Hong Kong
Hiking Wutong Mountain outside of Louhu in Shenzhen
A few days ago I went with my expat American friend Loren and his brother to Wutong Mountain (梧桐山) which is a small mountain village outside of Louhu in Shenzhen. The village is home to one of the most beautiful mountains I have ever had the pleasure of hiking in my life. Wutongshan is a rainforest-esque climb chock full of bamboo, wild birds chirping, torrential waterfalls and an absolutely breathtaking view of Shenzhen and Hong Kong at the summit.
It’s not an easy climb, either. In fact, Loren’s brother had to turn back about halfway up the mountain because he was too tired to continue. When I came to Shenzhen about two years ago and weighed 50 pounds more, I also could not complete this climb. There are seemingly endless sets of stairs that just keep going higher and higher.
Probably the coolest part about the hike is the myriad of beautiful waterfalls you will experience (Provided you take the stair route – if you decide to just walk up the road to the summit base, you may not see any waterfalls)
There are points where you have to practically rock climb to keep going. Once you get to the summit however, it’s pure bliss and satisfaction as you observe one of the most beautiful views I have ever seen in China.
Overall, I have hiked this mountain 3 times all the way to the summit now and it is an incredible workout, full of breathtaking views and an amazing way to get into nature in Shenzhen. Check out the full video of our hike complete with music below!
Making Chinese style Philly Cheesesteak.
Sometimes, I end up missing foods from home. There are usually ways to replicate these foods by cooking at home, but usually you can’t get things 100% spot on due to a lack of ingredients here in China. I love a good Philly Cheesesteak, which is the steak sandwich from Philadelphia with steak strips, green peppers onions and cheese on a bun. Now, using all those ingredients except the bun (Which I replaced using shou zhua bing, a common Chinese flatbread here) I decided to make what I call a Chinese Philly Cheesesteak.
The ingredients are as follows:
- 200-300g of beef sliced into strips.
- A red onion, sliced
- A green pepper sliced into strips.
- Shredded cheese
- 2 shou zhua bing flatbreads
- Salt (Optional)
To make this is actually a very easy recipe. First, start buy slicing your onions and green peppers. Next, heat up a pan with some olive oil and add in the peppers and onions. Stir to coat in olive oil. Let them cook for 2-3 minutes. Meanwhile, slice the beef into strips. After the vegetables have cooked a few minutes, add in the beef and stir it in. Let the beef fully cook, at least 5-7 minutes. After it is fully cooked, separate the piles of meat and vegetables in piles of half. sprinkle shredded cheese over each half and cover the pan, after turning the heat off. Let the cheese melt. Next, cook the shou zhua bing in a pan. Heat for 2-3 minutes on each side. Next, spoon the beef and vegetables and cheese mixture onto the shou zhua bing. Wrap, eat and enjoy! Check out the recipe from my YouTube channel here:
Walking around Laojie’s (Dongmen) food street in Shenzhen
Last night was epic! We took the MTR train from Dafen to Laojie (8 stops, about a 15 minute ride) which is home to some of the best shopping and food in Shenzhen. For my YouTube video channel I made a video sampling a few foods, and touring around the area.
Laojie is a beautiful place. Lots of beautiful women, amazing street barbecue and other foods, what could be sweeter? After getting off at exit D with a couple friends I met up with my girlfriend and we started walking around. I apologize for the low quality pictures, I was filming most of the time and I completely spaced out on taking some high res photos! These are all video grabs from this week’s video:
I hadn’t been to the food street that many times so we got lost for a couple minutes, but we found it pretty quickly. While walking there, we ran into an outside barbecue that was serving up youyu ( 鱿鱼 , squid), and yangrou (羊肉, lamb). We couldn’t resist the temptation and we all got a few skewers. The barbecue is well priced, too. You can get 4 skewers of squid for 10RMB ($1.50 USD) or 2 skewers of lamb for the same price. The squid was nice and chewy not overcooked, with lots of spices added. The lamb was delicious and fatty, and for me that’s great because I love animal fat. (Not in excess, of course!)
After devouring our skewers, we headed off to the food street. We got there around 9:45 which is pretty late for laojie. Although it is very easy to find street barbecue going until 3-4 in the morning in Shenzhen, Laojie is a bit of a different case. Around 10:00 it appeared that lots of vendors were starting to close down, but lots of people were still serving until we left (Around 10:45) I bought some lotus root (藕片) and some potatoes. There isn’t much to say about the potatoes except that these ones were actually a little bit overcooked (These were leftover at the end of the night) but still pretty tasty. However, they were a bit too salty. The lotus however was very good. Lotus has a really interesting texture and it is probably the crunchiest vegetable I have ever eaten. It’s somewhat comparable to the crunchiness of an apple.
After walking around a bit more and having some delicious leng mian (Cold noodles, 冷面 ) we decided to take the train home since it was early enough (The train stops around 11:30 and it was only around 10:45) and called it a night. Please check out the video of the food crawl below, and if you like it please feel free to subscribe to my channel 🙂
Chongqing noodles: Spicy and delicious!
Today while walking around Dafen my girlfriend Maggie and I stumbled upon a restaurant from Chongqing, a city about 1500 kilometers northwest of Shenzhen. The laoban was serving Authentic Chongqing noodles so we decided to have a try. I ordered ma la xiao mian (麻辣小面, pungent and spicy noodles) and Maggie ordered paigu xiao mian (排骨小面, pork rib spicy noodles)
The laoban was a very nice guy. He allowed us to film him cooking the noodles and even sat down with us and had a quick chat. In the video, he boils the noodles and adds them to the soup broth. He then adds a number of things. He adds some chili powder, lajiao, a little more broth, green onions and cilantro. Maggie ordered paigu which has meat in it, so he added some pork ribs to the dish as well.
Upon trying these noodles for the first time, here are my thoughts. The noodles were not too chewy, which I really like, very easy to eat. The sauce and dish overall is pretty spicy. You can taste a lot of chili oil in there and the bite you get from the lajiao is not a normal spicy. It has almost a citrusy sour flavor to it. It sort of reminds me of hot pot, but it’s not really the same thing. The greens (green onions and cilantro) do a lot to enhance the look and flavor of this dish as well.
That’s all for today’s entry but be sure to check out the video for this afternoon’s lunch on my YouTube channel:
Cooking up some Chinese style carne asada!
Today is Sunday, our day of rest. Of course for me, it’s always a day of cooking, too. Using my new Canon G7X I filmed a recipe for tudou niurou, 牛肉和土豆, or beef and potatoes.
The recipe itself is very simple, and the ingredients are few:
- 5-6 medium potatoes with the skins included
- 350-500g cubed beef
- Garlic powder
- Red pepper
- Cumin
- Salt
- 1 whole onion chopped
- Cilantro (optional)
- 2 teaspoons Chinese lajiao (拉脚) OR
- 2-3 red chili peppers chopped with seeds
Directions: Cut the potatoes in cubes and cut the beef into smaller cubes, like the size of what you would see in a Mexican style burrito. Add olive oil to pan and let it heat up for 10-20 seconds. Add potatoes, stir to coat in oil, then leave for 10-12 minutes minimum. While the potatoes are cooking, slice the beef and the whole onion. Also, add 2 teaspoons of lajiao or 2-3 chopped red chili peppers at this time. After potatoes have been cooking for 12 minutes, add the beef and spices. Stir, and allow to cook for 5 minutes more. After 5 minutes goes by, add the onion and some more spices if desired and cook for 3-5 moe minutes. Add in chopped cilantro at the end and stir it in. Serve and enjoy!
Check out the recipe on my cooking channel below!
Zhou: A traditional Chinese porridge breakfast.
This morning I went down with my girlfriend to yet another local laoban at Dafen. For breakfast we had pi dan shou rou zhou (皮蛋瘦肉粥), which is a delicious rice porridge with pi dan (The century old egg which I have mentioned many times in this blog), a few assorted vegetables and some pork.
Not only do I absolutely love this porridge, it’s very cheap! At only 3 RMB a bowl, that is about a half dollar US. One bowl is also very filling. This is a very traditional dish that many people eat in Chinese villages throughout the country. This specific zhou however is a little different – many villages will just do a plain rice porridge with nothing else. This one is a bit of a “designer” porridge as it has pi dan and meat and vegetables added.
Let’s talk about the taste of pi dan shou rou zhou. There are a couple words I can use to describe it. Light, creamy, smooth and delicious! Normal rice porridge is well, let’s face it, kind of a dull meal, but Chinese people generally would eat it with a side mantou, 馒头, which is kind of a bread-roll, and vegetables. I mentioned before this is like designer zhou, sort of a fancy kind. The addition of the pi dan is excellent because it gives the zhou a really creamy and delicious flavor and texture. My personal favorite way to eat it is by adding some lajiao to it:
Overall, zhou is one of those classic Chinese breakfasts that is filling, cheap, and delicious. That’s about it for today’s entry but I’d like to leave you with Episode 7 of my cooking show: Lemon Lajiao Chicken!
How to make 猪肉包子, Chinese steamed pork buns.
Today my girlfriend Maggie and I did an authentic Chinese recipe for 猪肉包子, or pork steamed buns. If you recognize the name, baozi, the first article on this blog was written about niurou baozi from the streets. We decided to make some at home, but with pork.
The recipe was quite a bit of work, but the end result was well worth it. Here is the recipe:
Ingredients:
- 1 large leek (chopped)
- 1 kilogram ground pork (You can use less, this is enough for about 30 baozi
- Salt (About 1 tsp)
- Soy sauce (2 cap fulls)
- 1 onion chopped
- 3 cups of flour
- 1 cup of water
That is everything for the baozi, but we also made a nice pungent dipping sauce to go with it which is very easy to make and only has 3 ingredients:
- 2 pieces of garlic chopped
- Soy sauce
- White vinegar (1 tsp)
To see how to make this recipe, check out the video on my cooking channel!
Chaoshao: A sweet and delicious Chinese pork dish.
Today I felt like writing about one of my favorite Chinese foods. The Chinese are celebrating labor day weekend, so traffic in the city is out of control. I’m on the 21st floor but all I can hear are mass numbers of horns honking from the street below.
But that won’t stop me from updating the blog! Today we returned to our same laoban from last week, the one that makes killer 猪杂汤粉, pork noodles. We ordered our usual, the noodles, but also ordered a few other things as well. From a separate street stall we ordered 20 RMB worth (~$3.09)of some chaoshao, 叉烧, one of my favorite Chinese pork dishes.
Chaoshao is basically Chinese style roast pork, covered in an incredibly sweet and flavorful sauce. The sauce contains things like soy sauce, spice powder, honey, ginger, garlic, etc. The pork meat is soaked in this marinade for many hours, and then slowly roasted over a cooking fire. Upon tasting this, your flavor receptors immediately go off. It is a great combination of salty and sweet, nice tender meat that isn’t dry. This meat is seriously, OUTSTANDING and I am sure could win awards back home. It’s so good we even combined it with our noodles.
From our noodle laoban we also ordered one other dish: 牛筋丸, or niu jin wan, also known as beef meatballs. The meatballs are 1 rmb each, at a combined cost of 10RMB for all of them (~$1.54)
The meatballs were absolutely outstanding. In China you will often find street vendors selling Chinese soups with vegetables where you can pick the things you want to add from trays (Vegetables, meats, etc) and have the laoban boil them together in a soup for you. Usually the meatballs and fish balls that you will find at these stands are processed factory foods with who knows what in them. I only order meatballs from this particular laoban because I know she does them fresh and from real beef. They were excellent.
When factoring in the cost of our entire meaty and delightful lunch, it only clocked in at 50 RMB, or about ~$7.72.
I’d like to leave you today with Episode 6 from my YouTube cooking show: The Tomato Herbs and Cheese Toasted Sandwich:
Eating duck hearts in South China
So today I thought I’d sample a bit of street food for you all out there. Today I decided to try some ya xin, duck hearts. (鸭心) Your heart may have skipped a beat. Duck hearts? Are you serious man! Are you some kind of vampire or something? No. The truth is, duck hearts a pretty normal part of cuisine here in South China. When I approached the street stall, here were some of the interesting foods before me:
The duck hearsts are in the bottom left corner but if you take a look you can see a couple other interesting things. There are also duck legs, tea eggs, lotus root, and seaweed amongst other things. Not your typical western cuisine to say the least!
Despite what it may sound like though, duck hearts are delicious. They are also very cheap, only 2RMB (~.32 cents USD) per skewer. However, though cheap, they are not exactly pleasing to the eye!
Upon eating this skewer of duck hearts, I have a few comments. Number one, yes they are actually very tasty. However the idea that you are eating the “heart” of something is a little bit disturbing and is kind of hard to get your head around. Once you bite into it you are thinking “Hey, not bad!” but your mind is also thinking..”I’m eating the f**king heart of something..” so your body is not exactly sure how to react. Anyway, to describe the taste, it does taste like duck meat somewhat but the texture is very different. Duck heart is very firm and slightly chewy, but not too chewy. The heart was also a bit salty, since it was likely a preserved heart that they salt beforehand. To be honest, I was a lot more afraid of eating the pi dan (The century old egg in a post from last week) than this one. I give this strange snack a thumbs up!
Please do have a look at the actual tasting video, which can be found on my YouTube channel here (Subscribe if you like the video!):
Chang fen: A cheap, delicious and exotic breakfast in China.
This morning I felt like going down the street to my local laoban (The boss of an establishment in China, in this case the boss of a restaurant) and ordering a bit of Chang fen.
Chang fen (肠粉) is a very common breakfast in China. It is made with rice paste (Rice ground up in a machine and mixed with water) eggs, meat, and vegetables. The way they cook it is by steaming it in a multirack steamer. They crack an egg on a cooking tray, mix in the rice paste, spoon in some ground pork, a couple vegetables and send it in the steamer for a very short time.
When it comes out of the steamer, they pour on top a sauce which is a mixture of soy sauce, oil and water and garlic. When served, I recommend adding a dash of chinese chilis, lajiao (辣椒) to give it a little more kick and flavor. When I came in the restaurant with my girlfriend this morning, the laoban gave us 2 complimentary drinks of dou jiang, 豆浆, or hot soybean milk!
The soybean milk is probably the most common drink at breakfast for Chinese people. It can be served hot and cold, and is very refreshing either way.
When you bite into chang fen for the first time, it might seem a bit plain. It is a breakfast food that can be done very poorly, or very graciously! I have had terrible chang fen, and mind blowing chang fen. This restaurant is up there with high quality, but not quite the best. However, the cost is just amazing. One order of chang fen at most places in the city runs for about 4 ￥, or ~.64 USD! I got two eggs with mine, so mine was 5￥, about .80 cents. For the two of us it was only 9￥ total, ~$1.50! The soybean milk was complimentary but normally costs around 2￥, .32 cents.
To describe the taste, think of rice. The base of this dish is a rice paste, so think of rice but in sheets instead of rice grains. The texture is different, but the flavor is a bit plain and the same as eating white rice. This is why they have the sauce served with it to give it more flavor, and also adding lajiao or cilantro on top is a good way to bring out the flavor.
Overall I definitely recommend trying chang fen if you are in China, or even recommend it as a daily breakfast if you live here. It is cheap, delicious, and relatively healthy compared to most foods on the street. I’ll leave you with a recipe for two bean spicy beef chili, which is episode 5 on my cooking show (The lighting in this episode is not very good, I apologize for that, but in all episodes after the lighting issue is fixed 🙂
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