Fried Tofu

I usually deep fried tofu but this time I tries shallow frying and it works. Ginger, garlic, scallion, salt and chili pepper are quickly fried in just a little oil and toss in the crisp tofu. Good with beer.

Scallops and Tofu, Steamed

This is a simple but elegant dish--scallops are place on top of tofu pieces, cured black beans, ginger, garlic and just a touch of sugar are placed on top, steams for a few minutes until the scallop is just cooked. A few scallions are placed on top, a couple table spoons of hot oil is poured
over to bring out the fragrant. Good soy sauce finish the dish. Simple.

Fridge Special Fried Rice

Most days I decide what to cook and eat, but some days, like today, the fridge decides. Ground beef, celery, carrot, scallion and egg made this fried rice. Seasoned with a little soy sauce and sambol sauce. Simple and help clear the fridge a little.

Roast Chicken Thigh

The kitchen sink approach: ginger, garlic, scallion, salt, sugar, shaoxing liquor, soy sauce, sambol sauce and sesame oil make the marinate. The pieces are roasted hot 400℉ convected. It got a little smoky but the skin is crisp and the meat extra tasty.

More Double Boiling

This is the classic cough tonic: Ya pear, chuanbei and rock sugar. The pear is halved and cored, puts into the double boiling pot with chuanbei, hot water and rock sugar. The whole things is steamed slowly in a larger pot with the double lid of the pot closed. Takes a couple of hours at least but the result is just the most tasty.

Snow Mushroom

I am having a little cough so I bought out the small double boiling pot, into it went snow mushroom, chuanbei, aged tangerine peel, rock sugar and almonds. The snow mushroom is a fungus that grows on trees and comes from the store dry. You have to soak it for a good few hours before cooking it. It is one of the best soothing tonic in the fall. Chuanbei is the bulbs of a small plant that is excellent in calming the lung. It is all very good for you, and it taste great.

Slow-Roasted Lamb Shoulder

To go with the fall theme, this stuff lamb shoulder is filled with thyme, rosemary, sage, mint, garlic, salt, pepper, almond and dry cranberries before being roasted for 2 and a half hour in 300℉. It is browned in a pan first before carrot, onion, celery and clove are added to the pan, a little water is added and the lid is put on. The meat falls apart under the fork and it has the sweetness of fall. Warms the soul.

Double Boiled Soup

One of the most delicate and easiest to make soup is double-boiled soup. The principle is simple--slowly cook soup in a well sealed container inside a slow steamer. The cooking time is long, 4-5 hours in very low heat but it is simple to do. The meat (stewing hen and ham here) is parboiled for 10 minutes before going in. The Monkey-Head Mushrooms 猴頭菰 are soaked for a day and a half. Everything goes into this glazed clay pot inside a steaming pot with ginger, scallion, shaoxing liquor and hot water. The resulting soup is clear with all the goodness contained in the the soup. Chinese use this method to make the most delicate and healthful tonics.

Old Standby

When it is cold and rain outside, I want some old standbys. Spaghetti with meat and tomato sauce is just such thing. Here it is made with chunky carrots, celery, onion, ground beef, tomatoes, oregano, thyme, garlic, beef stock, milk and parsley. Finish as always with parmaggiano reggiano.

Experimental Egg Plant

This is a bit of a kitchen-sink approach. Ginger, garlic, scallion, chili, sugar, salt, vinegar, Sichuan Pepper, Shaoxing rice liquor and sesame oil. Too much vinegar.

Pork Shoulder Chops

I haven't cook shoulder chops for a long time so I thought October is just the time to do so. I browned the chops then added sautéed onion, garlic, ginger, dry cranberries and some chicken stock. Took a good 20-some minutes to cook covered but the result is fantastic--sweet, tender and rich. Just what a early cold day needs.

Fall Special

Got some giant halibut cheeks from Granville Island and with the last of the year's chanterelles, it is a classy fall special. The cheeks are simply seared and then left in the over for about 10 minutes. The chanterelles are sautéed in olive oil and butter, a touch of chicken stock and some parsley.

Korea-ish Stew

Bought some yellow Korean bean paste (Doenjang) so I made a soup stew with it and Gochijang, ginger, scallions, tofu, wakame and dice balls. It is warming and tasting in a cold day, very encouraging to rice-eating.

Steak Frites

The hot-sour-sweet tomato-corn salad is a good accompaniment to steak and home fries. The steak is a cheap cut pounded lightly and cooked medium rare. A very nice home meal.

Sweet Salad II

The fun thing about heirloom tomatoes is that they tends to go against expectations. Usually green tomatoes are unripe but his green tomato is ripe and sweet.

Sweet Salad

This is time for tomatoes and corn and they make a great sweet salad. I have tomatoes, fresh corn, cilantro, walla walla onion, fresh hot chili, lime juice, salt and pepper. Fresh and refreshing.

Old Fashion Curry

I usually make my beef curry in the pressure cooker, but this time I did it the old fashion way. I wish I had some carrots, but as it is--beef, tendons, potatoes, garlic, ginger, curry powder, curry paste and onion--it is pretty tasty.








With an old fashion dish, it is best served the old fashion way.

Nutty Mooncake

This is, I suppose, what may be called nouveau Suzhou-style mooncake--seaweed and seeds wrapped in flaky pastry. Fun

Heirloom Tomato

This is the time for tomatoes and I got these crazy looking heirlooms from the farmers market. They are meaty and very flavourful. This is a good example of the good of biodiversity, I think.

Balacan

Balacan is one strong smelling thing made from salted fermented shrimp pressed into a hard paste. And it is honest too, particularly when you cook it--smells just like what it is, strongly. Most commonly it is combined with garlic, dry shrimps, a little sugar and sambol to flavour vegetables like spinach, or, here, water spinach.

Unusual Mooncake

The Mid-Autumn Festival/Harvest Moon is coming soon and Chinese stores are filled with mooncakes for sale. Here is one rather unusual one--it has extremely light pastry on top, sweet paste made with mung bean is the main filling and a little savory pork is in the very centre. Interesting cake.

Back Home

Well, I am back home and back to the same olds. This time I have a funnily named vegetable: mucus vegetable 潺菜. It is so call because after cook there is a smooth creaminess texture on the leaves. It is actually a good thing. Here I make a soup with it and a couple of salted eggs. Very simple, very traditionally home cooking.

Dad's 70th

I went to Hong Kong for my dad's birthday and I cooked him a dinner. These are his orders.

He wanted seared foie gras. It so happens that it is wild mushroom season in Yunnan and some good selection available at Sogo. Here I sautéed four different kinds, boletus and chanterelles, with some shallots, red wine, salt and sugar, and added the oil from searing the foie also. The asparagus is there for colours only.





He also wanted oxtail. I stewed it with garlic, onion, carrot, red wine, tomato, rosemary, thyme, and sage. Served with a little wide egg pasta.

The meal was very good but everybody was so full that dessert--blueberry soufflé was called off. Pity.

Lei Yue Mun 鯉魚門

Lei Yue Mun is a great place to have seafood. The live seafoods are sold in shops and the restaurants only cook them. Here are a couple other dishes I had there. This is a giant razer clam steamed in spicy black bean sauce. One of my favorites.








This is one odd creature, oddly named too--Pissing Shrimp! It sort of looks like a cross between a shrimp and a termite. Taste wise it is a wonderful mix of shrimp and lobster. Here it is prepared with garlic, chili, and salt. Very tasty.








Steamed fresh abalone is a crowd pleaser. The mildly sweet meat is great in this simple preparation.

黄油蟹 Yellow Oil Crab

'Yellow Oil Crab' is one of those rare delicacies that is created by a freak event of nature. When the female crab are fat and ready to mate they sun on the beaches on the mouth of the Pearl River near Hong Kong. If they meet extremely hot and sunny days, the fat in the liver breaks up and seeps into every bit of the body. Yellow fat then shows in the meat and under the shells turning everything inside yellow. If the summer is not hot enough or if the heatwave does not arrive at the right time, there is no YOC at all. And even when the weather is right, only few come to the market.


I was in Hong Kong this August and was fortunately enough to have this true wild Yellow Oil Crab at Lei Yue Mun. The fat under the shell is creamy and rich, and the oil penetrated well into every bit of the crab. I was sucking flavour out of the tips well after I finished with the meat. The price is scary but definitely worth it.

There are a lot of YOC in Hong Kong these days but most of them are female crabs 'baked' under hot lamps. They don't achieve this level of penetration and the fat does not break down as well. Not really the same thing.

Quick Chicken

A little quick homemade shake and bake action is just what a exhausting summer day calls for. I salted and peppered the chicken a little a head of time and then shaked it in flour seasoned with salt, pepper, chili pepper, cayanne, sugar, cumin, thyme, paprika.... A little oil is sprayed on before going into a 400℉ oven. The only problem is the package of the chicken recommended 30 minutes. While this is a bit longer than I usually cook it, I figured I would try it. Well, the chicken is over cooked. Still tasted good but it was a little, let's say, firm.

Mushroom Risotto

I have a bunch of wild and farmed mushroom in the fridge need to be eaten...











What is a better way to use them up than making a risotto? With good Parmiggiano Reggiano and finished with a little butter, it is all creamy and forest-y. Nice.

Curry Goat

I said there was no better summer dish to go with rice than black bean ribs and bitter melon yesterdays, well, I made one at least equally as god--Caribbean style curry lamb. I marinated the goat with onion, garlic, black pepper, salt, curry powder and hot chili pepper for an hour or so before browning it slightly and then adding water to slowly cook it for an hour and a half. More curry powder was added and then some fresh sweet sweet new Yukon Gold potatoes to cook for 15 minutes. Goat got to be the best meat for curry, and for stew, of them all. Sweet sweet meat in spicy sauce, so good

ReUse

This is perhaps the best way to use left over black bean ribs--cook it with bitter melon. It is very simple, sautéed the bitter melon for a short minute and then add the ribs and the sauce, add some water if needed, let it cook for until the bitter melon is done and you can't find a better summer dish to go with rice.

Wild Mushroom Linguine

I got some wild mushroom fresh from the market so I thought a simple pasta dish may be a good way to enjoy some of it. Here is sautéed it in some olive oil and onion. I then added some beef stock and cook till it is almost dry. Fresh organic parsley and thyme is added before a little butter and the linguine with a little of the pasta water. It is finished with Parmigiano Reggiano. It is very tasty indeed, feels just like walking in the woods.

Blueberry and walnut muffins

This is my second attempt at muffin making. Maybe my flour is too hard or I mixed it to much, it came out between a typical muffin and bread, on this side of muffin. It is still pretty good eating. I may even like it better this way... strange...

Ribs and Amaranth

This is a pretty standard meal for a Cantonese, steamed pork ribs and Amaranth soup. The ribs are marinated in salt, sugar, soy sauce, garlic, ginger, washed preserved black beans, corn starch and Shaoxing liquor.
It is steamed for about 20 minutes. The soup is the easiest just some garlic sautéed in a little oil, into which the veg is added and then some chicken stock or water, a little salt and boil for a few minute, and that is that. Comfort food.

Buns

I have a cut on my hand so I used the food processor to make the dough. It worked pretty well but not as good as doing it by hand though. Looks kind of cute like this.

Market Day Meal

Went to the Farmer's Market today for the first time this year. The wet and cool weather so far this year seems to be holding some produce back. Still, there are good things and this salad is the proof, the purple radishes are as sweet as can be and the three beautiful cheeses are: Mountain Meadow's sheep's brie and Goat's Pride Dairy's ash caprabella and Tomme de chevre. The cheeses are unique but uniformly excellent.








And to go with that wonderful salad, what is better then a morel omelet made with some top quality giant fresh morel from my friend Lewis.

Ribs

These short ribs are a little fat so I cut some of it off. The result is some thin strips of meat. Because of marbling the meat is still creamy without the extra fat. The marinate is garlic, ginger, Korean chili peppers, mirin, sugar, salt, soy sauce and sesame oil.

Poor meal

Here I have a giant mustard green in a rich chicken stock and a mix fry of dry tofu, sweet corn, "snow vegetable" and pork. Quite frugal but goes well with rice.

Melting Eggplant

I cooked this chicken using garlic, the winter preserved vegetable and rose liquor much like last time but decided to cook the eggplants in it to save time. I cut the eggplant into small pieces first but they melted away in no time. I then cut up another into bigger pieces and it works out fine. The result is I have a very rich thick sauce with the chicken.

It's so wrong

Thomas Haas makes some of the finest chocolates in the world but this hot chocolate mix is so wrong. It is exceedingly rich; it is lumpy rather than powdery when dry; it is quite hot from the chili; it tells you to make only a demitasse; and it becomes smooth with a few stirs. It is just not what you expect when making hot chocolate. But how divinely tasty it is.

Slow Lamb

I suppose this is more like a pot roast and it tastes good. I stuffed this lamb shoulder with garlic, rosemary, thyme, oregano, salt and pepper before browning it in a pan. I then put it into this clay pot on top of onion, cloves, dry cranberries, pine nuts, cinnamon and the pan juice. It stayed in a 300℉ oven for 3 hours.









The result is pull-apart tender, and very tasty.













I ate it over couscous. I could have reduce the sauce a bit but it has a nice mildness as is.

Symbols of Winter for the Begining of Summer

I had this little package of the "Big Foot Winter Preserved Vegetable 大足冬菜尖" opened so I thought I would cook some chicken with it. I brown the chicken well in the pot with a little salt first, then added garlic, ginger, chili pepper, the vegetable for a few second before adding rose liquor and covered over high heat for a few minute. I removed the pot from heat just before it burn. I couldn't believe how tasty it is. This got to be one of the best 冬菜 I have ever had!





To go with it I have some winter melon cooked in rich chicken stock and Jinhua ham.