I bought a huge bag of dried Szechwan chilies from the market a few months ago; in honor of Chinese New Year I made a Szechwan chicken dish. I tried a dish like this in a Szechwan restaurant in Hong Kong. The dish from the restaurant had deep fried battered chicken, so I have made a similar but healthier dish. The dried chilies add a smoky, spicy flavor to the chicken.
Yesterday, I decided to make a beet and avocado salad for lunch; I set out everything on the counter and went to check my emails. I was out of the kitchen for about 2 minutes when I heard some rustling... A few minutes later, I went back into the kitchen to find Guinness wandering around, wagging his tail like crazy. Suddenly, I noticed the avocado was missing; I looked at Guinness and he had the avocado in his mouth! Luckily, I had a few extra avocados on hand.
A Sri Lankan friend made this curry for us the other night - it was so tasty I asked for the recipe. Today, I decided to make it to accompany a fish curry that my boyfriend announced he was going to make. Actually, he came up to me this morning and said, “Tonight, I am going to
attempt to make one of the most fiery fish curries ever." Knowing his obsession with chilies, I was sure he would put in about 20 chilies, a heap of chili powder, and anything else spicy he could think of. In the event, he used 12 fresh green Thai chilies and 10 teaspoons of his special, home-ground dried red Sichuan chili pepper flakes (see upcoming story about these).
I was at the grocery store with a friend recently and she said, "Oh yummy, let's buy some raita!" I said, "WHAT?! Raita is sooo easy to make - I'll show you how!" So we bought all the ingredients but never got around to making it, even though it only takes 5 minutes. (We ended up drinking wine instead.)
I love Mexican food. I have never been to Mexico, but I lived in California when I was little and the one thing I remember is the amazing Mexican food. In general, Hong Kong's Mexican food is pretty average. I cannot understand why restaurants like iCaramba can't manage to make a fresh salsa; there are so many fresh tropical ingredients available in HK but the food tastes like it came out of a can.
