Chinese Pickled Sour Mustard Greens 酸菜

Recently we've been obsessed with what the Chinese call '酸菜', directly translated as 'sour vegetable.'  What is meant by 酸菜 is actually mustard greens which have been pickled or brined. It's simple to make with a basic salt brine but wow is the resultant flavor big!

The result of the pickling/brining is a delicately soured pickled vegetable with a soft yet crunchy texture.  It's addictive I tell you, just addictive!  These Homemade Chinese Pickled Sour Mustard Greens 自製酸菜 can be used to stir fry with pork or chicken, eat plain as a relish, or toss in with fish to make the famous (and my favorite) Sichuan Fish Soup with Pickled Mustard Greens 酸菜魚 (recipe coming up next!)

Spicy Mala Peanuts 麻辣花生

We made the most crazily delicious peanut snack ever - the Spicy Mala Peanuts  麻辣花生 - fried peanuts flavored with a mouthwatering mix of spices and fired up with hot chilies and tongue numbing Sichuan pepper.  This snack has been all the rage in recent years, rising in popularity along with the Sichuan Spicy Stews that have become ubiquitous.  (Psst...check out our Sichuan Spicy Fish Stew 水煮魚 recipe.)

OMgosh but these peanuts are soooo additive!  Once you start eating these luscious spice coated, tongue numbing bits of peanut crunchiness you just can't stop!  So aromatic!  So yummilicious!  Now you can enjoy making Spicy Mala Peanuts 麻辣花生 at home for a fraction of the cost of buying them from the store!

Winter Melon Roasted Duck Soup 冬瓜燒鴨湯

This very easy to make Winter Melon Duck Soup is so delicious and deeply satisfying.  And gorgeous to look at.  And so easy to make!  Wait,wait...first I must say that I'm not completely convinced it's a soup rather than a dish.  It's certainly deliciously soupy.  It's also most assertively a dish in its own right.  Let's just call it a superliciously soupy dish then!

This Winter Melon Roasted Duck Soup 冬瓜燒鴨湯 is filled to the brim with tender melt in your mouth pieces of winter melon soaked through with flavorsome duck infused soup as well as delicious bites of succulent tender roasted duck.  For a family dinner it's both soup and dish in one!  This wonderful soupy dish is perfect for the warmer months as winter melon is super refreshing and cooling to the body.

Artisanal Shrimp Paste 廣興隆蝦醬

As promised, our post on the amazing artisan shrimp paste that we discovered in Macau.  

We recently returned to Macau for a short trip.  It was our first time out of Hong Kong in 3 years!  We had missed Macau in the interim, its charming streets, gaudy casinos, the grand old buildings from another time... There was so much to rediscover!

But you know what we quickly realized that we had missed most of all?  That’s right, it was the food!!

So we ate and ate.  And got slightly chubby.  So much yummy food!  Food is life!  Even in the midst of this feast we had to stop by and pick up a jar of our favorite artisanal fermented shrimp paste: 廣興隆 Kong Hing Loong Shrimp Paste.  It’s simply the best shrimp paste we’ve ever had.

Stir Fried Tung Choi with Shrimp Paste 蝦醬炒通菜

Ahh!  This dish is so fragrant that you can scent it from outside of a restaurant!  That is because this classic vegetable stir fry uses the redoubtable Chinese fermented shrimp paste 蝦醬 as the flavoring component.  

In this Stir Fried Tong Choi with Shrimp Paste 蝦醬炒通菜 the briny, pungent, funky shrimp paste clings lovingly to the tender leaves and crunchy stems of the Chinese Tong Choi, thoroughly flavouring the leaves as well as providing the base for the scrumptious sauce.

Raspberry Charlotte Cake

We love cake!  Any kind, really, but especially the fancy, good to look at and eat kinda cakes.  For our birthdays I always make a fancy cake.  This particular cake, a most delightful Raspberry Charlotte Cake, came out really well and I wanted to share this straight forward to make but spectacular to look at cake with our dear readers.  Just in case you need a 'wow' cake to impress and celebrate.  Or just to eat and enjoy!  Cuz, you know, cake ❤️!

Pssst:  This is the perfect cake to make for Mother's Day!  

Quail Egg Siu Mai Dim Sum Dumpling 鵪鶉蛋燒賣

We continue with our Dim Sum series today with this classic Quail Egg Siu Mai dumpling 鵪鶉蛋燒賣.  It’s seldom offered in dim sum restaurants nowadays, not sure why cuz these are the most delightful and delicious little dumplings.  

The Quail Egg Siu Mai features the same fragrantly savoury pork and shrimp filling of its much better known cousin, the iconic Siu Mai 燒賣 dumpling, but it has the added lovely surprise of a perfectly cooked little egg wrapped inside.  I still remember my wonder and delight the first time I ate one of these, it was so perfect, the combination of the smooth slippery egg and the luscious juicy meat!

Hong Kong Made Cola 香港製造可樂

We discovered this neat-o soda recently, selling at a favorite restaurant of ours.  A Hong Kong made cola?  How terribly interesting!  Of course we had to try it!  

This hong kong made cola, called Ma Wan Cola 馬灣可樂, is new on the market I believe.  It is made in Hong Kong (yay!) and originally produced especially for children, having only healthy ingredients.  But healthy cola can be enjoyed by everybody, amirite?!

White Bean Paste Dough | Nerikiri

This innocuous looking piece of dough is much more interesting than it looks.   This, dear readers, is the not really famous but totally should be famous Japanese white bean paste dough.  Also known as White Bean Paste Nerikiri Dough.

This versatile dough made of white bean paste and mochi becomes an edible dessert 'clay' with which you can make so many yummilicious as well as gorgeously shaped and textured sweet desserts.  It's amazing, really, the wonderful shapes that can be made: flowers, leaves, pumpkins, animals, etc.  The limit is your imagination and ingenuity.

White Bean Paste Nerikiri Bunny

It's time for Easter and we're letting the bunnies out!  We recently discovered and have been exploring 'white bean paste', a mild sweet bean paste that turns out to be very versatile in the making of all kinds of desserts.  Check out our first dessert made with white bean paste, our Chocolate Raspberry Tang Yuan, so yummy!

We've pushed on exploring white bean paste and discovered the wonderful things that the Japanese have done with it.  Namely they have made white bean paste into an edible "clay" or "dough" that can then be modeled and shaped into all kinds of amazing little sweet treats called "nerikiri" or "nerikiri wagashi."

Our first try at making and shaping a "nerikiri" was to make this simple bunny in time for Easter celebration.  We were all delighted by the results.  Our White Bean Paste Nerikiri Bunny turned out super duper cute, with soft white fur and little pink ears, twinkly black eyes and a round fluffy tail.  Bunny's all ready for some Easter fun!