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20 October 2010

fat auntie cooks up a storm!

this is fat auntie in her kitchen about to cook up a storm.


actually i think this is her yelling at me to stop taking pictures of her while she's cooking.

fat auntie grew up in the area outside of guangzhou, cn called pun-yue (番禺區) where apparently everyone knows how to concoct magnificent feasts for supper, of which fat auntie is perfect specimen (more on that later).

pun-yue's notable for delicious dishes like deep fried water buffalo milk (keung-tsup tsoong lai), stuffed and fried dace (tseen-yeung leung yu), and a bazillion great pork and seafood dishes.

(she's so short that she sometimes has to use a giant box of pocky as a booster seat).

(photo via flickr, volcanologist)

can't wait to see fat auntie again so she can cook me some tasty meals!  

(also, a note to the jerks giving me flack for "improper" romanization of cantonese words can suck my balzacs. i'm a writer and i know how to romanize better than outdated stuffy bureaucrats.)

04 October 2010

try this: ox-tongue (minus the tongue)

sometimes i wonder whether or not it is out of sheer spite that the chinese create ridiculous and cryptic names for dishes and foods to turn them off from eating them.

one of my favourites in that category is the puffy, slightly chewy, slightly sweet and fun-to-eat ovular deep-fried treats called ox-tongue pastries, or 牛脷酥 (in cantonese, gnau-lei so).


[it's the one on the right! one in the back is a sesame ball and one in the foreground, i forget but it wasn't as tasty as the oxtongue.] 

there's no ox nor any ox-tongue in it, perfect for vegetarian/pretendatarian/omnivores alike! its namesake stems from its shape which resembles the tongues of our bovine friend (pretty ugly if you ask me).

often eaten to complement congee or with just fresh soy milk, these and other types of chinese pastries are often found in fast-foody type, street food carts, or dim sum houses (though finding them in the latter is kind of rare, at least in north america, but you might luck out).

i guarantee some smiles once you bite into one (hopefully not fake ones)!