The Jing Fong Restaurant in Elizabeth Street, NY

This restaurant was the only one we chose with the travel guide, my travel companion: I usually have a good flair and we don't rely on travel guides for food. I had a bit of a bad feeling in the entrance as there was an escalator, for some reason an escalator in the entrance of restaurant sounds wrong (you need the exercise when you come out!) Anyway, inside the restaurant, the space was huge, seemingly the place is used for big family events. The dishes were similar to those I can get in the UK, only they were presented differently on the menu, with complicated formula. The waiters found it difficult to understand us as their English was not too good, although I don't find this an issue. A glance in the room told me that nobody amongst the customers was chinese. Huh ho... The place was well lit at least..

Anyway, we order some duck tongues: We’d expected the tongues to be pan fried but they came in a thick batter which spoiled it a bit for us.

My companion ordered hairy taro balls which she liked although they weren't the best she'd ever eaten. I am not very much into deep fried so again that was a bit heavy for me.

Then we got the steamed scallop dumpling I'd order which were rather nice and fresh.

Of course I'd asked the waiter if they had Xiao long bao, and they did! They were ok, but definitely not freshly made, and the dough was to thick, with not enough soup inside.

The shark fin dumplings were quite interesting, i'd never seen them made that way. Not my favorite, but good.

There was no egg tarts for dessert (ohhhhh noooo!) so I ordered the only dessert that seemed healthy enough, which turned out to be coconut jelly with canned fruits, not very exciting really.

I suppose the fun bit came at the end since in Britain, we rarely get a fortune cookie at the end of the meal; orange quarter and mini desserts during the new year, but no cookie indeed, for it's an american invention. I must say I rather like it (the message, not the biscuit!)

It was interesting to note that in American restaurants, you don't need to order water, tea, they are brought to the table automatically as part of the service. The odd bit come with the bill, as you never know what you will have to pay: you have to calculate the tax on top then the service from 15-20% upwards. I don't like counting so I found that rather painful, and remain attached to the European way where everything is included and you don't have to worry about it. Also, the dollars come in small bills so you have to put plenty of them!

So the verdict: we should have followed our instinct and gone to the little restaurant at the corner of Elisabeth and Pell Street with all the pigs heads and ducks hanging in the window which emitted such a gorgeous smell. The standard in Manchester Chinese restaurants is rather high as I discovered when I went to HongKong, so I am a bit demanding. However, we don't have any Vietnamese restaurant and I was very pleased to find many of them in New York, even though they -again - tasted different frrom the ones in France. The other funny thing is New York is that when you come out of restaurants in the evenings, the pavement is full of bin bags! which conforted us in our thoughts we hadn't expressed them till then: the meal had been a bit rubbish really... (it might well be a British expression hum...).

But well, that was the only failed food experience in NY, the rest was awesome, I just wanted say like everywhere else, after all, it's a lot down to how one choses the restaurant. And our lesson that night was: do not believe the travel guides for food!!

Tai Wu Review

Tai Wu is a very big Chinese restaurant in Manchester UK, which was created initially with the chinese student population in mind - Manchester campus represents 1/3 of Manchester in terms of area - but it is also only a few hundred yards from Chinatown, on Oxford Road.
I was fortunate to visit the restaurant before it was finished with a group of architects, I could then see the gigantic kitchen. The ground floor is for proper restaurant food: dim sum and menu (also a special Szichuan menu in the evenings), and downstairs is a decent buffet (but then again just a buffet). Whenever you go you'll find it is packed, so get there before 12h30 during the week if you want to avoid the queues!

Since it opened, I have been many many times, for lunch, and a few times in the evening, since it is a stone throw from my office (yes yes I'm very lucky I know!). It makes a very reasonnable lunch with their half price dim sum from 12-4pm, usually we order 3 dim sum per person and a chinese tea and it comes up to about 6 pounds, a bargain. the more at the table the merrier although 3 is a fab number as the dim sum come in either 3 or 4 dumplings.

They have the classic har kao and sui Mai of course and a few other less commoin dumplings with scallops, cuttlefish, shark fin,

Sui Mai (above)

However, for Xiao Long Bao, you have to get there at the week end:

Xiao Long Bao (above) - soup filled dumpling, mind your shirt! -

Also, the week end lunches are more fun as you get the trolley ladies, who roam amongst the table to propose various dim sum although you can also order from the menu, or whatever is not on the menu either (that's a Chinese thing: even if it's not on the menu, chances are, they'll still have it. crazy and great!)

The trolley ladies

One of my favorites is the steamed chicken feet and minispare ribs on rice, not everybody's taste I know..

Steamed chicken feet and mini spare ribs on rice

I also go mad on the steamed aubergines dumplings and beef dumplings with ginger and spring onions.

steamed aubergines dumplings (filling is fish paste)

Below is the beef and mushroom dumplings:

beef and mushroom dumplings

And to crown the meal, the egg tarts, served warm. they are definitely not as good cold, so make sure you do get them warm. A few times, I could not get them as they ran out and believe me, it is veeeery disappointing...

Egg tarts

Egg tart

Also, I discovered via a friend of mine a great tea that makes a change from the jasmine tea usually served, called shiao mei (it's a more sbtled and perfumed tea), but I can't get it every time due to my pronounciation. Chinese languages are not very forgiving, and depending on the waiter's ears, you might or might not get the name through. but if you can get it, it's well worth it. I bet they have other types of tea, but unless you're chinese, it's hard to know...

Voila. I don't need to convince you, the restaurant is already packed!

Source: me of course!

Hong Kong Style egg tarts

Egg tart, originally uploaded by Christ tell.

When I go for dim sum, I usually get the egg tarts at the end of the meal, and they come still warm, with this crazy smooth gooey consistency and these gorgeous texture, smell and flavour, brittle puff pastry , aaaaaaah.. They are not too sweet either..I know, I am raving, but hey, they ARE gorgeous.
So I wanted to try them at home. No idea how they are made. Ah. Let's google it. humm, the ones I want to make are those that people take pictures of at the bakeries and restaurants hence no recipe.
On the wiki I could find a recipe for Portuguese egg tarts, but no, not what I want..

You know me, I would nott have stopped at that, so yes I improvised!
And guess what? the result was rather close, I'm very proud of myself.Yes it must be said.

So I prepared a french pastry, and also used puff pastry I bought (never done puff pastry, somehow it clashes with the title of my blog..).

for 6 egg tarts:

French pastry (for the equivalent of one big tart = twelve little tarts):
- 30 to 40g soften butter (no British butter allowed there, please use the French one, they taste very different!)
- 250g flour (Coeliacs use soya flour)
- 1tblsp sugar
- hot water (about an espresso cup worth)

crumble the butter into flour and sugar, when homogeneous, add the water, and work into a smooth ball, but do not knead and work as least as possible: the more you work it the hardest it will come out once cooked.
Cut and place in moulds.

The egg tart filling:
- 1 egg
- soya milk (ahem, no I did not measure, sorry... but think in proportion more than you would use in a quiche)
- vanilla essence, a few drops

Mix and pour in the pastry

Place in oven at 200 degrees for 15 minutes, then watch for the next 5 minutes, I figured from the look of the egg tarts I get at the restaurants that the filling should not cook too much, and the tart should look glazed.

Eat whilst it's hot please!
These egg tarts are still different from the ones I had in the restaurants, despite being close, and after making them I kept looking on the internet.
I fould this recipe(by Easy Recipe) and that one (by My Kitchen Snippet)and the Portuguese ones (by Leite's culinaria) that seemed closest. I will try it another time to see how they compare.
In any case, getting the puff/flaky pastry like I like it is possibly mission impossible...
At first glance it seems a bit more complicated/long. Anyway, if you have a recipe for it, please pretty please tell me!

Verdict: I will make these again, because they were so simple and tasty, and yes, the consistency was great...

Baked fragrant tofu

When I was in Singapore, I tasted a dish called fragrant tofu: a slab of hot silken tofu covered with a meat and herbs topping. I absolutely loved it, it was like a savoury creme brulee!

So recently I have bought some silken tofu, and it stayed in my fridge until I was reminded of my intent by an article about baked tofu I read on the internet. So my intents gave birth to a cross between fragrant and baked, hence the title!
And today, I wanted to eat something healthy and tasty, easy, and most of all satisfying.
Hence I knocked my own version of fragrant tofu with what I had in my fridge and baking it because I fancied it caramelised:

- 1 slab silken tofu
- 1 big slice of ham chopped in small squares
- 1/2 big green chilli chopped
- 1 spring onion chopped
- 1 teaspoon full of chopoped ginger
- 1 dash oyster sauce
- 2 tblspn sesame oil

Place the tofu on a small oven dish, mix all the other ingredients together and cover the tofu with it.
Place in the oven for 1/2h at 200 degC
I did not have time, but marinating the tofu in the mix first could have worked really well too, if you have the time. For vegetarian or vegans, skip the ham and replace by vegges.

Also, the same dish could be steamed, and I reckon it would be pretty tasty too!...


Source: my own food meanderings

Chicken Gow Gees

These are the first Chinese dumplings I've made, and I am proud to say, they tasted Chinese! I found the recipe in one of my Australian Women's weekly booklet which I think are great (the same recipes on their website are not as good ;) and I have taken some liberties with it to improve time and taste:
Ingredients:
400g lean chicken
2 shitake mushrooms
5 chinese chive (or green onions if you don't have) 2 cloves garlic, crushed 1 Thumbed-sized piece fresh ginger, grated ¼ teaspoon five-spice powder 2 tablespoons hoi sin sauce 1 teaspoon sesame oil 1 egg Gyoza wrappers or Har Gau wrapper made from scratch if you fancy trying that (the recipe says wanton or spring rolls wrappers)

For the dipping sauce:
1 tablespoon of hoi sin (the recipe said char siu, but since you've already got some hoi sin there..)
1 tablespoon of light soy sauce
3 tablespoons of water (adjust to liking)
6 fresh birds eye chili slices (the recipe says 2 tablespoon of sweet chili sauce)
and I like to add one table spoon of oyster sauce + a small teaspoon of golden syrup or sugar).

Mince the chicken with a knife not toooo finely. Add the finely chopped shitake mushrooms (you will have soaked them for 20 min in boiling water, and discarded the stems), chives,garlic and ginger, then the hoi sin sauce, five spice, toasted sesame oil and and the egg. Mix well with your hands. (I scrapped the breadcrumbs from the recipe - breadcrumbs especially from a packet are evil!!)

Take the wrapper as shown in the photo below and fill the middle with the mixture, pushing so that the wrapper drops a bit between our fingers to create a well, then close the wrapper by pinching it at regular (and tactical) intervals. (There, the original recipe says to roll the mix in balls with a spoon and place the balls in the fridge, covered, for 30 minutes, to brush the wrapper with water and pleat it around the ball you will have placed in the middle)

Place the gow gees in your steamer - make sure to place them on one of these Teflon baking sheet that you will have cut to a round-ish shape, and leave them to cook for ten minutes.
In the meantime, prepare the sauce by mixing the ingredients mentioned above. There you are, your gow gees are gowgeous! ;) It was long for me to write the thing down, but it takes no time in the kitchen, and I think looks impressive enough - who actually MAKES dumplings huh? even my Chinese friends buy them ready made from the supermarket.... But you know what's in these and you know they are healthy!

Source: The Australian's women weekly's 'Chinese favorites' booklet. They also have a recipe on their website, there.

And here's what the gow gees looked like in the original recipe: