Fresh Bamboo Shoots - How to Prepare 準備新鮮冬筍

I grew up thinking food only came from supermarkets and so am forever grateful that I have had the chance to discover and experience the wet markets of Hong Kong where anything and everything culinary can be found for your eating pleasure.  

There's nothing quite like the subtle thrill inside as you wander through the bustling real food markets on your daily round, keeping the corner of your eye on the lookout for whatever food treasures that day will bring.  

I was so excited with my latest discovery that we found in a humble dirt sprinkled box, these strange horn shaped plants? vegetables? that turned out to be Fresh Bamboo Shoots!  Woo-hoo!  I've always wanted to try fresh bamboo shoots!  It turns out that these fresh bamboo shoots are not only easy to prepare but much more delicious than the canned bamboo shoots that we usually use.  (But of course it is!)

Indian Chapatis Rotis

I looove Indian breads!  I always make my 老公 annoyed when we go to an Indian restaurant because, in the end, all I really want to eat is the amazing bread!  Hey, I can't help it if the darn bread is so yummilicious, amiright?!  

To go along with our home cooked mini Indian feast which so far has included the delightful Spicy Indian Potato Cauliflower Aloo Gobi and the meatilicious Indian Spicy Baked Chicken  Masaledar Murghi, I decided to make homemade Indian Chapatis Rotis.  I can't tell you how much fun we had at our Indian feast, each of us eating our fresh warm chewy (homemade!) chapatis wrapped around choice tidbits of tender tasty curried meats and veggies!  Plus it's easy to make these delicious flat breads!

Spicy Indian Baked Chicken Masaledar Murghi

Something easy and super tasty for dinner, right, that's what everyone wants?  This is the second post about our adventures into real Indian cuisine, about our mini Indian feast that we indulged in starting with the vegetarian dish Spicy Indian Potato Cauliflower Aloo Gobi that we wrote about the other day.  

To go with these delicious dry curry vegetable dish we made this super easy Indian Spicy Baked Chicken Masaledar Murghi, a tender, fragrant, super spiced up meat dish.

Spicy Indian Potato Cauliflower Aloo Gobi

Every once in a while we like to dip into far away cuisines for a taste of the exotic, to travel by dint of our tastebuds.  It's so much fun to treat yourself to a completely different world of textures, tastes and aromas!  

One of the old cuisines that I find really interesting (besides Chinese cuisine, of course)  is Indian cuisine.  What a spectacular, varied and long lived food culture!  

Recently we had a serious craving for Indian food and thus whipped up a mini Indian feast for ourselves.  Gorgeously spice infused vegetarian and meat dishes paired against a tart and refreshing cucumber yogurt dish, all of this eaten with deliciously fresh handmade chapatis.  This is the yummilicious vegetarian dish we made, the Spicy Indian Potato Cauliflower, also known as Aloo Gobi.

Natural Easter Egg Dyes

Winter fades and Spring is here!  And Easter is coming up!  Easter bunnies and creamy chocolates and Easter eggs!  This year we made some gorgeous (we think!) natural dye easter eggs for my little girl to take to her class to share with her schoolmates.   

It takes a bit of time to make these natural dye easter eggs but it's an easy, fun project to do together with your kid or just for kicks.  And healthier cuz you're just using natural food dyes to color the eggs.  How cool is that!

Chinese Pickled Garlic 醃蒜頭

Ah, garlic!  That humble culinary bulb, the stinking rose!  People always say that garlic is one of those things where either you love it or you hate it.  For myself, I have found that my personal relationship with garlic fluctuates.  

Sometimes, in some forms, I love it!  And sometimes, in other forms, I can find myself avoiding it.  I can't imagine cooking without it and yet, when I was pregnant and for a long time after, I could not stand raw garlic.  And then I swing back, ruminating on the creamy flavor of garlic after a deep slow long roast...or the flavor layers one smashed bulb can add to a simple stir fry!  

One thing I have always found harder to like is raw uncooked garlic.  Recently we decided to try making Chinese Pickled Garlic, or 醃蒜頭, and I was really, really pleased to find that this sweet vinegary pickled garlic is not only immensely more yummilicious than raw garlic, but also packed with great health benefits and you also end up with the most amazingly garlicky flavored vinegar syrup in the world!

Pan Fried Tofu Stuffed with Fish Paste 煎釀鯔魚滑豆腐

A simple and homey Chinese classic.  Easy to prepare and delicious and fun to eat.  An intriguing play on textures and tastes.  The smooth silky blandness of tofu contrasted against the sea sweet fragrant chewiness of ground fish paste.  Pan Fried Tofu stuffed with Fish Paste, or 煎釀鯔魚滑豆腐, is such a comfort dish and it's super easy to prepare!

Chinese Cooking Stories from the Heart 煮食故事

Dear readers, I want to first of all thank all of you that wrote in to tell us your wonderful Chinese cooking stories for a chance at our cookbook giveaway!  We reviewed 'Chinese Feasts & Festivals: A Cookbook' and made the delicious Homemade Chinese Pork Jerky Bakkwa  自制猪肉干 from a recipe in the same cookbook.   For a chance to win a free copy of the cookbook we asked for your best Chinese cooking stories.

 Well, we have chosen our two favorite stories (the winner's cookbooks are on their way!) and we thought that you might enjoy reading the winning stories as much as we did.  I have to say, (excuse the cheesiness!) that it was wonderful to see how cooking really brings people together!

Crystalline Iceplant Salad with Soy Sesame Dressing 冷拌水晶冰菜

After stuffing ourselves on festival foods merrily all through the Chinese New Year celebrations, we really felt like taking a breather and eating light for a while.  So we've been oohing and aahing our way through platefuls of our latest discovery, a plant/vegetable that, delightfully, looks as though it is covered with ice!  

Its dewy sparkles caught my eye one day at the local wet market and I immediately asked about it.  The vegetable vendor enthusiastically vouched for this strange new vegetable, telling me that it was absolute perfection when eaten as a cold dish.  She even suggested a recipe!  

And indeed she was right, this unusual vegetable made for a fabulous Crystalline Iceplant Salad with Soy Sesame Dressing 冷拌水晶冰菜, an easy to make, light, Chinese style cold dish.  Not only was this dish yummilicious, we have gotten seriously addicted to this icy plant!

Braised Dried Oysters with Black Sea Moss and Roast Pork 髮菜蠔豉燜燒肉

First of all let me greet you with this hearty Chinese New Year Greeting: Wishing you Prosperity and Good Fortune!  祝你好事發財!  And now let me invite you to eat that exact same greeting!  Whaaat, you're probably thinking, she's too much in the kitchen and has finally gone nutso!!  Wait...what I really mean is let me invite you to feast on the very traditional and very fabulous Chinese New Year's dish of Braised Dried Oysters with Black Sea Moss and Roast Pork, or 髮菜蠔豉燜燒肉.  

The Chinese characters for dried oysters and sea moss is 蠔豉髮菜  which sounds almost exactly like 好事發財 which means Prosperity and Good Fortune.  Thus, through this auspicious twist of words,  you can actually feast on a savory dish of Prosperity and Good Fortune to start off the New Year of the Sheep!  

And, indeed, what better way to start off the Chinese New Year than to partake of this intriguingly mysterious yet surpassingly yummilicious combination of unique Chinese ingredients that is the Braised Dried Oysters with Black Sea Moss and Roast Pork!