ET Speaks From Home

Cuisine & Culture the Chinese Family Way

Must-Try Dishes in Hong Kong

When I think of Hong Kong, the first thing that pops into my mind is Cha Chaan Tengs (local Hong Kong cafés). Back in my childhood, my sisters and I would binge-watch Hong Kong dramas, always drooling over the dim sum scenes and those cozy café settings.

Hong Kong is truly a foodie’s paradise. From roast goose and wonton noodles to claypot rice and beyond, the city serves up some of the best comfort food in the world. On top of that, it’s also home to countless Michelin-starred restaurants and Bib Gourmand eateries.

Must-Try Dishes in Hong Kong

Red Bean Paste Pancake

This is a Chinese style Red Bean Paste Pancake that normally serves in Chinese Dim Sum restaurants. However, over the years, I have found them harder to find. Most of the ingredients are very easy to get from supermarkets and the ready-made red bean paste can be bought from most Chinese supermarkets. Of course, if you don’t like red bean paste, you could get black sesame paste instead. Or try using Nutella!

Red Bean Paste Pancake

Apam Balik / Min Chiang Kueh Recipe

Apam Balik, also called Min Chiang Kueh (面煎粿) is one of the local snacks from my childhood that I used to eat for breakfast or dessert. Nowadays, it is a very common kueh/snack you can find at shopping malls or at hawker centres. They can come in many different fillings like ground peanut, red bean paste, cheese, salted green bean paste, chocolate, black sesame seed and many more. It is more common/traditional to have ground peanuts as the filling. If you have a nut allergy, you might want to avoid some of the Asian desserts!

My preferred filling for Min Chiang Kueh is ground peanut. I had already bought a few packets of ready-made ground peanut with sugar while in Singapore last year so now was an opportunity to use it.

Apam Balik Min Chiang Kueh Recipe

Sago Pearls with Melon

Many Chinese sweet desserts are quite light and refreshing. They are not very often found in the UK Chinese restaurants with plates of fresh fruits or fried banana fritters the more common options. I love eating sweet desserts after a heavy meal in Singapore especially like ice kachang, grass jelly and many more yummy delicious desserts.

sago pearls with melon

Chocolate and Vanilla Marble Cake

I have never tried to bake a marble cake from scratch as it is often easier to use a pre-mix to bake with my children! We all love marble cake for its chocolate swirls in the cake! But there isn’t much choice of marble cake pre-mixes on the market.

Anyway, recently The Happy Egg Co have kindly sent me a signed copy of Eric Lanlard’s Totally Chocolate cookbook, which features all his favourite chocolate recipes! I was so excited when I saw this chocolate and vanilla marble cake recipe which also happened to be his first listed recipe. I was thrilled to make it from scratch!

The fabulous chef, Eric Lanlard also created Peanut Butter & Chocolate Egg Cups for the Happy Egg co which can be found on their website.

chocolate and vanilla marble cake by eric lanlard

White Lotus Sandwich Cookies

This week I decided to adapt a recipe from The Secret of Cookies by Gu Huixue and bake White Lotus Sandwich Cookies. Instead of using black dates, I am using the leftover white lotus paste I had from the Swiss Roll Snow Skin mooncake and Colourful Snow Skin mooncake. Also one of the ingredients is cake flour which I replaced with plain flour and a few other alterations.

white lotus sandwich

Chinese Almond Cookie

This Chinese Almond Cookie recipe is for Red Tractor #RTChallenge. This is my second recipe using the hamper full of delicious Red Tractor Assured ingredients they provided.  This time I am baking Chinese Almond Cookies that do not require butter.  This is commonly consumed during Chinese New Year.  I have not bake this recipe (provided by my sister) for years since I had my son!  That was six years ago.  This time around, I have my little helper Ms C to help me to bake.

chinese almond cookie

Mung Bean Soup / Green Bean Soup

Green bean soup was never one of my favourite desserts until I came to UK as this is the only dessert I know how to cook.  Fairly simple!  Soak the mung beans / green beans for a couple of hours or overnight before placing them into the slow cooker, with a 2 to 1 water to bean ratio.  Cook it till soft and mushy.  After which, add rock sugar or brown sugar.  It is then ready to serve.

Green Bean Soup

Valentine Day Jelly Heart

Valentines Day is approaching soon.  Instead of buying an expensive gift to Mr C, I decided to make him a jelly heart as a treat!  I bought the jelly mixture from a Chinese supermarket.  It is called agar agar and is slightly firmer than other jellies which is good with moulding and cutting.  I also bought a pack of heart shaped cookie cutters.

Valentine Day Jelly Heart shaped agar agar jelly

Winter Solstice Festival 2013 with Tangyuan

Today marks another year of the Winter Solstice Festival.  I can’t believe how time passes us so quickly and it is going to be another new year in less than two weeks time.  If you don’t know what the Winter Solstice Festival/Dongzhi is and why we are celebrating it, please click here to read what I had wrote in last year’s blog post.

Winter Solstice Festival 2013 with tangyuan

How to make Chinese Steamed Bun – ManTou

Each week, my son has been asking me to make mantou as his fellow Chinese students are eating it for their tea during our weekly Chinese lesson.  So I followed the Food Network website to make this but I have altered the recipe.

Chinese Steamed Mantou

Winter Solstice Festival

The Dōngzhì Festival or Winter Solstice Festival is one of the most important festivals celebrated by the Chinese during the Dongzhi solar term (winter solstice) on or around December 22 when sunshine is weakest and daylight shortest. This year, it occurs on 21 December 2012.

Traditionally, the Dongzhi Festival is also a time for the family to get together. I still remember every year without fail, my mum would make tangyuan (湯圓) or balls of glutinous rice. She would put red food colouring into the glutinous rice flour and mix with water.  Once it was mixed, she would roll it into small flour balls and cook it in the boiling water with pandan leaves.

Winter Solstice Festival

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