What’d You Do Last Weekend?

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Chinese

Char Siu Bao

Posted by jenny on 04/11/2011
Char Siu Bao

Growing up in Texas, I spent summers at my grandparents' Chinese restaurant in Waco. Day in and day out I was surrounded by typical Chinese-American dishes: sweet and sour pork, chow mein, egg drop soup. One day a week we'd escape to Dallas to get away from what some of our customers would call 'the best Chinese (pronounced chah-neeze) food, better than that stuff they serve in China (again, chah-nuh).' We'd go for dim sum.


Coconut Jello with Sweet Red Beans

Posted by jenny on 11/19/2010
Coconut Jello with Sweet Red Beans

After watching what must have been zillions of dim sum carts go by, I finally decided to branch out and make a Chinese dessert myself. I'd watched my grandmother make all sorts of rock candy-sweetened beany things throughout the years, but I had always been drawn to more Western-style desserts and hadn't taken the time to learn how to flavor things like sweet red beans or tapioca. One of my favorites growing up was called bao bing (hong dao bing), the Chinese equivalent of a snow cone. Sort of.


Pickled Chinese Mustard Greens

Posted by jenny on 02/20/2010
Pickled Chinese Mustard Greens

I was rummaging through some second-hand bookstores this weekend looking for a copy of an out-of-print book when I came across this handy little book called Creative Pickling at Home, by Barbara Ciletti. It's one of those workbook-looking paperbacks that are usually destined for a home at the bargain bookstore. I have one somewhere in my storage locker that was published by Ortho - the pesticide people - and it was a brilliant cookbook for me when I was learning how to cook with more exotic ingredients, like preserved ginger (this was in like 1992, when that was still interesting).


Fish Congee

Posted by jenny on 08/05/2009
Fish Congee Spread

I was one of those weird half-Chinese kids who didn’t like congee. When my extended family would get together, they’d make giant pots of the stuff with an array of toppings, and I would hide in my bowl of ramen. I just didn’t think it had much flavor – plain boiled rice porridge.


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