Tag Archives: Chinese

Chinese New Year 2019 – Home Cookin’

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More home cookin’. A few posts ago, I showed you some homemade soup I prepared for Chinese New Year that featured long luxurious noodles, traditionally symbolizing wishes for a long life. I also did a stir fry with those noodles which I’m happy to report turned out deliciously as well. I added some lap cheong (Chinese sausage) to kick up the protein (yes, I know, and fat) but the rest of the ingredients were either vegetables I had left over from making the soup or dried/preserved items I always have on hand.

[1] If you’re curious, you can play Where’s Waldo in the bowl with the following: Shanghai bok choy, bean leaf, shiitake mushrooms, black fungus (wood ear fungus), huang hua (dried lily flowers), ya cai (Yibin preserved mustard greens), scallions, flowering chives, cilantro, dried red chilies, peanuts, and sesame seeds.

[2] The wok in progress (forgive the pun 😉).

恭禧發財! Gōng xi fā cái!
 
 

Chinese New Year 2019

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The Chinese celebration of the Lunar New Year is upon us!

One aspect of the holiday that I particularly enjoy is how wordplay and homophones factor into the selection of traditional foods. An example is nian gao, a glutinous rice cake sweetened with brown or white sugar and a homophone for “high year” – with the connotation of elevating oneself higher with each new year, perhaps even lifting one’s spirits.

This is the Year of the Pig 🐷 which, of course, is my cue to taste every traditional delight I can get my trotters on, but there was one year when the means by which to sample a particular nian gao turned into a complete mystery.

Curious? Please read my very short story, “The Case of the Uncrackable Case!”

 
 

Chinese New Year’s Eve 2019

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The Chinese celebration of the Lunar New Year, also known as Spring Festival, is a dazzling banquet for the soul that is laden with more symbolism than a Jungian interpretation of a Fellini dream sequence inspired by a Carlos Castaneda novel.

And that’s one of the elements that I love most about the holiday: wordplay and homophones figure into the choices for traditional foods (more about that tomorrow) along with their colors and shapes.

For Lunar New Year’s Eve (“Reunion Dinner”), I’ve prepared a duck soup with shiitake mushrooms, daikon, flowering chives, bean leaf, Shanghai bok choy, scallions, cilantro, dried red chili pepper, and too many seasonings to mention, but the focus is on the long noodles that are aspirational of a long life.

Stay tuned for more….

新年快乐! Xīnnián kuàilè!
 
 

Sweet Osmanthus Cakes

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Sweet Osmanthus Cakes (Gui Hua Gao, 桂花糕) are available in many markets throughout New York City’s magnificent Chinatowns. Used throughout Asia, osmanthus shows up in tea and tea blends as well as jams, liquors, and sweet gelatin desserts, often with goji berries embedded in gravity defying suspension. It has a buttery, floral fragrance with a subtle flavor – I’d describe it as somewhere along the apricot-leather continuum, if there were such a thing.

These delicacies are uncharacteristically sweet as Chinese baked goods go and have a coarse, slightly crumbly texture, cakier than a shortbread cookie and cookier than a cake – a biscuit, perhaps? Unsurprisingly, they are more comfortable in the company of tea than coffee (in my opinion, at least).

[2] The inside scoop.

[3] One brand’s packaging so you’ll know what to look for if you’re so inclined. I like ’em.
 
 

Manting Restaurant

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Mala Tang and Mala Xiang Guo are Sichuan dishes that are underrepresented in Manhattan’s Theater District, but those are the specialties at Manting Restaurant, 150 W49th St. We were invited to taste their renditions amid a selection of other items on the menu, and we happily obliged.

[1] They feature eight kinds of Mala Tang, the spicy, soupy hot pot, in ready-made versions such as beef, lamb, fish (pictured), seafood and vegetable. When I see “málà”, I expect numbing, spicy Sichuan peppercorns but the best I could tell was that this was ignited only by dried red chili peppers. Not complaining though: we requested very spicy and we actually got it. Spoon some of the sauce over rice for maximum enjoyment.

[2] Mala Xiang Guo, spicy dry pot, is a stir fry in which diners can choose from among 35 items that include meats (beef, lamb, chicken, tripe, kidney, for example), seafood (shrimp, fish fillet, squid), and a garden of vegetables (like mushrooms, cabbage, cauliflower, seaweed) and tofu. Choose your favorites, specify a spice level, and you’re set. Read the menu carefully regarding portion size and pricing: it’s priced per pound with a 1.5 pound minimum and a surcharge for orders under 2 pounds, but you’ll probably exceed those anyway if there are at least two of you. Common sense dictates that if you request many ingredients but the size of your order is modest, you may find only one piece of something you desired in the bowl. We decided to get two of these, one with meats and [3] the other fish based. Both filled the bill.

[4] We opted for the Scallion Egg Pancake appetizer, sort of an omletized scallion bing.

谢谢, Manting!
 
 

Shaanxi Tasty Food – Cumin Fried Noodles with Beef

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A couple of months ago, I wrote about Shaanxi Tasty Food, stall 27 in Super HK Food Court, 37-11 Main St, Flushing, in the basement of Super HK Supermarket. Shaanxi Province is in the northwest region of China and “tasty” describes the cuisine precisely. In that post, I raved unabashedly about their Oil Spill Noodle, aka Oil Splashed Noodle, so when my dining buddies and I were in the neighborhood the other night and about to embark on our second of three dinners (long story), it was a clear choice.

This time, we opted for the Cumin Fried Noodles with Beef (C3 on the menu, also available with chicken) and it was another hit. Now and then I have a taste for noodles that aren’t slathered in sauce or swimming in soup. These are dry – in the best sense – boasting a perfect chew, redolent of cumin, touched with a toss of bean sprouts, scallion and carrots plus a little kick from green pepper.

More to come from Super HK Food Court….
 
 

Farmers Restaurant – Part 3

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The more I post about this place, the more I want to return, if only to have another go at establishing a communications link with the folks at Farmers Restaurant, 1692 86th St, Brooklyn. Everything we tasted at this eatery in Bensonhurst’s Chinatown (yes, that’s a thing) was wonderful and I’m keen to sample some different dishes next time despite the language barrier. It’s worth noting that verbal exchanges aside, the take-out menu differs from the online menu which differs from the heavily redacted in-house menu – not to mention any specials of the day. I like a challenge.

Here’s Crab with Sticky Rice from the Chef’s Specialties section of the take-out menu. This kind of dish looks deceptively simple, but it’s not always easy to get it right; working with sticky rice requires some finesse and the chef had plenty.

This one is for friends who accuse me of never posting photos of vegetables (let alone ordering them 😉): water spinach, aka water convolvulus, aka water morning glory plus a frustrating litany of increasingly misleading names, served here with garlic sauce (another vegetable!) – tasty, green, and good for you. Right? It grows in water and its hollow stems are the clue to positive ID; they provide the buoyancy that keeps the leaves afloat. I’m not entirely sure if this was on any of the menus!

Looking forward to going back!
 
 

Farmers Restaurant – Part 2

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More from Farmers Restaurant, 1692 86th St, Brooklyn, in Bensonhurst’s budding Chinatown where the food was delicious and the language barrier insurmountable. I’m certain about the first dish shown here, Crab and Fish Maw Soup. Fish maw is swim bladder, dried and then reconstituted for soup; if you frequent Chinese markets, it’s easy to find in transparent cellophane or plastic packages. It has little flavor of its own, but is quick to take on that of other ingredients. See second photo for a closer look.

Apologies if you are troubled by the sight of disembodied birds’ heads but there’s a carefully placed specimen on our serving of tasty Crispy Fried Pigeon.

Despite the communications difficulties, I’d definitely return to Farmers Restaurant; it was a meal to remember.
 
 

Super HK Food Court

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Another visit to Super HK Food Court, 37-11 Main St, Flushing, in the basement of Super HK Supermarket, this time to Stall 21. I didn’t catch the English translation of the name (if it was even there to be caught), but the Chinese characters are 客來勤 (Ke Lai Qin) literally: Customers Come Frequent. That last character can also mean diligent or hard-working; either way, the name is surely aspirational.

[1] This is Fried Fish Belly, not to be confused with fish maw (swim bladder). I’ve had fish belly elsewhere, particularly in some dim sum parlors where I suspect the bellies were from smaller fish since they were significantly more tender than these. Their unanticipated texture is a little difficult to describe – they’re soft but resilient and chewy, not really crunchy (peanuts are crunchy), not really crispy (chips are crispy), but you can easily hear the sound of your tablemates chomping down on them. A tasty dish, but the texture will be challenging for some.

[2] Braised eggplant, a classic crowd pleaser; they did a good job with this one as well.

Stay tuned for more from the depths of Super HK Food Court….
 
 

Deluxe Food Market

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I promise to write more about the redoubtable Deluxe Food Market in Manhattan’s Chinatown. It’s one of my favorite locations for inexpensive prepared food (it’s a market as well), a place I always bring people to on informal Chinatown ethnojunkets, and will forever hold a place in my heart for its contribution to the day I played hooky from work with a special friend.

For today though, just a postlet about a couple of carbobombs I grabbed to stave off hunger while passing through. And I mean “through” literally since even the layout bears mentioning: Picture a capital H (actually, you don’t have to picture it – it’s right there before the parenthesis) where the vertical strokes are Mott and Elizabeth Streets and the crossbar is the store with means of egress on both sides; 122 Mott and 79 Elizabeth are reciprocal.

Deluxe Food Market is always exceedingly crowded but that’s part of its charm; if you’re there for the ready-to-eat goodies, your patience will be rewarded. In a way, it’s the next best thing to dim sum in terms of tasting a little bit of a lot of things: point to the items you want (assuming you don’t speak the language), pay at the register, and (at least in my case) carry your bag over to nearby Columbus Park and enjoy.

Its size isn’t evident from the photo, but this massive “beef cake” is 6½ inches across and 1½ inches thick.
[2] Photo depicting a deceptively meager amount of meat inside.
[3] Photo depicting a deceptively generous amount of meat inside.
Take the average.

[4] Their “scallion cake” is the chewy, not crispy, variety with a touch of sweetness.

More to come from Deluxe Food Market….