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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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 d
o 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!
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.
