A ubiquitous fast food sold by street vendors and/or in night markets throughout Taiwan, these fried chicken tenders are soooo amazingly crisp and flavorful! Mom likes to use pork or squid instead of chicken, and I believe there are even some vegetarian versions using mushrooms or potatoes. But the essential ingredients are a marinade of soy, garlic, rice wine, sugar and 5-spice powder for the meat, seafood, or veggies, potato starch for dredging, a salt-pepper seasoning, and

Another traditional Taiwanese dish that I grew up eating. We typically had this for breakfast with rice porridge. However, there's no rule that says you can't eat it with some steamed white rice at any other time of the day. Just sayin'...The radish in this dish is salted dried daikon radish that is readily available in most Asian markets. It typically comes in strips, but you can also buy them pre-chopped. Deeeeeelish!!

So what the hey is agar-agar? It's a derivative of seaweed and used basically as a vegetarian form of gelatin. In Chinese markets, it's typically sold in 1.5 oz packages and the product looks like long strands of translucent noodles with the consistency of plastic. Sounds delish, eh? Well, actually, it really is when well-seasoned and properly prepared. My grandmother used to make this tasty cold appetizer/salad with agar-agar and chicken. After some experimentation, I came u

I first came across this recipe in Fu Pei Mei's 1974  Chinese Cook Book Volume II, which I brought with me when I moved to Southern California from Taiwan to attend UC Irvine back in 1983. I was only 18 at the time and a less than seasoned cook, to put it kindly. I've tried many of her recipes since then, but not this one until just recently. I'm not sure about the origin of this dish, but how can you go wrong with steak and eggs, eh?

I don't remember my mom ever having made this home-style Taiwanese dish, but my grandmother certainly did (not while we were in Taiwan, but back in the mid-80's, when she, my Aunt Sheri and I were all living in LA). Tomato & eggs doesn't sound very Chinese, but the addition of garlic, a touch of soy, sweet chili sauce, ketchup and scallions makes this dish distinctive in the pantheon of egg dishes.

A favorite snack/appetizer that both my mom and grandmother excelled at, Pearl Balls are basically meat balls made from ground pork, soy sauce, rice wine, sesame oil, ginger, with a bit of chopped scallions and water chestnuts, coated with glutinous rice and steamed for about 30 minutes. Not all recipes call for this, but I also like to add some chopped shiitake mushrooms to the meatball mixture. The pearly white sheen from the glutinous rice coating is what gives this dish i

I adapted this recipe from the February feature of Panda Restaurant's 2002 calendar. We had our 2001 office Christmas party at Panda Inn in Pasadena, and all of us left with a copy of their 2002 Calendar. The recipes in the calendar are selections from Panda's full-service restaurants, not from their fast food chain 'Panda Express," so are more "authentic," if you will... The original recipe is called "Orange Roughy in Ginger Sauce," but I've renamed it because you can also u

This dish is redolent of the flavors of a hot and sour soup and probably something that my grandpa (Ah-Kung) would have enjoyed because of the addition of vinegar, a commonly used ingredient in the cuisine of his native Fujian province. I adapted this recipe from Chinese Cooking: Favorite Home Dishes , a Weichuan cookbook by Chen Hsueh Hsia published in 1993. Very easy to make, super flavorful and great on its own or over steamed white rice.

A totally decadent Chinese dish which, I believe, is a Cantonese creation from Hong Kong, although I'm still researching to confirm its exact origins. My first taste of this unctuous concoction was almost 20 years ago at the Hong Kong Flower Lounge in Millbrae, a Northern California restaurant noted for its dim sum and other staples of Cantonese cuisine. They called it 'Walnut Prawns' on their menu, but it's also known as 'Honey Walnut Shrimp.'

This is a delicious home-style Chinese tofu dish which I adapted from a recipe by the amazing foodie family at www.woksoflife.com . Their dish is called Chicken & Soft Tofu Casserole  https://thewoksoflife.com/chicken-soft-tofu-casserole/ . The main changes I made was to double their recipe, use an assortment of fresh mushrooms (including fresh shiitakes, oyster mushrooms and king trumpet mushrooms) rather than dried shiitakes, and add extra oyster sauce and sesame oil. I als

I used to hate Thousand-Year-Old Eggs ('Pidan') as a kid. Probably because the only time I would be tasked with eating them was once a year when we were at my Grandma's for Chinese New Year and these darned things would inevitably show up in the appetizer course along with Chinese ham, abalone & mayonnaise, and jellyfish salad - all of which were fantabulous, with the glaring exception of those gnarly looking black eggs. Fast forward about 5-6 years after I came to California

Lettuce is not typically cooked in Western cuisines but leave it to the Chinese to do just that. My grandmother had on a few occasions while living here in the U.S., made romaine lettuce sautéed with garlic, and it was delicious! Tender crisp is the best way to describe the texture. I adapted this version from Woks of Life  https://thewoksoflife.com/cooked-lettuce-with-oyster-sauce-garlic/ , adjusting by adding just a little sugar to balance the sauce to my preference.