Baguettes & Baozi

One-Pan Wonder

2009-05-11T19:46:00.004+08:00

It was a good fluke. I had four medium-sized potatoes, a head of cabbage, thin-sliced porkchops, and a red onion. In my head I ran through the possible cooking methods pairing these ingredients together. Whatever it was going to be, it was going to be Eastern European. I don't want to claim that I can cook German food, or Polish for that matter, because I can't. Like I said, it was a fluke.

I sliced the cabbage, potatoes, and onion all into thin strips (a little bigger for the cabbage, smaller for the onion, so everything cooked evenly). I also diced four cloves of garlic, because garlic = love.

Turner browned the chops in a frying pan over high heat and then removed them and moved aside so I could cook the vegetables. I first sauteed the onion over low heat until it softened, then added the garlic and fried together for a bit. In went the potato to soften a bit along with a cup of chicken stock and some fennel. After spreading that evenly over the pan, I dumped in the cabbage and placed the pork chops on top of that. The layers were covered with a lid and the heat turned down to low for everything to simmer. The cabbage cooks down and the pork chops cook through in about 20-30 minutes. (I forgot to time it.) Everything gets salt and pepper at its appropriate cooking stage (when it is the focus of the pan).

What came out at the end were tender chops and soft cabbage and potatoes in a sauce that, were there more, would make a fabulous soup. This was a great meal to finish out a long rainy day, and I would definitely make it again as it is a one-pan wonder.

A Bite in Time

2009-05-10T20:39:00.003+08:00

Just a brief post tonight because I'm tired. We went out to dinner with Turner's co-worker/Frisbee partner Ying. She's a very sweet girl and fun to talk with. We went to a Western restaurant near their office called Lisa's. Decor-wise it was very modern and un-Chinese. We went mainly for the hamburgers, which Turner claims are the best in Qingdao. I had to see if they lived up to their reputation.

We all ordered burgers, creative right? I also had a glass of white wine, which was surprisingly drinkable. A plus for the restaurant, the burgers all arrived at about the same time. At other establishments, there has been a 30 minute lag time between entrees. Everything looked appropriate but something in the flavor bothered me until I figured out that it tasted like Italian sausage! They must have added pork to the beef and used oregano and/or fennel.

Overall, I would give the restaurant one thumb up. To bestow the second thumb would require me sampling more of their food.

This Little Piggy

2009-05-09T08:39:00.006+08:00

It feels like summer in Qingdao. With the sun high in the sky by 8am and the temperature nearing 80 degrees by midmorning, I have less desire to cook than when the weather is cold and dreary. I don't want to spend hours in the kitchen when it's perfect weather to be outside. Nor do I want to stand over a hot wok or leave the oven on for hours.

I knew it was time to cook something though. It had been a few days since I had blogged about food, and I was tired of eating out at restaurants. Yesterday, I went grocery shopping for the first time in over a week. With no plan in mind, I just wandered the store trying to find something to spark my interest. I bought a chicken to cook this weekend, but knew I wouldn't have time for that yesterday because Turner wanted to play frisbee when he got home from work. Glancing over the meat case, I spied some pork ribs that looks perfect for a quick bake in the oven with barbecue sauce. We gave away our little Weber grill when we moved apartments last year, otherwise I would have grilled them outside for that extra flavor only charcoal can impart.

I made some brownies when I got home from shopping because it's always good to have something chocolatey on hand.

Then I made a quick barbecue sauce with soy sauce, ketchup, molasses, honey, a little rice vinegar, cumin, salt, and chili powder. Any combination of flavors like these, be it tomato paste and brown sugar also, make a wonderful sauce, and much healthier than anything out of a bottle.

I poured half the sauce on the ribs in the baking dish and put them in a 400 degree oven covered in foil for 30 minutes. After that, the foil came off and the rest of the sauce poured over the top to bake for another 30 minutes. The ribs are done when they have a nice dark crust and the meat has shrunk a little on the bone. We had Mexican rice (which I now love, maybe because of the MSG in the chicken boullion) and green beans alongside. The ribs were sticky and dee-licious.

On another note, I bought a container of dried peach chunks and this morning was craving some scones to go with my coffee. What to do when you crave scones? Make scones of course! I quickly threw the ingrediants together and started to cut the dough into triangles when I remembered that I forgot the sugar! It had already been a long morning because I went for a run before having coffee--what a really, really bad idea. I dumped the unbaked scones back in the mixing bowl and quickly mixed in the sugar, reformed them into triangles, and put them in the oven. The cardinal rule of scones is not to overmix, so I thought these might be too tough due to the extra mixing.

They weren't photogenic by any means, but man did they hit the spot. They actually came out pretty well!

This is a good morning for me... coffee, scone, and food blogging. Now I just have to get off the couch.

Here's the recipe should you want to whip up a batch yourself. It's super easy.

Buttermilk Scones with Dried Fruit

2 1/2 cups flour
2 teaspoons basking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup butter, cut into small cubes
2/3 cup sugar
3/4 cup chopped dried fruit (apricots, peaches, craisins, raisins...)
1 large egg
1/2 buttermilk (I cheat and use 1/2 cup of milk and a bit of lemon juice or white vinegar)
1 tablespoon lemon zest (optional but really nice)

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Prepare "buttermilk" so acid can react while you get everything else ready.

2. Mix flour, baking powder, and baking soda in mixing bowl. Add the butter and mix with hands, pastry cutter, or mixer until it's in small pieces. Add fruit and sugar (and zest). Beat egg into milk and then add to dry ingredients. Mix quickly until just combined into a rouch dough and turn out onto floured surface. Pat into 9-inch circle and cut into wedges. (I usually make about six, but they're big so adjust for your preference.)

3. Bake 12-15 minutes until tops are golden brown. Enjoy warm from the oven (with jam if you prefer).

You Say Tomato...

2009-05-04T20:14:00.006+08:00

My apologies, loyal readers (the few out there), my blog postings have gone amiss due to too much fun. If there was ever any excuse, this has to be the best because who can argue with too much fun? Either I have not been home enough in the past few days to cook, or I just had too much else to do, so I have had nothing worthy to write about.

Today, however, the tides turned. Today I made a loaf of bread, lemon yogurt cake, salsa, tortillas, Mexican rice, and burritos. And I taught this morning, ran four miles, and tried to grade grammar exams. A full day despite only two hours of real, paid work. (On a side note, today is China Youth Day, so my students got the afternoon off to do whatever youth do. I wouldn't know; I'm not one of them.)

I was supposed to grade exams today. I got through ten. I made a cake instead. Which do you think is better?

This morning I intended to make spaghetti for dinner. Then the temperature neared seventy degrees and I did not feel like making sauce, so I shifted to omelets--easy, quick--until Turner sent a text saying he had eggs for lunch. Third time's a charm, right? I thought about the two cans of refried beans in the fridge and half bottle of Patron tequila--and our two months left in China--and decided to make burritos.

Yesterday I saw beautiful orange tomatoes still on their vine sitting outside our local fruit stall. I needed something to use them in, so I decided on an orange tomato salsa to go in the rice and bean burritos. I diced the tomatoes along with some hot Hungarian pepper, onion, and garlic. Salt and cumin rounded out the spices, and lime juice brightened everything. After the fresh salsa sat for awhile, I cooked it briefly in a frying pan: one, to save us from getting sick; two, to bring the flavors together a bit; and three, to take the bite out of the garlic and onion. The salsa added a note of freshness to the burritos.

For the rice, I made a cup of plain white rice in our microwave rice cooker. Once finished, I put it in a sauce pan and added a cup of onion and a bit of garlic I had browned in a frying pan, a cup of fresh diced tomatoes (tomatoes are rockin' this time of year), cumin, oregano, chili powder, and salt. The rice turned out moist and sticky, robust with flavors of sun-baked Mexico.

Turner and I whipped up a batch of burrito sized tortillas, made more difficult by the white russian I was drinking and Turner's beer-in-a-bag that he brought home (yes, it does exist).

We had grated cheese, cilantro, hot sauce, refried beans (re-refried by Turner in lard that he keeps in the fridge), and the Mexican rice to build into burritos.

The only thing that could possibly make the burritos better would be avocado. It's not too shabby when the only thing missing from our Mexican repast is a difficult-to-ship, expensive, finnacky fruit. The Patron made up for it, I suppose.

I ate two burritos. They were amazing.

Shandong Tour

2009-04-30T16:11:00.002+08:00

Here is a brief, and I mean brief because Turner took over 400 pictures, showcase from last weekend's whirlwind tour around our province.

We went to the Weifang Kite Factory, which was pretty cool. I bought a dragonfly kite!

This is the whole group outside the kite factory. This was day one, you can only imagine what we looked like after an average of five hours a day on a bus.

The next day we went to Qufu, the hometown of Confucious. Turner and I had already been last year, but we went to a few new sights.

Like the Confucius Forest... the most natural green space I have ever seen in China.

Just look at all that green!

On Sunday, our last day, we went to the top of Tai Shan.

Turner carried a can of Tsingtao beer to the top and posed next to the sign that reads something like, "Confucius was here."

Hot Curry Lovin'

2009-04-29T21:15:00.005+08:00

Occasionally I will ponder, at 7 o'clock in the morning mind you, what I'm going to cook for dinner. If I happen to ask Turner then or at any other point before the evening, he will say that he doesn't know because he's not hungry. I think that since I cook the food and have to put something together, I tend to think about the preparations ahead of time. Turner is more likely to throw something together based on what's in the house or forgo cooking altogether and go get some street food.

This morning I was at a loss. I was tired of my repertory of recipes and didn't have the energy for completely unknown culinary territory, so I decided to do a variation on my regular curry recipe. Since I had a can of lentils and a can of tomatoes, I Googled "chicken lentil curry" and found some relevant recipes to used for inspiration. For dishes like stews, chilies, and curries, I tend to just toss things together instead of measuring precise amounts.

In a wok, I sauteed the basics to start: first the onion, then the garlic and ginger.

I added the boneless, skinless chicken that I had cut into small bits and the curry powder so that everything could get coated and the spices could toast to bring out their aromas and flavors. Then I squeezed the whole tomatoes from the can and added the juice along with two cups of chicken broth (from bouillon), a bay leaf, and three dried chilies.

Once this had simmered away for about 20 minutes, I added the rinsed lentils and let it all cook for about another 30 minutes. (I had to turn it off because Turner was late coming home from work.)

After Turner got home, had a shower, and made cocktails, I reheated the curry and then poured in almost one cup of yogurt. This adds a nice thickness/creaminess to the curry and can mellow out the heat of the chilies if it's overpowering. The curry gets ladled alongside white rice and steamed spinach. Oh, it was tasty. I'm already looking forward to eating the leftovers tomorrow. Like chili and stew, curry is usually better the second day.

All the World's an Egg

2009-04-28T07:05:00.003+08:00

So simple, yet so perfect in its infinite forms. Eggs have represented so much throughout history, as a luxury, as a staple, as a microcosmic image of the world around us. Life is contained within a single egg.

Over the weekend, Turner and I ate a lot of Chinese food. Much of it oily and salty. For all their cuisine's fame, the Chinese rarely serve food that actually tastes only of that food. There is a sauce for everything. A few times, we have had people over for dinner and served a simple steamed vegetable, like green beans, and they are amazed at how sweet they are. Usually, beans are stir-fried in oil and garlic and sauce. And hence taste like oil and garlic and sauce.

For our first meal back home, we wanted something familiar. I did not have much in the refrigerator but a bag of eggs, so I thought that omelets would be heaven. I bought some spinach and an onion, which were subsequently softened in some olive oil to use as filling along with some mozzarella cheese (the only kind we had on hand).

When people asks who cooks in our household, I always say that I do but Turner makes the coffee. He also makes a killer omelet. It's one of the dishes I always leave up to him.

He whisks two eggs and two tablespoons of water together, adds some salt and pepper, and pours it into a lightly oiled, preheated frying pan. This much I can muster. It's the actually "omeletting" that evades me. As far as I can tell, he scrapes the outside in to the center until it starts to set, then when it's almost done he adds the fillings and flips one side over the other. We had fresh bread with jam and butter on the side. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of the finished product because I wolfed mine down in a couple minutes.

Innocents Abroad

2009-04-24T13:09:00.002+08:00

Turner and I are off on a whirlwind tour of Shandong Province, mostly to places we have already been but the school is paying this time. I will surely have plenty to blog about when we return, what with the requisite banquets and local "delicacies."

On another note, I made Chicken an Broccoli Pizzas with Garlic last night for dinner. They reminded me of Carmine's Restaurant in Buffalo. Miss B will know what I'm referring too.

Portrait of a Chocolate Cake

2009-04-22T17:58:00.004+08:00

It all started with Google. Doesn't everything these days seem to start with Google? Well, I was chatting with Turner, who was at work, when I realized that my image on Google Talk has been a penguin for too long. Out of the sparse options Google provides for your image, I chose the chocolate cake. Who wouldn't choose a chocolate cake when given the option of that or a frog?

My new clip art in place, I chatted away, always keeping that cake in the corner of my eye. Subconsciously it started telling me that I wanted chocolate cake. Have you ever gotten off your lazy butt and baked and frosted a chocolate cake because a piece of clip art told you to? Now I have.

I found this simple recipe on a fellow food blog for an Easy One-Layer Chocolate Cake. I was in no mood to mess around with layers or fillings. I just wanted cake!

It was as easy as ripping open a box of cake mix and adding the wet ingredients. Honestly, I don't know why anyone bakes with boxes anymore. The real deal is almost foul proof, especially considering that the cake was baked in my toaster oven. So if you've never made a cake from scratch, try this one. Your skills will astound you and also your loved ones who are also fond of chocolate cake.

For the frosting, I followed the beat of my own drummer. I melted a few ounces of butter, a bar of Dove dark chocolate, and a bit of sugar. After it came off the heat, I sprinkled in some corn starch because it wasn't thickening like I wanted. What can I say, I'm impatient. That's why I can't sew. While the frosting didn't turn out like buttercream or ganache, it gave the cake an extra boost and a glistening topcoat. I must say, this cake has some serious sex appeal.

Immediately after I poured the frosting over the cake, I cut into it. My reasoning was that the late afternoon light would make for a great picture, and I wanted to eat it. So with a shot glass full of the leftover milk, my corner piece of cake posed for its portrait.

To Market

2009-04-21T21:35:00.009+08:00

After attending our university's annual sports meeting (really just a school-wide track and field event), Turner and I walked around the old campus area known as Yushan. We were looking for some barbecue and stumbled upon a bustling market area down one of the side streets. I want to share some pictures to show the variety and quality of the produce in China that you can find just about everywhere, though certain things, like watermelons and strawberries, have their seasons.

Watermelons.

Green onions, baby leeks, any guesses?

Walnuts.

Various grains for sale.

Radishes.

Lajiao and huajiao--the spices of life.

The sweetest beans you've ever seen.

Can you imagine seeing such a pile of grape tomatoes at your local grocery store?

Mangoes by the dozens!

The Chinese know how to do peanuts.

White Radishes

Papayas

A Leeky Day

2009-04-20T21:08:00.010+08:00

April in Qingdao fulfills the stereotype of spring--rain and cold one day, hot and humid the next, windy after that. Yesterday evening, the heavens dropped a deluge on us. It poured. And roofs are supposed to keep everything under them dry, right? Well, at the top of our stairs, above the seventh floor landing is a hatch that opens onto the roof. For some reason, the tenants on the seventh floor decided to remove the hatch cover, providing ventilation and a very leaky hole. The water drizzled down onto our landing on the sixth floor and continued to make it's way downstairs until it eventually dried out on the third floor.

Today fared little better. It started off breezy and rainy, turned cold and windy, and finished the day off downright tempestuous. I almost had to yell in class so the students could hear me over the howling wind. Tomorrow promises to be sunny and warm. So there you go; spring in a nutshell.

The foul weather put me in the mood to try this macaroni and cheese recipe that I have been saving for awhile. It takes just the right day to justify cooking with two cups of milk and almost a pound of cheese. Well, today was the day.

The recipe for Baked Penne with Farmhouse Cheddar and Leeks is from March's issue of Bon Appetit. I halved the amounts to fit in my little baking dish inside my little toaster oven. Luckily, I had almost a whole block of Vintage cheddar that is crumbly and pungent, like I think a "farmhouse" cheddar would be. It's the one decent cheese we buy regularly here in China, and it imported from Australia. Maybe someday the Chinese will come to appreciate good cheese, but I think it's far in the future. Leeks, however, they have in abundance.

Anyway, the recipe is fairly straightforward, using eggs as a thickener instead of a roux. The flour is stirred into the sweated leeks as the base for the cheese sauce, which then gets mixed in with a beaten egg and tossed with the pasta. Some Dijon mustard and hot sauce round out the dish, lifting it from the usual heaviness of a cheesy casserole. My own adaptation is to toss some panko breadcrumbs with olive oil, salt, oregano, and cayenne pepper and sprinkle this over the top. I love having the crunch on top of the soft goodness of the mac and cheese.

While the casserole baked, I made a quick rice pudding with our leftover rice from yesterday's leftover Chinese dinner. If you ever have any white rice sitting in the fridge (possibly because your husband doesn't want to waste anything, even 10 cents of cooked rice), then you should definitely learn a basic rice pudding recipe.

The one that works for me (and I love to eat) seems simpler than others I have come across. I merely mix up some dry soy milk powder with hot water. You can certainly use fresh soy milk, but we don't have that luxury in China. For about two cups of cooked rice, I start with two cups of milk and about half a cup of white sugar. Stir everything together over medium heat until it's gently simmering. Then you can add flavorings. I'm trying to use up my whole spices so I dump in a few cinnamon sticks, some star anise, and slivers of crystallized ginger. To westernize it, I add some ground nutmeg and vanilla. This all cooks until the rice is the consistency you like, usually very soft. You had to stir it occasionally to prevent it from burning to the bottom of your pot and you may have to add hot water every now and then if it thickens too quickly (which will depend on the type of rice you're using).

I prefer rice pudding to oatmeal actually, though I know it's not nearly as good for you. Sprinkle some cinnamon on top (and sweetened condensed milk if you're feeling decadent). It's great warm or cold, morning or night.

In Search of Pain Perdu

2009-04-19T12:06:00.006+08:00

Turner and I were going to run to McDonalds this morning for their 10RMB breakfast special (egg sandwich, hash brown, and a coffee), but we forgot that they stop serving it at 9am. By the time we had finished our morning cup of coffee, it was too late. Someday we'll do it, just have to wait for the right day. Also, today dawned cloudy and cool, providing even less incentive to get out of bed early enough for the breakfast run.

After my mid-morning run around our university, I decided to use our last wedge of bread and last egg to make french toast. This was not to be just any french toast though. Last year my mom mailed me a cooking magazine that had a recipe for Swiss-style French Toast. I think it was Swiss anyway. The country of origin doesn't matter too much. All you need to know is that this makes a regular Sunday breakfast into a sweet treat.

Cut into cubes any day-old French bread. Challah or brioche would work wonderfully for this; however, they require a few days prep time in themselves. I used the bread I bake every other day (the no-knead bread).

In a bowl, whisk together an egg (for two people, use more eggs for more bread/people), a few tablespoons of milk, 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla, some cinnamon and nutmeg. (My measurements for many recipes are really just "a shake of this" and "squirt of that," but I try to make some things reproduceable.) Anyway, at this point you're basically making French toast. The only difference so far is cubing the bread instead of leaving it in slices. Soak the bread in the egg mixture for a bit, tossing to make sure every piece is soaked through.

Then heat a few pats of butter in a frying pan and toss in your eggy bread. Fry it in butter on all sides until it's golden brown. Essentially, you bring it to the stage where it looks like French toast ready to eat.

Now comes the special part. Add another tablespoon of butter to the pan and sprinkle a 3-4 tablespoons of white sugar over the cubes of bread. Toss everything together in the pan so the bread is coated with butter and sugar. Now you are caramelizing the outside of the bread, so cook it for a few more minutes until the sugar crystals have dissolved and the bread has a deep brown caramel coating.

This is best eaten warm, obviously, so the caramel doesn't stick to your teeth as much. Turner and I drizzled what we have left of our maple syrup over the top. Needless to say, this is nowhere near healthy as it has a few tablespoons of butter and plenty of sugar, but it is delicious. We had some apple slices alongside so maybe the doctor will forgive us our trepasses.

Remains of the Pudding

2009-04-17T21:01:00.006+08:00

Eggs, cream, milk. What to do, what to do... Given my recent successes with pudding, I decided to use up the rest of our heavy cream in a luscious vanilla pudding--the same one that I made for the party a couple weeks back. Sinfully simple, this pudding must be loaded with fat calories, but considering that I rarely eat dairy products, must also supply me with my required intake of calcium.

I used the recipe from March's Gourmet without all the fuss with candied pecans or bourbon. Thankfully though, I do still have some Watkins Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla Extract brought from the States. Along with nutmeg, vanilla is one of the ingredients that is impossible to find in any Asian grocery store. Their aromatic qualities would label them as medicine, as ginger, cinnamon, and cumin are all spices that Chinese laud for their homeopathic uses.

In addition to my puny bottle, I have a large bottle of vanilla extract given to us by our former colleagues and friends from last year--former colleagues, still friends. As you can see, I use both of them: the bourbon vanilla for when the vanilla flavor is prevalent, in puddings mostly; the other in things like cookies, where it plays a supporting role.

The pudding set in the fridge for a few hours before I grabbed a glass and a tiny spoon--because it is best enjoyed in small spoonfuls. Only once I had emptied the glass did I think of taking a picture. My apologies; you can only enjoy the remains of my pudding.

A Chili Day in China

2009-04-15T20:12:00.005+08:00

March's lion decided to rear its ferocious head in April. We woke up this morning to thunder and lightening, a cold wind, and steady drizzle. But, you know what they say, April showers bring... Why is spring so full of cliches? I think we try to wax poetic about all the new life budding, bursting, blossoming, and blooming around us. Today brought a nice dose of moisture to brighten up the brown landscape. It also brought cold weather reminiscent of February. Cold weather makes me think of two things--wool sweaters and chili.

I paid visits to both our little school store for vegetables (and got ripped off) and Jusco for less common items (like Tide detergent and cheese). I used to make chili and spaghetti sauce from cans of stewed/diced/chopped/etc. tomatoes. In the US, you can get them just about any way now except upside down. I've seen cans that even purport to have all the spices needed for chili or spaghetti sauce. While easy in a pinch and cost effective when tomato prices skyrocket in the winter, in China, these cans are a high-priced commodity, shipped in from capitalist countries overseas. With tomatoes available fairly reasonably year-round, I've taken to making sauces from a bag of fresh tomatoes. It's really just one extra step, cutting up tomatoes instead of cutting open a can, and saves you from chemicals, preservatives, and that can that's been sitting on the supermarket shelf for two years.

While the tomatoes simmer in their own liquid, I brown and season ground beef with salt and chili powder. Dump that into the tomatoes, then sautee chopped onions, carrots, and green pepper in some oil, followed by diced garlic once the onions have softened. Though not traditionally a chili vegetable, I think the carrot adds a nice non-acidic sweetness and lends some brightness and vitamins. If you like chili that is simply beef, or beef and beans, my recipe is not for you. It's chock full of chunks of vegetables and tomatoes.

Just before the vegetables are done in the frying pan, grind some fresh cumin seeds and toss those with the vegetables along with a good dose (I mean a couple tablespoons) of chili powder and some salt. It's best to warm the cumin and chili powder in a frying pan to enhance their flavor and aromas before submerging the spices in the tomato sauce .

Now that everything is happily bubbling away in the tomato sauce, forget about the chili for awhile. When you remember, or catch a whiff of that fabulous goodness, give it a stir. Once it's been simmering for about 40 minutes, it's time to get out the secret ingredients. I learned this trick years ago from my Aunt Georgene actually. We had chili at her home and it was fantastic! Her secret, which I've adopted, is to add a tablespoon each of brown sugar and cocoa powder. It may sound strange, but it will take your chili to the next level or even out of this world, and also deepen the red of the tomatoes.

After an hour or so, add a can of beans (or two, depending on how much gas your significant other/family can handle), any kind you like, though I usually use red kidney beans or black beans. Let these cook in for about 20 minutes and you're done. Chili is so simple and soooo satisfying, especially on a blustery day.

Turner and I like to mix in grated cheese and cilantro and have tortillas alongside for dunking. My grandma used to make a classic Midwestern dish of chili mac, adding macaroni to the finished product and a good helping of cheese. I like chili just about any way but have yet to find someone who makes it better than me. I think my mom comes pretty close though.

Blossoms and Buddies

2009-04-12T09:21:00.008+08:00

Qingdao is abloom. This is the peak weekend for cherry and peach blossoms as soon the trees will be green instead of pink and white. At Zhongshan Park, Cherry Blossom Lane is bursting with white flowers, but my favorite trees were in Chengyang at our old school. We met up with some former students and wandered the grounds.
For lunch, we went to Jack and Qiu Qiu's apartment, which is very near the campus. We have been friends with them since our first months in China, back in 2007. Unfortunately, we do not see much of them anymore since we moved downtown to Qingdao. It was great to see them, made even better because Jack cooked lunch. He makes some of the best Chinese food we've had here. It's delicious, pleasing to look at and eat! He is a chef at a local hotel, but we have the honor of eating his food in his and Qiu Qiu's home. The food is always excellent.

A lot of Chinese cooking demands precise knife skills, which Jack deftly exemplifies in all his dishes. It's a pleasure to watch him cook. He also always has a smile on his face. For lunch we had a spicy cucumber salad, fried pork (which I love!), a dish with potatoes and peppers, stir fried eggplant, fruit salad, and pasta with meat sauce. This is the first time Jack served Western food, and I think it was a success. The sauce was fairly authentic except he included cinnamon sticks, which gave the sauce an extra aromatic jolt. I give him a lot of credit for even trying though, as many Chinese seem to be fascinated by Western cuisine.

We love seeing our friends and wish we could see each other more often.

What You Can Buy for $25

2009-04-10T07:20:00.005+08:00

One of the things that I will miss about China is the price of food. I went grocery shopping the other day and spent 150 RMB, or about $25.

Here's what I came home with: one whole chicken, pack of sliced pork chops, a bunch of spinach, two lemons, four kiwis, six potatoes, two packs of snow peas, aluminum foil, parchment paper, two-pack of sponges, soy sauce, can of tomatoes, brown sugar, and a large jar of CoffeeMate.

Do Blonds Really Have More Fun?

2009-04-09T08:12:00.008+08:00

While perusing the culinary blogosphere yesterday, I read about Use Real Butter's adaptation of Smitten Kitchen's Blondie recipe, taken from Mark Bittman's book How to Cook Everything (which I will certainly have to pick up when I am back in the States). The pictures and uncomplicatedness (did I just make up a word??) of the recipe made me eager to bake a batch. Plus, we were out of sweet stuff to eat. The only ingredient I was missing was an egg, so I hopped off like a spring bunny to the store and bought a bag of lovely brown eggs. I decided to add chopped milk chocolate, toasted walnuts, and some peanut butter, just to make them more sinfully delicious.

They bake for only 25 minutes and take half as much sugar and butter as cookies. In addition, I don't have to keep traipsing back to the kitchen to scoop and bake batch after batch of cookies. This is my new favorite!!

Out of the oven, they were warm and brown, so of course I couldn't resist cutting out the corner. The bite was chewy and toothsome with nuts and chocolate, and--get this--tasted like cookie dough! Like when you have a bowl of cookie dough and you can't resist scooping spoonfuls into your mouth but you have that guilty feeling because of the raw egg and depriving everyone of freshly baked cookies because you're eating all the dough... No more!

And, as if they couldn't get more salivating, they taste like Hello Dollies, those butter and sweetened condensed milk laden bar cookies that have like 8,000 calories per slice. I think the melted butter and brown sugar almost caramelize so they have a tang of butterscotch.

I'd have to agree that, in this case, blonds do have more fun, but I am sure that I will be back craving brownies in no time.

If I could eat dessert for dinner, I would. However, I bought a nice whole fryer chicken at the grocery store. This was the first time I saw a whole chicken that had some plump to her (though not like those Plump N Juicy chickens). As an extra bonus, she had already been decapitated, saving me that painful step. Most of the time, ducks and chickens are sold with their heads. I suppose so you can be sure you're getting a real fowl, since so many things in China are fake. I have to admit that I am not quite brave enough to take a cleaver to a chicken neck and Turner wasn't home to do the job.

Is a chicken butt joke really even necessary?

I did however take a cleaver to the breast bone to butterfly her because I didn't want to spend the extra time cooking her whole. Here comes the magic part ... I laid the two halves in a baking dish on top of a few slices of day old my homemade French bread. This served two purposes: one, preventing the chicken from sticking to the bottom of the pan; two, creating quasi-stuffing as it soaks all the juices and flavor from the roasting chicken. I also scattered the cloves from a head of garlic around the bird.

After about an hour in the oven, I threw some cherry tomatoes in to roast for about 20 more minutes. (This cooking time could have been shortened as the breast meat was a little dry.) The chicken came out golden with crispy skin and smelling divine.

Even though the chicken was tasty, the best part was the bread from underneath. One side was all crisp and brown and the other was soft. It was soaked with the chicken juices (a.k.a. fat) and the sage, thyme, oregano, and salt that I seasoned the chicken with.

It's Not Nice to Call Your Cakes Short

2009-04-06T21:50:00.005+08:00

When I was growing up, I had a Strawberry Shortcake doll house. I can still picture it's bright red strawberry roof that my sister and I used to ride like a horse because of its saddle-like shape. This house was definitely cooler than a Barbie house. Barbies couldn't even fit inside, though I had my fair share of them. I also had a Strawberry Shortcake blanket that I think my aunt made. The thing is, I can never remember having a Strawberry Shortcake doll, so I don't know how I played with the doll house. I only remember how cool it was.

I have always loved strawberry shortcake. I can think of no better summertime dessert. Since the temperature reached almost 70 degrees in Qingdao today (eat that Duluth and Buffalo!), it was a perfect holiday (Qing Ming, a.k.a. Respect the Dead Day) for a berry-licious dessert.

We had two pints of strawberries that someone brought as a gift for the party that were slowly rotting out on our cooking porch (two bags of lychee fruits had to go in the trash due to mold) and leftover heavy cream from the party puddings. I salvaged more than enough strawberries for a few servings of dessert and made buttermilk biscuits late this afternoon.

My January issue of Gourmet had a tip for making biscuits ala Francais that involved folding into a rectangle of dough thin slices of frozen butter to give them extra lift in the oven and extra flakiness once cooked. Well, my dough turned out too wet (thanks to a lack of measuring cups), but I did the butter trick anyway. I think it would work beautifully with correctly proportioned ingredients.

After dinner, Turner whipped up some cream with sugar and vanilla and we dug into our shortcake like it was the last day of summer. Thankfully it is merely the beginning of a season that should offer plenty more strawberry goodness.

Success!

2009-04-04T21:04:00.020+08:00

Well, it has been 24 hours since the party, but I have just had time (and an internet connection) to post about its great success. I cooked all day Friday, quite literally, and had some help from Latte and Wendy around 4 in the afternoon. Although I burnt the tomatoes for the bruschetta and had to toss them, I had more than enough food for our eight guests.

The day began with the brownies, since they would have to cool awhile before being frosted and cut. They were also the easiest because I know the recipe almost by heart. Surprisingly, it is hard to find good, cheap chocolate in China. Most major stores only carry chocolate meant for eating directly, Dove, Hershey, etc. I don't want to spend over 5 US dollars on chocolate that is going to be melted and put into brownie batter. RT-Mart, a Korean Walmart-like store, is the only place I can find suitable chocolate, and it's only 50 cents a bar.

The other day my mom said that she made brownies from my recipe and they turned out dry and dense. I think she jinxed me because this time the brownies took 10 extra minutes and I could tell from the toothpick test that they were going to be dense. Usually, the brownies are very fudge-like, but these had the consistency of a flourless chocolate cake. At least they were moist.

After the brownies were out, I decided to continue baking and make the Cheese Straws next. The dough is insanely simple and I will tell you know that the result is fantastic. It's basically a pie dough, flour, salt, butter, milk, plus a few cups of grated cheddar cheese and a good dose of cayenne. Roll out the dough into rectangles and cut into strips.

I experimented with the first couple batches, twisting and braiding the strips, but I gave up because the straws weren't coming out as crispy as I would have liked.

I decided to go straight and skinny. They sizzle wonderfully in the oven. If you like the crispy edges macaroni and cheese or the provolone browned onto the side of a bowl of French onion soup, then you will love these. And especially if you are a Cheetos fanatic (mom!) these are the next best thing and there is no fake coloring or chemicals. I ate the rest of them for a morning snack.

By this time, noon had come and gone and I had only made two items from today's to-do list. It was time to turn up the heat. In the form of a frying pan! While the tomatoes cooked down (they had yet to scorch) I started frying batches of meatballs for the meatball sliders. No fancy recipe, just beef, pork, egg, breadcrumbs, milk, oregano, basil, salt, and pepper.

I smashed them down a bit as they browned because they would be sitting on my garlic buns like mini hamburgers and meatballs have a tendency to roll. These went in the tomato sauce to finish cooking while I labored over the hard-boiled eggs to get them read for deviling.

It's no fun removing the shell from one egg, but twelve is downright tortuous. I've never actually made deviled eggs myself, but I have watched them being made and have thoroughly enjoyed them on the buffet table. I now have enormous respect for any maker of deviled eggs. The itty-bitty pieces of shell stuck to the white. The chunks taken out by my nails. The off-center yolks. The slippery bodies sliding around the plate. I could have thrown them at the windows (oh what a splat they would have made). I didn't though and managed to successfully recreate deviled eggs.

By the time Latte and Wendy showed up, I had finished everything except the Zucchini Patties and the Tuna and White Bean dip. We shredded the zucchini and let it sit with some salt to draw out the extra water, then I put Latte to work shredding potatoes and Wendy frosting the brownies. Some egg, flour, green onion salt and pepper got mixed in with the potatoes and zucchini to form a wet batter that we then fried in batches. The patties turned out wonderfully once we got the oil hot enough, all golden brown and crispy on the outside and soft like a pancake inside. Meanwhile, Wendy moved on to mixing together the tuna dip, which I have posted about before. Simple really, just some cans of tun and beans plus lemon, olive oil, and green pepper.

As party time got closer, we assembled the Meatball Sliders. Latte thought they looked like little farmers with their hats. Wendy smeared the ketchup on the bun, I placed the lettuce and meatball, and Latte secured the top with a toothpick. They made perfect buffet food!

All the food was set out on the tables and we waited for more guests to arrive. And we waited. And then we gave up waiting and started to eat!

Latte, the birthday girl!

Once everyone had arrived and eaten, I went to put together the pudding dessert. I filled each cup about half full with the vanilla pudding layered with thinly sliced bananas. Then I sprinkled some chopped candied walnuts on top of that. Next came the chocolate pudding and a whole walnut to top the entire dessert. They were sinfully delicious and smooth. I never knew that pudding was so easy to make from scratch. So long Jello.

Everyone really enjoyed the puddings, and some didn't have any room left for the ganache brownie. But we stuck a candle in one and sang "Happy Birthday" anyway.

The guests: (from left) Susie, Juan, Vivian, Latte, Sara, Wendy, Clement; (in foreground) Auda and Cherry

Sheer Exhaustion

2009-04-02T20:29:00.006+08:00

Day 2 at Party Central

My knees ache and I have whisk-elbow. Oh the injuries I will sustain for my craft! I jest. It was merely a long day of cooking and teaching. Just after rolling out of bed this morning, I mixed up the dough for the Garlic Buns, a double recipe mind you. While it rose I mashed up the roasted garlic that I made last night. I made them smaller than the last time so to better accompany their respective meatball.

So far so good. After the rolls were done baking, I split two eggplants and put them in the oven to roast for about an hour.

When these were done, I scooped out their now-soft innards and mashed them up with half a head of the roasted garlic, lemon juice, salt, black pepper, and homemade tahini (sesame paste). Yes, I made tahini from scratch. The baba ghanouj just wouldn't taste right without it. Roast a handful of sesame seeds in a dry frying pan for a few minutes. Toss them in your mortar along with some salt and a smidgen of olive oil, then mash away! It worked pretty well and was wonderfully fragrant.

The last bit on my agenda today was to make the puddings for the dessert. Part of my inspiration, and the recipe for the vanilla base of the banana pudding, comes from the March issue of Gourmet that Anya brought with her in March. I love thumbing through the pages of food magazines, ogling their food photographs and recipes.

So I made the vanilla pudding and the milk chocolate pudding, which are chilling in the refrigerator to be assembled into parfaits along with the candied walnuts tomorrow.

That's all for now folks. Tomorrow is the big day!

Party Planning

2009-04-01T15:31:00.011+08:00

We're having a party! To celebrate one of our friend's birthday, we invited a select group of acquaintances to have an intimate dinner party chez Gutmann Friday evening.

Since there will be eight for dinner, I can't serve anything that is best eaten at a table. Our dining set seats four and I only have two full-sized dinner plates. Taking into account these and other obstacles, I devised a menu of bite-size, toothpick-worthy hors d'ouevres that should satisfy any taste bud and be filling enough to count for a meal. It feels ambitious, but I've planned everything so that I too will be able to enjoy the party. The menu, and appropriate recipe links, are as follows:

Cheese Straws
Mixed Nuts
Tuna and White Bean Dip on Crackers
Baba Ghanouj on Pita Breads
Bruschetta
Deviled Eggs
Meatball Sliders on Garlic Buns
Zucchini Patties
Chocolate and Banana Puddings with Candied Walnuts
Double Chocolate Brownies with Ganache Frosting
Fresh Fruit

Today I bought the dry goods and some vegetables from Jusco. On Friday, I will pick up the eggs and other produce locally at our school store. Since I have to teach and go about regular life for the next few days, I have devised when I need to make what. And it began today.

I began with the pita bread dough, using all white flour though the recipe was for wheat pita bread. It called for a starter to ferment awhile...

...which got nice a bubbly before I added the rest of the flour and the oil and salt. It then rose for an hour. I thought it would be just barely risen, given the chill in the apartment, but when I removed the plastic, I was greeted by a lovely mound of dough.

The recipe called for this to make 8 pitas, but somehow I ended up with 12. I was supposed to bake them two and a time on the oven rack in a 500 degree oven. When I tried to put the first one in, it sagged through the spaces in the rack. Try again. I figured pitas are somewhat like tortillas, which we make in a frying pan, so I gave it a try and it worked perfectly. Only about a third of them puffed up nicely. I think this has to due with needing a longer knead in the beginning to make them stronger and stretchier.

They all look and taste good though. (Of course, I had to try one before serving them on Friday.) I don't think I can go back to eating prepackaged flatbread. Though mine are not perfectly round, they taste ten times better when they are freshly made.

During the rising time, I made the chocolate ganache frosting for the brownies and the candied walnuts for the puddings.

For dessert, I am adapting two recipes from Epicurious, one for Bourbon Banana Pudding with Candied Pecans and the other for Peanut Butter Milk Chocolate Pudding, into Chocolate Banana Pudding with Candied Walnuts. I wanted to do banana pudding but not with cake (nor did I have Bourbon), and I think chocolate goes well with bananas (and peanut butter pudding does not sound good).

Oh yes, I also roasted two heads of garlic for the garlic buns and baba ganouj (roasted eggplant dip).

After all this prep, I made dinner. At the grocery store, while wandering the vegetable section, I stumbled upon snow peas. I immediately grabbed a package, since this is the first time I've seen what we think of as a classically Chinese vegetable in China. I marinated some thinly sliced pork with ginger and soy sauce, then stir fried it, adding the peas and sliced garlic at the end. To make a sauce, I mixed some corn starch with soy sauce and water and added it to the wok. Served on rice, it was delicious, reminded me of my mom's stir-fry.

Luxurious Cream

2009-03-30T19:22:00.004+08:00

I made my version of fettucine alfredo for dinner and totally forgot about being a food blogger! My apologies for this post's lack of inspiring photos. A few day ago we bought a small carton of heavy cream, with the intention of having strawberry shortcake sometime. That dream has yet to materialize, so this evening I cut open the carton to make an alfredo sauce.

First I fried some chicken strips. Oddly enough, our grocery store sells boneless, skinless chicken breasts in little strips perfect for chicken fingers and, in tonight's case, chicken alfredo. Back to the frying. In olive oil, fry up the chicken adding salt, pepper, basil, and oregano until it's golden brown and cooked through. Set aside and add more olive oil to the pan and a whole diced onion, cooking until the onion is translucent. Add four cloves of garlic (diced), cook some more; add chopped spinach, and cook until wilted. Then add the chicken back to the pan along with a few tablespoons of butter, 1/2 cup of cream plus 1/2 cup of water, and a 1/4 cup (or so) of parmesan. Stir together until it resembles a cream sauce. Add your cooked pasta, and you're done!

I like how everything is made in one frying pan. Made cooking easy and clean up even easier.

I promise to have something more exciting in the coming days.

Pork Is Not a Verb

2009-03-27T20:17:00.008+08:00

China has fabulous pork. When we lived in Duluth, our pork options consisted of over-salted Hormel, which always turned out dry and salty. Here though, pork is rosy and fresh. No pale pink, anemic cuts of meat. This is real pork. And the Chinese should know how to do it right, since pork is in almost every dish.

I think that pork shoulder is an unappreciated cut of meat because it requires lengthy cooking times. Not one hour, not two, but three to four for a couple pounds of shoulder. I don't know what the Chinese do with it as it's not suitable for wok cooking, unless you slice it uber-thin, but I like to rub it down with a Latin American blend of seasonings and cook it for a good four hours at low heat.

The spice rub consists of cumin, chili powder, oregano, brown sugar, cocoa powder, and salt. Rub this into your meat and let it sit for an hour in a ceramic baking dish with a lid. Then, put it in the oven, covered, at 300 degrees and let it cook for three to four hours depending on your oven and how many pounds of meat you have.

I have adapted my recipe from NPR's The Splendid Table's Close-Roasted Pork with Ancho, Cinnamon, and Cocoa. This time I forgot the cinnamon, but this recipe is very forgiving. You can't over-cook the meat. It's virtually impossible. Stick the shoulders in sometime around 3pm and it's ready by dinner time with no extra fussing.

I whipped up some homemade tortillas and Turner added some goodness (lard, green onion, red pepper, and cilantro) to a basic can of black beans. We checked the pork at about 3 1/2 hours and it was not quite done. The meat should be fork tender and flake into lovely bits if it's ready. So, we had another cocktail and let it cook another half hour.

When everything was finally ready, we sat down for some excellent tacos. I ate four, I think, and could have had more.

Turner picked up some Beard Papa cream puffs on his way home from work. (I know it's a strange name for a cream puff store. Their mascot reminds me of Turner's father.) He brought the chocolate-covered variety this time. A perfect finish to a throughly satisfying meal. I am stuffed.

Caffeine For All

2009-03-27T09:12:00.003+08:00

As I was drinking my coffee this morning, I came across this article from the New York Time about how beneficial caffeine can be for athletes. Sure helps me get my feet in my running shoes and out the door in the morning.

Read on and see for yourself: It's Time to Make a Coffee Run

Wednesday Catch-up

2009-03-26T08:50:00.005+08:00

Wednesdays are one of my catch-up days. Monday and Tuesday are full of classes and lesson prep, and then I get a breather (until Wednesday evening when I teach my second section of grammar). Yesterday, I went for a run, swept the floor (you can't imagine how much dust accumulates--think godzilla-sized dust bunnies), and intended to go grocery shopping. When Turner got back from class, he decided taking a nap was a better option. I didn't make it to the grocery store, but I was able to pick up what I really needed from our school store: sugar, peanut butter, tofu, vegetables. My first culinary chore was to use up an old lemon, some eggs, and yogurt. So a yogurt cake it was!

Too bad it flopped...again! It's still tasty but really dense.

I think this may be a case of needing fairly exact measurements of flour, eggs, and oil. Since I don't have any measuring cups, I usually make an educated guess at what is a cup or a cup and a half. Thirds of a cup start getting tricky.

Dinner was to be quick and easy, since I had to leave for my class a little after 6pm. I marinated some tofu (or doufu in Chinese) in soy sauce, fresh ginger, and sliced chilis for a couple of hours. When you want to buy tofu in China, you don't look for individually wrapped packages. At larger stores it is sold near the deli or prepared food counter. At our school store, the vegetable lady also deals in tofu. She has one large block--think 3 feet by 3 feet--and will cut off however much you want. I asked for about 50 cents worth and got a piece the size that comes packaged in the US.

For a vegetable, I bought some youcai (oil plant), which looks and tastes like baby bok choy but is actually a rapeseed plant.I sliced the tofu into cubes and then fried it in some oil for about twenty minutes until each side was golden brown. The greens went in the wok for a couple minutes. And I made Peanut Sesame Noodles to go with everything.

I wonder if the Chinese would enjoy a meal like this...

I found it very satisfying, though Turner complained about how many dishes and pots I used to make such a simple dinner.

A Very Windy Day at the Beach

2009-03-22T19:21:00.005+08:00

We both had our hairs cut today. Yes, all of them. Turner actually went to a Chinese salon, brave man that he is. I was tempted but could not fathom what they would do to my lovely hair. We have seen all sorts of hideous haircuts around China. They are awfully fond of the mullet, lacking of course the cultural affiliations that most people make with mullets in the US. When Turner returned with a very reasonable haircut, I made him cut my hair.

Yes, my husband cuts my hair. It doesn't really matter since my hair forms Shirley Temple curls not matter how it's cut. I must say he took off more than I expected but it came out well, and I didn't have to brave a Chinese hairdresser.

This afternoon we took our bike to the beach. Notice the use of the singular, one bike. Turner pedals and I sit on the rack over the back wheel. It works out quite well actually, though better last year when we lived in flat ChengYang. Few people in Qingdao ride bikes because of the city's many hills.

The weather was much windier and therefore colder than I expected, so I was not dressed appropriately. I rarely am though, so it was fine.

After our beach jaunt and a trip to the local Western food convenient store for beans and gin, we had cocktail hour and Scrabble back at home.

Turner makes himself a dirty martini with gin, olive juice, and olives, and he makes me a lemon drop martini with vodka, a sugary lemon drink, and fresh lemon juice. Both are quite enjoyable and we often imbibe before dinner.

Along with our aperitif we had a regular smorgasbord (at least for China), black and green olives, vintage cheddar, and a hard-boiled egg, and played a game of Scrabble. Turner beat me, like usual.

Make Your Buddha Smile

2009-03-21T17:29:00.005+08:00

It rained today. For most of the day. My mood followed suit. In part due to my baking disaster yesterday (a whole loaf in the garbage!) and general malaise due to changing seasons, hormones, whatever, I was not a happy camper. I just wandered around the apartment, not sure what to cook, not sure what to buy, but starving nonetheless. Didn't I just write that my life is dictated by food? It's true.

Turner did his best to cheer me up with plentiful hugs, but success in the kitchen is what I really needed. So I went to our local store for vegetables and some other foodstuffs and came home with a head full of ideas.

It went a little like this. Rain. Yuck. Soup. Yum. Water. Carrots. Onion. Celery. Boil boil boil. Strain out overcooked stock vegetables. Noodles. Carrots. Zucchini. Leafy green something. Vegetable soup!

But wait, where's the protein? Ok. Eggs. Water. Boil boil boil. Cover. Hard-boiled eggs!

What a cheery plate of eggs. And perfectly cooked too. The secret, you ask? Cold eggs, cold water. Bring to a boil together for a couple of minutes. Turn off heat and cover for almost 10 minutes. Works every time.

Success at last. A comforting lunch suitable for such a dismal, dreary day.

Makes my buddha happy.

I also made rice pudding, apple crisp, and pizza dough so far today. I'm on a roll!

Tale of a Strawberry Gone Awry

2009-03-21T08:35:00.009+08:00

In China, March comes in like a mango and goes out like a strawberry. No real metaphor for anything, other than the fact that my life seems to be dictated by food. Strawberries bring the promise of spring--tough little buggers braving Qingdao's temperamental weather like a band of brothers laid neatly in their flats on the sidewalks. While they appear hardy, these strawberries are much more delicate than their American brethren, to be eaten immediately, not baked in a pie, turned into jam, or left in the fridge for a few days. One touch and their flesh turns to mush.

But oh the smell when they tumble out of the plastic bag. That's spring.

I bought our first pint yesterday, hoping to make another quick bread as an easy way to use up fruit. I really should have taken more consideration with these first specimen. Browsing recipes on Martha Stewart and Epicurious left me with plenty that called for heavy cream or gelatin, neither of which are commonly available in China. Rather than go the shortcake or pie route, I found a Fresh Strawberry Bread recipe on Martha Stewart that seemed quick and didn't require any fancy ingrediants.

It did require me to cook the stawberries for about one minute. I should have known something was wrong when this...

Turned into this...

Another different characteristic of Chinese strawberries is the amount of liquid in them, making them delicate and difficult to cook with. American varieties stand up to heat much better, while these quickly disintegrated. Undaunted, I knew I would have to use them anyway.

Back to the bread batter (not dough, you'll find out why).

This is one of the times when I miss my gleaming ruby KitchenAid stand mixer. If a recipe calls for creaming butter, sugar, and eggs, I know my arm is in for a workout. I have gotten much better at whisking since moving to China and must be developing some sturdy shoulder muscles in my right arm. However, I will be thoroughly grateful to have my trusty sidekick back on the counter.

The recipe calls for adding the sifted dry ingredients to the wet alternating with 1/3 cup of water. Here I have soupy strawberries sitting on the counter and I go ahead with this water idea. I should have listened to my instincts and omitted the extra liquid. Before I added the strawberries, the batter looked acceptable, like a normal quick bread, but once the berries went in, I ended up with grey quick bread soup. (Chinese strawberries also lose their color quickly.) I could have made pancakes at this point. Instead, to try and salvage my disaster, I added an extra cup of flour and into the oven it went.

After the requisite hour, the bread looked almost normal.

One slice into it revealed what looked like uncooked purplish grey matter. C'est la vie. I have two slices in the toaster oven now, hoping they perk up a little to accompany my morning coffee.

UPDATE: Toasting the bread did not help, so the whole loaf went in the garbage. Bye-bye strawberries.

A Tidbit

2009-03-20T18:33:00.002+08:00

A lovely website with innovative menus and carefully edited recipes. Enjoy!

Lunch At Noon

Purple Potatoes on Patty's Day

2009-03-17T20:50:00.002+08:00

The other day I came across purple potatoes at our grocery store. I know what you may be thinking; it comes as shock to you to see them even in an American store. Imagine my surprise to find them in China. I have only seen evidence of three kinds of potato used in Chinese cooking: the traditional yellow potato for frying and two kinds of sweet potatoes--yellow and orange. These potatoes color attracted me, their novelty was also endearing, so I grabbed a bunch.

They waited patiently until today, St. Patrick's Day of all days. What an apropos day to cook with potatoes. I had cabbage, potatoes, and pork, and wanted a hearty meal to fill us up after a couple days of just noodles and sushi. Figuring I could kill two birds with one stone, I looked up potato and cabbage casseroles on the internet and found a recipe for just the thing that used cheddar cheese between layers of the two par-cooked vegetables.

After peeling and slicing the potatoes, I threw them in boiling water for a few minutes to speed up the cooking time in the oven. They turned the water almost black! I could not believe how strong the coloring was, half expecting the color to fade to a pale blue. I probably could have dyed cloth in the boiling liquid, but it went down the drain.

So I had dark potatoes, sauteed green cabbage, and cheddar cheese--not exactly a winning color combination--but I threw everything in the baking dish anyway and popped it in the oven. Cheese can usually salvage anything, so I wasn't too worried until Turner walked in the door and said the apartment smelled like something nasty. Cabbage has that deceptive odor that, until you know what it is, makes you wrinkle your nose in disgust.

The casserole turned out thoroughly colorful and a nice counterpoint to the pork chops (which ended up a little tough). I wonder if the color in the potatoes is similar to that in blueberries, which acts as a very healthy antioxidant, or something along those lines. Anyway, it was tasty.

May the luck of the Irish be with you ... and purple potatoes too!

Mango Mania!

2009-03-16T07:00:00.003+08:00

Mangoes are on sale! We're nearing the end of the season so they are marked down to move them out of the stores before they turn into a rotten mess of sticky fruit. There is a specific smell that I describe as "Mexican grocery store," which can be experienced from a bottle of Chardonnay to a pile of garbage, and stems from an amalgam of papaya, mango, melon over-ripeness. It's heady and knocks me off my feet whenever I catch a whiff. But I digress. The idea of a rotten mango just sends me over the edge.

Anyway, a few days ago I bought a whole mess of mangoes, medium and bite-sized. This happened to coincide with my mom buying me Dorie Greenspan's Baking from My Home to Yours. (I just couldn't stand not having this tome that so many great food bloggers reference.) While have to wait a few months before looking at it in person, my mom has flipped through noting some good recipes, and the first one she mentioned to me was for Fresh Mango Bread.

Divine culinary intervention, saving me from rotten mangoes!

For anyone unsure of how to cut this slippery, strangely shaped fruit, the best way is to slice the sides off the pit, score them, and then slice the flesh away from the skin.

The recipe is a basic quick bread with the addition of dried ginger, lemon zest, and two cups of diced mangoes. It calls for quite a bit of flour, and the dough seemed dry going in the pan, but the moisture of the mangoes counteracts what might have been dry, tough bread. Instead, it came out of the oven fragrant and nicely browned. The whole bread is brown actually, though I did not use any whole wheat flour. It even tastes healthy, with the mangoes acting as nice bits of moist surprise, almost like a built-in jam.

No rotten mangoes in this house! In fact, I might make another loaf to freeze.

Quiz Answer and Purpleness

2009-03-14T19:13:00.002+08:00

Nobody even came close in this week's food quiz. It was dried apricots. Come on people, use your imaginations.

In other food news, I went grocery shopping today and you can certainly tell that spring is here. The produce looks so much better than it did one month ago. And what variety! I was drawn, of course, to this dark purple hued eggplanty thing. I don't know what it is, but it sure looks interesting.

I also bought purple potatoes. Or I think they're potatoes. Turner said they might be arrow root. Neither of my purple purchases made it in dinner tonight because I made a red curry with chicken and yellow potatoes. Their glorious purpleness would get smothered by the curry powder and tomato paste.

Oatmeal Cookies, Take Two

2009-03-13T21:12:00.005+08:00

You may or may not remember my recent post about making oatmeal cookies with peanut oil. Let's just say, it was a disaster, though Turner dutifully ate them. Today I made a new batch with a different recipe (found on my iPod Betty Crocker Cookbook). Thankfully the recipe called for the exact amount of butter and eggs that I had one hand, so I did not have to venture out into the nasty windy that blew through Qingdao today. I also was able to use up the walnuts that have sitting in my freezer.

I decided to use some brown sugar instead of the full amount of white sugar, thinking it would give the cookies an extra boost of flavor, but this plus the required molasses made the cookies a little too "flavorful." I think next time I will omit the molasses if I use brown sugar.

I have to bake in batches of six, so I spent much of my afternoon moving back and forth between computer and toaster oven. Somehow I never seem to make the recommended quantity of cookies. Most of the time I actually get nowhere near what the recipe says. I am even careful to scoop the dough out in rounded teaspoons. This time my cookies were well-shaped, but out of the five dozen called for I got maybe a dozen and a half (after I ate a few). How could I be 40 cookies short? I blame it on a typo in the recipe. Betty needs an editor.

I wish I had my mom's oatmeal cookie recipe. My copy is sitting in a recipe box packed away somewhere. She always makes the best cookies. (Hint, hint, wink, wink.)

When Life Gives You Lemons, Make Bean Dip

2009-03-12T21:05:00.002+08:00

I buy a lot of lemons these days. I use them in cocktails, in cakes, and today in a tuna and white bean dip. After a solid week or so of eating out at Chinese restaurants, I felt the urge for some satisfying Western food. To go with the pasta I made for our dinner, I whipped together a dip to eat while we "enjoyed" a cheap bottle of Chinese wine, which wasn't that bad.

One can of tuna. One can of white beans. Some lemon juice, olive oil, salt, pepper, and diced green pepper for color and crunch. Spread it on crackers, et voila, instant appetizer. It was scrumptious.

Coda

2009-03-11T17:41:00.004+08:00

I said earlier that I had no food news to write about.

I still don't, but I wanted to share a memory that flooded over me while I was preparing myself a quick dinner before my evening class.

I was making scrambled eggs and had bread toasting in the oven. My mom used to make "breakfast for dinner" when we had all had a long day and dinner needed to be simple and satisfying. Scrambled eggs were a staple. She would mix in some cheese, salt, and pepper. Nothing fancy. Served with toast and jam, this meal brings me back to my childhood, which is retreating faster and faster into the past.

I almost came to tears over the frying pan as the eggs turned golden. Maybe it was the Norah Jones playing on my iPod, but the poignancy of such a simple, wholesome food that reminds me of the warmth and care of my mother gave me a knot in my stomach.

I ate my eggs, alone at the table, with homemade bread. I could have been twelve years old again, my sister sitting next to me putting jam on her eggs.

I love you, mom, and all the memories you've given me.

Finding my Center

2009-03-11T15:43:00.004+08:00

I apologize for my lack of posts lately. We have had house guests, and between hosting, sightseeing, cooking, dining out, teaching, and making lesson plans I just have not had the time. I bowed out of their last afternoon on the town to rest and get my head together.

Lunch.

Nap.

Bake.

My iPod in my apron pocket, listening to The Splendid Table podcast, I made a Lemon Yogurt Cake, simple and light.

Since I do not have any interesting cooking or food news, how about another round of the Chinese Food Quiz? Like usual, submit your guesses for the food product advertised below and wait for the answer in a couple days!

It was ...

2009-03-09T18:09:00.001+08:00

... Colonel Mustard with the candlestick in the library.

No, it was the baking powder.

I bought new baking powder yesterday and made brownies. Miracle of miracles, it fixed my sunken baked goods problem.

Calm from the Chaos

2009-03-07T16:59:00.005+08:00

The boys are off to Beijing, so it's nice to have some quiet time to relax and accomplish minor tasks like sweep the floor and buy groceries. I've taken our guest, Anya, around for some fun things too, mind you.

Just now I put banana bread in the oven and am contemplating a cocktail. Sounds like a lovely pairing to me. Banana bread always reminds me of my mom, but I think it's a quintessentially American food that many people remember from their childhoods--a quiet weekend afternoon and a loaf, hot from the oven, cooling on the counter. The smell penetrates the house and you can't wait for a slice.

It's warm, soft, but the best part for me is the crust that forms from the cinnamon and sugar sprinkled on the top. Quite a few foods remind me of the past, and the crust of banana bread is one of them. I never wanted the end though--that was always claimed by my mom--but I would eat around the top crust, saving it for last. The caramelized sugar with a few soft crumbs attached, heaven.

If you don't put cinnamon and sugar on the top of your banana bread before you bake it, you don't know what you're missing.

But back to the present.

I have been having difficulties baking for about a month now. Everything is sunken in the middle--cake, brownies, banana bread. I tested my baking powder, which is about a year and a half old, and it still fizzes. I know it's not my recipes because I have been using the same ones for years. I think the culprit may be my toaster oven and it's uneven heating element. I can still bake regular French bread but only because it bakes inside a ceramic pot in the oven, thus regulating the heat. I am going to buy fresh baking soda and powder to make sure it's not just old ingredients. I would rather not buy a new toaster oven since we will only be in China for four more months. If anyone has other thoughts on my failure-to-rise problem, please let me know.

A Season for Mangoes

2009-03-02T12:40:00.008+08:00

Now is the season for mangoes, and we couldn't be happier. These are mangoes like you've never tasted before, unless you have traveled somewhere in Asia. The flesh is bright orange and sweet, like concentrate. Rarely do we get an unripe one, as the best specimens are usually slightly bruised and a little brown.

They come in three sizes, like the Three Bears. The baby mangoes are about the size of an apricot. Once you peel off the skin, you can pop them in your mouth, chewing the tasty flesh from around the small seed. The medium mango is best peeled and then sliced, while the large mangoes resemble those commonly found in the US, except they are a brilliant shade of orange, not green or pink.

Although it's difficult not to go through a whole bag standing over the sink with the vegetable peeler, I like to put mangoes on yogurt for breakfast or with a flan or panna cotta for dessert.

In other news, our friends Eddie and Anya arrived a couple days ago bringing with them many sought-after goodies from the States. In addition to a bottle of Patron tequila and two bottles of Cholula hot sauce, they brought me a selection of food magazines and my new favorite toy, an iPod Touch.

I had been lusting after the Touch since touching one in Shanghai, but the prices here are slightly inflated. So unbeknown to me, Turner had Anya buy one for me and bring it with her. What a surprise! It has 16 GB of storage so I can put almost all my iTunes library on it, plus my podcasts. It also has Wi-Fi, so I can check my email, the internet, the weather, etc, and browse iTunes and the App Store, where I have found many fun applications.

I downloaded the complete (and searchable!) works of Shakespeare, PocketGod (where you have power over a group of islanders), and two culinary apps: AllRecipes and Betty Crocker. In the AllRecipes app, you just shake the iPod (literally) and three rows align like in a slot machine, matching a course, food group, and cooking method. Then the application gives you a list of recipes that match the result. You can also search the database, but it's much less exciting.

The Betty Crocker app has all 4000+ recipes from the cookbook and you can search by name or tell the app what ingredients you have and what type of meal you want to cook (like garlic AND bread/rolls) and then the app will find recipes that match these parameters. This could be very useful for cleaning out the refrigerator.

I have come up with the idea of a rotisserie chicken application, where you can watch a chicken turn on a spit, dripping juices, crisping skin, and all. There is already an iBeer application where you can slosh a glass of beer around the screen. I figured the chicken app would be the perfect accompaniment. Maybe there would also be an assortment of sauces you could rub on your rotating chicken, like barbeque or Buffalo wing. Now, I'm hungry.

The Cost of a Meal in China

2009-02-27T21:25:00.003+08:00

Turner and I went out to eat tonight at a local, family-style restaurant. For a little more than six dollars we ordered the following:

One-liter bottle of Tsingtao beer
Two bowls of rice
Stir-fried eggs with tomatoes
Shredded potato fried with garlic
Sweet and sour pork

Not too shabby and utterly satisfying.

When my students ask me if I cook Chinese food at home, I usually say no, because we can get it for cheaper and tastier just a few hundred yards from our door.

(This picture is from Shanghai, not a few hundred yards from our door.)

Street Snacks

2009-02-26T17:00:00.003+08:00

China probably has more street vendors than anywhere else in the world. India might be a close second, but, as I have never been there, I can not compare.

Fruit, fish, rice crackers, bunnies, fireworks, dumplings, kebabs, watches. You can buy just about everything you need for daily life and special occasions without setting foot inside a building.

At every gate of our campus, food vendors set up shop. They arrive in the mid-morning to prepare for the lunch rush. Should we decide to grab some food around lunchtime, noon or so, we have to wait in line for quite awhile. Their popularity stems from the food's cheap cost, speed of preparation, and overall deliciousness. More on these purveyors of meals some other time.

Today, after lunch at our local noodle joint, we came upon a vendor of dried snack food. He was selling various seeds, nuts, and fruits out of large plastic bags. Our go-to snacks from these "establishments" are banana chips, unshelled roasted peanuts, and sweet potato chips. This last item has me in a state of enthrallment whenever we buy a bag. Sweet, thick, crispy, just the right amount of oil, these are sweet potatoes like you could never have imagined. I can't ... stop ... eating ... them!

I used to not like sweet potatoes, but since being in China and seeing the multitude of ways they are cooked, I am a convert. And these chips are quite possibly the best snack food ever.

Until I break into the bag of peanuts.

Garlic Lovin'

2009-02-25T16:08:00.012+08:00

I think I had a run-in with destiny today.

As I was eating my scrambled eggs on toast for dinner last night, I thought about the good food that I could be eating. Now, don't get me wrong, I love eggs loaded with cheese and topped with Cholula hot sauce, but one night a week is enough. For some reason, meat loaf sprang to mind.

Being a home cook in China presents wonderful challenges and many impossibilities. For one, I've learned to carefully select my proteins and their cooking method. It's hard to screw up ground meat and a loaf pan. It's hard to screw up the flavors of onion, garlic, tomato, and cheese. Meatloaf offers a few bonuses: easy preparation and cooking, compatibility with many side dishes, and tasty leftovers.

Back to my date with destiny though. I went grocery shopping this morning, picking up some staples (butter) and the fixings for dinner (ground beef and pork). The ground lamb winked at me, but I thought its flavor would overpower the other meats. I came home, put the food away, and then sat at the computer for my daily food blog perusal. How did I ever pass my time before the world of food blogging opened up for me? It's wonderfully addictive.

One of my favorites, Smitten Kitchen, blogged today about Meatball Sliders. Meatloaf, meatballs, basically the same thing--except hers are cooked in tomato sauce, while mine will be slathered with ketchup. The epiphany came when I saw her recipe for Roasted Garlic Buns at the bottom of the post. They would be perfect as a dinner roll accompaniment to my meatloaf! I had all the ingredients in my pantry and few glorious heads of Chinese garlic.

If you ever want to impress someone, foodie or not, have some garlic roasting in the oven when they come over for dinner.

Mine turned out well, despite a few alterations due to lack of fresh Pecorino in China, and I did not find it too difficult to work the roasted garlic in for the second rise. I ate one already, fresh out of the oven, and am having problems saving the rest for the meatloaf.

I also made healthy oatmeal cookies since I did not have to teach any classes today. I found a recipe from Martha Stewart that uses vegetable oil instead of butter (hence the "healthy"), which works perfectly in China because butter is a luxury item. Two things did me in, using Chinese peanut oil instead of soybean oil and using Chinese brown sugar. The oil had an odd smell, not rancid, just not as odorless as I would have preferred. Sometimes, Chinese brown sugar contains "rocks," as I call them, which are really just hard clumps of sugar that do not mix in well. I ended up with brown sugar pockets in the cookies.

Martha's dozen or so cookies turned into my six. (I can never make cookies tiny to meet the recommended quantity! It just feels like a waste of space in my toaster oven where space is at a premium.) I also added walnuts that have been wasting away in my freezer.

The cookies taste, well, "okay" would be a good adjective. They'll do in a pinch, but I won't be making that recipe again. "Healthy" and "cookie" should rarely be uttered in the same sentence as far as I'm concerned. One of my obstacles in China is that I have to bake cookies on a rimmed baking sheet all of 12 inches by 6 inches, approximately. This tends to lead to too many cookies baked at once, hence the flat edges.

Simple Pleasures

2009-02-24T19:45:00.005+08:00

Sometimes it's something so simple that so sensationally satisfies. Okay, I got alliterated-away. The other day I craved chocolate, surprise surprise, who doesn't get a chocolate craving every now and then? I really don't get them that often, but when one hits, I have a fail-safe remedy.

The best brownies ever!

It's a fairly simple recipe that even the most hard core box-mix bakers can follow. I think it's from Martha Stewart, like many other pleasurable recipes, but I have been making this one recipe for so long that I can't quite remember its origins.

Double Chocolate Brownies
Probably adapted from Martha Stewart

6 T unsalted butter
6 oz. coarsely chopped semi-sweet chocolate (I prefer Ghiradelli for its price point and quality.)
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (Don't know what the unsweetened bit means but I use Hershey's.)
3/4 cup flour
1/4 t baking powder
1/4 t salt
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
2 t vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and butter bottom and sides of 8x8 or 9x9 pan.
Put butter, chocolate, and cocoa in double boiler over simmering water. Stir until melted and then set aside to cool.
In medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder and salt and set aside.
In large bowl, whisk sugar, eggs, and vanilla until pale, about 4 minutes. Add the melted chocolate mixture. Beat until combined. Add flour mixture and beat until well-incorporated.
Pour in prepared pan and bake for about 35 minutes. (I prefer to underbake instead of overbake for fudgier brownies. Your choice.) Let cool 15 minutes before removing from pan.

You'll think you'd died and gone to heaven after eating these. I don't think I've made any other brownie recipe for almost 5 years, and I never add anything to these--no nuts, no frosting.

They're not the most photogenic, but sometimes all you need is a warm brownie and then all is right with the world.

Day 05 Shanghai

2009-02-22T10:26:00.006+08:00

This is the day I got sick. I felt exhausted, had sinus pressure, and dealt with a nose that would not stop running. I'm not sure if the change in climate and pollution levels did it or if I was just run down from traveling. Still, we spent most of the day walking around the city, finally making it to the French Concession in the daylight. First though, we walked along the building-side of the Bund so Turner could stick his head in the extravagant banks, most of which had surly guards and "No Pictures" signs, if they let you in at all. Turner likes to break the rules though.

During our perambulations, I started to get a chill, so we ducked into the nearest warm, quiet place we saw. Turns out it was a Dunkin' Donuts! I exaggerate. Turner saw the sign from the street and said he hadn't had a doughnut in ages, so we had to stop. Everything tasted like we were sitting in a doughnut shop in the US. Warm coffee can do wonders.

Not long after our late breakfast stop, it was lunch time. We had yet to eat dim sum, the Cantonese version of tapas, or small plates. Because we were in a retail/business district, most of the restaurants were fairly fancy, linen tablecloths and tuxedoed servers. But because it was lunch, prices weren't too high. We ordered a few dishes to give this cuisine a try: cucumbers in garlic sauce, chicken spring rolls, egg and onion pancakes, Shanghai pork dumplings, and sweet Shanghai dumplings (what you see in the foreground below).

These sweet treats look harmless until you try to pick one up with your chopsticks and realize that it is squishy. The outside is made from glutinous rice flour and coated in peanuts. The inside oozes a black substance that I think is made from either black sesame seeds or beans. As harmless as the ingredients are, it was the texture that I couldn't get past, only managing to eat half of one. Nothing we had for lunch was exceptional, somewhat of a let down.

All was salvaged with dinner though. Since I was sick and we were both tired from a day walking around, we decided to order pizza and have it delivered. We chose a place called New York Style Pizza, for obvious reasons, and ordering was surprisingly easy. They delivered it right to our hotel room for about the same price you would pay in the US. And let me tell you, this pizza would pass muster in Buffalo any day. I couldn't believe how authentic it tasted, right down to the pepperoni. What a great way to end our culinary adventures in Shanghai!

After some coffee and leftover pizza the next morning, we made our way by taxi and subway to the Maglev station in the outskirts of the city to take us to the airport. Turner was thrilled.

This was my first time on any high-speed train, let alone one that levitates on magnets. As we left the station, the train continued to pick up speed for about 3.5 minutes, topping out at 431 kilometers per hour and taking the rest of the trip to slow down. I am not kidding. It was like riding a 7-minute-long roller-coaster without the hills, though the train did make some steeply banked turns. Even I found the train ride exciting. Thus ended our vacation in Shanghai. It was a great experience, but I was happy to see our little city of Qingdao from the plane windows.

Bye-bye Shanghai; Ni hao Qingdao!

Day 04 Shanghai

2009-02-21T17:04:00.016+08:00

Our intention was to have brunch at a restaurant in the French Concession, which was a good 1/2 hour journey from our hotel (because we did not want to take a taxi). Turns out, this is too far for me to travel in a strange city without any sustenance, so we made it as far as McDonald's and succumbed to their breakfast menu. We got some egg sandwiches, hash browns, and coffee--a welcome change from the mornings of instant.

From there we meandered to the People's Square. As it was Sunday, the park was full of men and women, father and mothers, trying to marry off their children. Picture eHarmony without the internet and a feisty old woman as the matchmaker! Parents (or grandparents) wrote all the pertinent information--birth date, height, salary--on a piece of paper and attached it to a bush with a binder clip or secured it to the ground with some stones. Some even had pictures. Over a hundred people were taking part in this weekly activity, as marrying a Shanghaiese is very desirable in order for the hukou, or residency, of the bride and future children to be in Shanghai instead of a rural village. I think the parents or matchmakers exchange numbers and hopefully leave the rest to the couple, but I'm not sure.

After standing on the sidelines for awhile, we went to the Shanghai Museum, which I had heard was the best museum in China (or at least cost the most money to build). Entry was free, but you had to wait in a security line. They made me drink my water to prove it wasn't acid or something that could destroy the "relics." The museum had four floors organized by type: coins, jade, furniture, calligraphy, ceramics, painting, sculpture. Each exhibition contained the most exemplary objets d'art from across the country. I thought the most impressive were the ceramics (china from China) and the sculptures.

Around lunchtime we were hungry but had only seen half the museum. If we wanted real food we would have to leave the museum and then wait in line again, which had gotten much longer as the day wore on. This left the tea shop. Tea and cookies--not very filling and very pricey as "museum food." Then, by the time we left the museum, it was past lunch and we did not want to ruin our appetites for dinner, so we had a bit of street food and made our way back to the hotel.

Deciding on where to go for dinner took some time. We started looking through the city guides with the intention of going for Cantonese (or dim sum), but most of the restaurants were large, expensive hotel venues, which we were not in the mood for. Then the pendulum swung to pizza, which sounded okay, but not quite perfect. After frustratingly looking through literally hundreds of restaurants, I was getting very hungry and cranky (they usually go together). When this happens, one of the cuisines that can quickly cure my foul mood is Indian. Turner and I consider it comfort food--warm, satisfying, spicy, sweet--everything you want a good meal to be.

We chose Vedas, recommended as having very authentic food that could have come straight from Delhi. I was doubtful when we pulled up in the taxi to a large house in the French Concession with daunting wooden doors and a club next door. It seemed pretentious from the outside, but inside was inviting, with subdued decor (nothing overly exotic) and very friendly fuwuyuan (waitresses). Ours was downright giggly! The restaurant also has an open kitchen, glassed in to save the restaurant from being smoked out from the tandoors (Indian-style ovens, of which the restaurant had two, a good sign), but giving diners a view of the Indian chefs (another good sign).

We ordered drinks, a martini and an apple martini (guess who got which), and started salivating over the menu. This almost literally happens when I read descriptions of Indian food. I went straight for the naan section, happy to find more than one version--plain, butter, garlic--and knew we would need more than one order. We ended up getting butter naan and garlic naan, plus chicken tikka masala, palek paneer (spinach with housemade cheese), dhaba tadka dal (yellow lentils with ginger and other spices), and lamb botti kebabs (tandoori lamb with a crazy spice rub that tickles all your taste buds).

The chicken tikka masala was by far the best dish of the night. The chicken was tender, the tomato-based sauce was sweet and spicy, the whole thing just worked. I could have eaten bowls of it. The paneer was good, but there was too little cheese in the dish. The lamb was on the verge of being overpowering, but it was tasty. Of the meal, the dal was the least inspiring, slightly one-note and lacking salt. For dessert we shared a mango kufti, housemade mango ice cream, which was like eating a frozen mango--divine! We had enough for leftovers that we ate with dinner the next day. Restraint is hard to come by when I eat Indian food. It's becoming one of my favorite cuisines.

Namaste.

Day 03 Shanghai

2009-02-20T08:43:00.010+08:00

February 14th, Valentine's Day and our three-year anniversary. While out and about the past couple days I have been wearing just a t-shirt, but today was much colder and cloudier than previous days. Our itinerary today included a few tourist sites and then a fabulous dinner that we made reservations for a month ago.

First, we took the Bund Sightseeing Tunnel from the west side of the river (Puxi) to the east side (Pudong). This is no ordinary tunnel, mind you. You ride in enclosed modules (rather space-agey) on tracks through a tunnel covered in LEDs, lasers, and inflatable clowns. It's a good thing that neither one of us suffer from seizures because this was a mind trip. At the same time, it was a classic Chinese attraction because it was a lame attempt to be high-tech, well worth the 5 dollar ticket though.

Once we were on the other side, we went to visit the iconic Oriental Pearl TV Tower, a simultaneously perverse and communist building that is the symbol for Shanghai, like the Space Needle for Seattle.

You can buy tickets to the top, but since the air was not clear, we stuck to the Shanghai History Museum on the bottom floor. Rather than using artifacts or pictures, the museum relied on dioramas to recreate thousands of years of history. Some of them were very accurate; the hair on some of the Chinese mannequins was authentically balding--you could see individual hair follicles. Some of the exhibits though left us bewildered. Take the image below for example:

This is supposed to be a famous dance hall for the westerners in the French Concession during the occupation of Shanghai at the beginning of the twentieth century. The figures are about the size of Barbies and look like zombies. I'm not kidding! I call this the "Zombie Ball." It was really creepy because opposite this was a life-size reproduction of a hovel with poor Chinese covered in dirt. I'm not sure if this juxtaposition was intentional by the museum staff, but you can just imagine the message they're conveying: Look at the tiny, money-grubbing foreigners sucking the life out of the honorable, proud Chinese. Overall, the dioramas with Chinese figures were much more lifelike than any that contained a baigui (white devil). We left the museum in a state of befuddlement.

Then on to another museum, the Urban Planning Museum in People's Square, that was chock full of more dioramas about the future development of Shanghai and, more importantly, for the World Expo in 2010. (Shanghai has count-down clocks around the city that let you know there are 440 days left until the Expo.) By this time, we were tired, cranky, and overwhelmed by all the minute details. Turner took a lot of pictures though.

For dinner, we had reservations for the special Valentine's Day menu at Casanova, an Italian restaurant in the French Concession. At our table was a red rose and specially printed menus for the evening's four-courses, along with two flutes of Tattinger champagne. My menu consisted of Steamed Crab Meat with Cress Salad, White Beans, Sun Dried Tomatoes and Fig Vinaigrette Dressing; Fettuccine with Boston Lobster Sauce and Thyme; and Crispy Red Fish Fillet with Saffron Sauce, Mashed Chick Peas and Asparagus. Turner had Pan Fried Goose Liver with Port Sauce, Goose Liver Terrine with Orange and Marinated Goose Liver in Sweet Wine Sauce; "Candy" Dumpling Stuffed with Porcini Mushrooms Served with Butter Sauce, Truffle Pate and Crispy Parmesan Cheese; and Pan Fried Beef Tenderloin Wrapped with Smoked Ham, Rosemary and Mustard Sauce. The dessert course was shared, called the Cupid's Platter with Chocolate and Rum Mousse, Ricotta Cheesecake, Coconut Shooters, and Truffles. (You can tell that I saved the menu so I would not forget all the details!)

After our first glasses of champagne, we knew we would need more to go with dinner so we ordered a bottle of Prosecco. Everything was delicious! Yes, I ate a little crab and lobster, the first tasted like tuna and the second I gave mostly to Turner to eat but it flavored the pasta sauce nicely. Turner said that his beef was "something else," the best he'd ever had. This was a very memorable V-Day and anniversary, with better food and drink than we can usually afford in the US. Ah, the benefits of being an expatriate.

Salute!

Day 02 Shanghai

2009-02-19T10:29:00.006+08:00

After a breakfast of instant coffee and pastries bought from Paul the night before, we headed out with the intention of visiting People's Square in the morning. From a previous taxi ride I had noted an area full of book and stationary stores that was on the way to the square. I couldn't resist taking this detour, which turned into a morning browsing the shelves. Turner found a set of small notebooks that he has been looking for for almost a year now. They are the perfect size and have perforated pages--he loves them; it's cute. We also went to the Foreign Language Bookstore and bought a couple books on China and some leisure reads. I was amazed at the selection, all for about what you would pay in US dollars. I think most of the books were authentic, not black market copies. They have a lot of classics, for obvious copyright reasons. Anyone can make an edition of Pride and Prejudice or The Odyssey.

Laden with books, we decided to return to the hotel, deposit our purchases, and then head over to the riverside for a boat tour of the Huangpu River. On the way back, we stopped for lunch at a fast food chain that serves Chinese food and each got a set lunch that arrived cafeteria-style. The food wasn't outstanding, but it was honest and very cheap. After a heavy, expensive steak dinner, it fit the bill.

That afternoon, we bought tickets for a 3-hour river cruise that left the Bund at 2pm and advertised that it went to the confluence of the Yangtze and Huangpu rivers where they meet the China Sea. The small cruise boat had about twenty other passengers, mostly foreigners. I think the cheaper, one-hour tours are more popular with Chinese tourists.

The first half hour of the cruise was interesting, seeing both sides of Shanghai amid all the sampans, ocean liners, and fishing boats on the river. After a while though, the scenery became monotonous, one gray factory or shipyard after another. Three hours was going to be an awfully long trip. I don't know why I expected to see any nature, false hopes I guess. The most interesting part came when the boat reached the sea. The temperature dropped 10 degrees. The wind picked up. The waves got bigger. The coastline was lost in the fog/smog. We could have gone all the way to Taiwan, but the boat turned around and headed back upstream to Shanghai.

On the way we passed a large boat and saw a man walking along the edge holding a precious bundle wrapped in red. Behind him a woman poked her head out of a cabin holding similar cargo. Both had broad smiles on their faces as the lucky parents of twins (even luckier if they were boys). The dreariness of their surroundings couldn't stifle the joy of these new parents.

The boat ride left us cold and shivery, so we took a taxi back to the hotel for a nap and shower before heading out for dinner. We decided to try the Thai restaurant we had shunned the night before in favor of steak. The restaurant, Simply Thai, all dark and modern, appeared on the surface to know what it was doing, but the ensuing dinner fell short of the mark. We ordered cocktails, a mojito for Turner and Down Under Fizz for me (vodka, sprite, orange juice, grenadine), and flipped through the large menu. Our waitress cursorily took our orders for pad thai, green curry, and spring rolls, which arrived shortly, all at once. To them, we head just ordered appetizers instead of any main courses which seemed overpriced. This might indicate why the service was lacking and we felt sidelined. Turner's curry was very good, and very spicy like he ordered, but the pad thai tasted like it came out of a box and the noodles were undercooked. The spring rolls were nothing special either. This was our most disappointing dinner of the trip. I think Simply Thai should go back to the simple part of Thai cuisine instead trying too hard to be upscale.

We hightailed it out of there and headed straight for Paul, again. This time we ordered two croissants for breakfast and a tarte au citron to split for dessert. Sometimes all it takes is a little pastry to make an evening perfect.

Day 01 Shanghai

2009-02-18T16:18:00.027+08:00

Our first morning in Shanghai dawns sunny and hazy (as you can see from the view from our hotel room window), but since this is China, a little pollution doesn't scare us. Reconnaissance the night before left us with no breakfast options within a coffee-cup throw of our hotel. I can really only make it a few blocks sans caffeine.

We decided then to try out the hotel's room service and dutifully filled out our door-hangey with our breakfast requests. Playing it safe, we only ordered one breakfast because either a) there would be enough food for two of us or b) the food would be awful (this is a Chinese hotel doing a western breakfast so we were already on shaky ground). The food arrived on time and warm, so it had two things going for it. It also included a cup of coffee, so another point for the hotel breakfast. Alas, the toast was square, white (no sign of having been near a toaster), and dry. The eggs, while cooked fairly well, were covered with chopped ham, which we had ordered but did not expect to come as basically a garnish. The juice was essentially Tang and I preferred my cup of instant coffee to what came in the cup. All this enjoyment cost us almost $8 US. Needless to say, this was our first and last hotel breakfast. For our subsequent mornings, we had our instant coffee with yogurt, fruit, and the occasional croissant (more on these delicacies later).

Sometimes we would grab a cup of authentic coffee from Starbucks later in the day. They have them on almost every corner in the more touristy, commercial parts of the city. I remember reading that Starbucks was kicked out of Tiananmen Square because of its symbolism for all things capitalist. Well, Shanghai is more ready to embrace its western attitudes than Beijing. This Starbucks is a stone's throw from the Yu Garden, publicized as the most famous garden in southeastern China. Most of the tourists we saw were Chinese, so Starbucks clearly has a strong foothold in the Chinese market despite its high prices.

For lunch we ate at a crowded dim sum palace in the Yu Bazaar, enjoying some spring rolls and baozi, or meat dumplings. Unlike the baozi of the north, Shanghai baozi taste more like the wontons from the wonton soup that is ubiquitous in American Chinese restaurants. I actually quite enjoy them.

Yu Garden (Yuyuan) provided a tranquil break from the chaos of the Chinese marketplace just beyond its gates. Though small in size, the garden is emblematic of the Chinese style of landscape architecture that creates a labrynthine, enchanting setting in the middle of a crowded city. There were twisting corridors, serene pavilions, flowering trees, hidden nooks, still ponds--everything characteristic of the feng shui philosophy that became popular in the West only recently.

After touring the gardens, we decided to return to our hotel for a rest before heading out for dinner. We had made reservations at a Thai restaurant earlier in the day, so we took a taxi to its location and looked for a place to have a drink before dinner. The area we were in is called Xintiandi and is a reconstruction of a town street from Old Shanghai (kind of like a cutesy downtown pedestrian area with upscale shops and restaurants). While it was clearly built for tourists and well-heeled locals, it has some nice, relaxing places to eat and drink.

We had drinks on the patio of Cantine (a cosmopolitan for me and a martini for Turner) before deciding to cancel our Thai reservations because Turner saw a steakhouse and couldn't resist. It turned out to be Steak Out Thursday at Kabb (the restaurant) so we both ordered the set dinner that came with a salad, a steak, sides of vegetables and mashed potatoes, and a glass of the house wine. We also got another round of drinks, another martini for Turner (this one better than the previous one) and a chocolate martini for me (it was like dessert in a glass) and an appetizer of a bread and dip platter, which consisted baguette slices, Turkish flatbread, and another sort of bread along with hummus, baba ganoush (eggplant dip), and an olive tapenade. The whole meal was delicious. The steaks tasted authentic, the potatoes were garlicky, the dips rich and flavorful. Combined with the mellow lighting and dark wood decor of the room, our dinner was relaxing and comforting.

With very full bellies, we needed a walk around before heading back to the hotel, so we cruised the area taking in the strange surroundings of an area that could be dropped into any American town and no one would notice anything Chinese other than the occasional sign (and a larger percentage of people with dark hair).

It's a good thing we decided to explore because we never would have found the delicious little treat that is Paul, a French boulangerie and patisserie that has outlets around the world. It's no small surprise that Shanghai has its share of French food, what with the French running a large part of the city after the Opium Wars. This enjoyable little shop had a few counters and display cases filled with baguettes, boules, pains de campagne, tartes, macaroons, quiche, and many other delightful gems from the oven. We ordered their Valentine's Day special--a linzer cookie with custard and raspberry filling and a chocolate-dipped sable (shortbread) cookie garnish--along with a croissant and pain au chocolat for breakfast the next morning.

My eyes were probably wide as dinner plates as I took in this delightful establishment. This is my version of heaven: wood panelled walls, purple velvet-covered banquettes, plush rose-tufted chairs, all Old World charm in a very modern city. Turner asked me if I owned it what would I change, and I said almost nothing! It was the perfect piece de resistance to our first day in Shanghai.

So, for now, "Bonsoir, mes amis!"

First Taste of Shanghai

2009-02-18T10:46:00.005+08:00

We arrived in Shanghai in the late afternoon to warm air and green leaves on the trees, already very different from Qingdao. After taking a taxi to our hotel, our stomachs, as usual, dictated what we would do next--find food. At least they gave us peanuts on the plane, a rarity these days on US flights, but we were still ready to eat.

The hotel staff directed us to the closest area for food, a street a few blocks away, that had a range of options from street stands to fancy, "pet shop" restaurants (because you point out the fish that you want to eat from a range of aquariums, or in less posh places, from buckets of water on the floor). As it was only 4pm, we didn't want to sit down for a full dinner so we found our go-to street food--lamb kebabs! It is really hard to go wrong with one of these little Muslim places. You order however many kebabs you want and then have a seat in the little restaurant. From the grill on the street arrive your lamb skewers, perfectly seasoned with spice and salt. They go well with beer (which at most Muslim joints is a no-no), but we managed to get a "black beer" to wash down our food.

Satiated, at least for the next hour, we wandered around the vicinity of our hotel, to the famous Nanjing Road pedestrian area, filled with shops, restaurants, and of course, people (tourists and locals alike). Around dinnertime, we started to aimlessly look for a place to eat, someplace simple and not too expensive. Down one street, a hawker started yelling at us that his place was a good place to eat. We think he said they have American "sala," what we know as "salad." Because we were getting tired and hungry or because of his friendly demeanor, we caved and chose that restaurant for dinner. It turned out to be pretty good. The menu was enormous, with English and pictures! Always a plus.

Along with rice and a couple of Tsingtao beers (hard to beat our local brew, we ordered family-style Shanghai dishes: bean sprouts with tofu, eggplant in garlic sauce, stir-fried spinach, and sweet and sour pork spareribs.

The ribs were delicious, sticky, sweet, and awfully similar to American Chinese food. Because Shanghai is closer to southern China, its cuisine reflects the Cantonese style of cooking, which is the cuisine that Chinese immigrants brought to America. In Qingdao, the local food is more northern in character, using less sugar and more vinegar.

Although the rice was photogenic, it was mushy and on its way to being porridge!

Answer and Update

2009-02-11T09:03:00.002+08:00

Here is the answer to the second Chinglish food product quiz:

RAISINS! Can you believe it? Our winner this week is Paul Gutmann, a.k.a. Popsie. He guessed bay leaves, since he at least chose a food product. Although, considering the advertising copy, I think condoms was a good guess (way to go, Mom).

Turner and I leave for Shanghai this afternoon, so there will not be any posts until I return. However, I will take lots of pictures and record our culinary adventures. I am looking forward to some good Shanghai cuisine and also foreign food as we have reservations at an Italian restaurant for V-Day/3-year anniversary and a French restaurant for a buy-one, get-one dinner deal.

As long as we don't get Shanghaied, we will be back in one week. Until then, happy eating!

Up and Running

2009-02-11T08:26:00.007+08:00

Yesterday was the soft opening of Cookies Cafe, which Turner and I have worked diligently to get off its feet. The cafe was fully functional, selling hot drinks and baked goods.

In the morning I baked while Turner manned the cafe with the new waitresses. The foreign patients at the hospital have showed a strong interest in having good coffee, comfort food, and a relaxing place to sit and sip, so we have done our best to provide this. Some of the owners show an interest in the cafe becoming more of a Chinese restaurant, which would counteract our efforts to make the cafe a unique environment as there are about as many Chinese restaurants as there are people. What the area inside and around the hospital does not have is a quiet, soothing environment with authentic western food and drink. Our job has been to create this, so we feel that it has been a success. Whether or not it is what the owners want is up to them.

We had quite a few customers who said the coffee was great and the food tasty, so it was not a bad first day for a new business. Everyone involved seems excited at this new venture.

La Soupe Pour Deux

2009-02-09T20:41:00.007+08:00

It started raining last night. The morning dawned misty and overcast, making the bed seem like a warm haven from the dreary world, but the day beckoned. Before I had even finished my coffee, I was already planning the soup for tonight's dinner. This happens to me a lot and is one of the reasons I have problems sleeping in. I start thinking about food and what I can concoct in my kitchen with the resources at hand. If you've ever had the urge to jump out of bed and consult a cookbook or search the internet for a recipe, then you've the same "disorder" as me. My husband doesn't complain though because it usually results in good food.

After my morning cuppa and my run, I stopped by our campus store for ingredients. In America, a small supermarket like this would purvey Doritos and Pepsi. Although you can get your fair share of junk food in China, most stores also have vendors selling fresh vegetables, fruit, meat, and tofu. Only the vegetable guy has returned from the New Year holiday, but sometimes all it takes is a plump tomato or firm squash to get my culinary juices flowing. I bought all the vegetables seen above for only $2! And all were of excellent quality, better than most supermarkets in the US.

My plan was a simple minestrone that could be made around our hectic day. I made the vegetable stock while I stretched and showered. Simply put a whole onion (skin and all), a few carrots, and a bunch of celery in a large stock pot. Cover with water and let them simmer for about an hour with a bay leaf and some salt. I was amazed at how flavorful this broth was (I was a vegetable-stock virgin, usually using chicken for depth of flavor). I think a lot had to do with the quality of the vegetables.

We were going to be gone for the afternoon so I turned off the burner and let all the vegetables steep until we returned (no meat there to spoil). After a cold day working in a dirty kitchen (not my own, thank you), it was comforting to come home to prepare an easy and very healthy dinner. I strained the vegetables out of the stock and added carrots and chopped tomatoes before putting it on to simmer again. After awhile the new vegetables began to soften and I added some black pepper, more salt, oregano, and basil. The zucchini, cannelloni beans, and spinach went in toward the end. Everything came together into a light, fresh soup full of vegetables. I served it with cheesy toasts and forgot my worries over a steaming bowlful.

Chinglish Quiz #2

2009-02-09T20:22:00.004+08:00

Round two of the Chinglish food product quiz.

In case you can't decipher the image, the advertising on today's item reads, "Cool Fashion Need cool Taste. You Are The New Man." I will post the answer in a couple days, so send me your guesses as to what these words are advertising. Good luck!

A Well-Deserved Treat

2009-02-09T08:32:00.002+08:00

After working hard the past few days at opening the coffee shop, during which my nerves have been tested, we decided to go out for dinner last night to unwind. Well, that and we didn't have any food in the house. We didn't want Chinese or Asian and were thinking of pizza, but we can make pretty good pizza at home. We have a pretty solid rule of eating out at places whose food we can not replicate at home because what's the point if you can do it better.

We chose La Villa, a French restaurant, with a good wine list, bar, and pricey but excellent food. This meal was maybe my first in China that in no way tasted Chinese. You would know what I mean if you lived here for awhile. Even the cheeseburgers and pizza that are served in western restaurants usually taste vaguely Chinese. Not at La Villa though. The food we were served would pass as decent French food in any city. We started with cocktails (buy one, get one free)--Turner having a martini (obviously with olives) and me with a White Russian. So far so good, except we forgot the camera so my words will have to suffice.

On to the food, for an appetizer Turner ordered a Caesar salad and I had French Onion soup (which could have been the death blow right there). Both were very good! The salad had anchovies and real bacon bits (not from a can) and my soup tasted fairly authentic, if lacking in pepper. We decided to split a main course, saving our stomachs and wallet for dessert. There were many choices, ranging from goose livers and snails to salmon and lamb chops (there was even a pasta section for those suspicious of French food). We ordered a goose leg confit with mushrooms and peppers and parsley sauce. The presentation was great, the taste was comforting, and the potatoes garlicky. Mmm, mmm, good.

After another round of cocktails, we had to order dessert and choose a blueberry cheesecake from a range of choices like a Normandy apple tart or chocolate cake. Our cheesecake looked beautiful but lacked some flavor. It also had a strange fruit roll-up like top, tasted like fruit snacks. Overall, the dessert was good, but not the best part of the evening.

Even the inside of this restaurant took you out of a China for a few hours. It is housed in a stand-alone house (a rarity in a Chinese city) from the German colonization back in the early 1900s, so it has old doors and windows. The decor is eclectic but not over-the-top, with seating options from large dinner tables to overstuffed couches and coffee tables. A downfall of choosing the couches is that it is very difficult to leave after having a satisfying meal and a couple drinks.Service was perfect (both our appetizers actually came out at the same time!!) and attentive. Also, the waiter spoke English and understood the cuisine he was serving and the atmosphere the restaurant was trying to preserve.

All in all, the best foreign restaurant I have eaten at in Qingdao.

Coffee Shop Crash Course

2009-02-05T21:29:00.006+08:00

Turner and I have embarked on a new adventure, some might say crash course, as restaurateurs. To make a long story short, we are helping some investors start a coffee shop at a hospital in the Chengyang district of Qingdao, near where we taught English last year. My background as an amateur baker and aesthetic eye and Turner's business background and skill with numbers make us a pretty good team. It will be called Cookies Cafe. (As an English major, I'm still trying to wrap my head around the pluralization... should it be possessive? And if so, who's Cookie?)
When we entered the picture, the coffee shop and kitchen had the bare minimum, tables, chairs, refrigerator, oven, stand mixer (which is almost as big as me!). We have had to buy the rest in the past couple days to get both up and running, including everything from sugar packets for the cafe to spatulas and flour for the kitchen.

Tomorrow I am going to be testing recipes before training the Chinese staff in western baking and cafe service. The menu will be fairly simple and straightforward to start. Remember, they have never heard of putting cinnamon in something sweet. Baby steps, folks. Here's the game plan: granola with yogurt, fruit salad, apricot scones, banana bread, sugar cookies, chocolate chip cookies, and lemon cake.

The things that we have not been able to find thus far in Qingdao? Muffin tins and vanilla extract. The thing that will drive up the price of baked goods? Butter.

This next picture should accompany the punch line of a joke...

"Howdya like 'dem beaters!?"

Conveyor Belt Sushi

2009-02-04T20:27:00.008+08:00

For lunch today we wanted to do something special to celebrate my acceptance into the first of five PhD programs that I applied to last fall. We settled on sushi, in part due to our recent glut of heavy food and part for the entertainment factor. The sushi restaurant we chose (Qingdao has many) is in the lower level of the new retail complex I mentioned before in my post about Starbucks. I can't remember the name, but it was in Chinese anyway.

This chain follows the trend of using a conveyor belt that circles the central prep area where the chefs cook and that has bar seats on the opposite side. There are also booths, but they are not nearly as fun. As the little plates go by, with two to four pieces of sushi or sashimi or an appetizer on each, you can grab a plate off the belt, remove the plastic lid, and dig in. You're provided with a little dish for wasabi and soy sauce to dip your food in. Turner mixes his into a wet paste of wasabi while I go heavier on the soy, which is why his scalp itched and he almost broke into tears. Wasabi sure clears the sinuses. I actually found quite a bit to eat despite not enjoying raw fish. They used a lot of cooked tuna and cod, in addition to vegetables and bean curd. My favorite was probably the deep fried cucumber on sushi rice (trust me, it worked). We also ordered edamame, which were very tasty, miso soup, and sake.

Your bill is determined by the amount and pattern of all the plates you accumulate over the course of your meal. We ended up with about 12 plates. The price per plate varies from 6RMB (about $.90) to 22RMB (about $3.10), not bad for good sushi, so our bill came to about 130RMB (or a little under $20). It was delicious!

Baby Bok Choy

2009-02-02T19:39:00.005+08:00

After eating a few big, protein-heavy meals, I get the urge for something simple. I am sure most everyone does. My body craves vegetables and basic starches like rice or noodles. So I sent Turner off to the vegetable market on campus and he returned with carrots, spinach, and rapeseed greens. I believe that this is advertised in American supermarkets as baby bok choy. It looks awfully similar to me and the Chinese do not know what bok choy is. You can't even buy regular sized bok choy in Qingdao, so it might be a southern vegetable.

For dinner I made my mom's version of fried rice (the Chinese would probably disapprove but it sure is satisfying). Stir fry whatever vegetables you have on hand with garlic, onion, ginger, soy sauce. Scramble a couple eggs into the wok, dump in your cooked rice and some more soy sauce, fry all together for a couple minutes, and voila! I dress up the bowls with some sesame seeds but that's getting fancy for such a simple, delicious, quick supper.

Korean BBQ -- Grill at your own Risk

2009-02-01T22:21:00.003+08:00

Because we have not been grocery shopping in the past few days, Turner and I went out to eat again. No complaints here as Qingdao has plentiful dining options from all cuisines. The Asian variety offers the best quality, as far as I'm concerned obviously. Some of the Western restaurants don't quite hit the mark. I can usually make better food at home. Since we had less-than-stellar burgers last night, we chose between Japanese and Korean. Turner had been thinking about barbecue since lunch (which consisted of leftover birthday cake), so we opted for Korean barbecue.

What a good choice it was! We ate at An Shi Stove in the Hong Kong Garden area of Qingdao, where most of the foreign restaurants are located. Qingdao is home to many Koreans--we are just a ferry ride away from Seoul after all--so the Korean food in the city is especially good. I never thought that I would like Korean, but since our former tutees took us out last spring, I have been dying to give it another go. It's delicious, healthy, fresh, and, tonight, do-it-yourself.

You order your raw meat of choice--pork, beef, or seafood--and any other sides that you want (we ordered a pot of vegetables over rice). First, they bring small plates of appetizers, peanuts, cabbage and green onion kimchi, and a basket of lettuce (more on that shortly). Then they place a small, Weber-like grill on your table, with burning charcoal and a grill top, onto which you place your raw meat. We ordered "bacon," just fatty pork, and spiced rib meat, along with mushrooms for Turner. Grilling the fatty pork first works well to grease the grill top for all the subsequent food items.

Once the meat is cooked, you take a bite-sized piece, smear on a spicy, sour sauce, wrap it in a lettuce leaf, add raw garlic or jalepeno peppers if you wish, and put the whole thing in your mouth in one bite (we were scolded by the owner for not eating it in one bite). The rib meat was in long strips so the manager had to cut it into small pieces and change out the grill because ours was getting smoky. She took over from there, making sure all our food was grilled correctly and indicating when and how to eat it--very helpful indeed. The food is great with cold beer because it's spicy and salty, not to mention enjoyable and entertaining to eat.

Turner and I don't think this type of restaurant would fly in America. Burning charcoal inside, open flame, talk about fire hazard and cancer risk. Sometimes China really is more fun.

Let Them Eat Cake

2009-02-01T09:33:00.005+08:00

Happy Birthday Turner!

The cake turned out well, but the vanilla layers were a little dense. The whole was definitely better than the sum of its parts. I think it was a noble attempt at a layer cake.

Neapolitan Birthday Cake

2009-01-31T17:18:00.007+08:00

Turner turns 28 years old today, so only a special birthday cake would do for such a special man. My inspiration for this cake came from the container of Betty Crocker Strawberry Mist frosting that we were given by former expats who left last spring. Like all foods chock full of preservatives, this frosting is shelf stable for about two years, but I figured now would be a good time to use it. Also, in the fruit stands around the city, the strawberries have been temptingly red and plump these days.

I wanted to do a layer cake that involved strawberries but did not want the cake to be all strawberries, so I decided on a Neapolitan cake based on the ice cream that has vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry all in one. Looking for recipes proved fairly daunting as most cake recipes make two 9-inch cakes but in only one flavor. It always takes some Google ingenuity to find the right search words that result in appropriate hits. I finally found this recipe from King Arthur Flour for a Choco-Vanilla Cake that I used to make two heart-shaped cakes, one vanilla and one chocolate. I cut each cake in half so I had four layers total and alternated them using strawberry jam as the filling.
After I made the layers, it was time to get creative with the strawberries. I had about half a pound to play with. In the middle of the cake, I added sliced strawberries to the jam, which created an interesting pattern of polka dots on the chocolate background. (This would be a cute way to top a cake in the future.) Once the cake was assembled, I opened the container of frosting to find Barbie-pink, sugary frosting, not all that appropriate for a 28-year-old male, but it was part of the plan so I had to run with it. I chopped some of the strawberries that were not pretty enough for the garnish and mixed them in, hoping to temper to tooth-aching sweetness. This made the frosting fairly difficult to spread, so I think I will shy away from adding chunks to frosting in the future, but everything worked out in the end.

Culinary Envy

2009-01-30T14:15:00.003+08:00

I have to admit that I have cooking envy after reading so many food blogs. I am amazed by all the brilliant cooks and food stylists/photographers who make mouth-watering food and then photograph it to make everyone else jealous and hungry. As an amateur both in the kitchen and with the camera, I can only hope to some day have such an aesthetically pleasing blog like Tartelette or La Tartine Gourmande (see their blog links in the menu on the left).

Because I live in a medium-sized city in China, I am limited in what I can cook but more so bake. I only have a toaster oven and a few baking dishes that fit inside, and the temperature settings on the oven are merely estimates, which can spell catastrophe for baked goods. I can only drool over photos of souffles and macaroons, ogle beautiful cupcakes and tarts. I don't even have measuring cups but use a Chinese tea cup as my cup measure and guesstimate everything else. I do, thankfully, have a set of measuring spoons and a few bottles of vanilla--my luxurious western imports. I online window shop at Williams and Sonoma or Sur La Table just imagining what I could do if I had the right instruments. Sometimes I feel like a painter without brushes or a writer without a pen. I dream of my shiny red KitchenAid stand mixer packed away in my parent's basement.

My lack of cooking possibilities is probably the hardest part of being in China, next to the lack of English-language books and periodicals. I bake what I can, usually cookies, bars, or quick breads. I've managed flan and rice pudding and may someday try a mousse. Tomorrow I am tempting a two-layer birthday cake for Turner. I will post the results no matter what happens.

Quiz Answer and More

2009-01-29T16:48:00.009+08:00

Here is the answer to this week's Chinglish Food Quiz:

I'm sure you can tell what the product is from the picture. The Chinese call these la jiao, or hot pepper. We know them as chili peppers. Alyson had the closest answer as noodles are also dried and come in similar packaging, so one point for her! Stay tuned for another addition of the Chinglish Food Quiz.

Now, about last night's dinner. Here is what I started with. Can you guess what I made?

A curry with potatoes, cauliflower, and spinach, but because of the coconut milk, it tasted more like a Thai green curry than an Indian curry. I also made daal, aka lentils, with onion and tomatoes. I always used canned beans because no matter how hard Turner and I try to used dried beans, they never, ever cook properly. Maybe someone reading this has a fail-safe method for preparing dried beans. Please share if you do! I also use prepackaged curry powder, which I know is not authentic and I could very well make my own except powered turmeric is very expensive! I do use fresh ginger and grind coriander and cumin seeds to add a fresher punch than what is in the packet.

With the extra rice and coconut milk, I whipped up a quick rice pudding while Turner did the dishes. I can't share a recipe because it's one of those things that you make without measuring anything. I can say that it involves leftover rice (about 2 cups), milk (cow, soy, coconut, rice, goat...), water, cinnamon sticks, an egg, and some nutmeg, and it comes together like a pudding minus the corn starch because...duh...rice is a starch.

Mmmm... writing about last night's dinner makes me think about the leftovers that are sitting in the fridge waiting to be reheated and served with a fresh batch of rice. I was going to make naan, or Indian flat bread, but it requires rising time, and both yesterday and today I have not made it home in time to prepare the dough. I love naan. Some day I will share my recipe with you. I think I could eat freshly and authentically prepared (which means not by me) garlic naan every day for the rest of my life. I'm off on a tangent. Time to stop writing for now. 'Night!

Live Blogging from Starbucks

2009-01-29T13:48:00.006+08:00

During our usual morning routine, one of us usually asks the other, "So, what do you want to do today?" The response entails exploring some area of the city or going grocery shopping, but today Turner said he wanted to be a bum and sit in Starbucks for the afternoon, sipping a latte and browsing on their wireless internet. Qingdao has five Starbucks, though they seem to be multiplying like rabbits. Whenever a large, high-end retail complex opens, they always have a Haagen Dazs and a Starbucks. We are currently in the newest of these complexes, owned by Hisense, that was built to please the international crowd for the Olympics and for the nouveau riche Qingdao-ren (people). Its stores include Prada, Hermes, Burberry, Tod's, and Tiffany's.

Coffee is a western luxury that few Chinese enjoy in a form other than instant 3-in-1 packets (coffee, milk, and sugar; just add hot water) that I use only in emergencies. The Starbucks' in China brew decent lattes and are hopping most of the time, probably because they also serve all sorts of milky, sugary tea and coffee blends (or fraps, as I've heard them called).

I walked through the Starbucks that we usually frequent, in the Jusco building, and was unable to find a seat anywhere because the Chinese are still enjoying the New Year holiday. The place looked mobbed! Turner had gone over to the Hisense building to meet up with a friend he made at Tiffany's (because he bought my Christmas present there) who knows a worker at the Starbucks who could get us a discount on merchandise. By the way, this is a prime example of what the Chinese call guanxi, or knowing the right people to get what you want. We got 30% off a couple of mugs I had been eyeing. The prices at Starbucks are equivalent to American prices, so things are not cheap, to say the least. We also got some coupons for "buy one latte, get one free." Talk about knowing the right people!

Chinglish Quiz

2009-01-28T16:48:00.004+08:00

I am starting a Chinglish quiz where you have to guess what food item the pictured advertising came from. I will accept answers for a few days before posting a picture of the entire product. The prize? We'll see...

Here is today's puzzler:

Hint: The food product is NOT ice cream.

Seaside Adventures

2009-01-28T16:10:00.010+08:00

Since the morning arrived bright and clear, Turner and I decided to explore part of our beautiful city. It was also the third day of the new year so we knew the tourist sites would be full of families on holiday. Qingdao advertises a 40km-long boardwalk that connects the east and west ends of the city, covering the entire coastline. In reality, about half of this length is walkable. The rest is under construction or non-existent. We chose to explore the area known as Xiao Qingdao (Little Qingdao) and Zhan Qiao Pier.

Along the boardwalk are many small, family-run seafood restaurants with their delicacies out for display on the sidewalk in large plastic bowls with an aerator providing circulation for the "critters." This is not the seafood you would expect as a sushi restaurant or even on display in a supermarket. While you have many options at these restaurants--clams, starfish, rock fish, snails, "sea intestines" (a rough translation), small conch--most of them came from the bay across the street. I know this because people scour the rocky beaches with buckets and ice picks, yanking the critters from rocks and tide pools. You see mama-sans in their kerchiefs with buckets of snails (about 1/2 an inch big) that I just know are heading for the dinner table. I have no idea how you eat a snail so small but I have a feeling the Chinese are very skilled at it.

While we don't live in nearly the dirtiest part of China, I am not confident that the water these sea creatures live in is especially healthy. Qingdao is known for its hai xian, seafood, but I refuse to try it. When we go out to dinner, our hosts usually offer plenty of seafood, from shrimp gracing the green beans to small mussels, and I have to be adamant about not liking it. Before you assume that I'm just being a Western food snob, I never ate seafood in the United States. Two things bother me about it, one of which may be unfounded. Number one, I hate the texture, and number two, it does not strike me as a very clean food group, least of all the things in these buckets. While I will eat fish, seafood strike me as slimy, large insects or bottom feeders whose most delicious feature is their digestive tract.

Another popular street food on the seaside is squid-on-a-stick. The vendor usually separates the squid so you can buy just the body or the legs, prices vary accordingly, but all for under a dollar. He grills them for a few minutes until they look like rubber-on-a-stick. The Chinese quite enjoy this snack, but I won't go near it except to take a picture. Maybe it's just me, but seafood sitting out all day in the sun doesn't seem appetizing.

Tortillas for Two

2009-01-27T18:47:00.010+08:00

It's the second day of the Chinese lunar year, which of course means constant fireworks. Today Chinese families visit their relatives bearing gifts. This time of year you can buy all sorts of things in festive red gift boxes--eggs, beer, oranges, dried meat, chickens--to bring to your nearest and dearest.

After overindulging in hot pot last night, I was not in the mood to cook or eat anything particularly heavy. We were out of most fresh ingredients, save eggs and fruit, so did not have a whole lot to work with. By the time evening rolled around, Turner decided to make tortillas. Fresh tortillas are ten times better than any of those stale, tough circles you buy in grocery stores and are very easy to make. Also, since we couldn't buy packaged tortillas even if we wanted to in China, making them from scratch has become second nature.

The recipe is simple: 3 cups flour, 1 teaspoon salt, 1/3 cup vegetable oil, and one cup warm water. Mix the ingredients together by hand until a smooth, sticky dough forms and let it rest for about twenty minutes. This recipe makes 12-16 tortillas depending on the diameter you would like. After the dough has rested, cut it into equal balls. This is where two people come in handy. One person rolls the balls out on a lightly floured surface while the other mans the frying pan. Roll out each ball and add it to a frying pan over medium-high heat. It will cook for about a minute on each side (flip it when you start to see brown spots). If you have two people, the cooking time matches the time it takes to roll out each dough ball, so the process is fairly quick.

I usually eat the first tortilla, because like the first pancake, it's usually the sacrificial lamb before the pan is hot enough. The warm stack of tortillas can be used for any manner of Mexican or other cuisine. We use them for tacos, quesadillas, enchiladas, and Mexican pizzas (one fried tortilla topped with beans, cheese, salsa, and a fried egg). But on a day like today, with little food in the house, we made bean and cheese roll-ups, which entails exactly what you would imagine from the name.

I also know a great recipe, courtesy of Mom, for leftover or almost-stale tortillas. Spread butter over the tops, sprinkle on cinnamon and sugar, and slide them under the broiler until they are golden and crispy. They're like little slices of tortilla heaven!

Huo Guo

2009-01-27T09:31:00.005+08:00

For our New Year's Day dinner, we decided to have huo guo, or hot pot, which is originally a cuisine from Mongolia or Sichuan. Basically, there is an electric burner in the middle of the table on which is a shallow pot of boiling water, which you add flavorings like garlic, boullion, ginger, and herbs to. In Sichuan hot pot, the water is red and oily from all the la jiao, or red pepper. This version is so hot that I can't handle it so I opt for the Mongolian version which is more like a soup base.

Today, hot pot restaurants are common across China. It became a food craze a few years ago. If you can't read Chinese like me, two things indicate if a restaurant serves it: one, the sign outside shows a pastoral scene with lambs; two, the windows are coated in steam.

Part of the experience of hot pot is the process. It's pretty much cook-your-own food. Once the "broth" is boiling and flavorful, you start adding the fresh ingredients. For our meal we had spinach, napa cabbage, potatoes, mushrooms, lamb, and noodles. The lamb comes frozen, sliced thinly enough to cook in about a minute. Other ingredients that people add include tofu, other vegetables, and seafood. First, the vegetables go in the hot pot (get it?), and once they're cooked, you fish them out with your chopsticks and dunk them in your personal bowl of peanut/sesame sauce. I think this is the best part! I know it sounds strange, but all these ingredients taste ten times better slathered in this delicious sauce. I go through many bowls of it.

After you've had your fill of vegetables, then add the meat. When the broth gets back up to boiling, then the meat is ready to eat. Leave it in any longer and it gets tough. After you've devoured everything and the broth is full of flavor, then the noodles go in. Though difficult to take out with chopsticks, once they're in your bowl of peanut sauce, thoroughly coated of course, slurp them up like the Chinese do.

On a side note, my mom once made noodles and peanut sauce for dinner when I was a kid. It's one of the meals that I remember pretty clearly because you physically couldn't eat it. Each bite formed a sticky mass in your mouth and you could barely chew or swallow. I think we all had a good laugh about it! It sticks in my mind because usually my mom is a very good cook, so a culinary failure is pretty rare. This was one of them though. Love ya, mom!

Chun Jie Kuai Le!

2009-01-26T09:08:00.007+08:00

Happy Chinese Lunar New Year! Since we do not have an extended family to eat dumplings and set off fireworks with (even though all our Chinese friends ask if we are going home for the New Year holiday as they do, not realizing the home is a 15-hour plane ride away), we decided to celebrate at a Peking Roast Duck restaurant. Last year at this time, we were in Beijing (formerly known as Peking) but were not feeling well so we never sampled the city's most famous culinary delight. Luckily, a branch of one of the more famous chains opened in Qingdao.

We ordered half a roast duck (which they carve tableside), cold mashed potatoes (which were oddly sweet), asparagus and mushrooms (which was surprisingly tasty), and soup. They also brought a small plate of jiaozi, or dumplings, because it was New Year's Eve and everyone HAS to eat dumplings. The duck was kept warm on a trivet over a tea light so that the skin stayed crispy. To eat it, you smear the duck pieces in plum sauce and then wrap them together with slices of green onion in a pancake--very tasty! In addition to the duck meat from our half duck, they brought out half a head and tongue. Turner sampled the duck tongue, as you can see from the picture, and the brain but said the rest of the head tasted strange... imagine that. At the end of the meal they served us duck soup, cloudy broth with slices of cucumber floating in it. It was tasty for the first few spoonfuls and then just tasted oily.

After dinner, we decided to seek out a sweet treat, heading first to Haagen Dazs but, upon finding it closed, settling for a 30-cent cone from the 24-hour McDonald's. On our walk, we saw fireworks light up the sky throughout the city, being set off in front of hotels and banks--think the Fourth of July times twenty for about five hours.

Best wishes for a prosperous new year!

Coffee Time!

2009-01-25T09:04:00.005+08:00

It's Sunday morning here in China, and I am sipping on my magical morning brew. I started drinking coffee about five years ago on a regular basis because my aunt gave us an old espresso machine that she was not using. So I started drinking soy lattes in the morning and soon became a coffee fiend. I can handle not having coffee every now and then but my day seems to go much smoother if I have a cup in the morning. Just one cup. I'm not one to drink five cups of coffee in a day, nor do I imbibe after noon (most of the time). For Christmas a few years ago, Turner bought me a more powerful espresso machine and a burr grinder so we could have prefect lattes all the time. We also lived down the street from our local coffee roaster, Alakef in Duluth, MN.

So when our move to China became imminent, I was nervous about not being able to enjoy my brew in the land of tea. We packed a stove-top espresso maker and brought along a pound of Alakef grounds. For a while, my mom shipped coffee from Duluth to Qingdao so we could continue to enjoy coffee.

Then, one fortuitous day, we bumped into a fellow foreigner at a DVD shop and he told us about his Chinese friend Gordon who owns the only coffee roasting shop in Qingdao. We found our way to his shop, near Jusco but tucked away in a building with a small sign, and made quick friends with Gordon and his fuwuyuan (shop girl). He imports beans from all over the world and roasts them on-site, from Columbian to Yunnan to his famous Espresso blend. We usually get the Espresso blend--it's strong, full-bodied, and just damn good. On our most recent visit, Gordon looked like a child on Christmas morning. He had just received a new restaurant-quality espresso machine (see the bottom image), so he can make all sorts of espresso drinks, for free of course because we buy beans from him.

In the morning these days, I roll over and poke Turner, asking him, "What time is it?" I'm not looking for the hour but for the response, "Coffee time!" He makes me coffee most mornings in a traditional filter set-up into my extra-large Starbucks Qingdao mug.

People, people everywhere!

2009-01-24T17:05:00.005+08:00

If you thought that an American grocery store was busy during the days leading up to Thanksgiving or the Fourth of July, then you have never experienced a Chinese grocery store the day before the biggest holiday of the year, Chinese Lunar New Year. Turner and I ventured out to our local Jusco, think upscale department store with groceries that is popular not just for foreigners but for every Chinese person in Qingdao. We needed to stock up on some staples to get us through the next few days since tomorrow is New Year's Eve.

Let's just say, a linebacker would have been useful today. We had to push and shove to get through the store, had to stand in a 20-person line to have our produce weighed and priced, and had to use my white hat as a beacon among the hoards of dark heads. It was craziness! Luckily, Turner had his camera so I can share this priceless experience.

We bought lemons, potatoes, cabbage, noodles, frozen lamb, yogurt, and soda water, and then Turner stopped at the liquer store for a bottle of Gordon's gin. (We have been having cocktail hour lately and he was getting sick of cranberry fusion vodka, which I enjoy immensely.)

The New York Times & Me

2009-01-24T12:40:00.009+08:00

"Hi. My name's Sara. I am an addict." Addicted to the New York Times, that is. It's my morning staple as much as coffee is. The end of the week is best because then I can catch up on the Dining & Wine and Style sections. I love Frank Bruni's restaurant reviews and Mark Bittman's Minimalist recipes, videos, and blog posts on Bitten (see blog link to the left). Recently, he blogged about what he ate on a book tour in the northwest. In this vein, my posting today will also record "What I Ate."

breakfast: coffee, two small slices of toast with peanut butter
lunch: "smoothie" (peach yogurt mixed with apple juice), one apple, a few slices of cheddar
snacks: two espresso shots, mini McDonald's hot fudge sundae (we visited our coffee dealer today and he always makes us free drinks), banana
dinner: cheesy pasta bake (made from yesterday's leftovers), steamed broccoli

I also ran five miles and did some yoga.

A week ago, I put half of my famous Chocolate Gingerbread cookie dough (okay, it's Martha Stewart's recipe) in the freezer to make at a later date (which turned out to be today). I may have eaten a couple of these warm out of the oven. How could you resist?

January Tomatoes

2009-01-23T20:21:00.009+08:00

Chinese tomatoes are generally not of the variety that make you want to take a big juicy bite. See item A to the left, for example. On the other hand, the only pasta sauce available comes in a can and costs over $3.00, which seems like pittance to most Americans but is about an hour of work for us in China and a day’s toil for your average factory worker. A bag of tomatoes costs half that (though in the summer they are half this price and twice the quality). So, when choosing between chemical-laden, who-knows-how-long-it’s-sat-on-the-shelf sauce and fresh tomato sauce, we usually opt for the latter. The tomatoes we bought today (in about 5 degree plus -20 degree wind-chill weather) were less than inspiring, but they were all we could find.

The Chinese use tomatoes for one of two things: first, the large tomatoes are used in a few savory dishes, usually basics like “xi hong shi chao ji dan” or “tomatoes fried with eggs;” second, the small grape or cherry tomatoes are set out fresh for dessert alongside other fruit. I use tomatoes to make spaghetti sauce or chili, methods of cooking completely foreign to the Chinese because they entail cooking something for longer than 5 minutes. Luckily, we don’t have to pay for electricity, so we can leave our burners on for hours. I know it’s not environmentally friendly, but we walked to and from the grocery store, which must make up for leeching power from China’s grid.

So, I made spaghetti sauce with ground pork for dinner tonight. It didn’t taste authentically Italian, but it was awfully fulfilling after freezing my fingers off carrying home groceries. On a side note, the only Parmesan cheese we can find in Qingdao comes in a green tube. I would not use the stuff if I had any other option.

UPDATE on the Yogurt Cake

2009-01-22T17:10:00.004+08:00

This afternoon I made the cake I wrote about a couple days ago, the Yogurt Cake from Dorie Greenspan. I followed the recipe exactly and it came out golden and perfect from my toaster oven. Moist, light, not-too-sweet, this is the kind of cake that is easy to eat a lot of. (As per the reviews on epicurious.com, I would cut the amount of oil down to 1/4 cup.) Turner and I couldn't wait to slice into so I forwent the marmalade glaze but might try that next time. The cake would also be good with a lemon glaze.

For anyone curious about how I bake in my Chinese kitchen, here is my secret weapon:

Best Laid Plans

2009-01-22T13:50:00.004+08:00

Since Turner and I have almost two months off between semesters, we have come up with creative ways to spend all our free time. Today's modus operandi was a Tour de Qingdao McDonald's. I know what you're thinking--"McDonald's? Why on earth would you want to go to more than one?"--but sometimes you just gotta.

Qingdao has five McDs within the city proper (one is beyond the Licung River so it does not count). They are located in the tourist/retail areas of the city. Our plan was to visit all five in one day, more as a way to see parts of the city we've never been to rather than to enjoy the cuisine.

We left the apartment around 9:30am, hoping to snag the 10RMB breakfast deal at the location closest to us, but by the time we had walked the two miles, it was past 10am and therefore no breakfast! So we ordered two coffees and a 5-piece chicken nugget to hold us over until lunch.

From here we hopped on a bus to take us further west in the city to the Taidong shopping area for McD #2. It was about lunch time so we ordered a Whopper Value Meal to split, taking into account the fact that we were going to be eating at three more McDs. The food is about the same quality as an American McDs, so it offers a nice bite of Americana when we feel homesick. After eating at one of these fine establishments though, we usually feel a different kind of sick.

After our lunch, we started our walk to #3. By this time the weather that was earlier partly cloudy and mild had turned cold and extremely windy. We had not dressed appropriately and started to feel quite chilled and miserable. The wind was blowing dirt and debris everywhere, including our faces. Trudging along, hunched over, we were not longer enjoying our outing, and so we decided to abandon our hopes of eating at five McDonalds in one day.

Fabulous Fruit and Fake Food

2009-01-21T16:40:00.006+08:00

While on our peregrinations through the city today, I thought I would share some of the food culture of China.

I have spent most of my life in the northern part of the United States, so I have rarely had the opportunity to buy and eat very fresh fruit on an everyday basis. However, in China on every corner or side street there is at least one fruit stand offering a surprisingly wide selection of produce that would make American grocery stores jealous. This one is outside the gates of our university campus and has apples, pomegranates, kiwis, grapefruits, cherries, strawberries, mangoes, papayas, bananas, dried fruits and nuts, but what my husband and I repeatedly buy are clementine oranges, ten times better than any box of clementines from Spain, and pomelos, aka yuzu fruit, which are like large grapefruits with the flavor of Sour Patch Kids (I am holding one in the picture and that is a small one!). They are oddly addictive. I have been known to eat a whole one in a day. We are certainly not suffering from a lack of vitamins based on the amount of fruit we consume.

Further afield, in the commercial/retail area of the city where we frequent the larger grocery stores, are many, many, many restaurants. Usually, the facades offer nothing that tells me what they serve because I can't read the writing, though occasionally there will be Chinglish translations. However, this fast food restaurant had window displays of the food available on their menu. About thirty plates in all were available for your perusal. The food was like the fake, plastic food that children "cook" with when they play "house," but maybe more realistic. I especially salivated over the burger and fries (well, not exactly)...

The restaurant advertised the following: "It's not barbecue, it's BBQ! They returned for more when they found out the BBQ CHICKEN were actually good." I think it's a brilliant marketing scheme. They didn't think it would be good, but they tried it anyway and actually liked it.

Fresh French Bread in China

2009-01-21T12:26:00.005+08:00

Bread comes in two forms in China, one attempts to copy western recipes for baguettes or sandwich loaves, the other is strictly Chinese and involves steam and no flavor. The former is generally spongy, soft, or stale in a day. And while the latter goes well with a spicy, sweet Chinese meal, it can not be toasted or made into grilled cheese. Concerned with this lack of decent bread, last year I undertook baking bread at home.

While I had made bread before, my lack of oven in China presented a daunting obstacle. I knew I could not make a traditional loaf due to lack of space in my small toaster oven--the top would burn before the rest had cooked. I recalled reading an article in Vogue (of all places) a year or so before about "No-Knead Bread." The idea has since taken The New York Times and the rest of the world by storm and offered a perfect combination of easy preparation and necessity of a small, enclosed space for the bread to bake. Using a small ceramic pot (traditionally used for stew or something) in my toaster oven provided the bread a warm, moist space to rise and bake. For the last minutes of cooking, taking the cover off the pot created a crackling crust indicative of quality french bread. I had success with the first try!

Now I make this bread every other day, mixing the dough in the evening and letting it rise overnight, giving it a second proof for an hour in the morning, and then putting in the toaster oven for about 40 minutes and out comes this:

Pizza, pizza!

2009-01-20T23:42:00.002+08:00

Last night we made comfort food... pizza and chicken wings. I use Mark Bittman's Minimalist recipe for fried pizza. It works great when you have a wimpy toaster oven that could never turn out a decent pizza. We topped the dough with tomato paste (makes a great sauce), garlic, onions, peppers, wilted spinach, Parmesan, and mozzarella--makes me hungry just thinking about it again.

A Cake without Butter!

2009-01-20T23:25:00.001+08:00

I am always thrilled when I find a recipe that I can make using common ingredients in China. Let's just say that butter is a luxury item here, costing us about 20 RMB (which is a lot when you're earning a Chinese salary). So if I can make a cake without it, then everyone is happy! I found this recipe on Epicurious and can't wait to try it: Yogurt Cake with Marmalade Glaze

Eat, Drink, Cook, Share

2009-01-20T22:36:00.000+08:00

This is my first posting for what I hope to be a record of my trials and triumphs of cooking, eating, and entertaining, for now all done from Qingdao, China. My husband, Turner, and I are foreign experts, teaching at a university in this "lovely" coastal city well-known for seafood and Tsingtao beer, both of which I will discuss at some point I'm sure.