Mini Crystal Red Bean Zong Zi 水晶紅豆粽子

It's almost that time of the year for the beating drums of the Dragon Boat races and the deliciously tantalizing aroma of zong zi 粽子 floating in the air: it's time for Duanwu Dragon Boat Festival 端午節!  

For me, this time of the year is always filled with thoughts of my dearest Grandma 奶奶, busy and bossy in her kitchen, making all kinds of special traditional treats for us that no one else bothered to learn how to make.  Except me, I guess, I finally did some learning myself on these things and always have her in my mind and heart as I bustle away in my own little kitchen.  

So it is that every Dragon Boat Festival I always try to find the time to make two kinds of zong zi just as Grandma made, one kind the savory pork and salted duck egg zong zi 肉粽子  and the other kind the sweet red bean zong zi 紅豆沙粽子.  This year I thought I would try adding a twist to this traditional combo and thus made these Mini Crystal Red Bean Zong Zi, or 水晶紅豆粽子, a light and delightfully chewy, beautifully translucent version of the traditional zong zi.

How to Temper Chocolate

At the beginning, all I knew was that I loved chocolate.  Loved, loved, loved chocolate.  And when I got more interested in baking and all that jazz I naturally started wanting to do some chocolate stuff.  

First I decided to make some molded chocolates with my little girl.  Should be easy, right?  We melted some dark chocolate, poured it into molds and put it in the fridge to set.  The next day we popped them out, looking pretty and...they melted immediately to the touch.  Ugh...what were we doing wrong?

It turns out that to do most of the cool things one can do with chocolate, one must temper the chocolate.  Tempering melted chocolate allows one to coat with chocolate or mold chocolate that will end up to be shiny, smooth, break with a snap and able to stay at room temperature and be touched without melting right away.  I was determined to learn how to temper chocolate and here I share what I learned, how I screwed up, and the tips that really helped me.

Hong Kong Style Mango Pudding 香港芒果布甸

One of the delights of the Hong Kong dim sum feast is the mango pudding.  Not just any old mango pudding, mind you, but the classic one developed by the ingenious chefs of dim sum who have been trained in the tradition of creating small, beautiful, delightful tasty treats that can be eaten as part of the buffet of tidbits that is the dim sum lunch.

While mango pudding has existed in many other permutations, this particular Hong Kong Style Mango Pudding, or 香港芒果布甸, is light as a feather, melting in the mouth, packed to the brim with the freshest mango taste and texture and creamy with an aromatic hint of dairy.  Now you don't need to come to Hong Kong for this dim sum treat, you can make it quite easily at home!

Vietnamese Lemongrass Beef Noodle Salad Bun Bo Xao

When it gets hot and muggy (yup, that's right, it feels like summer already here in Hong Kong), there's nothing like a chilled bowl of noodles, amiright? But at the same time why not go for a refreshing green salad? Heck, why not have both at the same time?! 

One of the best kinda noodles /salads for when you want to cool down and you're in the mood for lots and lots of fabulous flavor is a chilled bowl of Vietnamese Beef Vermicelli Noodles or Bun Bo Xao : tender, chewy noodles cradled in a bed of baby greens, dressed in a tangy sweet spicy sauce and topped with more luscious greens (including mint and basil!), strips of oh so flavorful grilled lemongrass marinated beef and, to top it all off, sprinkled generously with crushed peanuts and crispy fried shallots.

Chocolate Dipped Biscotti

My very first biscotti was eaten a long, long time ago in a little Italian style cafe near my university campus.  The counter had a beautiful and enormous glass jar packed with these funnily shaped biscuits.   Newly from suburbia I naturally had no idea what they were but I could see that many others in the cafe had indulged.  So I took the plunge and ordered one with my usual cuppa.  

As I picked up this thing called biscotti I thought to myself, you have got to be kidding, this thing is hard as heck!  I gnawed furtively at one hard end.  Humm...not going to happen.  I looked about and spied out others taking their hard as heck biscottis for dips into their coffee.  I followed suit and wow, wow...deep biscotti love!

Ever since then I have always, always wanted to make biscotti.  So I'm super excited to share this amazing biscotti recipe, it's so easy to make and OMG so yummilicious!  And comes out hard but not too hard!  You can eat it without dipping.  And of course, because I'm a chocolate freak, I had to up the ante and make it Chocolate Dipped Biscotti!

Bang Bang Chicken Salad 棒棒雞絲

Bang! Bang, bang! Want to get back at all those annoying things that happen all in a day's work that you can't do anything about like...being stuck in traffic because you stupidly decided to get a taxi instead of using public transport or...waiting in line forever as the person in front "chats' with the cashier or...your boss giving you a hard time for something that's his fault or...hey, I could go on forever.  

Well how about taking out your frustrations on a tender juicy piece of chicken breast, before ripping it to tiny little pieces?  But then you feel a wee bit mean and so you have to make amends by dressing that shredded chicken with a drizzle of spicy numbing sesame soy dressing, then nestling it tenderly on a cool crunchy bed of cucumber strips and translucent mung bean noodles?  Yummmm...amiright?  And don't you feel better already?  I know I do.  

Make this cool and yummilicious Bang Bang Chicken 棒棒雞絲 for your dinner tonight and see if you don't get a right 'bang' out of it!

Grow Spring Onions in a Jar

Bring the spring in, I say, bring it in!  We've been experimenting with spring onions 珠蔥 also known as green onions or scallions, trying to find a way to have this essential to Chinese cuisine flavoring unit at hand whenever we need it.  

I don't know if it's just my luck but, really, almost every time I need spring onions, all the stores are out of it!  And if you cook Chinese food, you know as I know that you will always need some spring onion for your dinner dishes, be it a sprinkled garnish, a way to aromatize your oil, or even as the tasty vegetable portion of your stir fry.  

Which is why, here in Hong Kong, I have never understood why it is so hard to buy spring onion after a certain time of the day.  A shake of the head, a shrug of the shoulders...sorry, no spring onions.  Urghh...how devastating to that delectable dish that you have in mind for dinner!  

Recently we have discovered a way to easily insure ourselves against the abyss that is the lack of spring onion:  we have been growing our own spring onions in a jar!

Five Spice Kumquat Jam

I'm so happy with my latest jam!  I feel like I've bottled up some serendipitous springtime sunshine in a jar.  This is because the lovely golden kumquat is in season again and after making Chinese Candied Kumquats  糖漬金橘 last year, I decided this year to make some marmalade with it.  

Marmalade, for me, is always associated with Paddington Bear, that adorable little hatted bear from deepest, darkest Peru.  His most favorite, absolutely preferred food was marmalade.  When I think of him I always see him with one furry paw, sticky with orangey goopy goodness, just out of the marmalade jar.  But enough of bears!  Back to the jam at hand!  

I had never made marmalade before.  But since the surprising easy success of my Easy Homemade Strawberry Jam, I decided to try making jam with kumquats.  A bit more work, but oh my gosh darn it!  This Five Spice Kumquat Jam  is soooo addictively tasty, refreshingly sweet yet tangy, a touch of that distinctive citrus bitterness, all rounded out by the warm spiciness of five spice.  

Oh, dear, oh dear, I keep finding myself in deepest, darkest Fridge-ru, dipping one paw into the goopy golden goodness that is my very own marmalade jar!

Stir Fry Scrambled Eggs with Char Siu Pork 叉燒炒蛋

It's been so nice and quiet these few days.  Spring is coming, it's getting warmer and I've started seeing little tender green buds everywhere.  Right now it is the long Easter holiday for the school kids here in Hong Kong and I've been lazing around the house a lot with my little girl at home.  It's so nice to have her to myself all day again!

So we've been cooking (and baking) a lot as well and I suddenly realized that we had somehow missed out on writing about one of the most totally kick ass Chinese comfort foods, the amazing Stir Fry Scrambled Eggs with Char Siu Pork.   How could we have forgotten this humble and easy to make home style dish?

Tender just set flakes of golden yellow eggs clinging to caramelized chunks of Char Siu, that yummilicious world famous Chinese barbecued pork.  This Stir Fry Scrambled Eggs with Char Siu Pork 叉燒炒蛋 is one of those soul satisfying Chinese dishes, a veritable rice slayer, that is really easy to make and guaranteed to produce shiny licked over plates and rice bowls. There will be nothing left, seriously!

Fragrant Pear 香梨

Tis the season for the best, I kid you not, the best pear you're ever going to have!  If you're a pear lover, and who isn't, you have to do your pear shaped duty and find a source for these special Chinese pears.

Our latest fruit obsession, these Fragrant Pears or 香梨 are amaaaazing: light, tender, snowy white flesh, delicately crisp, filled to the brim with the most refreshingly sweet and flavorful pear juice.  They are so good that we can't stop gobbling them up right away and having to run back to the market to stock up on more!  And why not indulge, tis the season for the Fragrant Pear 香梨 and they'll be gone soon enough if you don't hurry and get some for yourself!