January 2010

Page 1 of 3.

Click on images below to enlarge:
Dinner at ramen joint on January 2, 2010
On the way from the airport to home, we stopped by a ramen joint in the Jing'an Temple's mall's basement. I had the "Tokushima Prefecture" (de2 dao3) ramen (la1 mian4), i.e., ramen of the type that comes from that part of Japan.	My ramen: perfectly respectable.
Lunch Out on January 3, 2010
Our choice for lunch, a joint on Guangyuan Road near Yuqing Road.	Inside the shop. This is setup is common for hole-in-the-wall restaurants (of which there are many).	Standard, boring soup with plain noodles. I liked the garlic, bamboo pork that I ate with the noodles.	Some kind of dumplings that, although they weren't named as such, were effectively xiao long bao. They were decent, but sub-par (i.e., below average) for Shanghai, with a too-thick pinched top and not enough liquid or meat inside.
Dinner at Home on January 3, 2010
I cooked a good Mexican recipe, red chile chicken with rice and beans, that I've made before and liked. This time I substituted broccoli for black beans. It worked fine.	Close-up.	Di Yin made one of her usual soups. She makes a lot of soups (she likes them). Mostly, they're clear soups with potato, carrots, and pork.	Di Yin made a delicious dish of green beans and caramelized red onions.
Di Yin made an okay dish of a leafy spinach-like vegetable with sambal sauce.
Dinner at Home on January 4, 2010
Di Yin made her usual delicious eggplant dish, which I'm still trying to figure out how she makes it.	She also made a good pork, broccoli, and tomato stir-fry.	We had the same soup as the previous night.	We brought home a tupperware container of food from the friend with whom we stayed in Singapore's family reunion. We served some of these leftovers: a spicy Portuguese-Malaysian dish, white curry, made by our friend's father, and slices of a roasted ham, brought by some other relative.
The bearded papas were surprisingly different. The vanilla filling had a texture like custard. The chocolate filling was much thicker, more like mousse. The chestnut was a bit custardy and definitely nutty, but not overly chestnutty (a fact I appreciated).
Dinner at How Way on January 6, 2009
Sichuan poached sliced fish in hot chili oil. Good, as before, though this time we had peppercorns, which I didn't appreciate, and more bean sprouts, which for some reason I liked less than before. Nevertheless, it was a good dish.	Its menu description. (shui3 zhu3 yu2) Incidentally, the different items offered are catfish (nian2 yu2), blackfish (hui1 yu2), herring / black carp / mackerel (qing1 yu2).	Warm, squishy, tasty mushrooms, as before. Di Yin loves that they're cooked in chicken oil.	Liberally translated, assorted Su mountain mushroom delicacies (shan1 zhen1 su4 gu1 pin1).
Peking duck, just made with shredded pork instead of duck. Also good. Admittedly duck is tastier, especially with the hoisin sauce, but this was still pretty good.	Technically, thin pancakes with marinated shredded pork (bao2 bing3 jiang4 rou4 si1).	Spicy cabbage in a claypot with a bit of pork and spicy black beans. Again, excellent, as before. This time it tasted spicier than I remember (though I was sick the last time we ordered it). A warning: the vegetables soaking in the juices at the bottom of the pot are yet spicier.	Clay pot (sha1 bao1) with baby (wa2 wa2) vegetables (cai4). Baby vegetables means Napa cabbage.
The same, awesome tea-smoked duck, as before. Smoke rings everywhere. I've never eaten anything like this in the states.	The Chinese says Camphor-tree tea duck. (zhang1 cha2 ya1)
Dinner at Home on January 8, 2010
I cooked a dish of cauliflower with cumin, following a recipe I never tried before from an Indian cookbook I own. (I scanned its pages before I flew to Shanghai.) It turned out very well. I used many spices I brought with me from America.	Belachan kang kong (a.k.a. kangkung, kong xin cai). This is a dish we've often had in Singaporean/Malaysian restaurants. This was our second attempt at cooking it--this time we tried it collaboratively--and it turned out well. I would call it a success, and, though we could do better, I wouldn't be surprised to be served something of this quality in a restaurant. The major ingredient, belachan sauce, we brought back from Singapore.	Di Yin's newly-invented dish of romano beans, potatoes, and onions. Good; I could eat this regularly.	Di Yin also made soup, which I forgot to photograph.