Food Blog It # 1

Welcome to the first installment of "Food Blog It!" This part of my Hong Kong food reviews blog is to share some interesting food related things in a fun and concise format unlike the full reviews I do normally. Basically, anything applicable to eating, i'm going to "Food Blog it!" Anyhow, hope this will be fun and informative. Here we go!

There's always some interesting history behind every famous dish in every cuisine in the world. One particular item famous in Hong Kong that has a neat story behind its name is yau cha kwai (油炸鬼). In western culture, yai cha kwai is known as Chinese doughnut. In literal translation, yau cha kwai means oil fried ghost. It's basically two sticks of deep fried dough stuck together (pictured in this entry in a shorten piece) that is usually eaten with rice congee for breakfast. It is a very good Chinese delicacy and sometimes people even eat it with fresh cold or hot soy milk! You can usually find this when you go to dim sum! The one word that probably bewilders you is the last word, "ghost." There are a few "myths" that explains this but I'm going to share with everyone the one my father told me of...

Prime Minister Cheun Kwai from the Southern Song Dynasty (1127 to 1279) asked Ngok Fei, an infamous war general, not to go to war aganist the Jürched (they are the ancestors of the Manchurians which Ngok Fei defeated many times) because they are trying to form a peace agreement. After failing to convince him to stay many times, Cheun Kwai asks the emperor to demand Ngok Fei to obey at once or he will receive the death penalty. Having no choice, Ngok Fei was back in Hang Zhou (the capital at the time) and was thrown in jail and murdered. Furious at what Cheun Kwai has done to Ngok Fei, Fei's soilders and the people of Hang Zhou wanted to boil Cheun Kwai and his wife in oil. This notion has inspired a local chef at the time to make a snack with two long pieces of dough stuck together and oil fried. The two pieces of dough represents Cheun Kwai and his wife boiling in oil. Hence, we have the name yau cha kwai, where "kwai" is Cheun Kwai's name!