November 30, 2019

Chinese Five Spice Ribs 五香烤排骨

baked, chinese, dry rub, Five Spice, recipe, Ribs, spare ribs, 五香, 排骨, 烤, pork

It's getting chilly in Hong Kong (finally!) and the cool refreshing winds that were absent all summer (and most of the autumn...sigh) are now come back, nipping at my legs and arms, urging me to dig out those stored away down jackets.  I'm loving it, the coolness, the brilliant blue of the almost winter sky, the feeling of space opening up everywhere.  

I love the cooler seasons and all that it brings and especially love the food!  These are the warming foods, the foods that insist on warm huddles about the table, the cold kept out as we devour the foods that warm and sustain us with the extra energy we need.  

One constant at our autumn and winter table is this Chinese Five Spice Ribs 五香烤排骨, ribs marinated with a special dry rub spice mix then slow roasted at low heat until the flavor infused meat tenderly, deliciously falls off the bone and straight into your mouth.  YUMMM!  If you like eating spare ribs, you've gotta try this easy foolproof recipe.  You'll find yourself making ribs at home that are as good as or better than what you've ever had outside!

November 13, 2019

Chinese Spring Onion Pancake 蔥油餅

Chinese, recipe, Amaranth, Soup, easy,  紅莧菜, 湯

Oooo...yummy...I love, love, love bread and this one just happens to be a childhood favorite!  This utterly scrumptilicious savory flatbread is what my grandma 奶奶 used to make for us as an after school snack if we were good 乖 and didn't bother her too much as she began to prepare dinner.  

How I loved this Chinese Spring Onion Pancake 蔥油餅, crunchy on the outside, chewy layers on the inside, salty bits of fragrantly pungent spring onion flavoring the bread...it was after school heaven! 

Especially after my usual dismal school lunch of a slice of bologna stuck between two slices of dry bread.  Sigh...no mayo, no butter, no lettuce, no nothing...just a slice of bologna stuck between two slices of dry bread.  My dearest grandma, magnificent Chinese cook that she was, never quite grasped the western concept of 'sandwich'.  

October 15, 2019

Chinese Amaranth Soup 紅莧菜湯

Chinese, recipe, Amaranth, Soup, easy,  紅莧菜, 湯

Here's a gorgeously healthy Chinese soup that's a cinch to make.   Plus it's PINK!  That's right, it's not an illusion, we're talking today about pink soup!  My little girl was completely delighted with this soup that seemed to jump right out of one of her story books and, to be honest, so was I.

This Chinese Amaranth Soup 紅莧菜湯 is not only a thing of beauty but also super easy to make and super healthy and super yummilicious!

October 4, 2019

Chinese Pickled Chili Peppers 自製泡辣椒

chinese, fermented, lacto fermentation, pickled chilies, Pickled Peppers, recipe, 腌制, 辣椒, 泡椒, 自製

Dear readers, do you recall this delightful little tongue twister?
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
But...
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
Where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?
I challenge you to try to say this teaser more than one time in a row.  We couldn't get through more than one reading of this tongue curler before we burst out laughing at the garbled nonsense coming out of our mouths!  

Like everyone I've known this rhyme forever but only recently did it occur to me to wonder what exactly pickled peppers are.  And why the heck chili peppers needed to be pickled.  I actually didn't think I'd ever had pickled peppers at all, but it turns out I was wrong.  I love the jalapenos used in Mexican food and they are a pickled pepper!  

I decided to make a batch of Chinese Pickled Chili Peppers 泡辣椒, also known as 腌制辣椒,  to see what all the fuss was about and discovered, to the delight of my 老公, that pickled peppers are so much MORE!

September 23, 2019

Umeboshi Roe Pasta

flying fish roe, japanese, pasta, recipe, Roe, sauce, tobiko, Umeboshi, sour plum, fermented plum

This lovely pasta dish is actually a happy mistake...no, not a mistake, more like a happy meander that occurred when we were trying to recreate another Japanese dish known as mentaiko pasta (which is super nom nom!)  

The problem with recreating that particular dish is that we couldn't find the main ingredient for it, Japanese cured cod roe.  So we played around and came up with something just as good (we think!

Our Umeboshi Roe Pasta is a simple to make creamy yet light pasta with a delicately tangy sauce dotted with umami bursts of roe that is so delicious and totally addictive.  Umeboshi really rock the flavor!

September 6, 2019

Black Sesame Walnut Mooncakes 黑芝麻核桃月餅

black sesame, cake, chinese, mid-autumn festival, dessert, mooncake, recipe, traditional, Walnut, 黑芝麻, 核桃, 月餅, 中秋節, 黑芝麻核桃餡

Yay, it's almost time for Mid Autumn Festival 中秋節...my favorite Chinese festival!  I love the fact that it's a night festival (I'm an owl for sure) and the extravagance of Chinese lanterns floating like glowing gems thru the velvet night, illuminating the happy faces of children up well past their bedtime.  And...glory!...the sight of the Moon Goddess Chang'e 嫦娥 floating high in the sky in all her silvery glory is not to be missed.  

And besides all that I love making and baking and eating mooncakes, those wonderful moon shaped cakes stuffed with all manner of decadently delicious fillings.  (See the list of our other yummilicious mooncake recipes at the end of this post!)  And out of all those decadent mooncakes I think these particular mooncakes might be my favs.  

Maybe cuz I dig the fragrant nuttiness of roasted black sesame.  Maybe cuz I lust after walnuts. I don't know...maybe I'm just nutty.  

I just know that I love eating these deliciously satisfying Black Sesame Walnut Mooncakes 黑芝麻核桃月餅, with its tender golden crust wrapped around an oh so fragrant sesame filling dotted through with delicious bitter sweet bits of walnut.  I can eat a whole plate of these in one go!  That's right...the whole plate means all five of the mooncakes on the plate you're looking at...gulp, gulp...gone already!  Hee hee...

August 28, 2019

Salt Baked Fish Head 鹽焗魚頭

amber skipjack, baked, chinese, fish head, recipe, salt, yellowtail, 五條鰤, 鹽烤魚頭, 鹽焗魚頭

Nowadays you can get sashimi and sushi just about everywhere as folk all over have fallen in love with the deliciousness of the fresh raw fish that Japanese cuisine has introduced to the world.  Twenty years ago I'll bet most of these people could never have imagined themselves eating and loving raw fish!

One of the unexpected benefits for seafood lovers such as ourselves is the fact that supermarkets that produce sashimi and sushi for sale are left with very very fresh fish heads.  And they put these out for sale at very reasonable prices!  Whoppee yeah!  Well as least for fish head lovers.  

For those of us in the know, fish head is deliriously delicious, amirite?  Fat and fatty meat and cheek meat (yum!) and soft cartilage, crispy skin...  Oh yeah...seriously yummy.  

August 21, 2019

Quick Salt Pickled Cucumbers

japanese, Pickled, Cucumbers, quick pickles, recipe, salt, vegetables, shiozuke

Here's a quickie...a lovely little thing to have as bit of a side dish on your dinner or lunch table.  A small dish of something piquant and refreshing to contrast against the main dishes in your meal.  

I discovered this japanese shiozuke style of Quick Salted Pickled Cucumber that is, to my delight, super duper easy and so quick to make that you can just toss it together as you're beginning to cook and have it ready by the time you're putting the meal on the table!

August 10, 2019

Red Bean Curd Nam Yue Chicken Wings 南乳雞翅

Red Bean Curd, Nam Yue, Chicken Wings, chinese, recipe,  南乳, 雞翅, 紅腐乳

One can never have enough chicken wing recipes, amirite?  This all around favorite finger food for both big and little kiddos comes in all kinds of flavors such as the classic soy sauce chicken wings and our current favorite salted sake chicken wings...so easy and so yummy!  

The wings we're making today are uniquely Chinese with the addition of fermented bean curd to create the finger lickingly yummilicious Red Bean Curd Nam Yue Chicken Wings 南乳雞翅, where crispy skinned chicken gets coated with a clingy luscious red bean curd sauce that packs an umami flavor punch that gets downright addictive!

July 24, 2019

The Yummiliciousness of the Mud Crab 清蒸奄仔蟹

chinese, immature female, Mud Crab, recipe, steamed, virgin, yim chai, 奄仔蟹, 清蒸, 青蟹

While doing research for our Soy Sauce Marinated Crab 醬油醃蟹 post I got pleasantly sidetracked on to the very interesting subject of the mud crab 青蟹 (which is the type of crab we decided to use for our soy sauce marinated crab.)  The more I looked into the information on the mud crab the more various names for the crab kept popping up.  

Lots and lots of names...it was crazy.  What was going on?  How many names could one crab possibly have?  

Well, it turns out that this humble looking green shelled mud crab 青蟹 has specific Chinese names for many stages of its life, each stage offering a different yet equally yummilicious taste and textural experience.  It's so amazing the different offerings this little crab has to offer to the seafood lover!