109.Chinese soup: Meat balls and Chinese leaves soup

Chinese soup with meat balls and leaves

Normally I would leave this kind of dish for the weekend, but since we are in Chinese new year time, every dish is a ‘weekend’ dish, no? Ha… Just spoil ourselves. And don’t worry about putting on weight, next month, I am thinking of sharing some of my Chinese ‘detox’ recipes. :))

The original version of this dish comes with meat balls and ‘little bok choy’, a type of northeast green leaves (see  Chinese leaves). It is called ‘Xiao bai cai chuan wan zi’, literal translation is little bok choy with meat balls ‘inserted’ in them. But since here in UK, I cannot find this particular type of leaves, (and the bok choy usually sold in the supermarkets is not suitable for this dish), I will use Chinese leaves instead.

The original dish with ‘little bok choy’ is normally prepared in spring or summer, because it is when this particular type of vegetables is on season. My version with Chinese leaves becomes a perfect winter recipe --- warming up your stomach, as well as taking in plenty of essential nutrients. Oh, saying that, I lately read an article discussing whether ‘we should eat more for winter’ --- the thing is I don’t think we particularly need to eat much more in winter, but we do need to have more ‘heavy’ and warm food to help us fight the cold, no? At least, I do, that is why my friends always say that I become a balloon in winter --- quickly ‘blown up’, even I did not eat that much. Ha…

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88. Four-Joy Chinese Meatballs (Meat Balls Braised with Brown Sauce)

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Chinese meat balls

Another not so simple simple, but very traditional recipe. It seems that I am very hard-working after all. Ha… After having continuously cooked in the kitchen on Friday and Saturday, I have so many recipes to share. :))

I normally cook a lot of vegetable dishes for our daily meals, but since we were having friends over, I thought it would be nice to make some meat and vegetable dishes and put together a traditional Chinese meal (along with some salad/liangcai dishes).

I chose this dish for our guests because they just got married, and this dish is a typical one for happy occasions, such as wedding banquets or festivals.

‘Four - joy meatballs’ is the direct translation. In many English menus, it is translated as ‘Four Meat Balls Braised with Brown Sauce’ -- don’t be confused with the ‘brown sauce’, it has nothing to do Western brown sauce, here ‘brown’ only refers to the colour.

The original Chinese name for this dish is ‘Si Xi Wan Zi’, if you are in China, you probably have to mention this pronunciation, in order not to confuse the waiters.

The dish and the name of the dish actually have some history. This dish is a truly good example
showing how Chinese like to play with words and similar pronunciations.

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