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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101. Healthy recipe: Chinese lamb and radish soup

Chinese lamb and radish soup

As I said yesterday, if you don’t want to make dumplings for winter solstice day, let’s make a healthy lamb soup. :)) It is another most popular dish for entering winter.

According to the news,  these days, because of the winter solstice day in China, lamb has become a most popular food and the price of lamb has rapidly increased. --- So, it seems many people are celebrating with lamb this year.

This lamb and radish soup is popular not only because of its taste, it is also famous for its health benefits. Probably you are familiar with the reputation of ‘healthy soups’ in China, most of them are from Cantonese cuisine with many herbs, but the recipes of ‘healthy soup’ in Northern China are a totally different story. This is probably why you rarely come across this kind of dish in any Chinese restaurants outside China, as most of them serve Cantonese or southern Chinese cuisine.

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100. A typical Northeast Chinese dish --- “mess stew” with beef, tomato, aubergine and potato

As I was writing this post,  I realized that this my 100th recipe. :) I remember when I started writing, I was very worried if I was going to run out of recipes very shortly, but, hey, this is the number 100 now. :)) So thanks for my friends’ and family’s encouragement, and hope you enjoyed these recipes. :)

Ok, today’s recipe, a stewed dish. As I mentioned before, not everything in northeast Chinese cuisine is about stir-frying; the most representative dishes are actually stews. So here is one of the most common one -- “mess stew”.

-- Ha.. “Mess stew” is a direct translation from its original name in Chinese, “Luan dun”, which literally means "to put everything together to stew", without any particular "rules".
Different people, however, cook it differently. For example, if you look a bit around in the internet, you will find recipes that mix potato, pork, aubergine, green beans, cabbage, and many more things together. I have to admit that I have never tried this kind of mix before, in restaurants, it is almost impossible to find this dish, as it is so ‘homey’, so it is really difficult to say which ingredients are more ‘standard’.

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97. Stewed Chinese style sauerkraut pickled Chinese leaves with frozen tofu (V)

Stewed Chinese leaves with tofu

Yesterday, at the German Christmas market in Verona, the smell of sauerkraut was everywhere. I swear my mouth was watering :)), and I really wished I could squeeze through the queuing crowd to grab a portion --- o, o, if only they serve without pork sausage.

Chinese "sauerkraut"

My love towards sauerkraut is all because of its similar taste to pickled Chinese leaves, which makes many northern Chinese ‘emotionally’ attached to. As I said in a previous post, when I found out that I could actually use sauerkraut as pickled Chinese leaves to cook those typical northeast Chinese winter dishes, I was over the moon, especially, you can get sauerkraut in the supermarkets anytime in the year, not like northern pickled Chinese leaves --- you have to wait until winter comes. :)

I used to eat sauerkraut with my dear friend Zhenya in Manchester, she is also a big fan, and she can tell even the slightest differences between sauerkraut made in different countries. She introduced it to me as kind of pickled salad thing, I remember she used to take a big portion of it from its jar for each of us, sometimes it was too sour, we had to almost wink our eyes, but it was really nice --- and it was a really nice time.

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