scallion "pancake" 蔥油餅 - part 5

Scallion pancake 蔥油餅 has become my regular fares now. It is so easy to make and great substitute for bread or rice. I refined the procedure and found the techniques that make this simple snack great.

stir fried sticky rice cake 炒年糕 - part 1

This is a difficult dish to make. Stir fried sticky rice cake 炒年糕 (lian gao) is a stir fry dish with glutinous rice cake, which is also called lian geo (年糕), meaning new year cake. It is a dish enjoyed during Lunar New Year holiday. I have write a post a few years ago on Stir fried sticky rice cake 炒年糕 (lian gao) a few years ago.

shanghai thick wheat noodle stir fried with julienne pork 上海肉絲炒粗麵 - part 3

Each time I had Shanghai thick wheat noodle stir fried with julienne pork 上海肉絲炒粗麵 I was not satisfied. I could do better at home making my own. In the past my noodles were the biggest impediment. Slowly I gained some insight into the reasons why. This is a great dish if you are a hungry man and need to fill the voids in your empty stomach.

shanghai thick noodles with dungeness crab meat 上海蟹肉粗麵

This is what I call opportunistic meal made from the assorted ingredients, most from leftovers of other dishes. I had a Dungeness crab a few days ago and as always I could eat it all in one setting. I harvest the meat from the body and saved some juice and tomalley in the refrigerator. I need to use them up before they go bad so what to do?

beef meat ball soup thick noodles 牛肉丸粗麵

This is just an improvised light meal with what I happen to have on hand. A beef meat ball soup thick noodles with home made thick noodles. I made a batch of beef meat balls and vacuum packed most of them and store in freezer. I kept the ugly five to be cooked. As making beef meat balls requires blanching them in hot water I ended up with a pot of beef broth. I use it to make this bowl of soup noodles.

pan fried beef buns 生煎牛肉包 - part 1

This is another Shanghainese delight from childhood memory that I have been craving. It is pan fried beef buns 生煎牛肉包. The only thing that I bought to make these was a large pack of extra lean ground beef from Costco. All other ingredients are from the freezer, fridge, and my pantry.

scallion "pancake" 蔥油餅 - part 4

This is getting out of control. I wasn't planning to make this until I give the stomach a rest. However, I wanted to improve the techniques of making scallion "pancake" 蔥油餅. This one turned out incredibly good. It is transformative.

xiao long bao 小籠包, potstickers 鍋貼, and pan fried pork buns 生煎包 - part 5

Wanting a little bit more soup in the xiao long bao 小籠包 for the remainder of the pork filling I thought I would add a bit a vegetable to it. I happen have a stalk of spring onion left over. It was just perfect and I chop it up and added to the filling. There is a bit of dough left as well so breakfast should be easy.

xiao long bao 小籠包, potstickers 鍋貼, and pan fried pork buns 生煎包 - part 4

Success! I made some decent xiao long bao 小籠包. For me xiao long bao 小籠包 is the holy grail of a good Shanghai restaurant dishes that once I thought very difficult to make. If I succeed in making this, everything else should be cake walk. There were some challenges along the way, but thankfully I eased myself starting with other Shanghai delights that are easier to make. I also needed to get some bamboo steaming basket liners so the xiao long bao 小籠包 would not be sticking to the bamboo slats.

shanghai thick wheat noodle stir fried with julienne pork 上海肉絲炒粗麵 - part 2

My recent jumped into making a number of Shanghainese delights reignited my desire to make my own Shanghainese thick noodles 上海粗麵. Finding good Asian noodles in the west is most frustrating and I am seldom impressed with the variety with the exception of very few, and this includes edible ramen noodles. My solutions to these frustrations have been taking matter into my own hands. Some noodles are off limit to DIYers and Hong Kong wonton noodles is definitely one. By these I am referring to the raw noodles for making all these dishes where the quality of the noodles are paramount.

stir fried crystal shrimps 清炒水晶虾仁

Stir fried crystal shrimps 清炒水晶虾仁 is often also found in the Shanghainese restaurants that serve xiao long bao 小籠包. It is called crystal 水晶 shrimps for their near translucent appearance. When I was in Toronto a few months ago we ordered this dish. Ever since returning to the Pacific Northwest I have been wanting to recreate this dish. The challenge is finding shrimps with just the right size.

xiao long bao 小籠包, potstickers 鍋貼, and pan fried pork buns 生煎包 - part 3

So my quest for learning to make these Shanghainese delights continues. All counted I have tried making 5 things this week. While Hunan savory braised pork belly 湖南紅燒肉 suggest it is a Hunan dish the truth is you can call it Shanghainese too as Shanghai, and many other provinces also have a basically identical dish.

xiao long bao 小籠包, potstickers 鍋貼, and pan fried pork buns 生煎包 - part 2

I am amaze how productive these wheat flour based Shanghai delights are. I prepared a modest size batch of filling for making potsticker 鍋貼 and I had to stuff myself to make some headway. Still there were what appeared a tiny bit of the filling left. I put it away in the refrigerator. The next morning I wonder what to eat for breakfast.

xiao long bao 小籠包, potstickers 鍋貼, and pan fried pork buns 生煎包 - part 1

Being a fearless home cook I always look forward to making something new. I used to think xiao long bao 小籠包 is something extremely difficult to make at home. I have been watching some excellent videos on Youtube and I decided to jump into making a few Shanghai favorites with both feet. The worst is I just have to eat my own dog food if they turn out terrible.

a couple of shrimp dishes

I haven't bought farmed shrimps for close to a decade now. I used to buy them back when they were not as widely raised. In recently years I only buy wild sea shrimps - US gulf shrimps. Need to say when you go out to eat, more often than not the shrimps are farmed, except in the high end places where the shrimps are the highlight of the dish.

shanghai grocery store 上海鋪

In my childhood growing up in Hong Kong one place we lived in Tsim Sha Tsui has a Shanghai grocery store on the ground level. There are certain things my parents would buy from that shop and most of these food are etched in my young mind. Most I forgot until seeing this Shanghai grocery store recently.

kimchi and pork lian gao 炒年糕

Sticky rice cake is eaten in many Asian cultures. It is called lian gao (or lin go in Cantonese) 年糕 in Mandarin. It is made with flour of glutenous rice (sticky rice). Here in Oregon I found the best quality ones are from Korean stores. While they are exactly like the Chinese one, the Korean ones always have a slanted cut instead of straight cut.