Food

One of my favorite ways to eat steamed vegetables is with a braised mushroom sauce. To my omnivorean palate, mushrooms are a good substitute for meaty flavor when you want a vegetarian dish.

But there's sometimes a dilemma when Westerners cook Chinese dishes that involve mushrooms, especially shiitakes. When Chinese cooks do braises or soups, most of the time they will use dried mushrooms, favoring the more complex flavor profile. The sun-drying process for shiitakes draws out the strong umami flavor.

As Westerners, however, we've been taught that fresh ingredients (almost) always tastes better than its dried equivalent. And many Westerners (Jacob, for example) don't like the chewy texture of dried mushrooms or think the soak-to-rehydrate preparation is too much of a hassle.

I've tried the following recipe for baby bok choy with both dried and fresh mushrooms, and I have to say I like the fresh version slightly better. In dishes where ingredients are few and the mushroom texture stands out, my opinion is that plump and juicy fresh shiitakes win out. However, in dishes that have a lot of ingredients like Buddha's Delight, dried mushrooms lend a valuable umami flavor to rest of the dish.

Cool site of the day courtesy of the Shanghaiist: IslamiChina, a guide for Muslims living/traveling in China that includes a very comprehensive listing of halal restaurants in almost 40 cities.

In Beijing, there's almost 60 restaurants listed, mostly Mongolian hot pot or Xinjiang. The maps on the site are pretty basic, so to pinpoint the exact locations (especially in sprawling Beijing) you would need a more detailed map. But I'll definitely use this the next time I have hunger pangs for lamb kebabs, stewed mutton, or nang.

Whew! With being mildly under the weather and furnishing a new apartment, I haven't had time to write a lengthy post yet this year. I did, however, make it out to Beijing's Ikea over the weekend. I had thought US IKEAs were crowded, but here I couldn't push a shopping cart 3 feet without hitting someone. (Had to resort to a yellow bag hooked on a dolly.)

Beijing's Ikea restaurant seats 700, possibly one of the largest Ikea restaurants in the world. The picture above shows only about 1/4 of the restaurant. We went at 3pm on a Saturday, and it was so packed many families were roaming around with their trays looking for seats. And while most people were enthusiastically chowing down on such un-Chinese specialties as herbed salmon and Swedish meatballs, there were stirfries available to appease the local palate. (Like how the McDonald's in Spain has gazpacho, and so on.)

What we ate at the restaurant (and what furniture we bought) isn't as important as what I found at the Swedish food market: vodka, for 86 yuan! That's at least 3 to 4 times cheaper than any bottle I've seen elsewhere. I also found some other Swedish goodies like fish roe, Wasa, and lingonberry jam that would (naturally) fit into our Chinese kitchen.

IKEA Restaurant
3rd floor, 1 Taiyang Gonglu, Dongbahe
Chaoyang District, Beijing
800 810 5679

In the spirit of end-of-the-year reviews, I've hopped on the bandwagon and created my own. This past year, travel and moving sucked up most of my expenses, so dining out took a backseat compared with previous years. However, I've had many wonderful meals at home and at the houses of friends and relatives. I've become well acquainted with grocery stores in Beijing, Hong Kong, Macau, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Denver, LA, and San Francisco, where the simplest provisions can make hearty and delicious picnic fare. And nothing cheers up the appetite and the wallet simultaneously better than street food, of which I had plenty this year.

So below is my little year-end ode to joyous eating. Happy New Year!

Best Meal in China

Din Tai Fung, Beijing: The chefs here have certainly mastered xiaolongbao's soup-to-filling ratio. We had basket upon basket of steaming hot pork xiaolongbao, crab and pork xiaolongbao, mini pork xiaolongbao, veggie dumplings, and sides like their signature chicken soup. A must-visit if you're ever in Beijing, Shanghai, Taiwan, or any other city where there's a location. (See Food Resolutions for 2008 below)

I never thought I would have trouble finding fish sauce in China. Growing up, many of the Cantonese dishes my mother cooked contained fish sauce. In New York's and Boston's Chinatowns, Squid Sauce and other varieties of nam pla were staples in every market.

Even though fish sauce is hardly used in northern Chinese cooking, I didn't think it would be hard to find in Beijing. Even if Thai, Vietnamese, and other Southeast Asian cuisines aren't too popular here, various Cantonese dishes aren't hard to find. But of the 3 supermarkets in my neighborhood, none carried it. I then scoured the Lotus Center in Wudaokou, thinking that with the neighborhood's large Korean population the supermarket must carry all sorts of fish sauce.

Well, I did find it, but not in the sauce aisle. Rather, there was just one kind, amongst imported goods like mirin and shochu. Guangdong province really is like another country.

With fish sauce in hand, I was able to try the Vietnamese Caramelized Pork recipe I found in the NYTimes. It's a good recipe except that it calls for 1/4 cup of fish sauce. That is madness. The point of fish sauce is to use just enough to bring out the dish's other flavors. The first time around I lessened the amount and still my apartment reeked for hours.

...We did have Lulu 露露, an almond milk drink that is all the rage here in Beijing. (You may have seen it in this Thanksgiving video.) And unlike eggnog, it's not so heavy that it sits in your stomach all night long with the turkey, pie, and chocolate pudding you stuffed into yourself.

Of course, living in Beijing and being thousands of miles away from either of our families, we didn't have turkey, rich desserts, and all that good stuff. We decided to go out for dinner instead. Let's just say Lulu goes quite well with Din Tai Fung's soup dumplings, although beer also does.

This almond drink featuring an actress and her signature on the can has inspired a host of other imitation almond drinks, or walnut and peanut drinks, also with actresses and their signatures on the can. But only Lulu is popular enough to make it onto the drink list of what seems like every restaurant in town. Including the upscale ones.

Although Lulu tastes good cold, the best way to drink it is warmed up. Restaurants will offer to warm up the can if you order one. At home, you can use an electric tea pot and heat it up as you would water. Of course, be careful not to wander off and accidentally let the almond milk boil over, resulting in a big mess, like I did tonight. Oops.

Oh, to be cooking again! Nothing feels better than being in your own kitchen after months of travel and eating out. Not that I mind eating out, but I love having full control over the ingredients, freshness, and healthiness of any given dish. Cooking also puts me into a serene zen-like state that staring at a huge menu cannot possibly do.

Tonight we had hot pot again, but instead of cooking noodles at the dinner table I chose instead to prepare some peanut sesame noodles beforehand. I added more peanut flavor than the Sichuan-style noodles usually have, and toned down the chili a bit. They are easy to whip up and can include as much fresh vegetables as you'd like. Although I made mine vegetarian, they also taste great with shredded meat.

__________________________________

More noodle recipes to try:

Noodles with Hot Bean Sauce

Wonton Noodle Soup, Hong Kong-Style

Dan Dan Mian (Spicy Sichuan Noodles)

__________________________________

Peanut Sesame Noodles

Serves 2-3 as an appetizer or side dish

Jacob and I moved into our new Beijing apartment less than a week ago. Because we were lacking proper equipment and flatware, we had to eat out or prepare frozen dumplings every night. (Ever eat dumplings out of a coffee mug because you didn't have plates? Ever do it post-college?)

I am happy to report that our kitchen is now getting less and less empty. After several trips to outdoor markets, department stores, and Carrefour, we have not only plates but also woks, teacups, beer mugs, and many many pairs of chopsticks. We are also the proud owners of a sleek new Joyoung induction cooker, otherwise known as a Chinese home hot pot machine.

Tonight we had our first full meal at home. It was, to be honest, very bare bones. All vegetarian, minimal sauces.. Since I'm also sadly coming down with a cold and possible fever, we cooked with a non-spicy broth. But the wonderful thing about hot pot is its inherent simplicity. Throw a bunch of raw food in a boiling broth, and watch it cook right at the dinner table.

Our minimalist hot pot meal:

1. Induction cooker with pot
2. Original flavor (原味) hot pot sauce from Little Sheep
3. Lettuce, spinach, bok choy
4. Enoki mushrooms
5. Fresh wheat noodles
6. Fresh tofu
7. A sauce made from 2 parts soy sauce, 1 part honey, 1 part sesame oil

Even on the bleakest of Beijing's winter days, many corners of the city are lit up with bright colors. These are the corners where the bīngtáng húlù vendors stand, selling their skewers of candied fruit.

The traditional form of bīngtáng húlù 冰糖葫芦 is a skewer of about half a dozen hawthorns that are dipped in a sugar syrup, which hardens into a shiny candy coating. The snack is most popular during fall and winter months, when the hawthorn and its cousin the crab apple are in season. Hawthorns, called shānzhā (山楂) in Chinese, are also used in juices, jams, even alcoholic drinks. The Chinese believe that hawthorns aid digestion, so this is one sugar-ladened treat that you shouldn't feel guilty eating. At least, I don't.

Did I mention that adults love this as much as kids do? It's not uncommon to see adults going about mundane tasks like grocery shopping or commuting home, munching on a shiny fruit kebab with the nonchalantness of a Westerner sipping a cup of take-out coffee.

World Hum, my portal for travel news, just posted an article I wrote for them called "How to Eat Peking Duck in Beijing." It's part of the site's series of "How to's" that are culturally specific to a given destination.

Included in the article is a bit of Peking duck history, how to order and eat Peking duck, and a list of recommended restaurants in Beijing. It's geared towards the Peking duck newbie, but veteran eaters of kao ya will probably also find it interesting. (I hope!)

Related duck posts:
Video: Thanksgiving in Beijing with Peking Duck
Crispy Duck Spring Rolls