Moon Cakes
Tiny sticky cakes with a salted egg yolk in the middle. Sounds tasty, no?
One baked lotus seed paste mooncake with one egg yolk weighs about 180 g, has 790 calories, and contains 45 g of fat, so they taste good, but aren’t so good for your figure, unless you want to end up looking like the autumn moon!
Posted in Articles and tagged china, Chinese, culture, festival, food, mid-autumn festival, moon cake, Moon Festival, tradition
Sweet & Sour
Frequently, conversing with my Western friends about Chinese food, I hear the old line that “the Chinese don’t eat desserts” wheeled out. The only thing they can really point to is the toffee apples and toffee bananas, which a lot of restaurants over here offer. This is a misconception worth correcting.
Posted in Articles and tagged bun, Canton, china, Chinese, culture, dessert, dumpling, food, green bean, Guangzhou, ice cream, milk, pancake, red bean, shaved ice
Jiao Zi: A Spring Festival Recipe
Spring Festival, or Chinese New Year, this year falls at the end of January. On Friday the 31st, we will be ushering in the Year of the Horse. People all over China will be jostling to travel back to their hometowns for the most elaborate annual culinary and festive extravaganza. Jiao Zi are one of the major new year foods of the North. In the West, they are simply translated as dumplings, but are a world away from the egg sized, suety doughballs consumed in stews and casseroles by the staunchly traditional British. Jiao Zi are the chewy bite size parcels of meat and vegetables wrapped in thin dough skins, pinched together, looking like miniature Cornish pasties, or ravioli.
Posted in Articles and tagged china, Chinese, cooking, culture, dumpling, food, jiao zi, recipe
La Ba: a Winter Festival
Winter Chinese festivals are few and far between. 腊八 La Ba is one of them. Other than meaning “wax, 腊”La”, was an ancient ceremony of offering to the gods that happens on the 12th month of the lunar calendar, on the 8th day (hence “ba”).
Posted in Articles and tagged Buddha, china, Chinese, congee, culture, festival, food, winter
Dong Zhi (Winter Solstice)
Last night, we celebrated 冬至 (“dong zhi”) or Winter Solstice, which for the Chinese is one of the 24 seasons in the Lunar Calendar. This is longest night of the year for those in the northern hemisphere, after which the night will gradually shorten and the day lengthen. In Chinese philosophy, Dong Zhi is a time when strong forces of the Yin begin to wane and weak forces of the Yang, start to rise . It’s been an important winter festival for more than 2000 years, as a time for ancestral, heaven worship, rest and celebration of the departure of ill luck, diseases and the health and good luck this will bring.
Posted in Articles and tagged china, culture, festival, food, winter