Braised Lion's Head
Originally uploaded by cutejoos
It's been awhile since mother-earth made Braised Lion's Head, a dish that evokes memories of my childhood growing up with my sister on D. T. Street. Having decided that I would make this for our dinner tonight, I went online to see if I could find the origins of this classic family favorite of ours. I was really surprised to find that this was a dish that traced it's roots to Shanghai, I always assumed that with it's popularity, it would be a dish from Fujian province where my grandparents are from. Now I'm really curious as to how my grandmother and the other chinese families here in The Pines got introduced to this dish because I can remember eating this since I was but a wee little sprite which was some 30 odd years ago (scary thought!), a time when the internet was non existent. I have been a fan of cookbook author Eileen Yin Fei Lo for quite sometime now, she does things old school, meaning she still uses mainly traditional chinese ingredients in her cooking & she doesn't do short-cuts, (buddha jumps over the wall soup takes 3 days), you can tell that she "honors" those classic chinese dishes that have been around for generations. Her version of this dish was quite simple enough and I had all the ingredients on-hand which was the key thing. The secret to the success of this dish is that the ground meat has to be marinated first before they are formed into huge baseball sized patties, then pan fried till its gets a nice golden brown crust. I did this first step yesterday and placed the patties in the fridge, then after coming home from work I continued on to the next step which is to place some chinese cabbage in claypot with some stock then put in the patties & let it braise for an hour or so till done.
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