Goodbye Beijing

To sum it up, here is what we mainly ate:

For breakfast I ate oatmeal and very occasionally Chinese-style (i.e. a sesame shaobing).

For lunch, we usually ordered fast, home-style dishes from downstairs, such as eggplant, stir fried eggs and tomatoes, Ma Po tofu without the meat, etc. etc.

If we were feeling slightly less lazy, we would eat at the restaurant in our building: again, simple, but more Cantonese-style food: fish head tofu soup, stir fried greens, and clay pots with mushrooms and five spice powder.

Other wonderful restaurants nearby:

A Xin Jiang noodle place. Xin Jiang food is basically Chinese-Middle Eastern fusion, so they eat flatbread (Nang, obviously the same root as the Indian naan) and hand-pulled noodles like extremely chewy, thick, spaghetti, which you can eat with tomato and egg, or eggplant, peppers, and garlic shoots for the vegetarian options. As a carnivore, they have a ton of meat options: lamb, sliced beef, you name it. Everything comes in huge portions and is just great to carb-load after a swimming workout. My dad once ordered something called shou zhua fan (rice to eat with your hands), that was basically a biryani/pilaf/fried rice hybrid. The rice was short grained, but stir fried with lamb, cumin, and dried apricots. It looked great. Recently, we also had the lightest dish of cabbage in broth with nothing but a little bit of dried shrimp and goji berries—the perfect restorative tonic. We also ordered a huge pot of soup (made vegetarian) with a base of spices and hot pepper, swimming with cubes of tofu, noodle scraps (that’s the only way I can think of to describe their shape), and vegetables. Last but not least, I sampled two sweet pumpkin dishes: one served with glutinous black rice in a sticky orange syrup, the second much less sweet, but filled with raisins, figs, and Chinese dates (jujubes)—that one was much better. I saved it the next day to eat for breakfast.

This restaurant I mentioned earlier—the one hidden away in the village part of our neighborhood that has yet to be modernized. Every time we went there, we would order ge da tang, soup thickened with lumps of dough, egg, wild vegetables and tomatoes. In addition to this, we would get the fabulous sesame pancakes, filled with a sandy, sticky and sweet sesame paste within a crispy flatbread. Even the simplest stir fried vegetables they did amazingly well, especially the mung bean sprouts, which were cooked with nothing besides Sichuan peppers, peppercorns, and a little vinegar. Two more great dishes that we tried: a variety of vegetables topped with an omelette (“vegetables covered with a quilt”) and smoked tofu with garlic shoots: usually smoked tofu is too hard, but this was soft and tasted more like bacon than anything I’ve had in years.

The dumpling place—I only came here once this year, but it’s great if you’re looking for something easy and quick. Pick a filling, any filling, and the weight you want (usually 2-3 ounces), in addition to some simple cold salads and you’re good to go. Some of the fillings they might have would be any combination of beef, lamb, chicken, or pork with any kind of vegetable, vegetable fillings with egg, and of course seafood dumplings. When I went, we got pork and cabbage, green bean, lotus root and egg, and lamb with scallion. Sometimes the simplest things are best, especially drenched with lots of vinegar.

Another dish I love is zhou: there's a specific place we went to for it: known for health benefits, rice porridge is a way to get a lot of volume for very few carbs. You can get it either salty or sweet. Some zhou I've ordered in the past is mushroom and broccoli zhou and boneless fish zhou. Of course, Korea and Japan have their own versions, where the rice is already cooked and added to a broth, whereas in China the rice is cooked slowly like oatmeal into a thick porridge.

Of course, we had the occasional Korean

or Japanese meal.

And I always found time to grab one of the yogurts on the street—Chinese yogurt, although you can get it in the store, is always better served in the ceramic jugs that you drink on the spot with a straw. More of a drink than Western yogurt, it’s only slightly sweetened and is a wonderful thirst-quencher.

So that’s it! I’ll miss you, Beijing… I’m also in for a shock when I find out how expensive everything is when I get back.

Beijing countdown number one: Da Dong

I've decided that since I'm leaving tomorrow morning (!) and there are a lot of restaurants that I didn't mention that I've eaten at, that I would do a sort of countdown as a goodbye to Beijing.
I'll start with the fanciest, which is a famous Peking Duck restaurant called Da Dong. There are several branches all over Beijing, but they're known for impeccable presentation and a more subtle, refined approach to Chinese cooking. They've also recently added a "lowfat duck" to their menu, which is a much leaner alternative to the more traditional fatty Peking Duck.
We went there for an extremely late lunch a couple weeks ago, and the huge restaurant was almost empty. We decided not to order duck at all, but since dishes could be ordered in individual portions, to each order something we wanted and get some other dishes to share. This is what we got:
I chose the scallops with sweet corn, which were perfectly cooked, but in fact turned out to be the least successful out of all our dishes. They had been coated in egg yolk, which added nothing but a sandy mouthfeel and extra cholesterol. They were garnished with a sprig of mint, kidney beans, and a swipe of green sauce (cilantro sauce?). However, it has to be said that the sweetness of corn and scallops go together perfectly.
My dad ordered oxtail with peas, carrots, cilantro, anise, and 5 spice powder.
My mom ordered a sampling of all duck parts: the liver, webs (feet), and breast, which had been boiled in rice wine dregs with tree ears. Unfortunately, this was just a bit too adventurous for her.
To share, we ordered three FANTASTIC dishes. We started off with an amaranth and mushroom broth with roasted garlic clothes that added an amazingly robust aroma. It managed to be light and satisfying at the same time.
My personal favorite (or not... it's so hard to decide) was the eggplant, which was deceptively simple. It had been simmered to tender shreds with anise and five spice, roasted garlic, and a sprig of rosemary. Because the flavors were similar to that of my dad's oxtail and other traditional meat dishes, the soft, almost fatty texture really made it taste like meat. While in the West we look down on fatty meat, the Chinese relish it.
Because I'm a pumpkin fiend (if I could eat pumpkin every day for the rest of my life I would be happy), we ordered the roasted cod in steamed pumpkin. While the cod itself was flavored similarly to the eggplant and oxtail, it was the combination of the fish and pumpkin that was truly outstanding. This was because the cod was soft and salty, whereas the pumpkin was durable and mild, yet managed to absorb all the flavors of the sauce. I must have eaten half the pumpkin by myself.
For dessert, we were sent out a simple fruit platter surrounded by dry ice.
As you can see, we usually prefer simple, homestyle Chinese cooking, but I never realized how worth it the fancier places are sometimes.

Pasta Lessons

This might be a lengthy post.
The reason I still haven't written about Singapore is that 1) a lot of stuff has been happening here too and 2) probably the most "Singaporean" and interesting meal (hint hint: CHILI CRAB), I didn't attend. I still feel that it's worth blogging it, so I have to convince one of my parents to write a little description.
Anyways, these pasta lessons, that were given to me by Patrizia, were given in two parts, but I decided to put them together. The first time we made tagliatelle, which my mom and I then took home. The second lesson (yesterday) was much more complicated and enjoyable, because it also included cooking: we made spinach ricotta tortelloni and vegetarian lasagna, which our families then ate together.
This post will be like a tutorial. I'll start with the tagliatelle. First of all, let me just say that Patrizia grew up in Bologna, where everything was impeccably fresh (her parents still live in a little house in the mountains over there)-- in fact, she didn't have factory-made pasta (i.e. spaghetti) until she was in her TWENTIES!
My friend Bea was there for the tagliatelle, but not so much for the second cooking lesson.
1. Tagliatelle-- Making the dough was much simpler than I would have thought. All you need is flour (wheat, not semolina, which is too hard) and eggs. No water. That's it. You pour yourself a pile of flour (we just eyeballed it). Then you dig yourself a little hole in the center of your pile and push outwards to make it bigger. This can all be done on the kitchen counter. Then you crack three eggs into the center and start to beat them into the dough with a fork. You want to gradually start beating outwards so as to incorporate the eggs into the flour. When the flour-egg mixture is no longer running, you can start using your hands to knead it together, adding more flour if it's too sticky.
Now you begin the kneading motion. Use your right hand to fold the dough over towards you, then use the heel of your hand (is that a word in this context) to PUSH outwards. Now use the same part of your left hand and PUSH again. The dough should be elongated, facing you horizontally, like a baguette. Now turn it so that it's vertical, and use your right hand to fold it towards you again. Once you get into the motion, you start to use your whole body-- I don't think I ever got that far, but for Patrizia, this motion is as natural as brushing your teeth or toasting a piece of bread.
The dough will begin to harden, but it should still remain pretty soft. You should be able to tell when you don't need to knead it anymore. It should stay in a loaf-like shape, and should have a homogeneous texture.
The next step is to slice the loaf into about two-inch thick pieces (we used a Chinese meat cleaver), then dip the pieces in flour and flatten them. At this point we need to crank out the pasta machine, which is a very simple, hand operated, and attaches to the table. The only problem with the machine is that it doesn't attach very firmly, so you need someone to hold onto it while you turn the handle. What you do is this: pass the flattened pieces of dough through the machine, and turn the handle while gently pulling the dough out as it comes through in a much thinner piece. Each piece should go through the machine about three times, or at least until they have the thickness of two or three pieces of paper.
For tagliatelle, you gently fold each stretch of dough onto itself like an accordian, then use the cleaver to slice thin pieces LENGTHWISE (too thick and it becomes fettucine). After you've sliced the pieces, you can unfold them, and see your beautiful work!!!!
Tagliatelle needs to dry before boiling (you can keep it up to two weeks). Store it folded in a dry cloth.
We took it home to eat it, but sadly, we overcooked it so badly that it became inedible! It really only needs to cook for one or two minutes, but even so, when you taste it it seems much more al dente than dried pasta. Nevertheless, if you overcook it, you WILL be sorry.

By the second pasta lesson I felt like I had started to get the hang of the dough, so it was time for some more time-consuming (and more rewarding) tasks. Although we were making about three different things at the same time, I'm going to separate them so that it's easier to understand. We'll start with the tortelloni.
Begin by boiling the spinach (she used frozen, but obviously fresh, especially pre-washed to save you time, would be better).
Combine a tub of ricotta (we had to use what was available to use here in Beijing, bought at the Western supermarket Jenny Lou's), two eggs, some parsley, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and a decent-sized pile of parmesan in a bowl and combine. When the spinach-water is boiling, drain the spinach, roll it into logs, slice it, and add it to the filling.
As for the pasta itself, it's exactly the same as the tagliatelle up until the very last step-- instead of folding the sheets, use one of those ridged ravioli cutters to cut them into squares. We were making tortelloni, so they were on the large side, but tortellini are about 1/4 of the size of tortelloni.
use a knife or spoon to put a dollop of filling IN THE CENTER of each square (this part is a lot like making Chinese dumplings). Fold the square in half so that it forms a triangle, taking care to seal the edges well. Now this is the tricky part, which took a while to get the hang of. Put the triangle so that one corner loops over your thumb. Use your thumb and index finger to squeeze the corner that's further away from you, then do the same to the corner on your thumb. Now take the corner that's further away from you and loop it downwards around your thumb and bring the two corners together, pressing them so that they stay. And voila! Your first tortelloni!

I was so proud when I finally got it right.
It was right before we were about to eat when we realized that we didn't have a sauce to serve with it-- sage butter is a classic accompaniment, but we didn't have any sage (and the thought of melted butter still makes me shudder a little, neurotically), so we decided to make a simple tomato sauce with garlic and canned tomatoes.

Lasagna: Begin by slicing your eggplants (we used four of the skinny, Asian variety), then salt them in a colander to get rid of some of the excess liquid.
When you can see the water droplets on the surface of the eggplant, rinse and dry them (obviously, while the eggplants were sitting there, we were preparing other things-- this isn't an instant process).
The next step is to fry the eggplants-- since eggplant has a reputation of being disgustingly oily (I had a stirfried eggplant the day before yesterday that made me feel nauseous, because by the time I got to the bottom of the bowl, it was just a giant puddle of oil), we tried to use a minimal amount of corn oil and olive oil (at home I would use canola and olive), since using just olive oil would be too strong a taste.
Frying them is pretty self-explanatory... wait until you see golden skillet marks, then put them on a plate between paper towels to drain (We didn't need to cook them TOO well, since we were going to bake them anyway).
The pasta-- again, the same process up until the last step.
Cut the pasta sheets with the tortellini-cutter, only this time you can be much less precise about the shapes, as long as they're slightly longer. This is because even after you've already cut them, you can continue to do so so that they fit the casserole dish you're using, a bit like a jigsaw puzzle. BOIL them before you layer them in the dish!!
For the tomatoes, we just used canned tomatoes-- don't even bother making a sauce. We put a thin layer of tomatoes on the bottom of the dish so that the lasagna wouldn't stick. Next, put a layer of pasta, then a layer of eggplant, then mozzarella, taking care to space them far apart, since we knew they were going to melt all over the place. Continue layering like this until you get to the top, then bake (sorry! forgot the temperature, and either way it was in celsius) for 45 minutes.

Last but not least: the simplest but most delicious apple cake.
At first, Patrizia told me she was making an apple pie, and my mind skipped to my mom's Thanksgiving apple pie: using the food processor to grind up the butter, flour and shortening, refridgerating the dough overnight, rolling it out over plastic wrap, making the filling, making an egg glaze, etc. etc. etc. How could we possibly have enough time to make an apple pie? Then I thought maybe she meant an apple tart, so we would only have to make one crust... then it turned out that we weren't even making anything as complicated as that-- just an apple cake.
Because I have no (good) baking experience and Patrizia wasn't even using a recipe, I must admit I was skeptical at first. But then it turned out to be the most wonderful, light, moist (I HATE THAT WORD but it applies here) cake ever.
ADDED: RECIPE, gotten directly from Patrizia:

Apple cake

about 200 gr flour

about 150 gr white sugar

about 50 gr butter

1 table spoon red sugar (brown sugar, but this is too cute so I have to keep it)

1 tea spoon vanilla concentrate

1 tea spoon baking soda powder

1 lemmon zest (thanks Lida, I learned this new word)

2-3 apples (depending on size)

powder instant yeast (the dose for 500 gr of flour, usually one packaging is the dose for 1, Kg.) so use 1/2 package, my favorite brand is Pan degli Angeli (Angel's Bread) no wonder it's so good

put all the ingrediants in one bowl, liquify the butter in advance, keep a table spoon of butter to grease the baking pan

peel the apples and make cubes

bake about 30 min at 200 degrees Celsius (you make the conversion)

I'm not sure of the weight, but proportions are right.

love

patrizia

In fact, I barely got any photos of the process because it seemed so simple. She combined equal parts flour and sugar in a bowl, added two eggs, a little brown sugar, vanilla, a packet of yeast, and the zest of a lemon, at the same time as melting half a stick of butter over the stove and cutting two apples into chunks. She threw everything together, mixed it, put it in the oven (didn't even preheat it!) for about 30 minutes, and it was done.

THE MEAL: We decided to eat Chinese-style, which I prefer: i.e. rather than eating in courses, we just put EVERYTHING out on the table so everyone could help themselves. This was good, because lasagna and tortelloni aren't traditionally even supposed to be served at the same meal, and I thought eating them one after the other would mean that I wouldn't be able to stomach whichever one we ate second.
Because the dads of both families are Chinese, we had some xiao chi ("little eats:" appetizers/hors d'oeuvres): spicy cabbage with vinegar, bamboo shoots, and liang fen (solid blocks of mung bean starch, what glass noodles are made of). We also had a simple salad with a balsamic vinaigrette.
My mom had bought them a bottle of red wine. I had a tiny amount to go with the fabulous dinner.
Everything was wonderful: the tortelloni really did bring back childhood memories-- they were a little bit too chewy, but perfect for me. the filling was perfect: a little sandy from the ricotta, but pungent from the parmesan. The spinach added more color than taste, but it was so hard to believe that I had made these!
But what was really the best was the lasagna, although I would have been happy to just eat the eggplant, which was meltingly tender and not too oily at all, on its own. Maybe next time I'll make eggplant parmesan.
The only problem was, after eating not even that much (maybe four tortelloni and a little bit of lasagne), I got one of my terrible stomache-aches! I actually get stomache-aches daily, and sometimes acid-medicine doesn't help. It usually feels like flames are erupting in my stomach (above my belly-button), and people say they think it's acid, but my mom wants to get me tested for allergies. Please don't let me be allergic to anything I love! I don't think it can be lactose-intolerance, since I drink a lot of milk and eat cottage cheese and yogurt (although lactose-intolerant people can eat yogurt)....
I sampled the cake but wasn't feeling up to having a piece for myself. It really wasn't an apple cake-- while the apples added texture, it was the lemon that overwhelmed it (in a good way). It reminded me of a lemon honey cake, although there was no honey in it.
After dinner, they cracked out the aperatifs, and for some reason, I really wanted to try some. I had tiny sips of amaretto (way too sweet... definitely prefer it in gelato) and limoncello.
It was a great dinner-- for once, I felt like we actually had family friends, something we don't have much of in Chicago. Cooking with Patricia was such a fun experience: she kept muttering in Italian the entire time, and I found I could understand most of it, it being a Romance language (except now I know that adesso means "now").