cantonese steamed beef meatballs 鮮竹牛肉丸 - part 3

鮮竹牛肉丸, 即製即吃. One of the reason that I diligently blog about my culinary journey is I would look back in later days and review my own progress as well as the evolution of taste and interest. I take abundance of photos as they are better than thousand words.

beef meat ball soup thick noodles 牛肉丸粗麵

This is just an improvised light meal with what I happen to have on hand. A beef meat ball soup thick noodles with home made thick noodles. I made a batch of beef meat balls and vacuum packed most of them and store in freezer. I kept the ugly five to be cooked. As making beef meat balls requires blanching them in hot water I ended up with a pot of beef broth. I use it to make this bowl of soup noodles.

pan fried beef buns 生煎牛肉包 - part 1

This is another Shanghainese delight from childhood memory that I have been craving. It is pan fried beef buns 生煎牛肉包. The only thing that I bought to make these was a large pack of extra lean ground beef from Costco. All other ingredients are from the freezer, fridge, and my pantry.

mussels with asian eggplant

I bought some Pacific Northwest mussels without much thought of how I would like to prepare them. Mussels are the easiest to prepare like boiling water. What you need to know is they cook very fast, and release a lot of liquid. You should not waste the liquid they release but utilize it for your dish.

scallion "pancake" 蔥油餅 - part 4

This is getting out of control. I wasn't planning to make this until I give the stomach a rest. However, I wanted to improve the techniques of making scallion "pancake" 蔥油餅. This one turned out incredibly good. It is transformative.

xiao long bao 小籠包, potstickers 鍋貼, and pan fried pork buns 生煎包 - part 5

Wanting a little bit more soup in the xiao long bao 小籠包 for the remainder of the pork filling I thought I would add a bit a vegetable to it. I happen have a stalk of spring onion left over. It was just perfect and I chop it up and added to the filling. There is a bit of dough left as well so breakfast should be easy.

xiao long bao 小籠包, potstickers 鍋貼, and pan fried pork buns 生煎包 - part 4

Success! I made some decent xiao long bao 小籠包. For me xiao long bao 小籠包 is the holy grail of a good Shanghai restaurant dishes that once I thought very difficult to make. If I succeed in making this, everything else should be cake walk. There were some challenges along the way, but thankfully I eased myself starting with other Shanghai delights that are easier to make. I also needed to get some bamboo steaming basket liners so the xiao long bao 小籠包 would not be sticking to the bamboo slats.