Chinese Candied Cashews 蜜汁腰果

Here's another Chinese New Year post, a most delicious snack, perfect to have around to serve guest and friends during the new year festivities.  These Chinese Candied Cashews 蜜汁腰果 are quick and easy to make and good enough you're going to want to make it again and again.  So yummy and they are shaped like gold ingots of old, giving lucky vibes to all who partake!

Chinese Prosperity Cake Fa Gao 新年發糕

It’s the new Chinese year, dear readers, and we’re ready to start it off with our lovely fortune guaranteeing Chinese Prosperity Cakes Fa Gao 新年發糕!

These simple but gorgeous sweetened flour cakes or buns are steamed until they dramatically rise and then crack into a distinctive and attractive pattern. This ‘explosion’ of these buns, made in the event of the new year, indicates that your upcoming year will be prosperous!  Cool trick, amirite?

Before we go on, let me quantify a teensy bit.  Your prosperity will be predicted by the mysterious gods of bun fortune, BUT you gotta make sure that your buns actually do achieve that ‘explosion’ effect. Your buns might just not ‘explode’ at all (guess how I know that LOL). 

Fish Congee 魚粥

Congee love!  More congee goodness!  We move onto the fabulous traditional Cantonese Fish Congee  魚粥 which is my favorite congee of all time!  Smooth creamy warm congee with just cooked, tender and delicious pieces of fish, what more could a gal ask for?

Basic Congee with Dried Scallop and Tofu Skin 腐竹瑤柱粥

There are tons of recipes for congee out there, and I can totally understand why.  Rice cooked into a soupy mess is delicious, filling and soothing to the soul.  But honestly a lot of the recipes labeled as congee are not really congee.  Rather, they are recipes for delicious rice porridge.  This is a recipe for traditional Cantonese style Chinese congee 粥, a different creature altogether from rice porridge.

Traditional congee or 粥 is thick and creamy and perfect for showing off the simple yet aromatic flavor of rice.   It is so popular a part of the Cantonese eating repertoire that there are dedicated restaurants that serve delicious congee all year round in HK.  Which is saying a lot considering the super high rents in this functional city.  

But it's actually pretty easy to make traditional congee at home.  The most basic congee you can make is with just rice, water and salt.  Today, however, we're kicking it up a notch or three by introducing the more sophisticated classic Basic Congee with Dried Scallop and Tofu Skin 腐竹瑤柱粥, a deliciously creamy congee, ever so delicately flavored with beancurd and scallop.

Mini Gingerbread House

Mini gingerbread houses!  Oh what fun it is to bling out our house, hey!  Instead of making one big gingerbread house to adorn our Christmas table we decided this year to make lotsa mini gingerbread houses so that we could spread the love by gifting them to friends and family.  

These mini ginger bread houses are soooo cute, if I say so myself, and just the perfect little gift.   My little girl and I had so much fun blinging these wee houses and are totally excited for gift opening day!

Chrysanthemum Flower Tea Jelly 菊花茶凍

Like  a moment frozen in time, so does this little jelly capture the beauty of the delicate chrysanthemum flower.  This little dessert is a riff on the classic relaxing and rejuvenating Chinese Chrysanthemum Tea (click link to check out how to brew some!) which is beloved by young and old.  

For myself, the joy of the chrysanthemum tea has always been the fact that flowers, yes! actual flowers, are used in the tea.  Dried, twisted and wrinkled flowers, that, once blessed with hot water, will blossom to the full of their original, delicate, dancing beauty.  Fascinating!

We capture the beauty of this tea, of that moment of blossoming, with our Chrysanthemum Flower Jelly 菊花茶凍, where the delicate taste of this flower tea can be enjoyed against the full glory of the flower's beauty.

Shrimp Cheung Fun 鮮蝦腸粉

This delectable little morsel, the Cheung Fun 腸粉, is a part of the classic Cantonese dim sum experience, a must order for any dim sum lunch.   These dim sum rice rolls come with various fillings such as minced beef, char siu pork, pork floss, dried shrimp and fresh shrimp.  We'll be making the fresh Shrimp Cheung Fun 鮮蝦腸粉 today; an unique experience of sea sweet fresh shrimp rolled up in delicate slippery rice sheets: a savory, slightly chewy, slighty slurpy taste sensation of the first order.  

You can now enjoy this at home with this recipe and guide where we've worked out all the kinks and tips for successfully making shrimp cheung fun at home.  It's fairly easy with the right batter recipe and once you get the hang of it and, may I just say, WOW is it just a great delight to be able to whip up these delicate dim sums at home for a quick and totally delicious snack!

Rose Dragon Eye Jelly 龍眼玫瑰茶果凍

This delicate little jelly is actually inspired by my one of my attempts at a super fancy type of cake, known as 'entremet', which pretty much gobbled me up and spit me right back out.  Delicious but, ouch, not much to look at.  Oh well, live, try, fail, and try again, amirite?  

But one thing that I took away was this utterly delicious rose infused jelly.  Oh my gosh darn!  What a taste!  The delicate heavenly scent of rose (I LOVE the scent of roses!) captured in a cool quivering jelly state contrasted oh so sweetly with the clear fresh sweetness of the dragon eye fruit, also known as longan.  So good had to share!

Homemade Kombucha - Second Fermentation

When you make kombucha, fermented tea, you have the option of making kombucha tea up to the first fermentation and then enjoying it immediately with all the probiotic health benefits or you can go on to do a second fermentation, which is optional but very much recommended.  The second fermentation is an opportunity to add both flavor and fizz to your kombucha tea.  Most of the kombucha sold in stores are flavored kombucha that have gone thru second fermentation.

We have found the addition of extra flavor to really boost the taste of the kombucha.  Especially enjoyable is the delightful fizz that can be produced due to the carbonation created by the further fermentation.  A fizzy fruit flavored healthful homemade drink, what more can you ask for?!

Homemade Kombucha - First Fermentation

Making kombucha, or sweet fermented tea, is easily done at home!  It’s a fabulous drink, tart and refreshing, to have handy for you and your family, full of gut healthy probiotics and anti-oxidents.  And did you know that kombucha originally came from China?  That's right, kombucha came originally from northeast China around 200 B.C.  After that kombucha traveled around the world, passing through Japan, Europe, and Russia, celebrated everywhere for its health benefits.

The thing about making kombucha is that you have to set it up first.  Once you’ve got everything set up it’s just a matter of keeping it going, very easy.  I’m breaking my homemade kombucha posts into three parts so as to be really clear and avoid the misunderstandings that confused me when I first started my kombucha journey.

The first thing to do is to make the SCOBY, a gelatinous blob that contains all the good bacteria and yeast that is needed to power the kombucha fermentation.  We’ve done that in our first post on How To Make a SCOBY.  Once you have a viable SCOBY you’re ready for the next step which is making the kombucha tea, first fermentation, which is what this post is about.  In our next post we’ll talk about the final optional step:  kombucha tea, second fermentation.