Shanghainese Broad Bean Mash 豆瓣酥

Broad Bean Mash may not look the most delectable, but it is one of the richest, most scrumptious and satisfying cold appetizers you may find on a Shanghainese menu. Good news for those who are not into cold appetizers, this dish may be served hot as well!

Unfortunately, not many restaurants in Hong Kong serve this dish. I don't understand this because unlike the yellow mung bean bricks which I have introduced to you in the previous post, broad bean mash is not at all difficult or time-consuming to make! So, I decided to experiment and reproduce this family-favorite.

Let me warn you in advance. Spoon after spoon, you can easily finish a whole pack of broad beans and still feel like you haven't had enough. But do try to restrain yourself from over-eating this because soon after 5 minutes, the bloating will sink in and hit you and cause great straining at waist! ARGHH!

  

Yellow Mung Bean Bricks 豌豆黃

These delicate yellow bricks, born humble, accidentally made their way up to the royal lips one day in the Qing Dynasty a hundred years ago.

Given the very specific timing, I am regrettably unable to start my story with our familiar "Once upon a time", but I can assure you that this story has our usual happy ending. So, one evening, Empress Dowager Ci Xi was enjoying some peace and quiet when suddenly loud, repeated sounds of the gong hit in outside the thick walls of the palace. The disturbance brought a frown to Ci Xi's thin, moon-shaped brows, so before questioned, her trusted servant quickly explained that it was the sound made by a peasant selling treats. Ci Xi then summoned the peasant, who frantically offered her a bite of the little mung bean bricks he made for a living. Just one bite, Ci Xi was utterly impressed and made the peasant the dessert chef of the Imperial Kitchen. These delicate yellow bricks since then became Ci Xi's particular favourite. 

Now, you may be wondering- what is so magical about this little mung bean brick that managed to please the woman who was the most difficult to please?! These yellow bricks are sweet and refreshing. Delicate and light, but unlike jellies, there is this fine graininess that gives the dessert a bit of body and form this smooth, silky texture that just melts and silently slips away like sand when pressed against your tongue.

This imperial dessert is widely available in Beijing. You can find them in almost all Chinese eateries, both cheap and expensive. Unfortunately, it it not so in Hong Kong. My family and I all loveeeeee this dessert and we had experienced numerous counts of disappointment over the menus before its absence eventually became a matter of fact to us. So, my success in making these yellow mung bean bricks is the most recent big thing in the house! 

Now I understand why these adorable bricks are not widely available- it takes so so sooooo much time to get them to the table! Soaking the beans requires 4 hours, simmering the beans requires almost an hour, and freezing the bricks requires another hour! BUT, the actual cooking time that requires you to actively work in the kitchen is in fact, quite little! I think around 30 minutes will do. So, have fun turning your kitchen imperial!

Shanghainese Wonton 上海雲吞

This is a recipe passed down to me from my Shanghainese grandmother. Every year when I visit her in the San Francisco Bay area, she welcomes me with wontons. No matter what time I arrive, say, past midnight, she still cooks for me around 20 wontons. That is honestly too much, but knowing how much love and effort she has put in making them for me, and being a traditional Chinese who has been taught to place filial piety above everything else, I have to finish all the food placed in the bowl in front of me. 

My grandmother is proud of her wontons. She adds shrimps to hers. But I usually skip the shrimps because it is really time-consuming to wash, dry, remove the shell and pick out of the shrimps their intestines. Either way, the wontons still taste awesome. 

On certain days, my grandmother has to mass produce these pretty parcels for lunch with her mahjong friends. My mother and I, along with my grandmother's helpers, then help out under the direction and supervision of my grandmother. Making wontons is so calming and satisfying that it is almost therapeutic. It is, I must say, a great family activity too! I have tried my best to draw for you the steps to wrap these pretty parcels. Hope this helps and don't laugh! ;p

We call these little parcels "nurse's caps". The Shanghainese wonton wrappings are slightly different from those of Guangdong wontons. The Shanghainese ones are milk in colour and trapezium in shape. So make sure you buy the right ones for this recipe!

My grandmother only boils the wontons and serves them in chicken broth as in the picture below. For a naughtier and crispier version, which is greatly endorsed by my mother, you may pan-fry them and serve them with Zhejiang vinegar. They are sooo good, I eat them for breakfast, for lunch and even for dinner! So, enjoy!

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.

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!

Almond Jelly 杏仁豆腐

 

Almond jelly is one of the few desserts my mother keeps asking me to make because it is extremely healthy with very little calories. Usually when we talk about healthy food, we immediately expect some sort of compromise on the taste. But let me assure you, this almond jelly tastes just as refreshing and appetizing as it appears to be! So abandon this stereotype of healthy food being something tasteless and boring and embrace this dessert!

This very local traditional delight endures over generations. Distinct from the rest, which are mostly rich, silky, dense and soup-based, almond jelly is light and refreshing. You can eat as much of it as you want and still feel completely guiltless and light as a feather! Alternatively, like a cherry on top of that huge spoon of cream on a typical American-sized ice-cream sundae, it is a perfect ending to a super heavy meal!

Stir-fry Wild Rice Stems 雲腿茭白絲

Wildrice stems are aquatic plants which take on the good qualities of bamboo shoots and drop the bad. They have that very distinctive fresh taste of spring and a tender, pickled turnip-like crunch, combination of which makes them too much of a delicacy to be dismissed from your menu! What's more, they do not leave your lips numb as bamboo shoots usually do! Yay!

Another little fun fact about wildrice stems lies in their shape and colour. Taking off the coats of green reveals a sleek, smooth and fair inside. Look at the pictures below. They are said to resemble a Chinese woman's perfect lotus feet, concealed within tiny shoes and bindings. As such, wildrice stems also take on the name 腳白筍 "fair bamboo feet". 

Bound feet? Meh. I see little aesthetic value in them. But looking at these exposed pure stems, I do see a pair of hot, sexy legs! Seriously, who can resist that? ;p

醉雞

I know drunken chicken looks presentable and impressive but turns out it is pretty easy to make. I remember I was in awe when my very good friend S told me that she made this with her sister back in hm.. say Form 4. This dish goes really well with the Shanghainese vegetable rice, recipe of which will be shared in the next post. 

I managed to find all the ingredients in just one street of the YauMaTei market. Very amused and really enjoyed the process. Will share with you more about my market experience later. Have to get back to revision, bye!

蔥油伴麵

First of all, my apologies to my faithful readers, if there are any. To redeem myself, I promise to put up at least 1 post every week until the end of the year, except 3-9th December, when I have my exams. I did not make any posts in October as the PCLL got a little intense and my sister had to march down the aisle. For those who are interested, you may catch a glimpse of the gorgeous bride and the dashing groom on this photography blog created by my cousin Brian Ting. 

It took me days to recover from my sister's wedding. I lost interest in everything and all I cared about was my bed. I finally crawled out of my cocoon last week and started cooking again. Ahh, my long lost happiness and sense of satisfaction. 

Every member of my family loves this. We order this every time we go to 夏麵館. It is very simple to make, very cheap, and you can make the sauce in advance, keep it in the fridge and every time you want something to eat, you can go grab the sauce, reheat it, cook the noodles and in only 3 minutes, any lazy bum get the taste of heaven. Trust me.