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Recipe: chinese barbecue char siu pork

H’okay! I can now stand and sit for longer than 15 minutes at a time without breaking into a cold sweat and THAT my friends, is a GREAT feeling. I’ve been watching the snow falling outside our house all week long and I just keep telling myself that it’s laying down a good base for the rest of the season. Not being able to stand or sit for long also means I’m now well behind in just about EVERYTHING I had planned this month. However, being forced to stay inside means that I actually read the user’s manual when this arrived in the mail.

nikon 1 v1

just a little bigger than the iphone

We’re still getting to know each other, but it’s a nice addition to my Nikon family. I think I’ll call it Baby Bear. I’m kidding – I don’t name my cameras. This one will get a lot of miles in the backcountry and on the slopes this winter and spring (and hopefully summer too). I can’t get over how small it is and how well it performs so far…

test shot on the v1

test shot on the d3x

snowy boulder (v1)

Before my back went to hell in a handbasket, I had tested out a recipe that is a childhood favorite of mine. It’s Chinese and it’s pork, so yeah – that makes complete sense. Char siu pork or Chinese barbecue pork was this special treat you could get at the good Chinese restaurants back in the day. They would serve it sliced with the cold appetizer plate or more commonly we’d have it in the barbecue pork steamed buns at dim sum. My sister and I used to fight over these, we loved them so much. She usually won.

five spice, white pepper, garlic, honey, hoisin sauce, soy sauce, sesame oil, shaoxing wine, oil, pork

heat honey, hoisin, soy sauce, shaoxing wine, spices, and sesame oil together

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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

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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

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