Shanghainese Feasts - part III

The final part of all my eating in China.

I hate to say this but by the end of my 10 days I was a little tired of Chinese food *shock horror* and I was really looking forward to my big finale ... yes, a buffet lunch at the Shangri-La! Oh no, no .... this was no ordinary Mr Wu's buffet with it's greasy fried chicken wing tips, sweet and sour onions (oops..pork) and stir fried bean sprouts. This buffet lunch was an abundance of fresh seafood, sushi, Indian dishes, dim sum.....emmm........£25 a person. Alright, that is actually bloody expensive for China but hey, it's Shanghai... it's an expensive city and it was a birthday treat for my mum so it was money well spent :) Now, let's dig in!

First up, poached fresh scollops and mussels with shallots in red wine vinegar. Fresh plump and juicy.. need I say more? ;) In the little glass was a little ceviche (citrus marinated fish) with some mango salsa. Not terribly exciting taste wise but it looked very pretty in the glass.

Next (clockwise) - boiled asparagus and garlic flower (minus the flower) topped with fish roe and chopped boiled egg. In my attempt at being 'arty' I put a slice of salmon sushi at the head of the plate. To the left a slice of deep fried Indonesian beancurd - terribly unexciting and bland. At the botton I have salmon (an another fish which I do not know the name of) sushi topped with mayo and seared with a blowtorch (Crème brûlée style at the sushi counter). Next to this - salmon and tuna belly sashimi - emmm good! A pretty little dish of wasabi with soy sauce on the side rounds it off.

Anything but Chinese food at this point = goood :) So I had Indian-ish... I sneaked in some dishes from other regions too :D In the top left hand corner is a vadai, an Indian savoury snack that looks a lot like a doughnut made with, in this case, lentils. Next to it chickpea curry (sorry can't remember what it tasted like but I think it was relatively good). Moving on - the green patch next to the chick peas - tabbouleh from the Middle Eastern counter. Ergh no, no, BAD. It was made with curly parsley instead of flat leaf so the texture was wrong and taste was just not right. The fish next to it was from the Southeast Asian section. Grilled with a tamarind sauce. The fish was dry and quite boring really. The fish dish below it I did like though. It doesn't look like much in the photo (to be honest this photo is really quite bad with no practice on my almost new camera) but it was tasty, tasty, tasty. If I remember correctly, the fish was cooked on the grill on top of a banana leaf with a sauce of tomatoes, onions and other yummy things. It was moist and the sauce had a good tang from the tomatoes. Next, deep fried green beans with minced pork. I'm in China, I just can't escape it! :) Actually, despite being in China and all that, the dish was terrible. The beans were too old and thick (does that sound odd? thick beans?) and there wasn't the taste of a good, big fire needed to cook this dish. Above the beans - lamb curry. Ohh yes, *drool*. This they did well - actually the Indian chef did well (he said hello to me). A well spiced dish with tender chunks of meat. Flavoured rice above that, with what I can't remember.

I moved west for this round. Baked oysters with cream, breadcrumbs and cheese. Can't really go wrong with a dish like that. It was good but not spactacular. Next to it, fish with a tomato and basil sauce. Again good but if I can't remember it, it couldn't have been briliant. Behind this a big, big mound of mushrooms. I love mushrooms. Garlic, wine, a bit of rosemary.. can't go wrong. Well, they did when they added lemon juice to it! It was all wrong. Where you're expecting richness of flavour enhanced with some butter, you hit with sour lemon mushrooms. Thumbs down! Hiding behind the musrooms is a little dish of breaded fish and tartare sauce. An attempt at fish and chips. I thought was a cute idea but the fish was dry and the coating not nearly crunchy enough for my liking.

Andddd there's always room for dessert. The dessert counter is the first thing you see when you enter the restaurant and unless you really dislike sweets, you won't say no :) Along one glass window were 4 fountains - milk chocolate, dark chocolate, vanilla and pistachio. As soon as I entered I knew I had to try this out! I've never had this before but I had heard alot about it. Fruit and sweeties galore as dippers, of which I chose a fruit stick and a choux pastry stick. The pastry was dry even after a good douse of chocolate. No points there. The fruit stick on the other hand was very good despite previous sneers of fruit and chocolate. The one that did stand out was rock melon and dark chocolate. Very unexpected.

On the whole I was dissapointed with the dessert. Definately not the selection but with desserts itself. The 3 memorable desserts: the melon fruit stick with dark chocolate, the dark chocolate ice cream seen here with the chopped nuts and the little chocolate mousse torte (as enlarged and distorted for the main picture of this blog). Don't ask about the lemon...my mother thought it was added colour to the photograph. She thought it was hilarious too.

The end of 10 days fooding in Shanghai. I didn't take pictures of all the meals I ate. Sometimes I was too hungry to wait, other times my mother and I were too engrossed in those mother-daughter discussions. I also sometimes forgot. It was a good, albeit, freezing holiday in China. It did really open my eyes to what the country is becoming and gave a little insight of what it still is. Food-wise .... it was all good. All good.

Shanghainese Feasts - continued

Continuing on our cultural experience of Shanghai, my mother and I went on a day (which lasted all of one morning) trip out to the 'ancient' town of Qibao. Apparently built in the Northern Song Dynasty (960 - 1126), whatever that was ancient about the town seems to have now disapeared. In its place stand mock ancient Chinese buildings (in the style of the mock Tudor style buildings) that cater to the mainly local crowd. Despite the architecture that wouldn't inspire anyone to venture out here, I had a good time. A good sniff in the air brought me straight to the food street, where every shop and stall sold a tasty morsel.

Candied fresh fruit tang hu lu- I really wanted to try this since I saw pictures of them sold as street food in Beijing. I got a traditional Chinese hawthorne fruit stick (the fruit is supposedly very good for you) but ERGH! Two bites was all I could take. It tasted like apple...gone wrong. Soft and tasteless, it had nothing going for it except the hard candy shell. My mother had it in Beijing on a previous trip and admitted this one didn't taste so good. In the bin it went... what a waste! Maybe we should have stuck with a 'normal' strawberry and kiwi fruit stick. The man was also selling grilled bananas in bamboo - and that's him breaking open the bamboo. It wasn't particularly interesting...so we moved on to the next stall.

Next stop, the tong yun shop. Dough balls filled with either a sweet filling - peanuts, black sesame, etc or savoury - pork (what else?this is China after all!) and boiled. It doesn't sound particularly appetising and these weren't the best. The dough was too thick but my filling of choice, black sesame, was good. The balls were also served with the water they were boiled in .. perhaps a little sugar syrup would have perked the dish up a little.

We passed quite of these stalls selling all sorts of meat on sticks. Actually, not just meat. All parts of any animal on sticks, which was fried, grilled or boiled. I can't say if any of it was any good. I had a good look and moved on to more recognisable food.

The wine shop didn't seem to be doing very good business that morning.

One of many shops selling packs of sealed glutinous rice with dried fruit, nuts and beans. I've seen this sold in the Chinatown supermarkets in London but nothing in comparison when it came to variety. I'm no dried fruit, nut and bean girl so I passed on this.

I found this oddly fascinating - lotus root stuffed with what looked like a mashed bean mix then drenched in syrup. I've never seen this before and maybe one day I'll get round to asking my mother to translate what it says on the glass case.

These dumplings were made in a special griddle mould. The girl would pour a mixture into each individual mould and as it cooked topped it with bits and bobs...cabbage, cooked squid tentacles are the only two that come to mind. It looks so yummy when I look at it now but it didn't call out to me then. Sigh... what a wasted eating opportunity.

This goodie I did try :) Fried dough with spring onion, Chinese 5-spice powder and very liberally sprinkled with sesame seeds. I found the 5-spice powder a little over-whelming so I left my mother to it. She really liked it, perhaps she fancied she was eating something healthy with all those sesame seeds te he he...

After lots of tasty treats, we found that there wasn't much to do so decided to head back downtown to the very touristy area around Yuyuan Gardens. I was nicely surprised with the gardens itself. Away from the hustle and bustle of the shopping area outside it's old walls, it was very peaceful and surprisingly clean. I was a little anxious I would be told off for the cup of coffee that I had brought in with me but no one gave a fig.

After emerging from the gardens, we passed a stall selling braised tofu and quails eggs in a herbal broth. I'm a huge fan of braised tofu (not so much the eggs, which mum happily ate anyway..everyone was happy) and couldn't resist. The firm tofu was braised long enough for little air holes to be formed inside, which was then penetrated by the soya sauce-herbal broth. Ohh, tasty goodness. You can sometimes get this in shops with just the eggs sold as 'herbal eggs' but hardly ever the tofu, so you can see why I was so excited :)

Further along there were two girls selling pancakes filled with red bean paste. These pancakes did smell very good. The girl cooked up a batch by adding batter to oiled moulds and as it cooked added mashed red beans and added another dollop of thick batter. She then sprinkled a thick layer of sugar to a flat pan on her left and flipped the half cooked pancakes onto the melting sugar. Ohhhh smells so good...now if only I liked beans....

Shanghainese Feasts

Back in January I made it over to Shanghai to meet up with my mum. I thought it would be a great breather from London and a lovely half way point between my trip home to Malaysia last September and another trip back this coming May. Oh...but how wrong I was. Shanghai is definitely not made for visiting in January! I had also arrived right BANG in the middle of China's big freeze. Huge snowstorms, freezing temperatures, power cuts.... However, I was mostly unaffected by all this. I was snug in my coat, warm in the cars that ferried us everywhere and only slightly irritated by the ice on the pavements that threatened me with a broken limb. I was in Shanghai and I was determined to feast on as much food as Shanghai could offer.

The famous Shanghainese xiao long bao (little basket dumplings), a ball of minced pork with a little chunk of solidified meat broth wrapped in a pleated flour dough skin and steamed in a bamboo basket. Dumpling perfection! As you bite into a freshly steamed dumpling, expect a shot of wonderfully meaty broth to fill your mouth before trickling down throat. Eaten with ginger and vinegar, these beauties make a brilliant snack or meal (snack for me, meal for others! heh) and with all the different variations - pork and crab, plain pork, pork and vegetable, plain crab, crab and crab roe - I could never get bored. Oh, I do love my dumplings! From the cheap to the expensive, I loved all of them.

I'm told that Shanghai really isn't anything else like the rest of China (not counting Hong Kong, of course). It's more cosmopolitan and modern but I won't really know since before this trip I had never ventured any further than standing on a hill in Hong Kong's New Territories and staring across the border when I was about 10. So I thought what better way to balance the old and the new of Shanghai with a few visits to Starbucks. Love it or hate it, there was no better way than to beat cold, cold Shanghai with a brew of Starbucks' finest beans. I find comfort in the familiarity of it all (and also much to my mother's relief it was the one place where she didn't have to act as translator). I have to say, I found one of the nicest Starbucks I have ever seen. Located on the ground floor of one of the hotels (the name now escapes me), it was all marble and the staff with that comforting twang of wobbly American-English. A skinny grande latte with an extra shot for me and I am ..home :D I also found these yummy cashew brittle that they had down by the counter. An excellent balance to all those salty baos.

At some point of our trip, my mother and I decided we should do the 'cultural thing' while we were in Shanghai. The only problem was finding them. The city isn't particularly known for its historical heritage. Shanghai is a city of commerce but thanks to our handy Lonely Planet guide book (which I borrowed from our hosts - the Gates) we found ourselves some temples to visit. And what is a Chinese temple without a visit to their vegetarian restaurant? At first glance, I have to admit I was a little reluctant to go in to the restaurant at the Jade Buddha Temple (Yùfó Sì). The restaurant was practically empty (it being about 3pm) and it was cold (thanks to its marble floors and the lack of heating)!! The waitresses were even wearing their coats :( But persuaded by a very hungry mother, I was treated to one of the most memorable meals in Shanghai.

I ordered the lion's head meatball and preserved vegetable soup noodles (I didn't take a photo of) and my mother settled for the mushroom noodle soup. My mother dug in as soon as the food arrived and after a few bites we both agreed that we preferred each other's noodle bowl to our own and we promptly swapped. The mushroom noodles (pictured above)- oh so ...divine. It was filled with fresh and dried mushrooms, which gave the dish a nutty earthiness. Although a little too oily (which I overcame by skimming it a little), it was full of flavour .. sigh, and I still dream about it...

We also had a few side orders - fried turnip cake (top right), steamed bao of some sort (top left) and fried sweet pastry filled with Chinese custard (bottom). I say Chinese custard because it's less creamy and a tad bit more egg-y. None of the side dishes took my breath away - in fact I won't bother if I ever went back. However, another bowl of mushroom noodles would do very nicely.

Food to tempt, food to lust after....

To eat to live or to live to eat? I personally live to eat. Yes, I am that dedicated to the nector of life. Always have been and probably always will be. I know not otherwise! Is this another food blog? Yes, I suppose it is. But it will be my food blog. Why now? Why not now. I live it, dream it as it is...why not drag it a notch further and write about it and have a great time doing it. This blog is more than a little about myself and be warned I am new to this. So please be generous and be patient :)