This year, my daughter has learned a little bit about the Lunar New Year at school and a little bit about the Chinese horoscope. And she wanted to know if we could eat some new year food and treats.
Thanks to Marley and Spoon providing a few new year dishes for selection this week, I made lion's head meatballs and Hong Kong egg tarts.
I made modifications to the meatballs by adding minced wood ear mushrooms and shiitake mushrooms. I also halved the amount of cornstarch, which made my meatballs too wet and thus became big hill mounds rather than balls. But these were so delicious; it doesn't matter that they're not balls! My mom learned how to make these from Chinese cooking school in Taiwan and has been known to make awesome lion's head, and she approved of these!
I continued my streak of ugly but yummy food with the egg tart recipe. Maybe I can blame Marley and Spoon for forgetting to include the pre-made pie crusts. I went and got some pressed empanada dough instead and churned these puppies out. The ones baked in small muffin tins were forgiving, but not so much the regular-sized ones! The flavor and texture are pretty spot on, but I swear the instructions did not include tips on how to avoid the custard from bubbling in the oven!
Mini Egg Tarts
For dinner, we ordered from the closest Chinese BBQ restaurant to Round Rock, Ho Ho Chinese BBQ. This place is straight up "we make good food and don't care about all the other variables that a customer may care about." It's an old school Cantonese restaurant where the exterior and interior aesthetics is pretty tattered, but it doesn't stop the influx of customers trying to get their fill of savory morsels of meats. My online pick up order was supposed to be ready at 5:18 PM, and they didn't have the food ready until 6 PM. Granted it's Lunar New Year and instead of taking the day off, they were trying to service greater than usual traffic.
With my daughter in tow, I solved our long wait by ordering roast duck and roast pork belly to be chopped up straight from the BBQ line and took it out to my mom and daughter to munch on while I went back to the restaurant to listen for my name.
I came back to very satisfied passengers
None of the dishes are particularly pretty to look at; maybe they're slightly better looking than the building that it came from, but there's definite skill and authenticity behind the taste. Each dish has its distinct flavor profile and none are overly salted. I feel like these have become rare qualities in Chinese restaurants as of late. As chefs who have trained in specific Chinese cuisines retire, new chefs or owners have tried to cater to the types of Chinese cuisines and dishes that have risen in popularity and they lose authenticity. Cantonese food has been pushed to the side to make way for Sichuan food. And restaurants that don't align to Sichuan food try to do a bit of everything to accommodate what's trending and lose their way. I feel like Ho Ho does a great job in staying true to Cantonese flavors, and I hope they can successfully continue that!
Happy new year to all!
No comments:
Post a Comment