Pandan Snow Skin Mooncakes with Coconut Mung Bean Filling

How nice to make these fragrant pandan snow skin mooncakes for Mid-Autumn Festival? It's fun and divinely tasty. Step-by-step photos are in the recipe below.

Mid-Autumn Festival (aka moon festival or mooncake festival, 中秋節) is one of the important festivals in Chinese calendar. I’ve grown up from a family that would have store-brought mooncakes every year. Since I moved to Australia, I’ve been pondering over the idea of making my own mooncakes. After many years, I made some traditional and trendy ones finally.

Coconut milk and pandan juice often go well together in making Chinese dessert. Off I went with this idea and made these mini snow skin mooncakes for our church gathering.

The smell, taste and colour of both coconut milk and pandan are very unique, that you hardly find any other things to replace them.

Fresh pandan leaves are not common here. I could source some frozen ones though, and was glad that it was a big hit in our gathering.

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Braised Chicken Wings with Potatoes

If you’ve lived in Hong Kong for a while, you would’ve known this dish, Braised Chicken Wings with Potatoes, or tasted it before. It’s so homey and tasty dish.

I miss this braised chicken wing dish so much. If you’ve lived in Hong Kong for a while, you would’ve known this dish or tasted it before. It’s so homey and tasty.

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Steamed Eggs With Milk Dessert Recipe

This steamed eggs with milk dessert is very popular in Hong Kong, and also my childhood dessert that I grew up with. The egg custard texture is so smooth as silk. Armed with this recipe, you can make your own at home at a very high success rate.

I remember my dad always took me to a popular Chinese dessert restaurant when I was young. Not only did the dessert taste good, but also the companion with my dad made my heart feel so sweet.

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Bandit Chicken Wings (土匪雞翼)

This is a signature side dish of a popular noodle restaurant in Hong Kong, very well-known and loved by local people. Believe me, the taste of these Bandit chicken wings is wonderfully good.

I have no clue how this dish name came up. The word of “bandit” might put some people off to try. The soul of this dish is the spice, cumin, that makes all the baked chicken wings smell pleasantly and take the whole dish up a notch.

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Lemon Garlic Prawns

This Lemon Garlic Prawns dish is absolutely simple and easy to make. What you need are only garlic and lemon. It won't take long to enjoy this refreshing and delicious dish.

Here comes another delicious prawn / shrimp dish. These large king prawns were really a bargain got from a nearby supermarket. The prawn meat was so fresh, springy and delicious.

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Chinese Dumpling Soup (上湯水餃)

The dumplings in soup (上湯水餃) are really flavoursome as you'll have more ingredients and more texture in the fillings if you enjoy it in a traditional Hong Kong noodle restaurant.

Every time I went into a noodle shop in Hong Kong, I’d definitely order either wonton or dumpling noodle soup. Are there any big differences between these two noodle soups? The fillings of both are mainly pork mince and prawns. But for dumplings in soup (上湯水餃), there are some extras, wood ears, mushrooms and bamboo shoots. More ingredients mean more delicious.

Wood ear has a crisp texture. So you can imagine how balanced the texture of each dumpling you’d enjoy of every bite. When it comes to making your own dumplings in soup, you can skip anything except the wood ears. I just feel wood ear is the signature ingredient that makes these dumplings so special.

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Poached Chicken in Spicy Sauce (貴妃雞)

Traditional poached chicken is very popular in Hong Kong. If the chicken is just cooked through with silky smooth skin and the meat is succulent, it’s a high-praised dish that’s well-accepted by everyone.

To make silky succulent poached chicken, it’s not that difficult as we thought. All you need to do is to submerse and soak the chicken in a bowl of iced water to stop the inner cooking once the chicken is done. The skin will be kept very smooth and the meat won’t be over-cooked.

For making this special poached chicken, you can simply skip the soak-in-iced-water step, still can achieve the same effect. The simple trick is to prepare a bowl of cold spicy brine to get the cooked chicken soaked in it. It’s very straightforward and simple.

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