Christmas in Shanghai day 3: classic Shanghainese

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I had planned to go hit another xiaolongbao joint for lunch today, when my friend Julia suggested that we go to Fu 1088 (福 1088) instead. Turns out this is just on the block next to the house…and I didn’t even know it! This is the big brother of Fu 1039, with much the same menu but supposedly more upscale, so I was happy to have a chance to try it.

We were typically Chinese and wanted to order half the menu. Fortunately the waiter suggested that they set us up with tasting portions of the cold starters, which can accommodate up to 5 different dishes per plate. This turned out to be a really good idea, although this convenience comes at a premium. The 5 starters were:

Deep-fried fish in sweet soy sauce (老上海燻魚) – this came out warm instead of the standard cold version, so that the texture of the black carp was soft and silky inside while the outside was crispy. Very yummy.

Tea smoked egg topped with caviar (黑魚籽煙燻溏心蛋) - this was served cold instead of the lukewarm versions I’m used to in Hong Kong. As a result the outer edges of the egg whites were a bit harder and “rubbery” to the bite.

Black fungus with sour chili sauce (涼拌木耳) – this was nice and pretty, as the fungus they chose were round and ball-like. A nice contrast came with a couple of small petals of lily buds as garnish – white in color – against a mound of black beneath.

Pea starch noodle rolled wild vegetable with sesame sauce (胡麻醬涼皮野菜卷) – kinda interesting and a little more modern. I didn’t get too much out of this one-bite portion besides the obvious sesame flavor, other than I think it was a bit spicy. Might have been some XO sauce on top?

Marinated jelly fish with cucumber in sour chili sauce (陳醋海蜇頭) – no cucumber here, just a bit of red chili as garnish. The “head” of the jellyfish was crunchier in texture.

I can’t walk into a proper Shanghainese place without ordering the braised pork with soy and rock sugar (香溢紅燒肉), so in came a nice collection of fatty pork with layers of skin and fat. Very nice…although it will always take its place behind the pork at Jesse (吉士酒家)...

The rest of the dishes came in quick succession – very Chinese style – which meant we didn’t have time to properly enjoy them before some of them got cold. I always forget to ask them to pace the dishes, and this is what happens.

The sautéed hairy crab meat, served with toast (清炒蟹粉伴吐司) was very, very good. The big plate of crab meat/roe combination came with long sticks of toast. I greedily scooped the orange paste into my bowl, dipped the toast in, opened wide and devoured it like it was manna from heaven. It was really yummy, and my friends weren’t eating their share…so guess whose belly it all ended up in?

I initially rejected the waiter’s suggestion of baked cod fillet with sautéed egg white and caramelized black vinegar, but went ahead and ordered it when we needed a fish course and my friends didn’t agree to the Reeve's shad (鰣魚). The presentation and cooking style was very modern. The bed of egg white at the bottom was surprisingly hard – I had imagined something like 賽螃蟹, another Shanghainese favorite. There were a couple of bits of unripened mango on top, which provided an interesting touch.

For veggies we had sautéed sweet pea with minced ham (火腿豌豆). This was pretty OK. The peas were tiny and sweet.

There was no way we could have finished everything on the table, so I packed away the leftovers – especially the pork! – and look forward to bringing them back to Hong Kong. This was an excellent lunch, and the food was definitely at the top level in Shanghai. I left the restaurant stuffed with lots of hairy crab meat and roe…

Dinner tonight was with Uncle Benny and his friends. We worked together a long time ago, and he’s my go-to guy in Shanghai for a lot of things. We went back to 1221. Benny knows the owner Michelle well, and he first took me here more than 10 years ago. I always thought the food here was pretty decent. And this is definitely a more laowai restaurant as a significant portion of the clientele is not local Shanghainese.

The starters:

Shredded chicken in sesame bon-bon sauce (棒棒雞) - OK

Mashed broad beans (雪菜豆瓣酥) – not a fan. It’s like taro/potato mash except that it’s cold.

Crispy eel (脆鱔) – pretty well done although it’s cold, not warm the way I prefer.

Shanghainese smoked fish (燻魚) – ho hum.

Mixed chilli with black bean sauce (尖椒泡豆) – not bad.

Braised beef tendon (拌牛筋) – pretty spicy, to my surprise, but very soft.

The mains:

Pan-fried chunky beef steak with garlic (蒜香煎牛柳粒) – ho hum.

1221 2-ways stir-fried shrimp (鴛鴦蝦球) – pretty disappointing, especially the plain ones…they were just bland.

Sweet and sour mandarin fish (松鼠桂魚) – my least favorite way to prepare fish…and the Shanghainese love it for some reason.

Crispy duck (de-boned, 香酥鴨) – probably the best main dish…nice and crispy on the outside, with a bit of fat in the middle.

Sweet and sour pork (咕嚕肉) - OK

Tofu with hairy crab roe (蟹粉豆腐) – I guess I’m jaded after having a ton of crab roe in the last few months, so this didn’t impress.  But upon reflection, this dish also didn’t cost an arm and a leg, and for the money I paid it’s pretty OK.

Stir-fried mushroom with XO sauce (XO醬百靈菇) – the slices were a little dry, but flavor was OK.

Pea sprouts in broth (上湯豆苗) – these sprouts looked tiny and really young, so why was the texture a little tough?

Won-ton chicken soup (餛飩雞湯) – the soup had plenty of chicken flavor, but fell just short of being really rich so it’s probably a bit healthier for us.

The complimentary dessert was made with pan-fried sticky rice that’s studded with some watermelon seeds, with some bananas in the middle.  The rice was pretty nice, although I can’t imagine why watermelon seeds were used…

It was still pretty early when we finished dinner, and although my face was already red from the yellow wine, we moved on to another round of whisky and pool to finish off the night.

Christmas in Shanghai day 2: dumpling day

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Got up and went for a late breakfast at the Changning Road branch of Yang’s Fried Dumplings (小杨生煎), which is a nice walk from the house.  I needed to run a few errands on my way there so it worked out well.  This is a pretty new branch, and not one of those that tourists would hit, so there was no line mid-morning on a weekday.

As usual I ordered one tael of four fried dumplings (生煎包).  I’m not a connoisseur and don’t profess to be able to detect the minute differences that is inevitable between branches.  Anyway, it was good for me.  The buns were very juicy as expected, and this time I remembered to carefully suck out the soup so didn’t have to repeat the squirting accident last time.  I thought the filling was a little bit more salty here, but the aftertaste of the pork was certainly sweet.

I also ordered a bowl of curry-flavored beef soup (咖喱牛肉湯).  Drinking curry soup doesn’t seem very Shanghainese to me, but I guess the same could be said of having curry beef brisket or macaroni in soup in Hong Kong…  Anyway, I wanted some hot soup to warm up and I achieved my goal.  There were some thin slices of beef in the bowl, and the soup did taste of beef and curry – with lots of coriander floating on top.  Honestly, though… the dumplings gave me much more bang for the buck, considering they’re the same price.

For lunch I decided to hunt down another xiaolongbao (小笼包) specialist.  There was a thread on Chowhound on various xiaolongbao places in Shanghai, and I’m making my mission to try out all the top spots by the end of this trip.  The Xingshan Road (杏山路) branch of Shangweiguan Nanxiang Xiaolong (上味馆南翔小笼) was pretty out of the way, although distance-wise wasn’t that far from the house.  I had to flag down 4 cabs before I found a driver who even knew the location of the street it is on.

The xiaolongbao part of the restaurant only has xiaolongbao and Shanghainese wontons on the menu.  I ordered a tael each of the pork dumpling and the shrimp and pork dumpling, and waited outside the kitchen while my order was being steamed.  As this is a self-service joint, I heeded the advice given on Dianping.com to grab some paper napkins and insulate my hands when I picked up the steaming hot basket with my dumplings inside.

As mentioned on Chowhound, the dumplings are casually tossed around because they are steamed in larger groups (maybe 3 taels per basket?) then moved to serving baskets.  This is especially true as I had two different types of dumplings, and my basket had two dumplings where one was on top of another.  And what’s with the extra piece of dough stuck to this dumpling?!  Definitely knocking points off…

The dumplings themselves were as I expected.  The skin was pretty thin, to the point where they were translucent.  Lots of pork juice inside, but somehow not up to the level of Jiajia’s in terms of flavor.  They’re pretty good dumplings in their own right, but I’m not sure if it’s worth the trek to get it.  There are better and easier alternatives in town.

I spent my Christmas Eve with a family I’ve known for more than 25 years.   Julia lives in Shanghai, and her aunt and sister Helen are both here for Christmas.  We met at Osteria, an Italian restaurant which was not very far from the house, but took me almost 50 minutes to get to thanks to the difficulty in finding a cab (I thought Chinese don’t celebrate Christmas?!) and the traffic jam.

I arrived half an hour late, and hurriedly ordered while apologizing profusely.   The ladies were enjoying some raw oysters but I decided to pass.  For starter I chose a bowl of gnocchi with Fontina, chives and red beet chips – in keeping with the dumpling theme of the day.  The gnocchi was not bad, and I could taste the sweetness of the potato.  The beet chips were sliced paper-thin and deep-fried, but were soggy by the time they were served.

I shared the antipasti platter with the ladies, which were OK.  For main course I had the osso bucco.  This was not so good.  They had given my plate to someone else, so the chef had to make a replacement in a hurry when the mistake was discovered.  I knew the chef was in a hurry because some of the salt he sprinkled into the sauce was still in crystal form…  Worst of all, they took out all the bone marrow!  The bone was completely hollow, and that is totally unacceptable!  One of the reasons for me to order osso bucco is the joy of either spooning or sucking out the bone marrow.  What a disaster…  The risotto on the side was made into a giant ball and deep-fried.  While mine came out golden brown and was alright, the other serving at the table was overdone – the ball was dark brown and completely dry inside.  Clearly the food quality is inconsistent here.

But what’s important is to spend this holiday with family (or close friends), so I’m glad we got together.  We skipped desert and adjourned to my friends’ place to play with their cats.

Christmas in Shanghai day 1: neighborhood eats

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We received an offer to buy the house in Shanghai, so I’m back in Shanghai to close the deal.  It’s two days before Christmas, so I’ve decided to stay and spend it with some friends.

I got to the house a little later than I expected, and was left with about 30 minutes to grab lunch before going to meet the buyer.   The simple thing to do was to go back to Fuchun (富春小笼) as it’s just on my block.  I placed my order and sat down at the only available seat in the packed dining room.

The “crystal bun” (水晶包) arrived first.  I actually had no idea of what it was when I placed the order.  This is the Shanghainese version so it’s different from the small ones found in Cantonese restaurants.  This looks a bit like your regular steamed meat or veggie bun.  As I picked it up with my chopsticks, a bit of the clear, viscous liquid started to ooze out from the seams, and the first bite revealed something completely different inside – it was sweet.  I took a look inside, and it sure tasted like sweetened lard to me… Yup, this is the Shanghainese version alright.

The two large fried pork and chive dumplings (煎韭菜餃) came next.  They came fresh out of the pan and were piping hot.  I had to bite off one of the corners and let the heat escape from within.  Pretty decent for something cheap.

Finally my half-dozen of pork and crab roe xiaolongbao (蟹粉小笼) arrived.  These were steamed to order, and the skin was definitely better than those on the regular ones on my last visit.  I could definitely taste the sweetness of the pork, especially the coagulated protein that comes from the steaming process.  There was some crab roe mixed in, but somehow I also tasted some herbs…perhaps used as part of the roe mixture to cover up the strong taste?  These were definitely not as good as the ones I had at Jiajia (佳家汤包), and to think that half a dozen here cost about the same as a dozen at Jiajia!

I didn’t plan my trip very well, so I was left all alone for dinner tonight.  Chinese food is hard for the solo diner, and I’m left searching for something simple around the house.  I thought about going back to Fu 1039 (福1039) for some nice Shanghainese, but the thought of dining alone and trying to meet the RMB 150/head minimum put me off.  I searched for neighborhood joints around the house in Dianping.com, and ended up a couple of doors down the road from Fu 1039 at a hole-in-the-wall that was rated 24 out of 30. 

百瑞斋桂林米粉 specializes in Guilin-style rice noodles.  Actually they’re more like rice spaghetti, as the shape and gauge of the noodles are very similar.  But the consistency is entirely different – the rice noodles are very soft and will hang limply when picked up with chopsticks.  I was thinking about getting it stir-fried, but I wanted a hot bowl of soup for the cold winter night.  I ended up ordering a soup noodle with pig intestines and pig ears (大腸豬耳米粉) as well as a side of stir-fried veggies.  The bowl was huge, with lots of dark brown soup undoubtedly full of MSG.  The intestines were chopped into fairly small pieces, and were pretty yummy and full of the typical strong flavor.  The pieces of ear were softer than what I’m used to, since they’ve been soaking in hot soup.  There was also a good amount of chopped pickled string beans and peanuts in the soup.  I’m not sure I agree with the rating, but the bowl of hot soup did the trick of warming me up – it’s just that I had to drink lots of water to rinse off the MSG on my tongue…

A wintery treat

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The temperature in Hong Kong has dropped significantly over the last week, and as I have been shivering in my apartment with typical thin walls, my thoughts have been turning to traditional winter meals.  I can always count on a few people to go for fondue, and we made a date to go to Swiss Chalet.

The restaurant is doing brisk business now that it has gotten colder, and they were very full when I arrived.  The atmosphere was warm (both literally and figuratively), and the beautiful smell of cheese filled the room.  I could hardly wait...

While I was tempted to start with a green salad, I wanted to do something a little bit more interesting.  To my dismay the restaurant ran out of puff pastry to make the lozärner chügeli pastetli, filled with veal, sweetbreads and the like.  I had to settle for warthog and mushroom sausage with mustard sauce and rösti.  This was kinda interesting, because the texture was harder and chewier than your normal German/Swiss wurst.  Unfortunately there were a lot of spices in the sausage, and together with the mustard sauce pretty much covered up any distinctive taste of the warthog meat.  The rösti was OK...I would have preferred it to be more browned.

Three of us shared a nice pot of es purre fondüü mit chnobli mit öpis filee, Härdöpfeli und gmües while my friend's wife took the raclette.  I wanted this version because of the Vacherin, and having some beef tenderloin cubes is a bit better than only getting the usual sides.  I do like raclette, but today I was in the mood to play with my food, and fondue is so much more fun!

I was happy with the cheese...especially after a while when some of the wine had evaporated and the mixture starts to thicken at the bottom of the caquelon.   We didn't manage to finish all the cheese, but were pretty stuffed already...

I brought a bottle of the 2007 De Villaine Bouzeron to go along with the fondue, as a lean wine such as Aligoté is meant to pair well with the dish.  Sure enough, the wine showed steely minerals with a good amount of acidity to cut through the richness of the cheese.  There was some degree of ripeness on the palate, and the wine tasted a little "hot".

While we all thought there was no more room for dessert, I scanned the dessert menu and found sabayon mit beereli undeme schuss cassis.  Warm sabayon has been one of my favorite desserts since my high school days in Singapore, and it's really hard to find.  Of course I wasn't gonna pass it up!  The whipped egg yolk cream arrived in a brandy snifter, and the waitress poured some crème de cassis into the glass, settling on top of different berries at the bottom.  I was smiling as I scooped spoonfuls of the stuff into my mouth.  The rich, eggy taste of it (apparently made with 2 yolks) combined with the sweet Marsala wine was just so yummy.  It's been too long since I last had a good, warm sabayon...so despite being really full - and past the point where I stopped enjoying each incremental spoonful - I chose to finish the whole thing.

If there was a way for me to walk back home to the Hong Kong side, I would have.  After a meal like this - and I don't want to know the calorie count - it almost seems appropriate to curl up somewhere and hibernate...  It was certainly a perfect meal for a chilly winter night.

Museum day

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The parental units and I decided to go get some culture today.  Cai Guo-Qiang (蔡國強) is having another retrospective show in Taiwan - named Hanging Out in the Museum (泡美術館) - at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum (臺北市立美術館). There's been a lot of talk about this exhibition for a while, so I was pretty excited to see it.

I must admit that I didn't know a lot about the artist, because I don't follow contemporary Chinese artists.  I knew about his solo exhibition at the Guggenheim New York last year, where the artist hung 9 cars in the museum's atrium with blinking lights protruding from them - as if the cars were exploding.  The piece - Inopportune: Stage One (不合時宜：舞台一) - uses those light tubes that one sees all over China, where they are arranged in a exploding pattern to simulate fireworks.  It now hangs in the atrium here in Taipei.

The other work I knew about was Head On (撞墻), which was commissioned by my former employer for their collection.  The collection of 99 artificial wolves running head on into an invisible wall is quite impressive.

The artist's playful side is evident as soon as you enter the museum.  Once the visitors have finished admiring Inopportune: Stage One (不合時宜：舞台一), they are directed to an outdoor patio for Cultural Melting Bath: Project for the 20th Century (文化大混浴：為二十世紀作的計劃).  You see a wooden hut with a couple of benches and a few lockers inside, and 2 shower stalls next to the hut.  Sitting amongst a collection of rocks is a big jacuzzi that seats 5.  Apparently you can apply for one of the two daily sessions of hot-tubbing, where you hang out (a play on the Chinese slang 泡) with complete strangers for an hour.  I wonder how many people have actually participated?

The artist is well-known for his work involving gunpowder.  Whether it's lighting up gunpowder-drawn patterns to create images on substrates, or creating explosive trails for visual effect, he uses up tons of the stuff.  There are a number of films showing both the creative process behind some of the work, as well as showcasing the visual displays themselves.  Of course, there were also footages of his most famous works in terms of fireworks display - as Director of Visual and Special Effects for the 2008 Beijing Olympics (where the footage of the giant footprints were faked) as well as the 60th anniversary celebration for the PRC national day this year.

As I looked at both the films as well as the finished works themselves, a question kept hanging around: what was it that spurred the artist to experiment with gunpowder - essentially a destructive instrument - in his creative process?  Perhaps it's because he grew up with neighbors who were in the fireworks business.  Maybe, like many little boys, he just liked blowing stuff up.  While I enjoyed the visual effects from his fireworks and some of the controlled explosions, I can't say that I'm a fan of his gunpowder-on-paper work.

We actually spent a long time at the museum, as we ended up watching all the film footage.   3pm rolled around, and it was time for us to grab some lunch!  Mom suggested that we head for the National Palace Museum (故宮博物院), since the Grand Formosa Regent group had opened up a new dining pavilion there after the museum's last renovation.

Silks Palace (故宮晶華) has 4 levels of dining in a modern glass structure.  I wasn't interested in Cantonese dim sum, so we naturally went to the Taiwanese Food Court (府城晶華) in the basement.  We sat on low, traditional wooden benches and ordered up a storm...

My Miaokow rice cake cooked in barrel (廟口米糕) came in a cone rolled from bamboo leaf.  Kinda cute presentation.  While the stick rice tasted fine, I realized that I would keep getting disappointed every time I order this dish.  My preference is actually for the oily stick rice (油飯)...

The bowl of traditional ground pork rice (古早味肉燥飯) was really, really good.  Plenty of little cubes of fatty pork belly, and mostly skin and fat...  Couldn't ask for better!

Of course I had to order more fatty pork!  I thought the marinated pork with bamboo shoots (古早味筍干封肉) was pretty darn good.  The skin had taken in lots of the soy marinade, and everything was pretty soft.  But the marinated pig trotter (古早味滷豬腳) was even better!  Unlike many Taiwanese versions of this dish - where it was slightly undercooked and chewy - here the skin had been braised until it became very soft.  I greedily piled both types of pork fat into my bowl.  Oh and there was lots of marinated bamboo - the typical stinky Taiwanese kind...

The An Pin's fried oysters (安平蚵仔酥) was not bad, without the usual thick coat of powder.  The plate of blanched iceburg lettuce (燙青菜) had the usual ground pork sauce on top.  And dad's milkfish stomach porridge (安平港虱目魚肚粥) looked pretty good, but I didn't try it out.

It was too much food...I shouldn't have ordered the oysters as an afterthought.  But I guess since it was gonna be my only proper meal of the day (we finished lunch at 4pm), I could live with stuffing myself...