Welcome to the launch of our first ever volume of Kitsby's Lunar New Year community cookbook featuring recipes from our AAPI foodie network! The themes we wanted to shine through this project are how incredibly diverse our AAPI community is, and community - none of what we do here at Kitsby would exist without the support of our friends, family, neighbors, and beyond.
Many of us, who help to actively build the growing AAPI network that we have today, share roots in points of common nostalgia, which is exactly why we wanted this project to feature the nostalgia dish (the dish that transports you back to your roots) of each partner in a cookbook-format!
Meet Joanna Chung of Chung Eats:
I’m Joanna but people call me Jo! I’m a senior in college studying Visual Media with a passion for cooking and cultural exchange. I started learning how to cook and documenting my journey in May 2020. Since then, it’s become an avenue of community building, cultural exchange, and a way to understand my heritage deeper.
One of my favorite things to get at a 茶餐廳 (Hong Kong-style café/diner), was a slightly sweet-savory bolognese sauce with spaghetti. My mom would always tell me not to order this at restaurants because she said she could make it at home but she never made it. It’s a dish I enjoy almost as a guilty pleasure now that I’m older because I wasn’t able to have it much growing up, despite how much I liked it. The dish stands to be another one of Hong Kong’s classic Western influenced dishes, the epitome of cultural fusion and exchange, something I feel deeply in my identity as I moved around growing up.
Hong Kong-style Spaghetti Bolognese
- Servings
- 3-4 people
Ingredients
Broth- 1 lb ground beef
- 1 medium carrot, diced
- 1/2 onion, diced
- ~3 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 tomato, diced
- ½ Tbsp cooking oil
- ½ tsp sugar
- ½ tsp salt
- ¼ tsp black pepper
- 3 Tbsp tomato paste
- 1 cup chicken broth
- ½ cup water
- 1½ tsp maggi sauce
- 1 tsp dark soy sauce
- 2 tsp worcestershire sauce
- 2 Tbsp ketchup (I love using Ottogi’s!)
- 2-4 bay leaves
- ~3 servings of spaghetti
- 2 Tbsp butter
- Shredded mozzarella cheese (to your liking)
Steps
- Chop up your tomato, onion, garlic, and carrots, then set aside.
- Over medium heat, add cooking oil to a pan, then add in carrots & onions. Stir fry until onions are slightly translucent.
- Add in your ground beef and separate into small pieces with your spatula/spoon. Stir fry all together and add garlic, salt, sugar, and black pepper.
- Once ground beef is mostly cooked, add tomato paste and stir fry for about a minute until slightly caramelized.
- Add in tomato and stir fry together, before adding chicken broth and water.
- Once simmering, add in maggi sauce, worcestershire sauce, dark soy sauce, Ottogi ketchup, and bay leaves. Stir well and let simmer for ~10 minutes.
- In a pot of boiling salted water, cook spaghetti according to package instructions. Once cooked, drain spaghetti and set aside.
- Once the sauce is done simmering, add butter and stir to melt in.
- In an oven safe dish, mix the spaghetti with 90% of the sauce. Pour the remaining sauce on top.
- Sprinkle mozzarella on top and broil until melted/slightly golden brown. Enjoy!
