Our family is quite fond of travelling together. We always have fun, even if there are a few arguments along the way!

Most recently, the rest of the family travelled to the other side of the world to attend Amy’s PhD graduation in Cambridge. Then we took Mum and Dad to see some famous European sites, the kind of iconic scenes that had always just been the stuff of TV and books for us.

Without doubt, the Coliseum, Eiffel Tower, and Notre Dame were awesome sights. Nevertheless, one thing became very clear throughout our trip: when the Zhangs travel, they travel for food.

It didn’t matter how stunning a place was (read: the Hall of Mirrors!), it just wasn’t a *great* day until we had a great feed too!

Luckily we had plenty of Portuguese tarts, pastas, and crepês to keep us pretty happy 🙂

We love experiencing new places through food, because food is a special part of many cultures.

We definitely consider food to be one of the defining characteristics of the Chinese culture. Whenever we spend time in Guangzhou, it is *all* about the food. If you don’t come back from GZ a few kilos heavier, you’re just not doing GZ right!

It was during one of these family trips to GZ in 1998 that Ho Fun was cemented in our minds as a straight-off-the-wok classic.

In GZ the (Cantonese) culinary world is at your feet, with enough Yum Cha, bakeries, and famous hotel restaurants to make us giddy. Yet it is a tiny ramshackle restaurant near our uncle’s old apartment that wins our custom time and time again. There’s absolutely nothing fancy about this place, just a few mismatched tables and chairs along the street with a roaring hot kitchen inside. Their signature dish is ho fun: flat rice noodles wok fried with bean sprouts and spring onions. Add tender beef strips and you’ve got Ow Ho, where ‘ow’ literally means cow.

And what about the ‘Ho’?

Ho Fun, aka Shahe Fun are the noodles themselves, named for the region in Guangdong where they originate from. ‘Fun’ refers to rice noodles, while Shahe/Ho is the region. In contrast, egg and gluten-based noodles are called ‘mein’, as in chow mein, where chow means wok-fried.

Although we can’t promise you that our ow ho dish will taste quite as spectacular as the noodles produced in the ramshackle restaurant, we reckon that this recipe still makes for a very tasty and quick supper.