DylanK

Beef and broccoli. Hong shao-ish short ribs, gan bian-ish broccoli.

The most common pomelos here in North America wouldn't work quite right. They're far too sour and bitter and the skins are pretty thin, not much rind to work with. Everyday Chinese pomelos are full of thick, fluffy rind that tends not to be overwhelmingly bitter.

I really ain't feeling them. Sorta the same deal as bakeries in China: looks great, tastes terrible. I like the really sweet joints with egg yolks inside, I guess. I was sort of bummed out about not being able to eat them, though, since I moved outside of China. Then, today, my wife was looking thru fliers and said, "Hey, Superstore's got mooncakes!" Twenty bucks or so, Golden Happiness brand, not sure what sort.

Not 啥. Check the sha tang Wikipedia page for an explanation of the character. Kind of interesting. The fried dumplings are pretty generic fried dumplings, dude. Better than any famous joints' fried dumplings I ate in Shanghai, I promise, but pretty generic.

Also--and superior to 饣它 汤--辣汤 (la tang, spicy soup). But not... spicy. Well, spicy, but not, like, spicy. It's oldschool spicy, from the days before China had chilis, when things were spicy from black pepper and ginger. This is spicy, spicy soup, full of ginger and black pepper. It's the same deal as sha tang, roughly: thick soup made from pork and chicken bones and eel and such, but minus the green beans and with egg added right from the start (so, it's sort of tough and rubbery, but in a really good way). Sha tang is a nice beige color, la tang is dark grey. It's sort of like var. other black pepper soups I tried in Henan (I think it's Luoyang that's famous for a soup that's v. similar but thinner and with 粉丝 [fen si, bean vermicelli]) and Shandong... but not exactly the same, never as thick and full of meat. Some weeks I'd get a daily bowl at 民主路把子肉, which sells la tang and porridge and dumplings in the morning. By the time I'd get there, during my 9:30 break, the soup would be the perfect consistency. The 阿姨 were usually already at work tying up bundles of tofu and vegetables for the 把子肉, so I'd get to ladle my own soup. I always made sure I got a few chicken hearts and livers and lots of eel.

This will be the official thread for 徐州 specialties. From 马市街 饣它 汤 (join those two characters in front of 汤): Pengzu invented it. The dude lived to be, like, 700 years old. I think he invented 把子肉, too. 马市街饣它 汤 is an amazing place. They've got a cauldron as tall as the man that dips his massive spoon into it. I've been there at 5:00, when they take out the massive pork bones, like a dozen hogs' worth of bones. It's thick from pork fat and green beans. It's got chicken, eel. It's good. 马市街饣它 汤 is tiny and they're full from opening, at 6:00, to whenever they run out of soup, around 11:30 (if you go at 11:30, you can get a bowl of superconcentrated sha tang, almost porridge, full of green beans and eel spines). The main clientele is old men with their own little pots. You go to the front counter and buy tickets, one for soup, one for dipping items (dumplings, 油条), and grab an egg. You get a bowl, break the egg in, then bring it to the massive cauldron, get your bowl filled. Eating these dumplings ruined me for Shanghai, where I wasn't prepared for 小龙包, which tasted like they were composed of Sprite and ground pork, ultrasweet. You bite the top off of one of these 包子, then drop it in the soup to fill with sha tang, then bring it back out to eat.

Xuzhou, not Suzhou. 徐州 not 苏州. When I was first moving from Nanjing to Xuzhou, I told people and they'd always say, "Oh, Suzhou, beautiful gardens, great city." Then I had to tell them, "No, no, Xuzhou!" And then it would be, "Oh... why would you want to go there? Have you ever heard of Suzhou? Much nicer, beautiful gardens." I guess the quint. Xuzhou specialty would be... sha tang. It's the one that people know outside of the city. The meaning is like... "what soup." (Google Pinyin doesn't have the right character for that "sha.") This dude named Pengzu invented it. It was pheasant and black pepper, basically. And some Emperor came and asked, "What soup is this?" And they said, "Erm... it's 'what soup.'" It's full of black pepper and now it's got chicken and eel instead of pheasant. It's good.

A Xuzhou (徐州) specialty. Look at that. Pork. The fat is like ice cream. Really. It genuinely melts in your mouth. You chopstick up a piece, bite it, and then get a mouthful of still steaming rice. It melts. Your mouth is full of melted pork. The meat is chewy, stringy, salty, perfect. So, basically, ba zi rou (把子肉) is the slice of pork belly and also the dish, the whole idea. You've got a pot, a big pot. Inside: soup, pork belly slices, meat balls, ribs, every bean curd product imaginable, sausage, bok choy. It's a cauldron of pork fat and everything delicious in the world. My favorite place in the city. The lineup goes out the door from 11:30, when it opens, to about 1:30 or whenever they run out of meat. (I always said that one day I'd demand my ba zi rou inside a porcelain rooster, like the picture above the serving window). They've got special pots with platforms for the bowls, so that they can sit over the big cauldrons. You call out what you want, it goes in the bowl, and they pour soup over it. You get a bowl of rice beside it, an empty bowl to put rice broth in (water from the boiling of the rice), and a few cloves of raw garlic. Feng Qi is one of the more famous places. It has a few branches around Xuzhou. There's Min Zhu Lu Ba Zi Rou. And San Lei Ba Zi Rou. Those are the big ones, the best ones. All the big ones, the famous ones have branches around the city, franchises. But it's unavailable, as far as I know, outside of Xuzhou. Each place has their own special additions. Every place has a different meat ball. Every place has a different sausage. Min Zhu Lu Ba Zi Rou has massive, bronze chicken legs that stew in that pork fat soup all morning. Amazing. Feng Qi has pork ribs and ginger-y, spicy ground pork balls. That bowl above is from a generic xiao qu (小区) restaurant, just a little joint in an apartment complex. They have a big metal bowl going all day on an induction burner and it's available from mid-morning to closing time. It's not as good as the big places, but it ain't bad. My order was always the same, three slices of pork fat, and whatever I was in the mood for. But always three slices of pork. Feng Qi was my favorite but I ate at Min Zu Lu a lot because it was on the way to my bus stop (I often ate their twice a day, first the la tang and then the ba zi rou for lunch). But the tiny places are decent too, and often have unexpected variations (there's a place across the street from a Min Zhu Lu Ba Zi Rou branch that has spicy, red, thumb-sized chunks of barbecued pork). So... ba zi rou... Ever had it? And why have I now chosen to live in a place where ba zi rou is not widely available?

Every big grocery store in China has a hundred clones, featuring various semi-scowling portraits. I like Lao Gan Ma, though. Even just rolled up in Chinese flat bread (馍馍, shout out to 徐州), tasty. My wife says 老干妈 has changed over the years, though, tastes different from when it first appeared.

No idea. Where can I get good Chinese food in Regina? I mean the Chinese that involves chilis and pork and fermented black beans, not so much dim sum, dinosaur Cantonese, etc. I've been gone from the city for a couple years, so I really have no idea where to start. The last place I ate was called Beijing Something, near a hotel downtown, and it looks like it has a sushi place neighboring it now (Wasabi), maybe owned by the same people. Feel free to suggest places outside of Regina, too. I know the best Thai food isn't in Regina or Saskatoon, so the best Chinese could be in Radville or Weyburn, for all I know.

Yeah, exactly, get a pan of hot oil, throw in green onion, dry red chili (grind it up), salt, MSG, whatever else. Then let it fry until the oil is red. Put it in a jar. You can pour off that red oil into dishes, too. The red oil is even more useful than the chili sauce. 老干妈 is good, though. I like the kind with black beans. I actually found 老干妈 in Canada for $1.99. Not much more expensive than in any Carrefour in China. Same with lots of other sauces in jars and dry ingredients. I actually kind of like the soupy red sauce you get in southern Jiangsu and Shanghai. Bright red, only mildly spicy, a bit vinegary. Great poured into a bowl of wonton. It's a bit like the red chili sauce you get with stinky tofu.

The crucial ingredient here. Brick red hua jiao. Floral, numbing, perfect. This hua jiao from Ngoa Hoy in Regina, as good as any hua jiao in a Chinese raw market. I'm glad I didn't go to the potential trouble of smuggling a bag from home. Second most important ingredient. Fresh tofu. Firm enough to stand up to the pan and soft enough to soak up flavor and break down just a bit. Then, you want: pork (not too fatty, not too lean), dried red chilis (chopped up), ginger (chopped to a paste), green onion (sliced up), a bit of fresh green chili (mashed right up, just a little bit). Throw it all in a pan that's full of oil and as hot as you can possibly get it. Stir in some cong ban jiang (no proper bean sauce, since we've only been in Canada a week, but it's salty and pungent enough). Get that mixture as hot as the sun, then tip in your chopped up tofu. Add some liquid, let it cook. Hua jiao, ground, gets dumped on top as it comes off the heat. There it is. Swimming in deep red oil. Beautiful. Tastes exactly like the last plate of mapo doufu I ate in China (except: too spicy and lacking fermented black beans). It's salty and hot and pungent and has a great floral smell and the tofu is just soft enough. On rice.