June 28, 2012 by MaryAnne
Welcome to Part 2 in my series of as yet undetermined length on cooking Chinese food in Canada! Part 1 is here.
We’re still on safe, neutral territory here- no bear paw, no jellyfish, no shark fin soup in my drafts folder, thank you very much. I’m sticking with the things I eat regularly in Shanghai (aside from those guanxi-heavy banquets for work) and I have, by nature, really simple tastes. Veggies will predominate, as they ought to. (more…)
Category Improbable Things, Made in Jianada, Uncategorized | Tags: bacon,Canada,garlic,Hunan,OMFG Yum,wok | 2 Comments
June 20, 2012 by MaryAnne
Er, hello.
It’s been a while. You may remember me as the person who used Xinjiang noodle dough to make pretty much everything.
I’ve been, one might say, busy.
I got a new job about two months ago. I can’t remember if I mentioned it. Academic director of a new start up school. Or, as I’d hoped to have on my business card, Queen of the Fire Spiders. Did I mention that the company that is in charge of this whole project is named Fire Spider? Yes. Hot, roaring, powerful and drops from the sky out of nowhere. Can’t get more auspicious than that. (more…)
Category Made in Jianada, Spicy Things, Uncategorized | Tags: Canada,Chinese,garlic,salad,Simple,spicy,Vegan | 15 Comments
May 21, 2012 by MaryAnne
Oh. Hello. You might remember me from such diverse posts as Xinjiang Noodle Dough Tacos and Xinjiang Noodle Dough Pierogies. I’ve been slightly out of commission recently, what with suddenly having 5 jobs and all.
I must say, it sure is a lot easier to cook when 1. you’re actually at home (I’ve been either in Hangzhou or down in Xinzhuang and Qibao in deepest, darkest South Shanghai for much of the past month) and 2. not up to your ears in new and scary work projects with terrifying deadlines.
For the past few weeks, we’ve been living on crock pot soup, take away pizza, and neighbourhood Hunan restaurant yummies. My drafts folder here doubled in size, full of links and titles but no actual finished product. No time. Also, no energy.
Today, for the first day in yonks, I didn’t have to go somewhere immediately to do something workish (that would be scheduled for this afternoon). I cleaned the flat, drank 2 pots of coffee, and made lavash crackers and hummus. By hand. Which is still cramped. (more…)
Category Baked Things, Uncategorized | Tags: chickpeas,crock pot,Flatbread,garlic,Middle Eastern,Toaster Oven | 11 Comments
May 17, 2012 by MaryAnne
This is Part 1 in a series on Lanzhou noodles. Part 2 (the broth) is here.
This one has been a long time coming. Seriously. This dish is quite possibly the one thing we have eaten the most of in China. At 6rmb a bowl (like, 80 cents, maybe) and incredibly delicious, it’s hard to beat.
I was introduced to Lanzhou lāmiàn on my second day in the country, still jet lagged and wondering what the hell I had gotten myself into.
February in Shanghai, 2009; cold, grey, grim, absurdly smoggy, rainy.
I was flat hunting with Elaine, the admin assistant from my then new job, and I kept getting shown flats that were dishearteningly dreadful and embarrassingly over-priced (the laowai effect, I presume).
Elaine took me to lunch at a tiny Lanzhou noodle place just up the street from the flat I would eventually take (and then get booted out of 3 months later when the landlord suddenly decided he was itching to sell). She ordered me a bowl of piping hot 牛肉 拉面(niúròu lāmiàn), or beef pulled noodles. (more…)
Category Made in Jianada, Pasta Things, Soupy Stewy Things, Uncategorized | Tags: Canada,Chinese,noodle,OMFG Yum | 7 Comments
May 1, 2012 by MaryAnne
This one started out as just a sauce, intended to use up the tin of coconut milk that had been hanging out in our cupboard for at least the past six months. The recipe had promised me a multitude of uses- drizzled in soup, swirled into eggs, spooned into spring rolls. It was going to be my go-to sauce this week, just as the roasted garlic oil holds a permanent position in the fridge door. (more…)
Category Improbable Things, Soupy Stewy Things, Spicy Things, Uncategorized | Tags: Chicken,Mexican,OMFG Yum,soup,Thai | 5 Comments
April 18, 2012 by MaryAnne
Spring has sprung! Shanghai is currently alternating between gorgeous, sunny, warm days and, well, the usual grim and drizzly murkiness that seems to be its default mood. I, however, have been feeling remarkably sane (highly unusual) and have been quite busy with lots of little cooking projects this week. Last night we had fajitas (but with spicy sauteed chicken), this afternoon I made a massive new batch of roasted garlic oil, and tonight…we had something I hadn’t made in years: tandoori chicken.
Or rather, toaster oven chicken in a style approximating tandoori chicken. With lots of peppers to go with. Lots.
Yesterday, Doug hit the jackpot whilst picking up dinner veggies at the wet market on Taiyuan lu and came home with the biggest bag full of red, green and yellow bell peppers ever. It’s not pepper season here. Capsicum related foodstuffs of the fresh sort are thin on the ground right now. Bell peppers are like hens’ teeth. Now the crisper in our fridge is stuffed to the gills with the suckers.
And my god but they are magnificent! I cut one of each colour open for last night’s fajitas and he could smell them from the living room. The jus (if you can call it that) from the raw red pepper was a lovely deep red that stained the counter top. These were crazy fresh.
Peppers! Oh, and onion. But look, peppers!
I haven’t figured out yet what I’ll do with the other half dozen still in the fridge. I’m sure I’ll think of something. Roasted, perhaps? Try my hand at a Turkish biber salcasi? It’s all very exciting. (more…)
Category Improbable Things, Spicy Things, Uncategorized | Tags: Chapati,Chicken,Indian,OMFG Yum,Toaster Oven,wok,Yogurt | 9 Comments
April 10, 2012 by MaryAnne
Things are afoot. Now that spring has suddenly sprung here in Shanghai, many of the winter worries that had been taxing my brain are starting to resolve themselves. I won’t go into them in great detail here- that’s what my other blog is for- but I wanted to note them because they represent a huge load off my mind.
Living where we do makes some things a lot more complicated. Take my under-employment, for example. One of the reasons why I started this blog was because I suddenly had a lot more free time when my original job kind of…um, changed last June. Luckily, my company kept me legally employed under my original contract. I still work, but less than before and with more flexible hours. You may not realize how amazing and rare this is.
To live here, you need to be legal here; to be legal here, you need a full time job that is able to sponsor you (or a Chinese spouse); to have a full time job frequently means working your ass off for a middling salary at a place that leaves you feeling miserable… just so you can legally be where you live. Taking a break is complicated; going part time or freelancing are nearly impossible; changing careers entirely is not even an option, as you need to prove you have at least 2 years’ experience to be sponsored. I was given the gift of one year’s worth of flexibility. That year is just about up.
As well, to live here generally means renting- unless you’re married to a local, which makes buying more feasible if you can actually afford the insane housing prices. The rental market here is not in favour of the renter, nor is it in favour of foreigners. Our lease expires at the end of May and our landlord of two years (who is lovely–a rarity here) was planning to sell the flat over the summer.
Thus, as you can see, I was facing a mad scramble not only to find a new job to be able to stay here legally beyond summer, but also had to start looking for an affordable flat in a decent neighbourhood that hopefully wasn’t a dozen steps down aesthetically from our current one. Rental prices here have been increasing 20% each year, and our current flat was already at the top of our budget. I was very stressed.
Last week, two amazing things happened: our landlord changed his mind and said we could have the flat another year, and I was unexpectedly headhunted for a rather promising job for the new school year. Also, the sun finally came out.
Spring has sprung, the skyscrapers is riz
I could finally exhale. (more…)
Category Baked Things, Sweet Things, Uncategorized | Tags: Apples,OMFG Yum,Toaster Oven | 9 Comments
March 30, 2012 by MaryAnne
I bet you all think I live on tortillas and cookies, yearning for cheese and chocolate and fearfully snubbing the culinary options that surround me here in Shanghai.
I mean, that’s pretty much what this blog indicates in its persistent quest narrative, chasing after elusive sachets of gelatine or powdered sugar (found the sugar but not the gelatine), with long hours spent over a hot keyboard trying to figure out how to make mozzarella cheese without rennet (or citric acid or lightly pasteurized milk, for that matter).
I probably come across as a laowai so firmly jammed into her expat bubble that the thought of backing away from the toaster oven sends waves of homesickness and palpable fear coursing through her body.
This is actually more indicative of how I eat outside the flat, on a day to day basis:
Dumpling porn
See, I can get marvellous stuff like this for cheap (these were 10rmb, or $1.50) everywhere around me.
Most of my breakfasts are made up of a pot (or two) of coffee at home followed by steamed buns stuffed with tofu and greens or drippy barbecued pork, or hot and savoury tea eggs, or crispy fried rice cakes or savoury mung bean flour crepes stuffed with crispy fried wonton wrappers, chives, minced pickled veggies, cilantro and hoisin sauce en route to wherever I’m going.
I like to maintain a balance. Cheese, chocolate and tortillas on the homefront; tofu, lotus root and grated radishes outside.
Category Improbable Things, Spicy Things, Uncategorized | Tags: Beef,Flatbread,Mexican,OMFG Yum,tortilla,wok,Yogurt | 15 Comments
March 16, 2012 by MaryAnne
I’m a day early, I know. And possibly two days early depending on time zones. However, today was the last free day I have for the next seven days (oh, damn this freelancing- I work more than usual, in such weirder ways) so I decided to go all out in my potato and soda infused frenzy.
I used to live in Ireland. That was a very long time ago in a previous existence. I lived for a while on a sofa kindly donated to me by a fine Kiwi woman back in the mid ’90s (thank you, Kaye).
I spent days wandering around Galway, drinking tea in the Roisin Dubh when I really ought to have been drinking more Guinness (oh, so young!), wandering out along the promenade to Salthill, past the spiral stones, kicking the wall at the end and then turning around and walking back again. I was a music groupie who had no idea that I ought to have been sleeping with the band instead of inviting them out for tea (I’m the most promiscuous of the tea-groupies, I’m sure). I bootlegged dozens of concerts with my recording studio that I kept in my hat. I hitchhiked out into the Burren, out into Connemara, down to the steep cliffs of Moher, peering over the rim then stepping back again, sleeping in chilly, empty dorms, sipping mugs of strong tea, coughing from chronic lung crap. Ireland hated my lungs.
That was yonks ago. (more…)
Category Baked Things, Improbable Things, Uncategorized | Tags: Flatbread,Ireland,OMFG Yum,wok | 16 Comments
March 12, 2012 by MaryAnne
I’m not, as Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes once insisted, having the time of my life. Aside from the absence of Patrick Swayze, things here are a bit topsy turvy.
We just got word that our landlord will be selling the flat in June so the hunt for our fourth flat in three years must begin soon if we want to find anything decent. I’m not in the mood to move. In fact, the cold greyness of March is insisting that I stay inside and drink tea and eat cupcakes. Alas, I have work to do outside and there are no cupcakes to be found. Hibernation must wait.
After moping around the flat today, wrapped up in thick sweaters and felted watermelon slippers, swearing at the spinning rainbow wheel of death on my laptop (the Great Firewall has kicked it up a notch and the internet was practically non existant, with no proxy ports connecting), I decided I needed comforting.
However, I didn’t want to make a whole cake or a big batch of anything because I’d just have to eat it all. That wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted…just one or two. Of whatever. But you can’t bake a batch of, say, three cookies. It just doesn’t work.
Unless, of course, you regress to childhood and remember the sort of cookies that grandmothers baked. You know, the kind that the freaking Pillsbury Doughboy co-opted and corporatized. Icebox cookies. Freezer cookies. The thaw-n-slice cookies.
You make a batch, divide it into dough logs, wrap them up individually and freeze them for later. When you need a micro batch of cookies, you just take out a log, let it thaw 15 minutes or so, slice them and bake them. Easy peasy. (more…)
Category Baked Things, Sweet Things, Uncategorized | Tags: comfort food,cookies,Haw fruit,OMFG Yum,Toaster Oven | 12 Comments
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