September 14, 2008

Eek, far too much time has passed since I last posted. I've been updating my Flickr page and have been working on other projects.

To get the ball rolling, I've nicked the 100 Chinese Foods to Try Before You Die meme from Serious Eats.

1. Almond milk
2. Ants Climbing a Tree (poetic, not literal, name)
3. Asian pear
4. Baby bok choy
5. Baijiu
6. Beef brisket
7. Beggar's Chicken
8. Bingtang hulu
9. Bitter melon
10. Bubble tea
11. Buddha's Delight
12. Cantonese roast duck
13. Century egg, or thousand-year egg
14. Cha siu (Cantonese roast pork)
15. Char kway teow
16. Chicken feet
17. Chinese sausage
18. Chow mein
19. Chrysanthemum tea
20. Claypot rice
21. Congee
22. Conpoy (dried scallops)
23. Crab rangoon
24. Dan Dan noodles
25. Dragonfruit
26. Dragon's Beard candy
27. Dried cuttlefish
28. Drunken chicken
29. Dry-fried green beans
30. Egg drop soup
31. Egg rolls
32. Egg tart, Cantonese or Macanese
33. Fresh bamboo shoots
34. Fortune cookies
35. Fried milk
36. Fried rice
37. Gai lan (Chinese broccoli)
38. General Tso's Chicken
39. Gobi Manchurian
40. Goji berries (Chinese wolfberries)
41. Grass jelly
42. Hainan chicken rice
43. Hand-pulled noodles
44. Har gau (steamed shrimp dumplings in translucent wrappers)
45. Haw flakes
46. Hibiscus tea
47. Hong Kong-style Milk Tea
48. Hot and sour soup
49. Hot Coca-Cola with Ginger
50. Hot Pot
51. Iron Goddess tea (Tieguanyin)
52. Jellyfish
53. Kosher Chinese food
54. Kung Pao Chicken
55. Lamb skewers (yangrou chua'r)
56. Lion's Head meatballs
57. Lomo Saltado
58. Longan fruit
59. Lychee
60. Macaroni in soup with Spam
61. Malatang
62. Mantou
63. Mapo Tofu
64. Mock meat
65. Mooncake
66. Nor mai gai (chicken and sticky rice in lotus leaf)
67. Pan-fried jiaozi
68. Peking duck
69. Pineapple bun
70. Prawn crackers
71. Pu'er tea
72. Rambutan
73. Red bean in dessert form
74. Red bayberry
75. Red cooked pork
76. Roast pigeon
77. Rose tea
78. Roujiamo
79. Scallion pancake
80. Shaved ice dessert
81. Sesame chicken
82. Sichuan pepper in any dish
83. Sichuan preserved vegetable (zhacai)
84. Silken tofu
85. Soy milk, freshly made
86. Steamed egg custard
87. Stinky tofu
88. Sugar cane juice
89. Sweet and sour pork, chicken, or shrimp
90. Taro
91. Tea eggs
92. Tea-smoked duck
93. Turnip cake (law bok gau)
94. Twice-cooked pork
95. Water chestnut cake (mati gau)
96. Wonton noodle soup
97. Wood ear
98. Xiaolongbao (soup dumplings)
99. Yuanyang (half coffee, half tea, Hong Kong style)
100. Yunnan goat cheese

April 4, 2008

Fried polenta sticks absolutely rule! I'm going to add this to the list of the things that are so tasty when crispy on the outside and soft and tender on the inside.

March 13, 2008

I take back what I said about Hanuta here. The first one I ate really was stale.

I'm eating a second one as I'm typing and omg...it's SO good. The wafer doesn't taste stale at all!

March 2, 2008

Little Shanghai Restaurant, Part 2

My mom and I were hankering for a light snack/lupper (lunch + supper)/snupper on Saturday. Thankfully, my dad said though he wasn't really hungry, he'll go where ever we decided.

We happened to be in the San Mateo area so we headed over to Little Shanghai again on Saturday around 4pm. This time, there was only a 2-top occupied. The rest of the staff was cleaning up the dining room and setting up for dinner.

My dad let my mom and I decide so we ordered xiao long bao (soup dumplings), sheng jian bao (fried pork buns), and the cong you bing (green onion pancake) from the "Shanghai Dim Sum" section plus the chao ma mian and "Ji Cai & Pork w/Rice Cake" from the "Shanghai Noodles" section. I had heard about this "ji cai" dish from Chowhounders and had asked a coworker who went to university in Shanghai. She said it was a very common Shanghainese vegetable ingredient so I was curious to taste it. I was bummed to find out that they had sold out of ci fan, the Chinese donut with pork fluff and pickled veggies wrapped with glutinous rice. :(

The chao ma mian and the xiao long bao were pretty much the same as before. The chao ma mian had fewer shrimps this time...we only counted 3 vs. the ~6 last time. The soup was also a bit saltier than before...I really wished I had some rice. The XLB (xiao long bao) fared better this time around - only one sad busted one out of the 8.

Green onion pancake (cong you bing)

The green onion pancake was okay. Nice and crisp on the outside but it was lacking something. More onions? More interior fluff? All of us dipped this into the tasty but salty chao ma mian broth.

Ji Cai & Pork with Rice Cake

I'm a person who dislikes certain chewy things including many Asian rice products such as mochi, nian gao (rice cakes/ovalettes), uh...variations of these things. A lot of times, I find rice cakes too chewy or rubbery and I'm afraid I'm going to choke on them when I swallow. I don't have that much patience for mastication. :P Yet, I still ordered this dish with rice cakes. And I'm glad I did. These rice cakes were very fresh and tender. No gumminess or rubberyness at all! I don't know what ingredients or magic many Shanghai dishes have but a lot of them have a distinct smell of deliciousness I can't put my finger on. It's sort of (but not exactly like) the smell of garlic sizzling in hot oil. I could smell the yummyness as soon as the waiter dropped off this dish off. My dad started picking at it as soon as put my camera down. ^_^ My dad is not one for saying things are good but his actions speak louder than words. Well, his chopstick actions anyway. He kept picking at the dish! :D

Also, we weren't exactly sure what vegetable "ji cai" is. The stalk ends and pieces were so tiny and delicate looking. The stalk ends looked like the end of a miniature spinach. In any case, it had a very interesting flavor. Green with a slight floral flavor.

Sheng jian bao (fried pork buns)

These were slightly larger than the XLB with a thicker skin. Sort of a like a pan-fried version of XLB - these babies also contain "juice."You can sort of see from the photo above that the bun in front was busted so no soup from that one. :( A bit oily for my taste but I loved the crispy browned bottoms. Mom thought the pork filling was a bit bland in the sheng jian bao but I thought it was similar to the XLB.

All in all, this was a delicious lunner/lupper/snupper - er, whatever you call the meal between lunch and dinner. :P Dad approved...seeing as how he nabbed 5/8 XLBs and inhaled a whole bunch of the rice cakes. When dad has a good appetite for food after claiming he wasn't hungry, it means he liked it. (Mom and I didn't realize he ate most of the XLBs until he left the table. O_o)

Hanuta


My coworker MD shared her bounty of these little guys given to her by a sales rep from a German company. To "sweeten" up the demo session, he brought in a whole sack of goodies including these chocolate and hazelnut wafer sandwich cookies. MD raved about how these were totally addictive and were her (sad) little morning secret. Haha...she had way way way too many and gave us each a few. Would I turn down a chocolate-hazelnut combo? Never. :D

Hanuta = wafer + chocolate w/ hazelnuts + wafer

So how was it? Meh. I guess my expectations were kinda high following MD's praise and seeing the picture on the label. The wafers were a bit dry and stale...not quite Triscuit-dry but not flaky and light either. The filling was very chocolaty but I guess I expected larger hazelnut pieces too.

I don't know if it was a fluke - I could've gotten a bum stale one since the salesman flew from Germany then traveled around the US with Hanutas in tow.