The Xiao Yang Blog

New York Spring Nosh Tour (IV): Wenzhou Fish Pellet Soup with a Shandong shui jiao chaser

I returned to the 41-28 mall for lunch on Friday (see a pattern here?), determined to try another unusual cuisine, that of Wenzhou. The easiest place to find Wenzhou cuisine outside of China is said to be Paris, due to long standing connections between Wenzhou and the French automobile industry, but I decided Flushing would do for the moment. I ordered somewhat blindly, as a couple of well-known Wenzhou dishes I had Googled up didn’t appear to be on the menu, and ended up with a big bowl of noodle soup plentifully seeded with fish "pellets", skinny fish cakes which themselves resembled small fish. It was subtly seasoned and tasty, but not particularly exciting.

After my noodle lunch I wandered upstairs in the mall and discovered the Shandong Dumpling stall, and couldn’t resist sitting down to a plate of freshly made shui jiao (boiled dumplings, for which Shandong is famous). They were obvious cooked to order, not par-poiled, due to the elapsed time, and the skins were classic but the filling a bit on the dry and bland side.  Another dumpling shop ion the basement level in the same mall offered better Shnadon dumplings when I tried them.

New York Spring Nosh Tour (III): Shabalay with a Chipa chaser

I t can be argued that Queens, NY is the diversity capital of the Universe, in terms of ethnic groups and ethnic cuisines.  Where else can you, as I did, in the course of a short stroll, wolf down some Tibetan meat pies followed by a couple of Paraguayan breakfast pastries?  The day after my lunch of Tibetan momos I found myself in the area again and decided to go for the shabalay at Tashi Delek.  (They were spelled peculiarly, "sha-bhag-le" on Tashi Delek's sandwich board, but I was unable to find that spelling anywhere in Googledom, so I'll stich with the more prosaic "Shabalay", small meat pies with a flaky crusts encasing ground beef spiced with onions.  They came four to an order, and were accompanied by the same soup that was served with the momos I had tried the previous day.  They were on the bland side, a bit blander that the Cornish pasties they resembles, whic may be th reason they were served with a spicy chili sauce.

After finishing my shabalay (shabalays?) off, I doubled back on Roosevelt to check out a bakery, La Uruguaya y Paraguaya Bakery, I had passed before lunch.  Most of the goods looked like things you would find at a typical Latin American bakery, but my eyes fell on a plateful of what looked like Twinkie-shaped cornbread on the counter near the cash register, where popular impulse items might be found.  "Uruguayan?" I asked. "No," said the woman, emphatically, "Paraguayan."  Eager to be the first kid on my block to eat anything Paraguayan, I pressed her for more info.  They were not sweet, she said.  She didn't know the English name of the flour they were made from, but it had cheese and onions mixed into it.  Sold!

Some assiduous Googling identifed my find as Chipa Bread, "A bread made from manioc flour. Chipa is a type of bread sold everywhere in Paraguay - on the streets, at soccer games and in chiperias. Made from a mixture of starch, paraguayan cheese and milk"  My chipas also were laced with anise seed.  They were chunchy on the outside, and spongy and chewy on the inside.  They were a few hours stale (the shop woman had warned me that they would be a little "hard") and I can only imagine how satisfying they would be fresh from the oven.

New York Spring Nosh Tour (II): Rou jia mo at Xi'an MIng Chi

The food court at the Golden Mall, 41-28 Main Street in Flushing, had already become the stuff of legend to me, thorugh my reading of accounts in blogs and on food message boards like (and especally) Chowhound.  On my first walkthrough of the mall, at lunchtime on a Wednesday, the Xi’an stall, whose name translates as something like Xi’an Famous Eats and offers precisely that, grabbed my attention with a picture of a platter of Rou Jia Mo, or Chinese “burgers”. These, unlike meat bingzi which are stuffed before cooking, are actually prepared and assembled like burgers, with the cooked meats and seasonings placed between two toasted flatbread disks. I pointed to the picture, asked “how much” ($2.50 each) and asked for two lamb rou jia mo. They came out in classic form, with shredded lamb seasoned with cumin, jalapenos and onions. I scarfed one down on the spot, and took the other one “to go” but devoured before I got back to the 7 Train. On subsequent occasions I tried the beef and pork versions, all spiced differently. The beef version seemed to be even better spiced than the lamb version, though I couldn’t put my finger on the difference. The pulled pork Rou Jia Mo was less spicy, more “cured” (salty) tasting. All were good

NY Spring Nosh Tour (I): Momos at Tashi Delek

Late April found me in New York visiting my daughter in Long Island  City, doing a little housing reconnaissance in Queens and, not incidentally, eating.  This is the first of some belated reports.  I've also documented parts of the trip (notably my forays into the Golden Mall food court in Flushing) on the Chowhound website, and a whole shipload of pics can be found on my flickr account.

On my first jaunt out to feel out the neigborhoods, I stumbled across a sandwich board and storefront sign promising momos and other Himalayan goodies.  It was in Jackson Hights, on 74th Street between Roosevelt Avenue and 37th Street, right by stairs coming down from the 74th Street #7 line metro stop.  I recalled reading a discussion of this place on Chowhound, including speculation about whether they were Tibetan or Nepalese momos (I've finally decided they were neither, but Bhutanese).  The momos were dealt up from a single small counter at the back of Merit Kabab Palace, a Little India place serving Indian snacks and dishes from a steam table.  According to  a sign hung by  the counter, the dumpling emporium is apparently named "Tashi Delek".  The momos were $5 dollars for eight pieces, and served with a hot suce for dipping and a small cup of chicken soup, which for all the world tasted like it was made with boullion cubes.  There was a choice of beef or chicken momos, and I chose the beef.  (I would try the chicken version on another occasion, as well as momos from two other venues in the same neighborhood).  The filling was ample and tasty, though a bit on the bland side (which is probably the reason for the chili sauce accompaniment. 

We Don't Need No Stinkin' Pizza!

Strolling through San Francisco's Fishermans Wharf, I spotted the latest food gimmick, "Stinkin' Pizza", a couple of blocks from the birthplace of the now-ubiquitous clam chodwer in a sourdough bowl.  It made sense that Stinkin' Pizza was housed downstairs from the Franciscan Restaurant, owned by the same group as The Stinking Rose, the North Beach restaurant with a monopoly on garlic schtick.  I had to cross this one off my "been there, done that" list so I blew $4 on a rectangular slice, and ate it under the envious gaze of a bunch of seagulls.  I haven't fetishized pizza since my old New York days (when I knew when to hold 'em and knew when to fold 'em) so I have no insightful analyses to offer, other than the fact it was tasty, light (down to the thick, fluffy crust) and the garlic (five cloves) was good.  Garlic is good.

Eating your way through the Chinese Zodiac

In all of the discussions I've seen, heard, and participated in about Chinese New Year dining traditions, I've never heard it suggested that eating the animal the upcoming year was named for would be an appropriate tribute to the new year. But why not devour the namesake creature of the spent year?  I'll be doing just that come Tuesday night, in fact, because we areleaving the year of the pig behind. 

The coming year is the year of the Rat and it occurred to me that I somehow have collected a photo essay on preparing and cooking rats, and I recall a National Geographic photo of a deli in Guangzhou showing barbecued rats hanging alonside the ducks and and bbq pork.   USDA Choice rat might be hard to come by in the US, but in New York, at least, one can score guinea pig (a rodent relative) at Ecuadorean delis, and there's probably some other edible rodent around that I'm not recalling at the moment.

Is it possible, I wonder, to eat one's way around the whole Chinese zodiac? Well, let's see.  Starting withe easy stuff, we also have chicken (Rooster), which everone who is not a vegetarian has eaten. Almost as many people have eaten Ox (that's cow to you and me).  Boar/pig?  Starting with our breakfast bacon.  Sheep is mighty tasty, especially on a skewer.  That gets us to Horse, which is widely available in French Canada, even in tartare form, which I've had at a fast-food frites chain. (Disclaimer: I downed a coule of beers first.)   Snake? I've had that, too, in Shanghai, in  a soup.  A little clam chowdery, it was. Dog? I've yet to have the opportunity, though many have eaten man's best friend.  The eating of Monkey in China has been documented, though the horror stories about eating it raw from the freshly cracked scull of a live monkey have never been proven to be anything but urban myths.  I have no idea what a Tiger steak would taste like, but I'm sure at least some part of a Tiger has been eaten in Asia, though I won't speculate publicly on which part.

After the above-mentioned Rat, that brings us to Dragon.  Hmm, isn't that on the endangered species list?

Shanghai Restaurant -- letdown in Oaktown

Shanghai Restaurant (Shanghai Xiao Chi, in Chinese) In Oakland's Chinatown, has long been one of my favorite places to be when I pine for Shanghai.  It has the most uncompromisingly Shanghainese menu, top to bottom, I've seen in the US and on the many occasions when the air is filled with energetic  banter in the musical Shanghainese dialect  it's easy to imagine oneself in a small family-run restaurant in Hongkou or what used to be Nanshi.  Specials posted on the wall (on fish-shaped pieces of paper) often promise the vegetable delicacy jiaobai, beloved by Shanghainese, but not to be found anywhere else in the US that I can recall.

Unfortunately, authenticity is no guarantee of excellence, and when six of us descended on it on Boxing day and ordered up a storrm, it became evident that the cooking at Shanghai Xiao Chi had seen better days.  The xiaolong bao, the cold appetizers and the red-cooked pork joint were decent, but the other dishes reflected a desultory preparation and lack of flavor.  My Shanghainese wife could have done better on about half ot the dishes and for once I wasn't dissembling when I agreed with her on that score.

I'll probably still hit Shanghai Xiao Chi at lunchtime once in a while for the xiaolong bao and more than passable salty soy milk soup.  But return for dinner, and experience an authentic mediocre Shanghainese family-style restaurant dining experience?  The yearning may never reach that level.

Sign of the Day: Zante's Pizza

No, it's not a pioneer specialty.  Zante's serves something called "Indian Pizza."  What's that?  Someday I may find out, though I've  heard suggestions that maybe I don't want to.

Rachel Revisits Mission Burritos

The holdays featured a welcome visit from my New York daughter Rachel.  She subscribes to the "There's no good Mexican food in New York" catechism (of which more later) and for our last get-together before her departure we hit a mutual favorite, Taqueria Cancun in the Mission District.  She was up for a full-blown carne asada "Mission" burrito.  Her arm provides some perspective on the size of the thing, which is no mere nosh, but she was able to eat the whole enchilada, er, burrito.  I had a mandate to show up at my inlaws a couple of hours later with an appetite for a  major feast of Chinese food, so I contented myself with a 'super" taco al pastor.

After the meal, we stopped into Acaxcutla Restaurant a couple of doors away, which now sports a full blown Guatemalan panaderia.   I was clueless, but asked what was "tipico" and "delicioso" and the pleasant counter woman suggested the croissant-shaped Gusano "caterpillar" and the two-dough Concha. This combination was suggestive enough of a good time, so I took home two bucks worth (each 4/$1). They both had a nice doughiness to them and were obviously fresh, but even unfilled they were too sweet for my taste, reminiscent of breads from Chinese bakeries but even a bit sweeter. The Acaxutla bakery  has a large variety, so next time I'll try to tell her I want something a little less sweet.

Personally, I find it hard to buy into the "no good Mexican food in New York" cliche.  Queens alone has over 70,000 Mexicans, probably almost as many as San Francisco, and there are that many again and more in other boroughs.  The Mexicans may be overshadowed by South American and Puerto Rican populaces, but there is certainly a critical mass of gullets clamoring for home cooking.  The task is to find who's cooking it.

Happy New Blog!

I didn't plan to begin my new blog on the first day of a New Year.  The two events just happened to merge.  And what's with "Living from Hand to Mouth?"  No, this is not another "Down and Out in Paris and London" by George, the phrase is simply a reference to the mechanics involved in that most basic and pleasurable of acts, at least at my age, eating.   The figurative meaning of "living from hand to mouth" is also not inappropriate, however;  this blog will focus on street foods, "small eats" and the most homey ethnic foods from all cuisines.  There will be no bombastic "My Dinner at The French Laundry" posts here.

Enjoy!