chinese

September 19, 2010

Cookbook Challenge: Week 44, Chinese

Agnes chinese, cookbook challenge, cuisine, recipe

Recipe: Sticky Asian Pork Belly
From: Donna Hay Simple Essentials: Lamb, Beef and Pork

It’s Chinese week for the Cookbook Challenge, and I didn’t have a plan for this week. What?! How did that happen? Being Chinese, I should have had a TON of ideas. Maybe I had too many options and was paralysed by indecision. Who knows! In the end, I made pork belly for this week just because I saw it at the shop – it was a total impulse purchase.

The pork belly I bought didn’t have the skin on it, so I couldn’t make the classic Chinese crispy roast pork. Instead, I followed a Donna Hay recipe for a sticky Asian pork belly (close enough) and braised the belly in a mixture of wine, hoisin sauce, kecap manis and soy sauce. (The recipe says to bake it, but I braised it and it worked well enough.) I cooked the pork and then let it cool in the fridge overnight, a step that I highly recommend because it meant I could scoop off a lot of the solidified fat. And, holy cow, was there rather a lot of fat and oil – it’s pork belly after all!

After hours of braising, the pork belly was soft and tender. It was a bit fatty, but not excessively so. The marinade and cooking sauce was quite strong and tangy, and there was an edge to it that I wasn’t sure I liked. Too much hoisin? Too much rice wine? I’m not sure. So it wasn’t the best pork belly I’ve ever eaten, though it was much better when eaten with plain rice to help cut through some of the richness.

Pork belly isn’t something I cook or eat often – everything in moderation of course! But next time I make it, I’ll try another recipe. I want something better than okay if I’m making pork belly – I want absolutely drool worthy! Does anyone have any recipe suggestions?

See previous Cookbook Challenge posts here.

Sticky Asian pork belly

Adapted from: Donna Hay Simple Essentials: beef, lamb and pork

4 cloves garlic, crushed
2 teaspoons finely grated ginger
1/4 cup hoisin sauce
1 cup Chinese cooking wine
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons kecap manis
1 cup water
2 fresh chillies, roughly chopped
1kg pork belly

In a large bowl, combine the garlic, ginger, hoisin, wine, sugar, kecap manis, chillies and water. Add the pork belly (skin side down, if it has skin) to the marinade, and cover and refridgerate for at least one hour.

Place the pork belly and marinade into a large pot. Bring the liquid up to the boil, and then turn down to a simmer. Let it simmer until tender – probably a couple of hours. When the pork is tender, leave it to cool in the fridge overnight.

The next day, scoop off the solidified fat and discard. Gently reheat the pork belly. When it is warm, remove the pork belly and cut into strips/pieces. Bring the cooking liquid to a boil and let it reduce slightly. Add some cornflour mixed into water to thicken the sauce.

Return the pork belly to the sauce and serve with plain rice.

June 20, 2010

International Noodles Incident Party

Agnes chinese, cuisine, incident party

Following on from the success of the dumpling, pizza pie and gnocchi parties – we’re having noodles!

I am a big fan of noodles, most kinds of noodles in fact. See the ramen hunt post as an example of my dedication to noodle goodness. As soon as the theme was announced, I had a fairly good idea of what I wanted to make. We had so much fun making soba noodles in Japan, that I really wanted to make my own noodles – and what better noodles to make than hand pulled noodles?

When Alastair and I were in China years ago, one of our most memorable meals was a bowl of noodles at a street stall. We watched the noodles being pulled in front of us, and five minutes later we were tucking in. Amazing.

I knew that I wouldn’t be able to come close to replicating that meal. Hand pulling noodles is a skill that takes lots of practice to develop, but hey – I’m always up for a challenge!

I followed the instructions on this website – How to make hand pulled noodles. The dough is easy to put together – it’s basically flour, water, salt, a tiny amount of baking soda, and oil. The dough needs to be kneaded for a long time – to “destroy the gluten structure” according to the website, until it gets to a point where it stretches easily without breaking. I let my mixer do the kneading, but even after 25 minutes my dough didn’t reach that point and I couldn’t do the first pull without it breaking.

Now panic and freak out!

Finally, I figured out that if I added more water, it made the dough more supple and less prone to breaking. So eventually, after rather a lot more water, YAY NOODLES. I still had a lot of problems with the noodles breaking, and they were all uneven thicknesses, but look!

If you watch the above video, you can see how wet the dough is at the beginning. If I was ever silly enough to want to try pulling noodles again, I would try lots and lots more water. I wish I had started with wetter dough – it probably would’ve been much easier!

If you’re considering trying this, let me tell you. It is HARD. I now have first hand experience of exactly how hard it is, and goodness gracious do I appreciate the skill that is involved in pulling noodles! It is definitely something that takes a lot of practice.

It took me so long to make the noodles (we’re talking hours…) that I was exhausted afterwards and couldn’t be bothered doing much with them. Fortunately, I had a large pot of chicken stock already made, so I boiled up the noodles and served them in the chicken stock with some enoki mushrooms. They tasted okay, but not amazing…. not like I had spent hours making them! But I’m really glad I gave it a shot.

That’s it for my contribution to the International Noodle Incident Party. See Addictive and Consuming for the round up or check out the following links:

Penny aka Jeroxie – Addictive & Consuming – Homemade ban mian with minced pork and mushrooms

Christine – Christine’s Recipes – Spicy Pork Mince and Noodles in Crisp Lettuce Cups

Mardi – Eat, Live, Travel, Write – Ginger scallion & Butter noodles

Trix – Tasty Trix – Summer ‘Noodles’ with yellow and green zuchinni with cool basil oil tomato sauce

Shirley – Enriching your kid – Vermicilli Biryani with Tahini

Natasha – 5 Star Foodie – Homemade Soba Noodles

Joanne – Second Helping

Cherry – Sweet Cherry Pie – Coconut noodles with honey glazed pork belly

Tracey – Tangled Noodle

Evelyne – Cheap Ethnic Eatz – Incidental Noodles

Ms Baklover – Footscray Food Blog – Zha Jiang Mian

Casey – Eating, Gardening & Living in Bulgari

Tamar – Koreanfornian Cooking – Tteokbokki

Billy – Half-Eaten – Pumpkin Miso Noodles in Shitake Dashi Broth

Nina – Consumed Food Love – Vietnamese Noodle Salad

Suresh – 3 hungry tummies – Twice cooked pork with rice noodles

Anh – A food Lover’s Journey – Taco Soba Noodle

May 12, 2010

International Dumpling Incident Party

Agnes chinese, cuisine, dumpling/yum cha, incident party, recipe

It’s time for another International Incident Party hosted by Penny from Addictive and Consuming, and this time we’re bringing dumplings to the table. When I started thinking about what I was going to make, I immediately thought of the mother of all dumplings (imho) – Shanghai soup dumplings / xiao long bao. But after a bit of research on the internet I decided it would be too much trouble and tried hard to think of an easier alternative.

I walk past a butcher on my way to work every day and as well as all the usual cuts of meat they also sell a lot of offal. Last week I noticed they had a tray of pork skin in the window – and since pork skin is one of the components of the broth that goes in the xiao long bao I decided it was a sign that it was meant to be!

For those uninitiated in the magic of xiao long bao, they are dumplings with a meat filling that contains jelly made from a savoury soup. When the xiao long bao are steamed, the jelly turns into a piping hot soup inside the wrapper. They are WONDERFUL. After picking up my pork skin and chicken carcasses, I set to work.

Stage one in making the dumplings was to prepare a broth out of chicken bones, pork skin, ginger and onions. After the broth was ready, I added flavourless gelatine to set it into a jelly.

On Sunday morning I got up early just so I could make them. First I made the dough for the xiao long bao wrappers. The dough had to rest for thirty minutes, so while that was happening I put together the meat filling, which has the jelly mixed into. I wish I had read the filling recipe before I made the jelly, because it turns out only 1 & 1/2 cups of jelly is required – but the recipe said to make 4 cups of jelly. Rah! I was a bit annoyed – maybe because I was up early and hadn’t even eaten breakfast yet!

After that it was time to roll out the dough and pleat the dumplings. I started off by rolling out the dough and using a cookie cutter to cut out circles, but eventually found it easier to roll the pieces of dough thinly into circles. The thinner the dumpling dough was, the easier it was to pleat (and the better they are to eat as well). My pleating was not great – but hey it was my first time!

The xiao long bao were steamed and, after giving them a bit of time to cool down, it was time for a taste test. It probably took me about an hour to make forty xiao long bao – but it certainly didn’t take that long to eat them! I thought my wrappers were still a bit thick, but the filling was tasty and, JOY OF JOYS, the steaming hot soup was contained inside. We ate them with vinegar. Nice! I was rather pleased with my effort – they weren’t complicated to make, just time consuming. The hardest part was not losing the soup after they had been steamed – the little buggers had a tendency to stick to anything and everything!

I also made har gow / prawn dumplings, apparently because I hadn’t spent enough time making dumplings! I found the har gow much harder to make than the xiao long bao. I could tell when I went to roll out the har gow wrappers that it was too stiff. Because the dough was relatively stiff, I couldn’t get the wrappers to be as thin as I wanted them, and I also couldn’t pleat them nicely. You really want a very thin wrapper for har gow, because the best ones have that translucent, thin skin when steamed.

The har gow were, as I expected, not great. Bro said they were better than the xiao long bao, but Alastair wasn’t a fan. I didn’t think they were terribly great, although not THAT bad for my first attempt. However, I don’t think I’ll try making har gow again – it’s too much effort to master the wrappers.

So that’s it for my contribution to the International Dumpling Incident Party. See Addictive and Consuming for the round up, I’ll update this post later with links for all the party goers.

Recipes:

For the xiao long bao, I found Steamy Kitchen’s post very useful.

For the har gow, I followed this recipe on About.com.

March 7, 2010

Cookbook Challenge: Week 16, Noodles

Agnes chinese, cookbook challenge, cuisine, recipe, vegetarian

Recipe: Chinese mushrooms with cellophane noodles
From: Chinese, the essence of Asian cooking

The theme for this week’s Cookbook Challenge is “noodles” and for the recipe I’ve gone very Chinese. And by very Chinese, I mean – I’m not sure anyone but us Asians would eat this. :p

This week I made Chinese (shiitake) mushrooms with cellophane noodles. This is a very hearty vegetarian dish, that contains shiitake mushrooms, bean curd skins, fermented bean curd and wood ears/black fungus. It’s very filling. I ate a bowl of it and felt like I had eaten a seven course banquet!

Left: dried wood ear. Right: rehydrated wood ear

Are you wondering what wood ears are? They’re an edible fungus, commonly sold dried, and they’re used for their texture as they don’t have much flavour on their own. The texture is firm, gelatinous and slightly crunchy and they soak up the flavours of whatever they’re cooked in.

Chinese mushrooms with cellophane noodles

I love the strong, meatiness of shiitake mushrooms, so I really enjoyed them in this dish. I’ve never been a huge fan of dried bean curd though, and I think there was far too much in this recipe. It made it all taste very “beany”. I think halving, or even quartering the amount specified in the recipe would be a good idea.

But I’ll just have to get over the “beaniness” of the dish since I have rather a lot left over. Alastair tried it and didn’t like it, so it looks like it’s up to me!

See previous Cookbook Challenge posts here

Update: See the round up at My Food Trail.

Chinese mushrooms with cellophane noodles

From Chinese, the essence of Asian cooking

Serves 4

115g dried Chinese mushrooms
25g dried wood ears
115g dried bean curd, broken into small pieces
30 ml vegetable oil
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 slices fresh ginger, finely chopped
10 Szechuan peppercorns, crushed
15ml (about 1 tablespoon) red fermented bean curd
1/2 star anise
pinch of sugar
15-30ml soy sauce
50g cellophane noodles, soaked in hot water until soft
salt

In separate bowls, soak the Chinese mushroom, wood ears and dried bean curd in plenty of hot water for 30 minutes.

Strain the mushrooms, squeezing out as much liquid as possible, and reserving the liquid. Discard the stems and cut the mushrooms in half if they are vey big.

Drain the wood ears, rinse thoroughly and cut into 2-3cm pieces.

In a heavy based pan, heat the oil, and add the garlic, ginger and Szechuan peppercorns. Fry for a few seconds, then add the mushrooms and red fermented bean curd. Stir and fry for several minutes.

Add the reserved mushroom liquid to the pan, with enough liquid to completely cover the mushrooms. Add the star anise, sugar and soy sauce, cover and simmer for 30 minutes.

Add the chopped wood ears and reconstituted drained bean curd pieces to the pan. Cover and cook for another 10 minutes.

Drain the noodles and add them to the pan and cook for another 10 minutes, or until tender. Add more liquid if necessary. Season with salt to taste and serve.

February 13, 2010

Footscray Lunar New Year Festival

Agnes chinese, cuisine, dumpling/yum cha, eating out, food event, footscray, lunch, suburb, vietnamese

We went to the Footscray Lunar New Year Festival recently – Chinese New Year is tomorrow, but the Festival was held a couple of weeks ago. It was a hot and windy day, so we showed up at Footscray early in an effort to beat the heat.

We did a quick lap of all the stalls, and then decided we would have yum cha and then return to the Festival. We headed to our usual yum cha haunt – Dai Duong.

We pretty much ate all our usual stuff. The first two things we had were pork buns and radish cake. Alastair ate both the pork buns, so I don’t know what they were like, but the radish cake was good.

Bro said yes to a basket of tripe. The tripe was really good – lovely flavour and not too chewy. I know most people don’t like tripe, but it’s really so good! We also had some pan fried pork dumplings. I love these with red vinegar.

Next up was a basket of steamed dumplings – I think these had prawn and garlic chives. They were fantastic. The wrappers were smooth and thin, and they had big pieces of prawn in the filling. We also had beef cheong fun, which were fine.

Yum cha isn’t over until Bro has eaten a basket of chicken feet (normally a whole basket by himself) whereas I don’t leave until I’ve eaten an egg tart. There were only two egg tarts per plate, so we had to get two plates so everyone received one. I got to eat the extra one. Wahoo! Alastair finished off with a bowl of dessert tofu.

Read about a previous visit to Dai Duong here.

After filling up on yum cha, we went on a walk through the festival and took some photos. Unfortunately we were too full to eat anything! Waah! There was lots of grilled stuff going on.

More grilled stuff.

I was full, but still bought a drink – this was a basil seed drink with what I think was grass jelly. It was kind of strange. The seeds sort of looked like tadpoles!

There were lots of dodgy looking rides and games.

Some kids looked like they were having fun on the rides, but I don’t know if I’d trust my life on them!

The MFB had a tent, and they were giving out paper models of fire engines – complete with road cones and little paper firemen! Squee!!

We arrived just in time to see the firecrackers being lit, but unfortunately there was a crowd and I couldn’t manage to get a photo. Afterwards there was a lion dance. A stall was also selling funky balloons.

Some more drinks on offer.

And more grilled stuff – corn, betel leaves and meat on skewers.

There was also dried squid hanging up for sale.

This was a big pile of betel leaves stuffed with beef.

And egg cakes (I think! Someone correct me if I’m wrong!)

I have no idea what this was, but it was GREEN. And HIGH. How could I not take a photo??

Happy Chinese/Lunar New Year and Valentine’s Day! We aren’t doing anything for CNY (I haven’t even cleaned the house – gasp!) but we are going out tomorrow for a late lunch/early dinner. More later. I hope everyone has an auspicious and love filled day!

May 24, 2009

Kum Tong

Agnes chinese, cuisine, dinner, doncaster, eating out, restaurant, suburb

The Parents went home today (awwwww!). Each time they visit, it goes smoother and smoother. I’ve stopped reverting into a sullen teenager (can’t say the same of my Bro though… ahem…) and they give me less lectures… err advice. We must all be mellowing with age! In fact, I don’t think I was snappy at them at all this time, and I only received one lecture. Maybe two if you count the advice on eating more fish – they bought us two humongous jars of omega-3 supplements because they were concerned about our fish intake! Rather random, but sweet.

When mum and dad were still here, we went out to dinner on Mother’s Day. It’s not normally a day we celebrate, being a meaningless commercial invention and all that, but my parents booked it, so off we went.

Mum and dad had seen an ad in a Chinese newspaper for a set menu with crab at Kum Tong. There were different set menus – one for four people, one for six people, and one for ten people. There were five of us, so we paid extra for an additional person and choose the four person menu. Unfortunately we didn’t seem to receive extra food, apart from oysters and rice. Mum and dad complained but didn’t get anywhere.

We started with a thick clear soup, with scallops, shitake mushrooms and bamboo shoots.

Next were steamed oysters. Everyone received two – one topped with black bean, and the other with a kind of spicy oil. I thought the black bean overpowered the oysters, and found the spicy one more enjoyable. I do prefer my oysters plain though.

After that – CRAB! It was stir fried with spring onions and XO sauce, and sitting on a bed of noodles. The crab was difficult to get out of the shell – I think it needed a bit more cooking time. We made a terrible mess of the table pulling the crab apart.

After the crab came a plate of Chinese vegetables – I think gai lan / Chinese broccoli. I like this vegetable, it has slightly bitter leaves and a sweeter stem. The stem is my favourite part.

A plate of poached white cut chicken came out at the same time. The chicken was really good – very tender and smooth.

Steamed fish is not that hard – and it was good.

A bowl of tong shui (sweet soup). This was red bean and sago (although you can’t see the red beans, they were hidden at the bottom). It was sweeter than I would make, but I enjoyed it. Ignore the messy table.

And we finished with some fruit – some rather sour oranges and better grapes.

Kum Tong didn’t receive the parental seal of approval (the bar is very high) so probably wasn’t worth the trip across town. At least it was a place of their choosing!

Kum Tong
19-21 Andersons Creek Road,
Doncaster East
Phone: 03 9841 8688

March 3, 2009

Wellington: Regal Chinese Restaurant

Agnes chinese, cuisine, dumpling/yum cha, eating out, new zealand, restaurant, travel, wellington

The day we flew out of Wellington, we had yum cha with my parents at Regal Chinese Restaurant. We’ve been to Regal a couple of times with mum and dad for yum cha – there’s always a good selection of food and my parents seem to like it.

There’s not much to say about yum cha that I haven’t said before so this post is light on words and heavy on photos.

Fried taro dumpling (wu gok).

Deep fried crescent dumplings (ham sui gok).

Steamed BBQ pork buns. One day I’m going to try making these. From scratch (including the BBQ pork). I have made my own BBQ pork before, so I’m halfway there.

Steamed pork dumplings (sui mai).

I think these were pork and ginger dumplings.

This looks like the more well known radish cake, but it’s actually taro cake. It’s made in a similar way to the radish cake but using taro. This was really good! I don’t see taro much in Australia, and eating this reminded me of how much I like it.

Speaking of radish cake, Mum used to make it when we were younger. We would eat it for breakfast with a chilli and garlic sauce. Radish cake is yet another thing I’m going to make one day.

My favourite savoury dish – chicken and sticky rice wrapped in a lotus leaf (lou mai gai). Here’s a tip if you’re ever at yum cha: don’t let them cut the parcel open (they’ll want to, with their scissors). If it’s cut, you get leaf bits all in the rice. Unwrap it instead!

One of these prawn dumplings (har gow) made a beautiful dive off my chopsticks and somersaulted its way under a chair.

I think these were chive dumplings.

Rice noodle rolls (cheong fun) – love ’em!

A basket of chicken feet (fung jiao).

And, as always, I refuse to leave until I’ve eaten an egg tart.

Regal Chinese Restaurant
7-9 Courtenay Place
Wellington
New Zealand
Phone: +64 4 384 6656

December 16, 2008

Soy sauce chicken wings

Agnes chinese, cuisine, recipe

So it was my birthday in the weekend. I organised a low key BBQ to mark the occasion – and of course it was the wettest day this year. It rained ALL FREAKING DAY. Nevertheless, I sent Alastair out in the rain to tend the BBQ.

Whenever we host a BBQ, I prefer not to cook raw chicken. No side of food poisoning for me thanks! So if I do chicken – normally wings – I poach them beforehand in a soy sauce mixture.

This is my favourite way of doing wings because they are sooooooooooooo good. The poaching ensures that the meat is tender and slides off the bones, and the soy sauce and star anise gives it a wonderful flavour. The wings don’t have to go on the BBQ either – whenever I make a batch I always eat a couple that have just been poached. I can’t resist them!

The poaching liquid can be reused and will develop more flavour as it ages. To store the sauce just boil it for about 5 minutes afterwards, cool completely, and store it in the freezer. The recipe calls for rock sugar (you can buy it from an Asian supermarket) but if you don’t have any you could use brown sugar. I would recommend tracking down rock sugar though, it seems to have a different sweetness (or maybe that’s just in my head…).

Soy sauce chicken wings

Adapted from the Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen

About 2 kilos of wings (or you could use a whole chicken if desired)
3 cups thin soy sauce
2/3 cup black/dark soy sauce
2/3 cup Chinese rice cooking wine
500g yellow rock sugar
1 & 1/2 cups brown sugar
1 heaped teaspoon Sichuan peppercorns
8 star anise
3 cloves garlic, peeled and lightly crushed

Rinse the wings under cold water and pat dry with paper towels.

In a large pot, combine all the other ingredients. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat.

When the rock sugar has completely dissolved, taste it. It should be fairly salty, but also have a touch of sweetness. Add more sugar if necessary.

Add the wings (do this in two batches if you can’t fit them all in the sauce) and return the sauce to a boil over medium-high heat. As soon as it boils, reduce the heat to a gentle simmer.

Cover and cook for about 20 minutes (longer for a whole chicken – approximately 40-45 minutes. A whole chicken will also need to be turned halfway through).

If not doing another batch, turn off the heat and let the wings sit in the sauce for another 20 minutes. They can now either be eaten or cooled and saved for a BBQ.

November 26, 2008

Congee and chili sauce

Agnes chinese, cuisine, recipe

We love spicy food in my house. I’ve been on the lookout for a good chili sauce/oil recipe for quite some time. I wanted something that wasn’t just spicy, but that was also fragrant and tasty. One evening I dedicated a couple of hours on google searching for a recipe that would be similar to what I had in mind. Eventually, I came across this recipe for a Vietnamese-Style Sate Chile Sauce on Viet World Kitchen.

It sounded like what I was envisioning so I cooked up a batch. I ended up with two jars of it – a small one (pictured above) and a larger one.

Well that was less than a fortnight ago, and I’m going to have to make more this weekend. Yes, it was that good! Bro and I have been eating it by the tablespoon – putting it on almost everything.

The day after I made the chili sauce, Bro made congee in my “magic pot”. When Mum and Dad visited us recently, they brought with them a thermal pot so we could make congee (you can make congee in a normal pot, but they said it turns out better in a thermal pot as there’s no danger of it burning). Bro and I have already had “discussions” about who owns the magic pot (ME!!). We shared our toys when we were younger but we’re not sharing this pot!

To go with the congee, I cooked up some noodles, mostly for Alastair as he doesn’t like congee. I was happy to make something extra because it meant that I could eat more of the chili sauce – yum!

On congee: I don’t have a recipe for congee – it’s one of those dishes where there’s a basic idea that can be varied as much as you like. This page has some useful tips on the basics. Bro made his congee by soaking the uncooked rice overnight, and then the rice was cooked in chicken stock in the magic pot. He added chicken meat just before serving (he reheated the congee on the stove to cook the meat of course). It was delicious. I also have fond memories of congee flavoured with bacon bones that my Mum used to make. Maybe some of you have a favourite congee recipe/variation?

November 16, 2008

Quanjude

Agnes chinese, cuisine, dinner, eating out, melbourne, restaurant, suburb

It was my Mum’s birthday during their recent visit here, and we headed out to dinner to celebrate. We booked a dinner at Quanjude, a peking duck franchise from Beijing. The first restaurant to bear the name Quanjude was established in 1864, and the one in Melbourne is the first in Australia.

The restaurant itself is (garishly?) decorated in tones of red and gold. We were there early and there seemed to be a lot of staff on board. At one point, we had three staff hovering around our table, which was a bit disconcerting!

Naturally, we had to order a duck ($88 for whole, $45 for half). That came out first, with a chef deftly slicing it up on a trolley next to our table. He sliced off most of the skin first, which was placed on a separate plate (it’s the best part!), and then carved up the rest of the meat.

We were all given our own small plates of spring onions and sauce. Then two steamer baskets of pancakes were placed in the middle of the table.

The pancakes were brilliant – very thin and soft. And the duck? The duck was lovely – the skin was crispy and burnished, and the meat was lean, flavoursome and not too gamey. There was more duck than wraps so we ordered another basket of pancakes.

Mum and Dad ordered the dishes that came after the duck and I must say that they weren’t the kind of food that I would order. Mum and Dad had Chinese menus, while the rest of us received English menus. I’m not sure if the items we ordered were on the English menu. I couldn’t place them, but it could be that the descriptions translated differently.

First up was a pork belly and chestnut dish. The pork had a good flavour – dark and salty, but it could’ve been more tender. The chestnuts were nice though. Eating them reminded me of how much I actually enjoy chestnuts in savoury dishes. I don’t have them enough – apart from when I’m exploding them in the oven.

Next up was spinach in a thin savoury broth, topped with diced salted egg and thousand year (preserved) egg. Thousand year egg can be quite challenging, and I’m not the greatest fan, but when it’s diced in small pieces it’s not too bad.

After that was a tofu dish – fried tofu stuffed with fish/shrimp paste and surrounded by steamed broccoli. Inside the fried exterior the tofu was silky and the fish paste was soft and fresh.

I was pretty full by this stage but there was one last dish – a hot pot of sea cucumber, fish maw and shitake mushrooms. Sea cucumber is desired for the texture and is very gelatinous, plus (I feel) it has a muskiness that goes right up the nostrils. Like sea cucumber, fish maw doesn’t really have much flavour, but it has a VERY fatty mouth feel that I don’t find very pleasant. Since I don’t like sea cucumber or fish maw (and I had pretty much stuffed myself) I didn’t eat any of the last dish.

We then received small bowls of soup made with the bones of the duck.

After such a large dinner, we finished off with a red bean pancake ($10). The fried pastry was filled with a red bean paste. It was crispy and not too oily. Just a little sweet something to finish off the meal.

Overall it was a good meal. Obviously, the highlight was the duck, and though the duck is somewhat pricey it really was very good. I would go again for that duck, preferably with someone else paying!

Quanjude
299 Queen Street
Melbourne
Phone: (03) 9670 0092

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