Lionheads(Traditional chinese dish)

I discovered this recipe in one of Ching He Huang's book, Chinese food made Easy. I think I own all her books now, and recommend them highly (and I have no commercial interest there!). I love that she promotes healthy traditional dishes, accessible and very Chinese. I am lucky that I can source all the ingredients so easily as I live next to chinatown. All the ingredients are already in my cupboard.
It a very traditional, home type of food, which is very healthy, tasty and so easy to make. 

My HongKong friend remembers the dish from her childhood, named so because of the ressemblance with lion's heads, the meatballs being the head and the cabbage the mane, what a great way to entice kids into eating it -  not that they need so much enticement mind you as it tastes so great!

Since trying this dish, I made it many times, and it has become one of my favourites.
I adapted the recipe a little, as I tend to prefer bigger meatballs, use the whole leaves of the cabbage and I also felt the need to add some sichuan pepper for a kick.

Makes 4 big meatballs

- 2 tablespoons groundnut oil
- 750ml Water or preferably stock
- 4 dried chinese mushrooms
- 1 Chinese dismantled leaf by leaf
- 1 Tablespoon light soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon cornflour blended with 2 tablespoons cold water (optional)
- 2 large spring onions, sliced
- Sichuan pepper, a pinch
- sea salt and ground white Pepper
- steamed jasmine rice

For the meatballs

- 500gminced beef, pints water or vegetable stock
- 4 garlic cloves, finely diced
- 2 tables spoon freshly grated root stem ginger
- 1/2 pinch of sea salt
- 50ml Shaoshing rice wine or dry Sherry
- 2 Tablespoons light soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
- 1 egg, beaten
- 1 tablespoon cornflour
- 1 pinch of ground white pepper

1. Put all the ingredients for the meatballs into a large bowl and stir to combine.
Using wetted hands take a large mound of the mince mixture and mould into a ball slightly smaller than a baseball. Place on a Plate and repeat with the remaining mixture.

2. Pour the oil into a large deep pan on high heat. Place each meatball in the pan.
Turn very carefully with a big spatula when brown, and repeat until all sides are brown (the meat is sealed, not cooked).

3.Arrange the cabbage leaves curving them lengthway around the meatballs, like a nest. Add the stock, mushrooms and soy sauce and sichuan pepper and bring to the boil.
Cover the pan, reduce the heat and simmer gently for 15 minutes. Add the blended cornflour, stir until thickened.

4. Take off the heat. Adjust salt and pepper to taste. Transfer to serving dish and sprinkle with spring onion and serve with Jasmine rice

Enjoy!

 

 

 

 

 

Source: recipe adapted from Ching He Huang's recipe, photos, myself



Cantonese stir-fry crab

We are blessed in Manchester with numerous and very good Chinese restaurants. I go out a lot to these restaurants, and was intending to go with a friend last Friday, but she suggested we'd cook something together at home instead. I embraced the idea as I love cooking with other people and the food always end up being something that would not come out of a restaurant's kitchen somehow.
So we met up in Chinatown - 2 min from my home, so my usual food hunts place - not knowing what we were going to do yet. As we entered, the first thing we saw was the seafood, and in particular the lobsters and the crabs. We looked at each other and it was decided, crab it would be. My friend who is originally from Hong Kong and she immediately suggested a dish from back home. We only picked up a few other ingredients as my kitchen already contains all the usual Chinese basics suspects.

The crabs were of course alive so I had a little photo shoot with them before they'd die for the greater good of our stomachs. I must say I've always loved crabs, they are fascinating crustaceans.

To cook this dish (for 2 pers.)
- 2 medium crabs
- Fresh noodles for 2
- 2 clove garlic, chopped
- 1 thumb fresh ginger, chopped
- 1 red chili, chopped
- 6 preserved black bean, chopped
- 1 head broccoli divided in florets
- dark soy sauce
- light soy sauce
 -oyster sauce
- vegetable oil (I used rapeseed oil, healthier)
- 1 bunch spring onions, chopped in diagonals
- a handful of cornflour
- 2 tsp sugar

Crabs:

Prepare a big pan with boiling water, drop the crabs in it (the faster the least they suffer...) and put the lid on.
Take the crabs out when they are red/pink/orange(depends on the crabs used), it only takes a few minutes. Take the crabs out and set aside.

When they are cold, dismember them and break the claws, remove the non edible part of the body.

Chop together chili, garlic,ginger and black beans. reserve some for the broccoli (to be cooked and served separately

Heat oil in a wok, throw in the mix, stir-fry for a minute, throw in the spring onions,and cook some more, then add the crab, mix a bit, add a dash of soy sauce and oyster sauce then add the lid on the wok.

In a small bowl, mix cornflour and 1tsp sugar, add some cold water, stir well and add to the crabs, stir till thickened.

The dish is now ready.

Broccoli:
Blanch the broccoli.
Heat oil in a wok, throw in the mix, stir-fry for a minute,add florets, soy and oyster sauce, stir well, cook for a few more minutes.
In a small bowl, mix cornflour and 1tsp sugar, add some cold water, stir well and add in the wok, stir till thickened.and the dish is now ready

Noodles
Cook the fresh noodles in boiling water, drain in cold water and then pour boiling water (to keep them hot) on top in the colander. Dish o the plates. Add a filet of oyster sauce, a drizzle of light soy sauce, and finish with a filet of hot oil.

Serve the three items.

This dish is really easy to make and has this gorgeous taste of Hong-Kong Street food.
The crab brings a flavoursome sweetness, and the whole dish does not take much time at all.
The noodles cooked that way take a whole dimension, and don't even think a second of skipping the oil, that would be murder!

Source: My friend, this is a common Cantonese dish cooked in HongKong at home.
Photography: myself.

Cheung Chau Island, Hong Kong (Part 1)

Quite a while ago, I started blogging about Hong Kong, but I am not quite over on the subject.
- You will have to excuse the poor picture quality, as I took only a little compact that time, my faithful Optio SV -

I really want to talk to you about the day I spent on my own on the little island of Cheung Chau. I have been totally under its charm at first sight. A very quiet place where life goes slowly, populated by friendly people (who only speak Cantonese by the way so be warned...).
The island is west of Hong Kong island and it takes about an hour by ferry to reach it.

The main business seems to be fishing,

And as soon as one lands, it is obvious looking at the harbour promenade, that tourism and in particular seafood restaurants are the main attraction of the island.

I took a stroll inside the island first, keeping the restaurant string for when I would be hungry later.
A few hundred yards further, after plodding along the narrow street,

I found myself by the beach on the other side of the island, having passed what seemed to be a resort, chinese way. The beach was being worked on, as the month of February is a quiet one.

Coming back into the small town, I came across shrine and church,

And amongst the shopping and workshop streets

A lot of dry fish for sale

And I will always remember the amazing smell of the dried (drying?) noodles...

To be followed.....

The Jing Fong Restaurant in Elizabeth Street, NY

This restaurant was the only one we chose with the travel guide, my travel companion: I usually have a good flair and we don't rely on travel guides for food. I had a bit of a bad feeling in the entrance as there was an escalator, for some reason an escalator in the entrance of restaurant sounds wrong (you need the exercise when you come out!) Anyway, inside the restaurant, the space was huge, seemingly the place is used for big family events. The dishes were similar to those I can get in the UK, only they were presented differently on the menu, with complicated formula. The waiters found it difficult to understand us as their English was not too good, although I don't find this an issue. A glance in the room told me that nobody amongst the customers was chinese. Huh ho... The place was well lit at least..

Anyway, we order some duck tongues: We’d expected the tongues to be pan fried but they came in a thick batter which spoiled it a bit for us.

My companion ordered hairy taro balls which she liked although they weren't the best she'd ever eaten. I am not very much into deep fried so again that was a bit heavy for me.

Then we got the steamed scallop dumpling I'd order which were rather nice and fresh.

Of course I'd asked the waiter if they had Xiao long bao, and they did! They were ok, but definitely not freshly made, and the dough was to thick, with not enough soup inside.

The shark fin dumplings were quite interesting, i'd never seen them made that way. Not my favorite, but good.

There was no egg tarts for dessert (ohhhhh noooo!) so I ordered the only dessert that seemed healthy enough, which turned out to be coconut jelly with canned fruits, not very exciting really.

I suppose the fun bit came at the end since in Britain, we rarely get a fortune cookie at the end of the meal; orange quarter and mini desserts during the new year, but no cookie indeed, for it's an american invention. I must say I rather like it (the message, not the biscuit!)

It was interesting to note that in American restaurants, you don't need to order water, tea, they are brought to the table automatically as part of the service. The odd bit come with the bill, as you never know what you will have to pay: you have to calculate the tax on top then the service from 15-20% upwards. I don't like counting so I found that rather painful, and remain attached to the European way where everything is included and you don't have to worry about it. Also, the dollars come in small bills so you have to put plenty of them!

So the verdict: we should have followed our instinct and gone to the little restaurant at the corner of Elisabeth and Pell Street with all the pigs heads and ducks hanging in the window which emitted such a gorgeous smell. The standard in Manchester Chinese restaurants is rather high as I discovered when I went to HongKong, so I am a bit demanding. However, we don't have any Vietnamese restaurant and I was very pleased to find many of them in New York, even though they -again - tasted different frrom the ones in France. The other funny thing is New York is that when you come out of restaurants in the evenings, the pavement is full of bin bags! which conforted us in our thoughts we hadn't expressed them till then: the meal had been a bit rubbish really... (it might well be a British expression hum...).

But well, that was the only failed food experience in NY, the rest was awesome, I just wanted say like everywhere else, after all, it's a lot down to how one choses the restaurant. And our lesson that night was: do not believe the travel guides for food!!