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  • Phoenix Claws and Jade Trees

    Essential Techniques of Authentic Chinese Cooking

     

     

     

     

     

    Winner of the IACP Julia Child First Book Award

     

    Order now at Amazon.com

  • Three Cup Chicken

     

    Recipe can be found in the new cookbook - Phoenix Claws and Jade Trees

     

    Order now from Amazon.com

  • Dan Dan Noodles

     

    A classic Sichaun street food

  • Luosong Soup: Too Chinese to be Borscht?

    Luosong Soup: Too Chinese to be Borscht?

    March 22, 2018
    Kian Lam Kho
    On the second day of spring New York City was hit by the fourth Nor’easter of the month. March is a fickle month. It often warms up as a portent of spring, yet sometimes the Canadian Arctic air swooshes down and reminds us that mother nature can be ruthless. This year, although Match has not been particularly cold, we’ve had three Nor’easters in a row with heavy wet snow and strong winds wreaking havoc in much of the city’s surrounding area. So, this latest storm is testing everyone’s endurance. Stuck at home, I decided to revisit my research for the foodways of Russian émigrés in China during the late 19th and early 20th century. A rather apt pursuit considering the wintery weather outside.
  • Not all Chestnuts are Created Equal

    Not all Chestnuts are Created Equal

    December 17, 2017
    Kian Lam Kho
    With the unusually warm autumn this year in New York City, the sudden cold snap and snow rudely reminded us that winter has arrived and Christmas is just around the corner. Which also means that chestnuts are in season and plentiful at the Chinatown curbside vendors. Seduced by one beautiful display, I lightened my wallet and brought home a bagful. Now the only task was to peel them in preparation to use in a recipe. Well, that is precisely the problem!
  • Mid-Autumn Festival Blog Feast

    Mid-Autumn Festival Blog Feast

    September 12, 2016
    Kian Lam Kho
    Amidst the hectic pace and chaos of modern life, we often forget the importance of family. Whether it is the family we are born into or one we build for ourselves, it is love that keeps us together. We must continue to cultivate this relationship if we were to maintain a healthy balance in life. Mid-Autumn Festival is an opportunity for Chinese families to reunite, and my family never fails to celebrate it with a feast. This year, with the upcoming first anniversary of the publication of my cookbook, Phoenix Claws and Jade Trees: Essential Techniques of Authentic Chinese Cooking, I’m expanding my celebration with a virtual feast to include my fellow North American bloggers, friends and food enthusiasts whom I consider as family.
  • Celebrating the World of Dumplings

    Celebrating the World of Dumplings

    October 5, 2015
    Kian Lam Kho
    As one of the most beloved food in the world, dumplings are universally enjoyed. Last week I had an opportunity to have great fun by spending an afternoon celebrating their goodness at the 12th Annual Chef One NYC Dumpling Festival. A wide variety of dumplings including Latin empanadas, Polish pierogies, Italian ravioli and Asian offerings with fillings from Korean, Japanese and Chinese cuisines were all offered for sampling. (As a disclosure I am paid to write this sponsored post.) I managed to eat too much that went beyond just sampling. But I was stuffing myself for a good cause. All of the proceeds go to support the Food Bank for New York City to provide hunger-relief.
  • It’s Not Too Late to Pickle Celtuce

    It’s Not Too Late to Pickle Celtuce

    September 23, 2015
    Kian Lam Kho
    Today is the autumnal equinox and that means summer is officially over. But with the unusually warm weather we’ve been enduring lately, it doesn’t feel like autumn at all. (What global warming?) Farmers’ markets throughout the city are still selling tomatoes, and Harlem watermelon vendors are still hawking this summer fruit at their sidewalk stalls. Last weekend I was delighted to find some wonderful looking celtuce, a summer vegetable, in Chinatown and thought that it was not too late to make soy-pickled celtuce.
  • My Father’s Island Paradise

    My Father’s Island Paradise

    May 3, 2013
    Kian Lam Kho
    Across a very narrow strait from the downtown waterfront of Xiamen (廈門) sits the island of Gulangyu (鼓浪嶼), a hilly outcrop smaller than Central Park in New York City and dotted with colonial-era European style buildings. Warren and I took the short five-minute ferry ride to this island last month while we were in Xiamen. Gulangyu occupies a very special place in my heart because my father spent his formative years there attending the Anglo-Chinese Middle School in the 1930’s.
  • A Love Affair with Pan-Fried Noodles

    A Love Affair with Pan-Fried Noodles

    March 18, 2013
    Kian Lam Kho
    My family is originally from the coastal Chinese province of Fujian. Traditionally our noodles are cooked in soup, boiled unadorned except for seasonings, or stir-fried in a wok with a thin sauce. When I was about ten years old my family went to a Cantonese dim sum house in Singapore, which at that time was an exotic excursion for a family accustomed to mostly eating Fujianese food. We were served a pan-fried noodles dish of delicious seafood vegetable sauce dripping all over thin golden brown crispy noodles. That was the beginning of my life long love affair with Hong Kong pan-fried noodles.
  • Zhajiang Mian: A Meat Sauce Taste Test

    Zhajiang Mian: A Meat Sauce Taste Test

    February 17, 2012
    Kian Lam Kho
    Go to a Japanese noodle shop or a casual Korean restaurant and you’ll find two noodle dishes with very similar names: Jajangmyeon and Jajamen. Not unlike spaghetti Bolognese they consist of a bed of noodles topped with a brown ground meat sauce often accompanied by julienned cucumbers. Few people though realize that this dish originated in China. Known as Zhajiang Mian (炸醬麵) in Mandarin it is a classic snack food from the Beijing region.
  • Raspberry, Mango and Summer - Perfect Together

    Raspberry, Mango and Summer – Perfect Together

    June 24, 2010
    Kian Lam Kho
    Just south of Prospect Park in Brooklyn bounded by Church Avenue to the north, Coney Island Avenue to the west, Beverly Road to the south and the Q line subway track to the east is an oasis of Victorian residences. Known as Prospect Park South the area was built around the turn of the 20th century for discriminating New Yorkers looking for a suburban lifestyle. Our friends Lauren and Maureen fell in love with one of these houses when they were hunting for a home about a decade ago. It was a huge rambling grey house in need of repair with an overgrown garden in the back. Although they knew there was incredible potential for the house, it wasn’t until they started clearing the garden that they discovered the real treasure: raspberry brambles.
  • Communal Dumplings for the Family

    Communal Dumplings for the Family

    May 20, 2010
    Kian Lam Kho
    In Ba Jin’s (巴金) epic Chinese literary trilogy: Family, Spring and Autumn (家,春,秋), the author describes the life of a Chinese aristocratic family during the final years of the feudalistic Qing dynasty. It was a tumultuous time in which the family members had to negotiate changing political landscape as dynastic rule disintegrated, as well as the family’s own struggle between generations over changing values and aspirations. Ba Jin was a great observer and narrator of a China struggling within and without while falling into chaos at the beginning of the twentieth century. Among all the confusions and upheaval, there is one single constant and that is the communal family meal.
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