Asian food and culture from the perspective of a Chinese Canadian expat living in Poland.
26 Jul 2021 2 minute read 0 comments Chinuck
There are just so many things you can do with shrimp. You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, sauté it. There's shrimp kabobs, shrimp creole, shrimp gumbo. Pan fried, deep fried, stir fried. There's pineapple shrimp, lemon shrimp, coconut sh...
23 Jul 2021 3 minute read 5 comments Chinuck
Hong Kong style cafés don't actually serve that much coffee. Instead, they serve copious amounts of their quintessential Hong Kong style milk tea. As the saying goes, when the colonizers give you tea, make milk tea. So what's a Ying Yang, you might...
21 Jul 2021 1 minute read 0 comments Chinuck
If you've never had bitter melon before, it's bitter. (Really?!) Well, there's more to the story than that. In Chinese, there are 2 words for bitter, "foo" (苦) and -- hmmm...both phoneticizations I can think of are problematic, so I'll go with the...
19 Jul 2021 1 minute read 0 comments Chinuck
Dried scallops are one of the most prized ingredients in Chinese cooking, second only to abalone. (We're just going to ignore shark's fin.) Even just a few of them adds a ton of umami to a dish and good quality dried scallops can get rather expensiv...
16 Jul 2021 1 minute read 0 comments Chinuck
Steamed egg is a truly Chinese home cooking dish. You won't find it at any restaurants. It's so simple, yet everyone I've ever made it for who hasn't had it before has been amazed! There are variations that add mushrooms, dried shrimp (called "shrimp...
14 Jul 2021 5 minute read 2 comments Chinuck
When you open the doors of a Chinese restaurant, your ears are blasted with the roar of a thousand people, like the heat blasting on your face when opening an oven door. Accompanying the choir is a ceramic percussion playing a chaotic clang of dishes...
12 Jul 2021 2 minute read 0 comments Chinuck
I mentioned in a previous post how it is not easy to find good, fresh seafood in Warsaw. But sometimes you get lucky and I picked up a nice swordfish steak. Calling it "steak" is no misnomer. Swordfish meat is extremely dense and robust, unlike white...
9 Jul 2021 1 minute read 2 comments Chinuck
I first mentioned natto in my post about Japanese breakfast. Today we'll look at a non-traditional and simple recipe that's very satisfying. Ingredients 1 package natto 1 can tuna -- Tuna sashimi would be even better for a more gourmet version. 1 c...
7 Jul 2021 4 minute read 0 comments Chinuck
Once in a while, my family had Chinese barbeque night. Unlike barbeque night in the West, we didn't light fires in the backyard like cavemen. I tease! It was when mom would bring home usually 2 of the following from the Chinese barbeque shop (the ty...
5 Jul 2021 1 minute read 2 comments Chinuck
This is a classic Chinese dish with two very Chinese ingredients: Water spinach and fermented tofu. Water spinach isn't actually related to spinach -- it is a type of morning glory. The most common Chinese names for it are "ong choy" and "tong choy",...
