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Recipe: chinese honey walnut shrimp recipe

Some time last week (Nov 7th) marked seven years since I began blogging. I hadn’t even realized this until today as I’ve been bogged down with so much. It seems fitting though, because I’ve been talking with some blog friends lately about blogging “back in the day” compared to now, today. It’s quite different. But I won’t bore you with those musings. I remember how excited I was in the early days to find a handful of blogs that posted Chinese recipes I wanted to make. The two I loved most were Jaden’s Steamy Kitchen and Bee’s Rasa Malaysia. They still crank out reliable recipes and I often reference their blogs for all manner of Chinese (or other Asian) cooking help.

Bee recently released her first cookbook, Easy Chinese Recipes, a lovely collection of favorite Chinese recipes and beautiful glossy photos to entice the reader to make every single dish. Bee’s style in her book is no different from her exacting instructions and helpful background information on her blog. The recipes are easy to follow even if you’ve never cooked Chinese food before. But I’ve cooked Chinese food before. LOTS. OF. IT. Yet, I still found plenty of recipes that I’ve been wanting to make and never found a good recipe for until I flipped through Bee’s book.

easy chinese recipes: family favorites from dim sum to kung pao

As any cook is bound to do, I compared some of my family recipes with Bee’s versions and they totally jived. There was never any doubt. I dog-eared several pages – recipes to revisit when I had more time. I finally settled on a restaurant favorite that I never had the guts to try at home, until now…

shrimp, honey, walnuts

marinate the shrimp in salt and egg white

The shrimp are raw despite their pink color (these are wild-caught Key West pink shrimp from Whole Foods), so be sure to use RAW shrimp and not cooked shrimp. It’s a straightforward process considering there is frying involved. Peel and de-vein your shrimp, then butterfly them if you like. (I like to butterfly them because they take on a pretty curled and flared shape when cooked.) Marinate in salt and egg white.

candied walnuts

mixing up the sauce

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: chinese sweet red bean rice balls

a great start to any day

If you’ve been reading this blog for longer than six months, you can probably deduce that it snows here in Colorado. Ever heard of Vail? Breckenridge? Beaver Creek? Right on. For some reason, every stinking time it snows, a local will invariably tweet, “I can’t believe it’s snowing again!” Dear Incredulous Persons of Colorado, it’s going to do that (you know, the snowing thing). That’s why I live here. And we did get a lovely 7 inches of snow on our deck overnight. On days when there is fresh snow and NO wind, you’d best get out there into the wild blue awesome pronto because it just doesn’t get better than that.

it was snowing and sunny at the same time

jeremy looks toward mount audubon

time to peel off the skins and head down

from 10,600+ feet

But it *did* get better. We have a good friend visiting from out of town on business. When Aaron’s work was done, we joined him in the afternoon to do a little exploring around downtown Boulder. We grabbed some nibbles at happy hour, then visited Boxcar Coffee to kill a little time before moving on to The Pinyon for an excellent dinner. I finally tried the Pnyn Burger and now I have a crush on it. Kaweah was overjoyed when she discovered we had brought home yet another house guest.

serving up cowboy coffee

jeremy’s latte

the pinyon makes a damn fine burger

Our weather created a little excitement for Aaron seeing as he lives in mono-seasonal Southern California (okay, okay – they really do have TWO seasons). We’re hitting 11°F overnight and all of our trees are blanketed in white as if they had forgotten to take off their Halloween costumes. My food cravings are strongly coupled with the weather. As you can imagine, all I can think of are stews and soups. But not all of them are savory. My favorite traditional Chinese dessert is a boiled pillow of mochi dough filled with sweet red bean paste.

sweet rice flour, red bean paste, brown sugar, ginger

i actually prefer this glutinous rice flour

Grandma knew it was my favorite and she made these sweet rice balls from time to time when I was a little kid. I’d come home from pre-school or kindergarten, change into my play clothes, and then sit on the counter next to her while she worked the dough into these bite-sized pastries. I’d sneak a little sweet red bean paste. Sometimes we were silent while she worked and I watched. Other times we talked about silly things that were important to a 4-year old. Then I’d forget about the sweet rice balls after: lunch, our walk around the neighborhood together, my nap, Kris coming home from elementary school, and dinner with the whole family. I’d forget until Grandma brought out these steaming bowls of sweet soup with soft white rice balls floating in them. I preferred the red bean paste filling. Kris liked the black sesame paste filling. Grandma made both.

mix the flour and water together

the dough should be silky and not sticky

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: chinese dry-cooked string beans

It’s the last day of spring and there is a winter weather advisory issued for our mountains until 6:00 this evening.

I am not complaining.

3-8 inches of fresh snow in addition to the 30+ feet in the backcountry is our reprieve for the zero (0, nada, nil) days of skiing we managed in March when so much glorious powder fell at the big ski resorts. We were busy, we were traveling, I got sick… We’re still busy, but we’re not traveling (at least not in June) and thankfully, we aren’t sick!

yes, still skiing

the lower alpine lakes are thawing

Yesterday was Father’s Day. On Mother’s Day you expect every brunch joint to be packed out the door. On Father’s Day, we brace ourselves for the onslaught of families who want to take Dad to the mountains for a hike or to burn things (I really do not understand the obsession of people from the flats who come up to our mountains to burn stuff). But this year, the campgrounds remain under snow in late June. The trails are under snow. Even the parking lots have a few feet of snow lingering about where cars would normally be. I like it like that, for obvious reasons…

putting the skins away after the climb up

the anticipation of skiing out makes my mouth water

wooo! jeremy gets his turns in (in june!)

Also, this is my 1001st post. 1000 is a nice round number, but it was a special post for my dad, so I didn’t want to detract from it. 1001 is a palindrome, which I love more than round numbers – so there. The only significance of my 1001st post is that I clearly never shut up.

String beans (green beans) are in the markets and they’re looking pretty good. I’ve been wanting to make Chinese dry-cooked string beans for a while, but it always goes to the bottom of the list because Jeremy has a slight allergy to string beans. They make his throat itchy. That’s a real shame because my mom cooks them up better than any one or any restaurant I know of. Oh well… more for me.

string beans

trimming the ends

I suppose the name “dry-cooked” refers to the fact that there isn’t much liquid used in the recipe. I found that a little confusing considering that the beans are essentially fried in oil – a lot of oil. But you don’t consume all of that oil, thank goodness. Aside from the beans, the other main ingredients are ground pork (this is optional), dried shrimp, and Sichuan preserved mustard green tsa tsai. The dried shrimp and preserved mustard greens you’ll most likely have to get at an Asian grocery store.

dried shrimp and sichuan preserved vegetable

cut the beans into 3-inch pieces (i just cut them in half)

**Jump for more butter**