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Chicken Stock
Chicken Stock Chicken stock is one of the key ingredients in Chinese cooking and is used as a base for many of the recipes in this book. This really simple Chinese recipe is for a light, delicious and...
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Mr Chow’s Oven Baked Barbecue Chicken Wings
‘I can still taste those barbecue chicken wings from old Mr Chow on the corner of Stanley market,’ said my grandmother. ‘They were the first thing your grandfather bought for me on our first meeting....
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The Story behind Sweet Mandarin
“To the ruler, the people are Heaven; to the people, food is Heaven”. (An ancient Chinese proverb) My grandmother, Lilly Kwok, was born in 1918 small village in Southern China. As an unborn child, she...
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Happy Birthday !
Happy Birthday To You Happy Birthday To You Happy Birthday To Lisa and Helen Happy Birthday To You! We were born and bred in Middleton, Manchester above a takeaway. Word of mouth spread quickly...
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Women in China
When I travelled to Guangzhou in 2002, I found China to be a country that was careering head first towards the 21st Century. My base was a hotel housed in a skyscraper which was circled by endless...
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Sesame Prawn Toast
The old Chinese fable goes that this dish was created by a Beijing chef whose specialty was mantou bread and a Guangzhou chef whose specialty was seafood. The Beijing chef travelled to Guangzhou to...
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Won Ton mean ‘swallowing a cloud’
Literally translated, wonton means ‘swallowing a cloud’. The wonton floating in the soup is supposed to resemble the clouds. Every province in China boasts their own version of wontons with a variety...
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Mum’s favourite salted ducks’ eggs
As a child I remember seeing these bright white eggs in the tray compared to the normal eggs I’ve seen in the fridge. I asked my mum why are these eggs different and she said try one! The first time I...
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If Heaven made him, Earth can find some use for him
When my grandmother was offered a chance to leave Hong Kong by the Woodmans, she stood to leave behind a good deal more that her mother and the crippling poverty of Wan Chai. Though the Woodman family...
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How my grandma chose her English name, Lilly.
My grandmother still speaks of the Woodmans with great affection. In her time with this gentle English family, my grandmother would learn what was like to be part of an English family. She became...
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“If you bow at all, bow low” (Ancient Chinese proverb)
One Sunday during my family’s visit to Hong Kong, I arranged to meet them outside the HSBC tower in the Central district. As they approached me across the concourse I heard a loud, high pitched...
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My great grandfather was murdered. He died, aged 37, leaving a wife and six...
My great grandfather was murdered. The man who had tried so hard to escape his past died on that warm August night right back in the village where he was born. Leung was not discovered the following...
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Hawker style Satay Chicken Sticks
Hong Kong was and still is famous for its amazing expanse of culinary offerings. As the Chinese immigrants poured into Hong Kong to escape the Japanese invasion of China in the 1920s, the streets...
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Chicken Stock
My grandmother, Lily Kwok, met my grandfather, Chan under the most remarkable circumstances. Lily was a maid and cook for an English family in Hong Kong and was walking the baby with a friend when saw...
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Chicken and Sweetcorn Soup
My parents married in the 1975 in Bury in a small traditional ceremony followed by a wedding banquet of huge proportions. My mum said practically all the Chinese who were in Britain were invited and...
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I never knew my grandfather…
My grandfather, was called Kwok Chan. He was born in 1914, four years before my grandmother. Though no one had seen or spoken to him for many years previously, we know that he died in 1961, a year...
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It has been said that the Chinese will eat anything that walks on four legs...
It has been said that the Chinese will eat anything that walks on four legs with its back to the sky. In actual fact, Leung joked with Lilly that only the tables and chairs were safe from the voracious...
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Winter melon and wolfberry soup
When we go for dim sum (also known as yum cha, which literally translated means ‘drink tea’) we bump into lots of family friends and one of those is Mr Dong. He grows his own winter melon, as does...
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Miso Soup with Tofu
My grandmother lived through World War Two, which saw Hong Kong endure years of Japanese occupation. By the end of the war in 1945 Hong Kong was a shadow of its former self – the population had...
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Salt and Chilli Squid
I’ll never forget the day in 2009 when we cooked this dish for the title of Best Local Chinese Restaurant Finals. I had just finished service at Sweet Mandarin at midnight. After two 2 hours of...
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