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If you haven't spent any time wandering around a Chinese grocery store, you really should. When you do, you'll notice a whole section of the frozen case that has various mystery balls along with a scoop so that you can fill a bag up with whatever you want in whatever amount you want. These mystery balls are almost all some sort of "fish cake" with a unique tender-yet-slightly-bouncy texture, and they're something that's not only a popular street food but also a home cooking staple. My FRIED SHRIMP BALLS are a made-from-scratch version of this ubiquitous food and have a similar texture. Ground shrimp is mixed with garlic and scallions, just a little potato starch, then flash-fried to cook them and brown the outside. It's not popcorn shrimp, but it's in a similar ballpark. I'll be serving these with some potentially non-authentic but also perfectly delicious condiments, namely savory mayonnaise and slightly doctored ketchup. These little bite-sized cakes make a great seafood appetizer for our meal this week.

Little snacky vegetable-based items to have before the main meal is a super Chinese way to eat, especially with older home cooks leaning into the more countryside way of doing things... and I'm 100% here for it. STEAMED SPINACH CAKES WITH AWESOME DIPPING SAUCE is a great example, and here's how they work: chopped fresh spinach is salted and squeezed to remove some of its liquid, then that liquid is mixed with a little flour and cornmeal to form a soft dough. Fold the spinach back in and steam the cake until it's set, and you're left with something that's very spinach-forward with some earthy corn undertones... delicious, but quite one dimensional. Good thing there's another half to this menu item's name: the awesome dipping sauce! This sauce has way more ingredients than the spinach cakes themselves, so I'll highlight the important ones. Ginger. Garlic. Dried chilis. Roasted sesame seeds. Sichuan peppercorns. Black vinegar. Soy Sauce. There's more, but even with this we've got a 7 dimensional sauce to go with our spinach cakes... quite an improvement. These are great, simple, delicious spinach cakes with a wonderfully complex dipping sauce that keeps things interesting.

Alright, hear me out for a second. There's a classic Cantonese dish called Soy Sauce Chicken, which sounds boring and forgettable but is very much neither of those things. I learned just recently that it's not uncommon to make this at home, but with one very specific secret ingredient: Coca-Cola. Enter SOY-COLA CHICKEN. Let's break this down... the cola provides a surprisingly complex set of flavors (that's why it's one of the most popular beverages in the world) and just the right amount of sweetness to offset the soy sauce. It's a strange thing, I know, but hey... southerners have been making things like ham and barbecue and wings with cola for a long time now, and everyone seems to think that's a good idea. I'll be breaking down whole chickens and poaching them in a mixture of cola and soy sauce along with plenty of aromatics and a few select spices, then letting that poached chicken rest overnight in the poaching liquid to fully absorb all the flavors. The next day those tasty chicken pieces get cut up and portioned, and the poaching liquid gets reduced down to a slightly thick "broth" of sorts, ready to heat at your leisure and serve with steamed white rice. I said I was doing casual homestyle dishes this week, and I meant it. But don't let the casual-ness of this dish fool you... it's a real star.

While our main dish this week is great, it's really asking for some bright tasty veggies to really complete the meal. Since we don't want to overshadow our star but don't want something boring, CHOY SUM WITH GARLIC is just the thing. Choy sum, by the way, is a delicious Chinese vegetable that's a little like Chinese broccoli, but with more leafy parts and more tender stems. Blanched choy sum with stir fried garlic and a little rice wine and sesame oil. That's the whole story, and it really lets this fantastic vegetable shine.

Wanna know what's Chinese about VERY AMERICAN BLUEBERRY BUCKLE? Absolutely nothing, and that's ok. A buckle is a type of old-school fruit-based cake, common with older home cooks but rarely seen in the wild nowadays. A buckle is only a "cake" in the technical way, it's mostly fruit (blueberries in our case) with just enough batter to hold it together. When the buckle bakes, the blueberries release their juice and hydrate the batter, making the result super moist and flavorful. I'll be serving this with some simple vanilla cream and that's it. If you're into pies and wish cake was more like pie, this is your dessert.