Crab, Mango and Avocado Salad

This salad stack makes an amazing appetizer. Great colour combination, just looking at it makes one happy, refreshed and the excitement over it can sustain throughout the rest of the meal. I do think that only by layering the ingredients elegantly like this can do this salad justice. But, not having a cylindrical mold/ cookie cutter should not be an excuse to not recreate this beauty at home. You can always have this salad layered in short tumbler glasses or even martini glasses. Really, whatever works!

Another reason I urge you to try this out has to do with its fantastic taste and fulfilling mouth feel. First, the avocado gives to this salad the mild nutty flavour and makes a rich and creamy versatile base that is neither heavy nor greasy. The salad is then elevated by the tropical sweetness of the mango, which if finely diced, presents itself in a soft, pulpy texture that quickly melts in your mouth. Finally, the firm yet delicate crab meat, combined with lime juice, breathes in that gorgeous air of freshness from the sea.

Marble Tea Eggs 茶葉蛋

Happy Chinese New Year! I wish you all great health, luck and prosperity throughout the Year of Snake! 

This is my favourite and the most important festival for the Chinese! Throughout the entire period, families gather, juniors pay visits to the senior members of the families, children receive red packets (me me me! As long as I am not married I still get them!), lots of traditional cakes, sweets and snacks to eat, houses adorned with all sorts of colourful, symbolic festive flowers with the backdrop of dices rolling, mahjong pieces clattering and cards shuffling! Ohoh, and no matter where we are and who we bump into, we will definately generously pull out a string of 4-Chinese-character blessings which are mostly related to good luck and fortune!

Speaking of great fortune, I present to you these nice little tea eggs! I know those Chinese herbal tea houses and chain soup stores sell these tea eggs all year round but these eggs mean something to us. Tea eggs is a traditional must-have for Shanghainese every Chinese New Year. We call these brown, aromatic tea eggs yuen-bo, the traditional Chinese gold nuggets, outline of which I think, with a little bit of imagination, resembles an egg placed in a boat. Peeling off the cracked chestnut-color shell, you will find a pretty marble pattern printed on these yuen bos. They taste soooo good, I already had 3 yesterday! Yes, the egg yolks too, forget about the cholesterol, they are too good to be wasted!

Roselle Tea 洛神花茶

Roselle tea is extremely popular in Tai O. You can find them in almost every store there! Bottled up and cooled in mountains of ice, roselle tea is extremely rejuvenating.

Quite an eye-candy in itself, this ruby-coloured drink tastes tart like cranberry juice. Oh, in fact it tastes more like Ribena, the blackcurrant juice! But more to it, there is a faint, sweet air of freshness and earthiness, like the taste of those soft, fine fibre strands growing out of the ear of the corns. Thanks to Google, I finally know the proper name of these strands- corn stigma, 玉米鬚.

Apparently, roselle is a species of Hibiscus. It is well-known for its high Vitamin-C content, for reducing cholesterol and treating high blood pressure level.  I used fresh roselle to make my pro-health drink, but I was told by the market vendors that the same could also be produced out of dried calyces. You may also try making roselle jam by slowly simmering the flower with sugar.

My Chinese Husband Taco 蝦豬餅

Hi, I'm back! Literally and figuratively. I have to confess, I have been back from Beijing for a month already. But I have been so beguiled with all sorts of reading and only until this week that I have finally realized how strong this addiction has become and how much it has interfered with my life and cunningly lured me away from updating my blog! 

Putting a stop to it, I am writing this post at 6 in the morning. 6am! Have I managed to redeem myself now? I don't know if me waking up so early today has something to do with my binge eating yesterday night, which has left me bloated now, OR is because my subconsciousness finally mans up and tells me to not let something so dear to me slip away i.e. leave my blog still hanging there in hiatus.

Ok, a little about my Beijing trip. The trip has brought me blessings and curses. Met some really nice, funny people, polished my Mandarin, to an extent that there is now a tendency for me to curl my tongue right up when I pronounce the very last word in every sentence- I call that the Beijing accent. ;p Oh, the curses, I gained 7 pounds in five weeks. Nothing much. Will share more about my trip later when I have shed some pounds. 

Now back to this Chinese Husband Taco. This is one of the delicacies (my favourite!) I tried in Tai O and mentioned in my previous previous post. I did not fully make this name up, the Vendor really created the name "蝦豬餅", pronounced as "Ha-ju-bang" in Cantonese, they simply bestowed upon it the big title: HUSBAND. See the evidence below.

The name "蝦豬餅" isn't just a gimmick. In as short as three Chinese characters, almost every ingredient used in this Chinese taco is listed out here. "蝦":shrimp paste, "豬":pork and "餅":roti. Poor lettuce, didn't quite make it to becoming our Chinese husband model.

Gone for the Month

I'm off to Beijing for a month so the blog will be on hiatus. See you in 4 weeks!

Tai O

It was a public holiday. To get away from the usual city lights and hustle and bustle, me and my family decided to go to somewhere far and fishy- Tai O. Apparently many shared the same thought, so together we brought into Tai O an unintentional, phenomenal surge of rowdiness. Despite the crowd, Tai O was still scenic. Never seen in cities except Venice, there were pang uks, stilt houses built over the waterway. As we peeked into the pang uks, we crossed the bridge and entered into a narrow, noisy street of seafood stalls, tuck shops and welcoming (you don't say!) vendors selling local delicacies. As if the place was not vibrant enough, the pungent smell of seafood crescendoed.

As my dad, my brother-in-law and I went crazy experimenting with our cameras, capturing the animated faces of the vendors and the colorful mix of food, my mom and sister really got into buying, eating and feeding us the local delicacies. We ate so much! We had those extremely old-school but tasty biscuit sandwich with malt syrup 麥芽糖餅, barbecued squid, scallops, refreshing roselle tea, chewy egg puffs (texture similar to that of a waffle, but the inside is custard-like) cooked over charcoal, and of course, my sister's new-found  favorites- barbecued mullet roe 烏魚子 and Chinese Taco. I have reproduced two of these delicacies at home and shall share with you the recipes in the next two posts. 

It is quite interesting as I look back, I realize that no matter where we travel to, our enjoyment and exploration always and inevitably involve FOOD.

As we squeezed our way deeper into the other end of Tai O, farther from the food stalls and pang uks, there were peace and quiet. Along the shore sturdily stood a few simple, little huts made out of metal scraps, that housed mainly elderly and small families. The masters of the houses are usually out to fish, leaving behind the mothers and wives home, making and selling simple local delicacies such as cha guos (glutinous rice cakes with fillings made out of red bean, black-eyed peas etc.) and tofu pudding. I love seeing this other face of Hong Kong, so serene and pure.

Inside these blue buckets were shrimp paste. In that, we could taste Umami 鲜味- the 5th taste, well-known and familiar in the East and less known in the West. I have scratched my head and still cannot write an accurate and comprehensive description for this taste, sorry! You may learn more about this taste on Wikipedia.

Having walked so much, we were too lazy to walk on the return route. We took a speedboat, which was so so fast, exciting and fun, and in less than a minute we got back to the narrow streets, just in time to grab the stall's last four Chinese Tacos!

Poached Pears

There is a reason why poached pears are always served as a round-up for a candlelight dinner. There they stand with such grace and elegance, adding to the meal an extra bit of romance and sophistication. I do also sense a subtle tinge of arrogance, but I guess that is exactly what is missing from most of the other desserts, thus makes poached pears more like a prize.

Last year, my best guy friend C asked me for dessert ideas since he would like to prepare a super duper romantic Valentine’s Day meal for his then girlfriend at his apartment in the US. Okay, a typical 20-year-old guy’s apartment has a wide variety of liquor but no electric mixer. So, unless you’re prepared to do an intense workout with your biceps and triceps, quite a number of desserts including soufflé and spongy cakes are to be ticked off.

In face of this, I suggested C to make either poached pears or molten chocolate cake, both of which are absolutely tasty, fuss-free and perfect for beginners or lazy bums who are keen to impress! In the end, C made molten chocolate cake to wow his then girlfriend, after all there’s an unshakable association between chocolate and Valentine’s Day. I should probably make a post on that later!