I’ve been meaning to post more photos from Matt’s 2007 trip to Hong Kong. Since I have no food news to report today I’ll do that here. We have: Aaron, Matt’s cousin and host, with his friend, Tracy, in Shenzhen, and next Matt in front of the Hong Kong skyline. Matt spent his days roaming around all the nooks and crannies of Hong Kong. He took the MTR subway to get close to where he wanted to be and then went off by foot. He wanted to be sure to make it to non-touristy sections of town so he could eat authentic, local food, which he enjoyed, apparently being seated with random diners and then pointing to dishes on other tables that he wanted to try but didn’t know by name. Evenings were spent with his cousin and various subsets of his circle, going out to eat and to the markets and whatnot. Matt said there was a father and son food cart establishment near his cousin’s apartment that sold snacks, like BBQ pork buns, shrimp rice noodles and fried taro, and that he had something from the cart each day. I believe it.
The Hong Kong Snack House in Pacific East Mall in Richmond is pretty good, I can report, for a little bite or even a whole assortment of goodies to combine to make a meal for your brood. They have excellent Vietnamese sandwiches that come on good, crusty French bread with crispy veggies and a sweet/sour sauce for around $3.50. Try the combo. We have not yet worked our way through the entire menu, but are able to vouch for a few other things, like the egg puffs and waffles, but I would advise eating these items while walking around the mall. The sandwiches travel fine, though. This place has a display table of brightly colored snack items that we have not yet selected from, and it was decked out in spades for Chinese New Year.
lion’s head meatballs 3-16-08
Chinese dinner tonight for friends. I guess I’m just crazy enough to make Chinese food for Chinese guests, but I figure they’d appreciate the gesture as I do when someone serves me up some Eisbein that is less than echt. I made a couple of my favorite Shanghai-style dishes: lion’s head meatballs, which are first fried and then braised in cabbage leaves, and pork belly braised in wine, soy sauce, ginger and rock sugar. For some reason I also served up kare-kare, a Filipino dish of tripe and oxtails laced with annatto oil and peanut butter, just for some contrast. It’s generally a bad idea to cook something you never made before when company calls, but I saw this in Jeff Smith’s The Frugal Gourmet on our Immigrant Ancestors (1990), and wanted to give it a go. I love kare-kare, but you can’t eat too much in one sitting or you’ll feel like killing yourself.
kare kare 3-16-08
Yes, I know this meal was too heavy in sum total, and I should have had a veggie or fish dish to round it all out, but we wanted to go for broke. I didn’t even mention the potato Kugel with blood pudding dip – which sent this nothing-really-goes-together meal into depraved territory. Yes, yes, I know Jeff Smith has been accused of terrible things and I should never use his cookbooks because that would go against the wishes of the powers that be – essentially to wipe his memory off the face of the earth, but I have no intention of stopping. His cookbooks are pretty good. Rip off my arms and legs if you want to.
braised pork belly
Szechuan spicy fish fillet from Great Szechuan
A meal today at Steve’s new favorite restaurant, Great Szechuan (3288 Pierce Street, Richmond) at the back of Pacific East Mall. I’ve written about this place before but did not have any photos until this trip. I again ordered the Szechwan spicy fish and again was not disappointed. As I reported last time, this dish is generous, with many deep-fried fillets served on a wooden tray under hundreds of chili peppers and Sichuan peppercorns. Hot. Numbing. Steve had the hand pulled noodles with pork, which he said was very good, with no heat whatsoever. Jon ordered the seafood chow mein, crispy style, which he made short work of. If you can’t deal with hot dishes they serve a number of mild things, so no worries there.
