Homemade Pickled Mustard Greens aka Kiam Chye/Hum Choy

i have been pickling my own kiam chai/hum choy and it has been very satifying as the taste can be adjusted to your own liking.  I am sharing my experience and hope that all who are far away from home and good freshly pickled kiam chai/hum choy is not available.  Nothing is better than a bowl of hot kiam chai/hum choy soup in a cold winter's day.  This soup is also good for the hot summers as the chinese consider salt to 'har for' (cantonese) - in english to douse the fire in you, especially when a piece of tofu is also added to the soup.

Japanese Style Spinach

This Japanese specialty is know as O-hitashi and is a simple to prepare side dish for chicken or fish, such as salmon or tuna. What i made might not be called O-histashi as i have changed the dressing to my taste. Well, whatever, not only is this recipe simple to prepare, it only needed everyday ingredients, plus water and two very simple, quick cooking techniques - blanching and dry-toasting.  Some easy plating tricks, will at the end, result to something that is visually quite stunning, delicious and healthy too.  

Napa Delight

Chinese New Year is around the corner and i have been trying to put up the menu for the Reunion Dinner and found this delicious and easy dish. Napa cabbage, also known as Chinese cabbage, has crunchy leaves that are more elegant and delicate than regular firm-headed green cabbage.  The Napa Cabbage is a sign of prosperity in China and this dish will certainly adorn your reunion dinner table with richness.  

Armenian Eggplant Spread

Here's an easy roasted eggplant spread which can be a dip, or side dish, or sandwich stuffer or pasta topper, that takes less than ten minutes of work time and can be made in advance.  Although the presented dish is a brown mass of suspicious looking stuff, never mind the suspicions,  it is awfully delicious no wonder some calls this - Russian Caviar.  To me this is more appetizing than the real Mccoy.

Dongpo Pagoda With Mui Choy

This weekend would be the last weekend to celebrate the Chinese New Year. as the 15th day falls on Feb. 6th 2012  What celebration??????  What is in store for my family and friends tomorrow would be "eating" of course and since it coincides with Super Bowl XLVI, the male friends and family will be glued to the TV enjoying the beers and all the good eats - you know what they are - chips and dips, buffalo wings etc.  We, the asians, wives and friends will be in the kitchen preparing our banquet and this is one of the dishes that i will be serving. 

Yan Yat Yee Sang

Yan Yat Yee Sang - this must sound like a tongue twister, that's how chinese sounds when you do not speak or know how to, Alexander will ask - What did you say? and mumble whatever came out of his mouth.  The Chinese Lunar New year is celebrated for 15 days, read about how  these 15 days are celebrated. The chinese has their humour in a funny way - 12th day is The Diarrhea Day - ha ha. Today is the seventh day and It is known as "人日" Rénrì in mandarin or Yan Yat in cantonese or Everyone's Birthday, the day when everyone grows one year older. In West Malaysia and Singapore, Yu Sheng/Yee Sang,  raw slivers of fish are tossed together with various pickles and vegeatble into a Salad.   As they toss the salad, they raise the salad high with their chopsticks and say auspicious words. 

East Meets West- Zucchini with Pork and Rice Stuffing

This is a guest post from Reese Darragh of The New Art Of Baking. A Malaysian living in the United States, not to mention a huge fan of Aunt Lily’s blog.

My dad put in 4 zucchini plants in the garden for me this year after I started dabbling in homemade zucchini relish last summer. The relish came out so good that dad thought I will be delighted to have more zucchini in the garden for more relish this year. The problem with zucchini is when you have a bumper crop. Boy do they grow!

After making what seems to be like 20lbs of zucchini relish last week, enough is enough. The next thing to do is to use them for dinner. Something I have never tried is making stuffed zucchini, the American way. See, my all American family have different idea compared to us, Malaysian, when it comes to stuffing vegetables. They don’t subscribe to Yong Tau Foo, so trying to stuff the zucchini with fish paste is strictly out of the question. I tried last year with eggplants from our garden and ended up eating all of them on my own.

It hit me yesterday to come up with an east meets west style of stuffing zucchini. I know for a fact that they love American Chinese food, pork fried rice in particular. Plus I really do not like tomato sauce with zucchini, like most recipe I found in cookbooks have suggested. So, why not make something entirely my own. The verdict: Everyone loves it! They went gaga over the fresh zucchini, pork fried rice and cheese combo. If your zucchini plant goes crazy on you this year like mine, give this recipe a try.