into our bodies so as to increase our likelihood of golden luckiness even more!  And thus we present to you our version of the Chinese Candied Kumquat 糖漬金橘, a choice snack for the festivities of the Chinese New Year, bringing you not only yummilicious delight for your sweet tooth but also a fun way to swallow some of that 'golden luckiness' right into your very being!

Macanese Style Portuguese Curry Chicken 葡國咖哩雞

I'm always so happy when I get a chance to write about Macau. It's a place that pulls me in some way, there's something so interesting about this little city that started out as one of the first European trading port cities in Asia and now, 500 years later, is a gracefully beautiful yet contradictory grand dame, full of sometimes shocking flirtations and many, many secrets doors into her long, intricate past. 

One very interesting part of this past of Macau is the ethnic group known as the Macanese otherwise known as the folks who are/were born with Portuguese and Macau ancestry.  ( Macau was for a long, long time a Portuguese colony. )  

The Macanese developed the eclectic original fusion food known as Macanese Food, a mix of Portuguese and Chinese cuisine that is very distinctly their own.  We were reminiscing eagerly about Macau today and about how much we missed the delicious food there and oh, we should make a short trip soon, blah, blah, blah.  

Long story short, what else to do to stave off our cravings but to make this yummilicious Macanese Style Portuguese Curry Chicken Portuguese Chicken 葡國雞, a dish unique to Macau and Macanese food!

Fishing Hong Kong Style 港式釣魚

In Hong Kong we live on an island surrounded by the sea.  Hard to remember sometimes in this concrete jungle that is the city.  But really truly, yes, we all live by the sea.  Often times we will stroll by the ocean pier just to breath the fresh breeze and feel the freedom of the open skies. 

Recently in the depth of the winter the weather has been just lovely (read blue skies instead of grey) and we have been exploring our outdoor options more than usual.  Thus our inspiration for a Fishing Hong Kong Style expedition 港式釣魚, a frolic along the pier of our nearby sea, a first fishing experience for our little girl and a fun reminder of past fishing adventures for mom and dad.  (Not sure why the ocean was sloped that day but it sure felt gorgeous!)

Fragrant Pan Fried Squid Paste 香煎魷魚滑

Ah, the mysterious creature of the deep, the delicious squiggly squid!  The stuff of legends, sailors of old telling tales of ginormous squid rising wrathfully from the seas to shallow them whole, boats and all.  

Did you know that the giant squid is a real creature, growing up to the size of 30-60 feet (13-20 meters)!!  It's true, they really exist and I'll bet they're super yummy too, if ever I get a chance to snack on a bit o' giant tentacle.  

For now , though, I'll have to be content with the wonderfully fresh squid that we can find at the wet markets in Hong Kong and especially, especially with our latest yummilicious discovery, the amazingly scrumptious freshly made squid paste that one can find at selected wet market stalls.  

It's really fabulous that they did all the hard work of making the squid paste already (so fresh too!) and you can just pick some up and TA-DA!!, just like that, a drool worthy, super easy to make and yummilicious dish, the Pan Fried Squid Paste 香煎魷魚滑!

Homemade Rice Vinegar Health Drink

The absolutely lovely (and rare) weather that we've been having in Hong Kong lately has managed to tempt us out and about more often than usual.  And we have been rewarded in some unlikely and very foody ways indeed!  

We had taken our little girl to her Christmas dance performance and soon after her dance we wandered off into the nearby neighborhood of Kowloon City to enjoy the sunshine.  We discovered the wonderful Kowloon Walled City Park 九龍寨城公園 (more on that later) and had a leisurely, lovely stroll to our heart's content.  

Just as we were almost ready to leave we discovered a little Mom and Pop shop selling water, snacks, ice pops, sodas...you know, the usual 士多 kind of stuff.  But, wow, wow, wow, imagine what we discovered, this humble little shop was also selling little bottles of homemade rice vinegar...with the mother!

Boiled Fresh Octopus 白灼新鮮八爪魚

Have you ever seen a live octopus up close?  Beautifully sinuous creatures in constant fascinating motion, their suction cups giving off a rapid fire pop, pop, pop as they propel themselves all over the place with ease.  

At the wet market seafood section the other day one of the fish vendors had a basketful of live octopus.  We stopped to watch the feisty boneless creatures writhe this way and that for a long while, my little girl was just fascinated!  In the end, of course, we ended up taking one of the octopus home!  

We made the simplest and best dish one can make with super duper fresh octopus: Boiled Fresh Octopus 白灼新鮮八爪魚 served simply with a soy sauce and wasabi dip.  So fresh and yummilicious!

Sea Salt White Pepper Crackers

It must be one of the ironies of modern life that we have everything at our fingertips and yet...we seem to miss out sometimes on just as much as we gain.  The reason I've been contemplating such dreary thoughts is that I realized recently (gulp...hangs head in shame) that I have never ever in my life eaten homemade crackers or even thought of making my own crackers!  I have always eaten the delicious (well sometimes delicious usually just kinda stale) boxed crackers that one finds in plentiful supply at the grocery shops.  

It never ever occurred to me to make them myself, I guess because I somehow thought that one needed a special machine to make edibles so thin and perfectly shaped.  Well it turns out that I was completely wrong!  You don't need a machine or special skills.  

It turns out that not only are crackers dead easy to make but these homemade Sea Salt White Pepper Crackers are so much more amazingly delicioso than the crackers that you buy at the store!  Seriously now...I'm kinda mad no one ever told me about homemade crackers!