Let's chase the dragon

There’s nowhere in my town that does good Chinese food. There used to be an all you can eat buffet that did surprisingly passable crispy duck and yes, there’s a Wagamama-esque place that does pretty decent kung pau king prawns (although they’ve taken the wonton noodle soup off the menu). 

And of course there’s a real Wagamamas with the great veggie katsu that surpasses the chicken one. But they are not the kind of neon lit places, on a corner, that you stumble into after a night on the beer for a foil tray of mixed meat chow mein and a big bag of prawn crackers, to use in lieu of cutlery.

I’m not even talking about ‘good good’ Chinese food, ‘bad good’ would be just fine. Ribs the colour of my scalp after half an hour on the beach without a hat on; mounds of crispy seaweed sprinkled with the mysterious powder that’s more addictive than opiates; Yeung Chow fried rice that tastes even better when slightly congealed and eaten the next day for breakfast.

Thankfully there is salvation not too far around the North Circular, at Bang Bang Oriental Foodhall, that I have previously written about here. While the bustle and the excitement of upstairs can't be beaten if you fancy a quick bowl of noodles or a bubble tea or slice of pandan swiss roll or a brightly-coloured Korean shaved ice dessert, I'm beginning to favour Golden Dragon, the more serene and refined Chinese restaurant that can be found in the ground floor.

We visited recently for Sunday dim sum, something I have pretty much given up trying to write about - there's only so many superlatives you can come up with to describe the endless baskets of dumplings and buns that a proper yum cha feast involves - but it would be remiss not to talk at least a little bit about our meal.

First out were the pork puffs, which have been a favourite since our visit to the original Tim Ho Wan restaurant in Hong Kong. Flaky lard-enriched pastry stuffed with sweet barbecued pork, these are a must order (even if my wife always seems to get the extra bun).

The main event was out next - some top drawer crispy pork belly - layers of sweet meat and wobbly fat, topped with a crisp carapace of crackling, even better when dipped into a sauce that was very reminiscent of Colman's mustard. Alongside were chinese greens, this time gai lan, stir-fried with big chunks of fresh ginger, to help bust the Ewing's cold.

We also had a selection of steamed dumplings, including some unmemorable, UFO-shaped ones stuffed with chopped scallop and some nice crunchy veg; verdant prawn and chive; excellent har gau (truly the king of dim sum) and the special cheung fun stuffed with scallop, char sui and prawns. Luckily the Ewing isn't really a fan of the slippery, slithery steamed rice dough wrappers. All the more for me then. 

One of the best things about dim sum is the fact you get pudding at the same time as your main. My faves are the custard buns, either deep fried or steamed. Far better than a doughnut This time we went with the latter, the puffy, squidgy balls bursting with oozy yellow egg custard.

We were back again for a roasted meat fix not long after. This time for an evening visit following a visit to Go Outdoors to buy a new tent and mattress for our camping trip. The next day. As you can appreciate the icy Tsingtao was well needed.

Roast duck and rice was a decent specimen- if you go to the loos at the back of the restaurant you can see all the roasts meats as you walk past the kitchen, hanging glistening in the window - with a good ratio of glossy, lacquered skin to sweet fat and tender meat. With a heap of fluffy rice, salty soy sauce and some token steamed greens, I struggle to think of a more perfect plate of Chinese food. Or any food, for that matter.

One thing the Chinese are good at is elevating the humble pig and I have wanted to try mei cai kou rou – steamed belly pork with mustard greens – for a long while. Fortunately I managed to persuade the Ewing that she did too. 

It’s a Hakka dish, so not often seen on the predominantly Cantonese menus we are most familiar with – that consists of thick slices of streaky belly pork braised in a mix of star anise, ginger, Chinese wine, rock sugar and soy. The hunks of pork are braised until tender and served with the cooking liquor on a bed of fermented veg. All I can say after tasting it was; where have you been all my life? It was certainly worth the wait.

We also ordered some customary chinese greens, although the Ewing was slightly disappointed that the pea shoots were 'out of season', which lead to Googling later to find out when the pea shoot season is. (Answer: we still don't really know, but we are going to keep trying until they are available). The choi sum was on the menu, so we had that cooked with garlic.

Afterwards, as has become the custom, we went next door to Loong Fung supermarket and picked up some more veg, although if you're getting concerned this has become an #eatclean blog, this time they were in the form of deep fried spuds flavoured with cucumber. We also picked up a  basket stuffed full of crackers and mochi and frozen dumplings and fresh noodles. 

On balance, it's probably a good thing there's nowhere to get good Chinese food closer to home, as I've still got a cupboard full of ingredients to get through....

Dim Sumday

It’s been a little while since the Ewing and I have been out for Dim Sum Day, but a visit down south from my Aunt and Uncle in Yorkshire, combined with the news that my aunt’s favourite yum cha stop in Leeds - Ho’s on Vicar Lane - has closed, made it easy to decide what we were going to eat.

Where to eat was scarcely more problematic as we had also recently discussed walking across the Isle of Dogs - home of the Lotus floating restaurant, sitting on the Inner Millwall Dock - and under the Greenwich foot tunnel. Its curious waterside location, in the shadow of Canary Wharf and the looming Baltimore Tower, made it the perfect starting point for a Sunday stroll to the South of the River, as well as being a curiosity in its own right.

The last time I visited was in the dark and distant past, before I started writing the blog. An almost mythical time where I still took lots of photos of my lunch, but didn’t post them on Instagram or write about it afterwards. I do remember the meal though, if only for the reason that a rather bullish the Ewing ordered curried whelks, being quite adamant that ‘I like all types of seafood’. It turns out that this precludes whelks, a lesson she has learnt from, unlike me, who persists in ordering strange gristly, knobbly bits of protein whenever I see them.

Sadly, the whelks have gone, although they still offer cold baby octopus in curry sauce alongside chicken feet and Sunday specials including jelly fish, trotters, honey roast ribs, and beef shank, which I thought sounded pretty interesting, but was dissuaded from trying by the voices of reason.

In the end we stuck to a more prosaic array of dumplings – there’s nothing wrong with the classics – that included delicate scallop with the crunch of water chestnut; shui mai, with their fluted open tops and minced pork and shrimp filling; virginal har gau, stuffed with bouncy prawns (still my fave); and fragrant Chinese chive, the jade green flecks showing through their translucent wrappers.

Some good roast pork puffs - with their friable lard-enriched pastry and sweet and sticky filling - and a trio of Ewing’s beloved puffy steamed buns, filled with more sticky char sui, quickly followed. 

Customary custard tarts were just so-so, although I still always love the fact eating pudding in the middle of your main course is thoroughly encouraged during a yum cha feast, even if they came garnished with a thoroughly retro sprig of curly parsley.

There were also rolls – deep-fried wonton pastry filled with rich shredded peking duck and hoi sin sauce, and slippery cheung fun filled with sweet shredded pork in a pool of tangy black vinegar and a crispy beancurd and prawn roll that was snaffled before I could get a pic.

And we finished things with an array of fried things including batons of crispy salt and pepper squid, my Aunt's favourite, and some slightly oily prawn croquettes that benefited from a liberal dredging in perky chilli sauce.

Overall the food, while not quite up to the location, was a step up from many jaded Chinatown stalwarts, and service efficient and friendly, despite there being a full house, and everything was ably washed down with pots of very good jasmine tea, icy bottles of Tsingtao and pints of draught Sun Lik. Prices all seemed pretty reasonable, around the four quid mark for each dim sum dish, although I’m not sure what the total damage came to as my Uncle, very kindly, treated us. 

Best of all was the postprandial stroll with lovely people in the glorious sunshine afterwards; the stillness of the city shimmering on Dim Sumday. 

Love buns in Brum

Last month saw the Ewing and I celebrate 5 years of marriage (or 1.25, if you consider we were married on a leap day). As love is all about compromise, she graciously entertained the idea of visiting Coventry Cathedral on a windswept February afternoon, while I tried not to snore too loudly through Sean Lock at the Birmingham Apollo.

One thing we could both readily agree on was a surfeit of food and drink to celebrate. So after cocktails the night before at the charming 40 St Paul’s – a bracing Gilpin’s dirty martini and a dangerously smooth G and T made with Blackwoods 60, a 60% gin that is, purportedly, currently the strongest available (also try the smoked and salted gin if you see it) – we elected to chase the cobwebs away with a brunch trip to Ken Ho in Birmingham’s Chinatown.

Being faced with platters of sticky buns and bamboo baskets of steaming hot dumplings always seems to do the trick if I’m feeling in a parlous state, not to mention the free facial you get as they arrive at the table. Throw in some crispy roast meat for protein, a good dash of soy to top up the sodium levels and stir fried greens for iron and you’ve got the perfect hangover cure.

It’s a cliché to say it, but it’s always a good sign when you're the only white faces in the house; even more so when a steady queue was already building behind us at 12:30 on a grey Wednesday. And, after assuring our waiter that we were actually there for the dim sum menu, rather than the Chinglish classics (as much as I love a deep-fried prawn ball), we got started with a pot of jasmine tea and some wonderfully short and flaky roast pork puffs. I love the trashiness of good Chinese baking, and here the balance between the lard-enriched pastry and sweet filling was perfectly balanced. Like a superior, Asian-inspired Greg’s sausage roll.

A classic test of the kitchen is har gau - those plump, shell-shaped shrimp dumplings – and these were belters. While the skin wasn’t a gossamer thin as some (with my chopstick skills, I prefer them slightly thicker, anyway) the filling was plump and bouncy with discernible chunks of sweet prawn. Better still were spinach and prawn dumplings, their lurid cases stuffed with a garlicky mixture of chopped seafood and greens.

Another good reason to visit Ken Ho for lunch is for their selection of roast meats, served with choi sum atop a bed of rice or noodles. We had the holy trilogy of roast duck, char sui and crispy pork belly with crispy egg noodles, with my favourite bits being the slices of sweet and smoky barbecued loin and the glass-like postage stamps of perfect crackling.

As much as I love the combination of sweet and stodge, I grew rather jaded about char sui buns after coming back from a trip to China and realising nothing served back at home could ever seem to match those pillowy clouds of porkiness. The Ewing, however, never stops trying and is always quick to put in her order - apart from this time, when she acquiesced after my grumbles and ordered the chicken and mushroom ones instead.

Sadly these buns missed the salty spiciness of the traditional meat filling contrasting with the puffy dough. I was suitably chastised, as well as being left to eat my way through the unfortunate (or fought over) third bun that makes sharing dim sum between a couple so potentially tricky.  A sad situation that not even their fearsome chilli oil did much to rectify.

Thankfully, things ended on a high note, with a customary plate of custard buns. Far preferable to a doughnut, these had the perfect sweet dough to gooey, golden filling ratio with a nice textural crunch from being deep fried.

If that wasn't pleasure enough, I even poked a few chunks of leftover roast duck into the centre of my bun for a heart-stopping mouthful. Although, even the best dim sum couldn't send my heart as aflutter as my lovely lunching companion. Don't worry, I spared her the romantic talk over our meal; even the Ewing can go off her food. Happy anniversary, Lump. Here's to another year of eating adventures.