Winter Melon Pork Bone Soup 冬瓜豬骨湯

For the Cantonese, drinking soup is like drinking from the fountain of life.  Since I've been in Hong Kong, I've caught the soup bug too, and why not, Chinese soups are soooo delicious!  Once I got used to having soups like these, I now find that I long for them, feeling like a wrung out rag when I don't get enough of these luscious liquids into my tummy.  

Lately we've been super happy cooking with our latest yummilicious discovery for making soup: using pork bones!  (I know, I know...everyone knows that already, right?!)  But do you seriously realize just how good of a soup you can make at home with just a bit of pork bones?  It is so good that it's sinful!  

It's a soup so sweetly savoury that it'll knock your socks right off!  Try out our Winter Melon Pork Bone Soup 冬瓜豬骨湯 recipe (with our secret for intensifying flavor) and see if you're still wearing socks after your first luscious sip!

Chinese Fried Fish Skins 炸魚皮

Do you like potato chips?  I do!  I love crispy crunchy potato chips so much I usually end up eating the whole bag!  Well, if you love potato chips, you'll love, love, love these Chinese Fried Fish Skin Chips as much as we do!  

A local Hong Kong staple available as a side order in most noodle shops, these absolutely deliciously thin, tasty and crispy deep fried Chinese Fried Fish Skin, or 炸魚皮 could possibly be more yummilicious than potato chips! (Seriously, I'm not kidding!)

Steamed Sun Dried Dace 蒸臘鯪魚

The fact is that Hong Kong is an island, though sometimes this is easily forgotten living inside of Hong Kong's massive, soaring concrete jungle of a city.  And because of this island history there is a strong tradition of fishery, seafood, and also, to many a food lover's delight, a diverse and rich local history of many ways of preserving, preparing and eating that seafood.  

We love the super fresh and happening seafood we get at the wet market in Hong Kong and have posted many recipes of our favorite fresh and preserved seafood dishes.  

Today I want to introduce you to an amazing southern Chinese speciality, the Sun Dried Dace, or 臘鯪魚.  This sun preserved fish, also know as Mud Carp, is nowadays rarely to be seen, but we found some the other day at the market at one of our favorite stalls and snapped it up quick as a flash!

Stir Fry Chinese Pea Shoots 炒豆苗

This classic Chinese vegetable dish is one of those things that is really, really simple to make and yet unforgettable in all its comforting yumminess.  I first had Stir Fry Chinese Pea Shoots long ago in a little hotel restaurant in Beijing on my first ever trip to China.  

This was rather long ago, when China was not the aggressive China of today, a much more relaxed and (for me at least) a much more interesting China.  I remember clearly that this humble little stir fry vegetable dish which my cousin ordered, though nothing special to look at, was a revelation to me.  

What was this vegetable, so tender, distinctive and tasty, I wondered while stuffing my face full of greens.  The really cool thing about this classic vegetable dish is that ever since that first tasting, every time I have happened to have this Stir Fry Chinese Pea Shoots, or 炒豆苗, it is always cooked the exactly the same perfect way!

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

Happy (after) Halloween to one and all!  I hope all of you have had just as gruesome and spookity a Halloween as we did!  Well, to be honest, ours was probably not so spookity as yours since it was mostly centered around tiny crazy costumed kids and their apparently insatiable appetite for sugary treats.  

And of course there was the Halloween costume to be made to order (umm...anybody else still traumatized from weeks spent making a Queen Elsa costume?) and the treats to be purchased and distributed and...last, but not least, one of my personal favorite parts of Halloween, the choosing and the carving of dear ol' Jack O' Lantern pumpkin!  (Do you like the slightly creepy way Jack's eyes came out?)   

And under the general motto of 'Waste not, want not," we always try to repurpose dear ol' Jack by eating his flesh (see our delicious Anise Pumpkin Cookies recipe!) or, this year, by ripping out his gook-ily guts and making yummilicious Roasted Pumpkin Seeds from the very seeds that we plucked out from Jack's innards!

Winter Jujubes 冬棗

One great thing that happens when you start regularly going to the your neighborhood wet market or farmer's market is that you start to become more attuned to nature's seasons as they pass.  For example, fruits, in their original state, are a seasonal thing, coming into the markets as they ripen to their full sweetness.  

Nowadays however, corporate needs, science, etc. have combined to convolute nature's four seasons into one large air-conditioned endless supermarket that serves your fruity needs, whatever they are, seemingly all year round.  Meh, I'd rather have it fresh than air conditioned!  

Fish Ball Soup Rice Noodles 魚蛋湯米粉

Sluuuuurp!  Nothing like a good ol' bowl of chinese soup noodles to warm you up on a cool windy day!  Not that it's that cold yet here in Hong Kong, but it's slowly and surely (I hope!) getting there.  Slightly cooler days now with rough and tumble winds sweeping in from the sea.  So on the other (slightly cooler) day we were feeling lazy for the cooking and all the washing up and stuff and we were like, hey, why don't we just make a couple of easy hot bowls of noodles for dinner?!  Sluuuuurp!

 
What we ended up with, this delectable bowl of Fish Ball Soup Rice Noodle, or 魚蛋湯米粉, is soooo easy to prepare and soooo yummilicious to your tummy and (yeah!) super easy to clean up after!  Plus I just love fish balls, they're so damn sexy!

Braised Cabbage w/ Dried Shrimp & Mushroom 白菜燜香菇蝦米

Ummm...yum, yum, ummmm!  This is one of the best, most satisfying Chinese vegetable dishes to cook and eat on chilly wind swept autumn's day.  Tasty, gorgeously saucy, simple yet richly layered with flavors, tenderly melting in your mouth and warming to the depths of your toes!  Best of all the star of the show, the humble looking Napa Cabbage, is very cheap.  

One finds mounds of this veg stacked up in tall piles at the wet market, although here in Hong Kong it is usually neglected for other more favored southern vegetables such as the Choi Sum 菜心 or Gai Lan 芥蘭.  But don't miss out, pick up a handsome head of cabbage and make this simple classic Northern Chinese comfort dish, Braised Cabbage with Dried Shrimp and Mushroom, or 白菜燉香菇蝦米, perfect for these cool autumn days!

Chinese Pear Herbal Tonic Soup 川貝雪梨湯

One lovely autumn day long, long ago, my Grandma, the dearest stubbornest little old Chinese lady that ever was, decided enough was enough!  She had waited and watched over the large pear tree in our neighbor's yard, just drooping with ripe juicy fruit, for days upon days.  Our neighbors evinced no interest at all in their luscious pears and they were starting to fall to the ground and rot.  

Waste not, want not was ever my Grandma's motto, and so very early that morning she, a little old Chinese lady armed with a big long stick, marched over to our neighbor's garden fence and began to knock those juicy pears right out of the tree.  Whatever fell outside the fence was hers and she came proudly  home that day with huge bagfuls of pears.  

My 爸爸 was so exasperated!  "You could have been shot!" he huffed.  But Grandma didn't care one whiff and soon a delicious potful of Chinese Pear Herbal Tonic Soup  川貝燉雪梨 was simmering on the stove.  I still remember that first golden spoonful of deliciously sweet, light, soothing soup.  Just the thing to sooth and heal sniffles and a cough.  There's really nothing quite like Grandma's pear soup!

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!