The focus of this post will be about food from ‘home’. Of course, there can be different definitions of home, but this time I’ll be focusing on home cooked meals as well as a couple photos of food from back when I lived in Windsor (which I consider my ‘hometown’). I’d share more than two photos from Windsor, but unfortunately I only have a few photos and only these two I’d consider sharable haha.

First photo from Windsor! Typical burger and fries combo from a local diner, I believe it’s still named Frazer Diner? I remember dropping by pretty often to grab lunch or breakfast. What a timeless classic.

A creme brulee from a restaurant in Windsor either named or nicknamed, ‘The Station’. I’d only go to this spot on a specific night of the week with a group of friends for their half-off wings promo. This restaurant was my introduction to creme brulee’s so I’ve always remembered it to a degree!

The rest of the photos will be home cooked meals! Pictured here is a spread of a typical hot pot meal at home. Given how many regions there are in China, each region may experience different kinds of hot pots or have different typical offerings. My parents are from FuJian province, so seafood is preferred compared to beef or pork. The beef you see in this photo is really only there because my sister and I will eat it. Starting at 12 o’clock and going clockwise, we have fish (looks like snapper?), frozen oysters and taro on the same plate, fish tofu and kani, soft tofu, FuJianese fish balls (fish paste with pork filling) and FuJianese pork dumplings (pork filling with a wrapper made from pork meat, a specialty of FuJian), mountain yams and wood ear mushrooms, mini sausages and fish noodles, blue crab, enoki mushrooms and okra, and finally, the fatty beef. Everyone shares from one pot, and you just toss in whatever you want to eat. Just remember to take it out before someone else grabs it from you.

A more traditional spread of a FuJianese dinner; starting from 12 o’clock again and going clockwise, we have flash fried and stir fried crabs, whole steamed fish with ginger and scallions, fried quail, stir fried sea snails and chives, stir fried duck tongue, the same crab dish, and then chinese watercress to round it out. The dish in the middle is sashimi geoduck! Most FuJianese celebration or family gatherings will include this dish, as it’s a delicacy for many of us. It’s also ridiculously overpriced in restaurants so it’s better to just prepare it at home.

A lamb roast I made quite some time ago! It was my first time cooking something so large, but honestly I feel like it went relatively well? I don’t really remember many details about it, but I do know we finished it which is saying quite a bit in my family; especially when it comes to larger portions of red meat or poultry. There were many years my sister wanted to make turkey for Thanksgiving, made it, and ended up throwing out or composting a large portion of what was left.

I’m not much of a baker, but my sister is, so this is all her handiwork. Cream puffs and eclairs are my favorite sweet treat (right next to tiramisu), so you’d think I’d have devoured these right? You’d be wrong. My mother got on my ass about not eating too many of these and I only ended up eating one of each. Needless to say I wasn’t a happy camper, but while I may be stupid, I’m not dumb enough to go against my Asian mother.

Speaking of my mother; this here would all be her handiwork! Up top, we have fried dough sticks, which are honestly just amazing. Think beignets but puffier and inherently salty/savory. There are marinated (marinade is a soy based but there’re honestly quite a few ingredients to give it more depth of flavor) eggs in the middle, homemade soybean milk in the cups, and in the bowls we have a type of pork wonton that uses extremely thin wonton skins. This was made for breakfast when my sisters boyfriend was visiting, because if it weren’t for him, we wouldn’t be getting the fried dough sticks. Not because my mother doesn’t love her children (I think), but rather because breakfast in my household is super simple and quick.

Beef Wellington and sides! Sides are simple, steam broccoli, butter corn, roasted potatoes, and a wine jus using the drippings from the tenderloin. A couple notes on the wellington; 1) My sister was lazy and told me to get the frozen puff pastry because “it’s just as good as homemade”. It wasn’t. 2) We learned that it’d be best to make a crepe and layer that over the prosciutto specifically so that it can absorb the liquid from the meat. Otherwise, the bottom of the wellington gets all soggy as it did here. Aside from the horrid presentation of a soggy base, the flavors themselves were pretty good! In the future if we ever decide to make this again, we’ll have to incorporate that crepe and I’ll tweak the duxelles a little bit to incorporate more texture and flavor.

The benefit of cooking at home versus in a restaurant for me is that I don’t have to worry so much about presentation at home. Despite it’s messy appearance, this frutti di mare was delicious. Personally, I prefer a classic bolognese or really any meat based sauce, but this was made for my parents; and as I mentioned earlier, they have a heavy preference towards seafood. Honestly, it was missing a little something, which I feel was cheese. However, I’m lactose intolerant and at the time, I had no Lactaid’s. Just needed some form of fat or sharpness to cut through the strong seafood flavor.

Last but not least, crab cakes! My family complained the cakes were too large and had too much crab. Ridiculous. Toss a little lemon juice on top, pair it with a salad or something light, absolutely wonderful. I used to hate crab, but it feels like as I’ve gotten older, I’m starting to prefer crab over other shellfish like lobster; I currently put it on the same level as shrimp and salmon, and the only seafood I prefer over the two is scallops.

That’s it for this post! I’ll try adding a recipe next; probably something simple but also ‘different’. I could just toss in a recipe for some mashed potatoes, but everyone has a recipe for that already, so I want to do a recipe simple, but eccentric to some degree. We’ll see though.