Your blog to China
Pep Talk for Chinese chefs in Kunming
Three Little Pigs Dumpling Restaurant Madrid makes some of the best Chinese dumplings in Madrid
Authentic Sichuan Food in Madrid
Wanzhou Kaoyu 万州烤鱼. A local specialty from Chongqing
Wine seller in the old Kunming 昆明 suburb of Guandu 官渡
Qingping Market, Guanzhou, An Urban Legend
Luocheng: The Ultimate Teahouse Town
Shaoxing in Beijing (now no more)
Lao Fangzi Restaurant 一颗印 Kunming
Alive and Flipping:The Dalian Seafood Restaurant, Beijing
Shaoxing: City of Wine and Stinky Doufu is a food lovers paradice if you love these two products
Qiezi Bing 茄子饼 China’s Aubergine / Eggplant Pancake: Yum, what a smell!
In the next article I will be talking about these amazing chillies that grow in Guizhou on Leigongshan 雷公山 or Thunder mountain.
These chillies are reported to be the longest in the world. The ones shown hear are growing on my terrace in Madrid.
Not all of them grow straight. Some curl up into the most amazing shapes like the one below that seems to want to be a snake.
How to Make Oyster Sauce: Watch this video for the secret for how to make one of China’s favourite sauces from scratch.
You’ll never buy another bottle of the industrial stuff again (if you have the time on your hands)!
Photo of the week presents:
Join the crowds and pig out on great snacks at Taiyuan’s Food Street 太原食品街
Passing through Taiyuan for a night or two? Taiyuan’s food street 太原食品街 is a great way to spend the evening. Great snacks, cheap beer and tasty desserts await the adventurous.
You won’t have it all to yourself; most of Taiyuan’s population will be there with you.
Our favorite: Grilled Squid in a spicy chili sauce.
To drink: Cold draft beer by the litre.
Kunming, Yunnan Province. Catering staff receive a motivational pep talk from their boss.
This is a common sight in many Chinese cities. Staff are often made to stand in public and recieve a motivational pep talk before they start their work. This is especially true in the hospitality industry.
In these pictures, Chefs and Kitchen staff from a downtown Restuarant in China’s south-western city of Kunming, are standing in line while the manager tries to motivate them to work hard and serve their customers to the highest standards.
It is clear that while some are paying attention others are not.
Authentic Zhejiang style 浙菜 restaurant in Madrid
Lao Tou Restaurant 老头浙菜饭店: Zhejiang style 浙菜 cooking in the heart of Madrid’s Chinatown Usera
One of the most popular restaurants in Madrid’s Chinatown in the neighbourhood of Usera, Lao Tou, is an homage to the cuisine of Zhejiang 浙菜, known as Zhècài. Zhejiang is the birth place of the majority of the Chinese community living in Madrid (and Spain).
Not only is Lao Tou popular with the Chinese residents in Madrid, it is also increasingly frequented by curious Madrileños and Chinese tourists visiting the capital.
What makes the restaurant special?
Firstly, the ambience: Lao Tou is boisterous, noisy and chaotic. The combination of Chinese and Spanish having a good time means that noise decibels go through the roof. Added to the animated conversations of the clientele is the clanging and banging made by the to-ing and fro-ing of the waiters as they bring a constant stream of dishes and drinks from the kitchen and bar. And to cap it all, there is the hiss of the wok and the sound of metal hitting metal as the chefs stir the food in the woks with their spatulas.
Then there is the food. Anyone following our blog will know that we love spicy food and our favourite Chinese cuisine comes from Sichuan and Hunan, called Chuāncài 川菜 and Xiāngcài 湘菜 respectively. Zhejiang Cuisine is very different. Rather than using a lot of spice, the aim of Zhejiang cooking is to concentrate on the natural flavours of the ingredients, using only a few spices to enhance the taste. Not much oil is used and the flavours are fresh.
Most of the Chinese community in Madrid come from Qingtian, a town close to the huge, commercial city of Wenzhou in the south of Zhejiang Province. As this area is near the border with Fujian Province, there is a lot of influence from Fujian Cuisine 闽菜, known as Mǐncài. 闽菜. Mǐncài uses a lot of seafood and fish and that is what makes Lao Tou such a great restaurant.
Fresh Spanish seafood, cooked in 浙菜; Zhècài /闽菜; Mǐncài style makes for a real treat. Great fish: seabass and turbot. Wonderful shellfish: clams, razor fish and cockles, to name just a few. For carnivores there is also a huge selection of offal, cold and hot, as well as chicken, duck and pork specialities.
Wa wa cai 娃娃菜 (Verdura adobada, Spanish translation): a cold dish of pickled cabbage hearts, slightly salty with a tinge of sweetness and a crunchy texture. I’d never had it before and neither had I heard of it, but it’s delicious!
As it’s not on the menu, you have to point to it in the glass cabinet between the bar and the kitchen.
Cold Fish Cake 鱼饼 in slices (Pastel de Pescado): tasty slices of cold fish with garlic and ginger, accompanied by a light soy sauce. It has a great texture too!
Cold dried and roasted fish 黄鱼 (secado de pescado): a really tasty fish that comes off the bone easily.
Pickled Turnip 萝卜条 (nabo encurtido) : similar to the pickled cabbage hearts; crunchy and delicious.
Jellyfish salad 海蛰头 (ensalada de medusa): a generous portion and excellent taste . However, the jellyfish could have been more tender and less chewy. This is usually one of our favourite Chinese cold starters, but this one was a little disappointing.
The other classic cold dishes on the menu include cucumber salad, tofu with black eggs (one hundred, or one thousand year old eggs) and fried shrimps with fresh coriander, among others. For adventurous meat eaters there are duck’s feet 鸭爪, tongues 鸭舌 or a whole head 鸭头 and veal tripe 牛百叶.
The star dish of Lao Tou seems to be steamed fish head (I think it is hake). We haven’t tried it yet. Nearly everybody else in the restaurant was ordering it, but Margie isn’t so keen on fish head, so we went for other options.
The razor fish 蛏子 (navajas) and clams 蛤蜊 (almejas) were fresh and tender and delicately cooked in soy sauce with spring onions and ginger. Most importantly, there was no sand in the razor fish.
However, the cockles 蚶 (berberechos) cooked in Shaoxing wine (Huangjiu 黄酒) were the icing on the cake: fresh, succulent and imbibed with the flavor of the wine.
We also had a huge, mildly spicy pot of fresh seabass鲈鱼 (lubina), which was beautifully presented. The slices of fish were very tender and almost boneless; it could have been a bit spicier for our liking, but – as I said – that’s not really what Zhejiang style’s about. The restaurant does a similar dish with congealed blood.
Don’t miss out on the salt and pepper deep fried prawns 椒盐虾: great texture and great taste!
Finally, there is a good selection of vegetables as well. I’d recommend the sautéed Mange Tout 荷兰豆 and if you are feeling adventurous, give the Chinese Yucca 山药 a chance, or the Jiao Bai (Sun) 茭白(笋), a type of crispy water bamboo.
They also do Okra Qiū kuí 秋葵 Chinese style, in a thick, sticky sauce。
All in all, Lao Tou comes highly recommended. At the weekend you may well have to wait at the bar before you get one of the coveted tables.
Three Little Pigs Dumpling Restaurant Madrid makes some of the best Chinese dumplings in Madrid. Jiaozi or Chinese Dumplings (empanadillas in Spanish) have been popular in Madrid for a number of years, but finding the real McCoy, as you would in the old days in Beijing’s Hutongs, has been more of a struggle.
The opening of the Three Little Pigs Dumpling Restaurant 三只小猪饺子店 (Tres Cerditos in Spanish) has remedied the situation sensationally and especially for vegetarians.
The tiny restaurant does three types of dumplings: meat, prawn and vegetable. The dumpling dough, using wheat flour, is color coded; bluish for seafood, green for vegetarian and orangey for meat. You can have them grilled ( a la plancha) or steamed / boiled (hervido).
The prawn dumplings are simply delicious, while meat eaters rave about the veal or pork dumplings. My only gripe is that the homemade chili sauce is not spicy enough for my spoilt taste buds. However, there is Thai Seracha sauce on hand.
The vegetarian dumplings have an original filling of carrots, onions, leeks and herbs (fresh coriander). Not only is the combination wonderfully eye pleasing, but it is also unbelievably tasty.
Next on the menu are Jian Bing 煎饼 or Chinese Pancakes. These Tianjin style filled pancakes with vegetables only, or with chicken / beef and vegetables are enormous, delicious, cheap and filling. They are also one of my favourite beakfasts when I am in Beijing.
The pancakes are made on a hot metal grill and you can watch the staff preparing them right in front of you. First the dough is spread onto the hot plate and then an egg is added.
The process of making the pancakes looks simple but the number of different ingredients and various stages is quite mind-boggling. I imagine it is a case of practice makes perfect if you want to learn how to do it. However, I’d recommend leaving the task to the experts at the restaurant.
Other dishes: Also on the menu are hand-made noodles. The noodles are cold and come with a scrumptious hoisin style Cantonese sauce and are accompanied with an assortment of vegetables.
Rice flour is used to make the delicate and mouth-watering wantons (meat only). All the wanton wrappers are hand-made in the restaurant.
The kitchen is open for all to see and kept incredible clean. The owner is from Zhejiang 浙江省, but the dumpling makers are from the home of dumplings, Shandong 山东省 province and further north in Dandong 丹东 Liaoning province 辽宁省.
The menu below is in Spanish only. If you are visiting the Museo de Ferrocarril ( the Railway Museum in Madrid), then a visit to the Three Little Pigs Dumpling Restaurant is a must! Just walk long the attractive street Tomás Bretón to get there. There is another Tres Cerditos restaurant in the neighbourhood of Manuel Becerra.
Just off the Atocha station and the magnificent Reina Sofia musem, home to Dali’s Guernica, is the attractive, but little visited neighborhood of Delicias.
Delicias was the first neighborhood where we lived when we came to Madrid. Back then, 1993, it was a traditional working class neighborhood (or barrio castizo) and slightly seedy due to its closeness to Atocha station. Over the years, it has become a melting pot for immigrants from all over the world, but particularly from Latin America.
This change you can see everywhere on the streets, on the faces of the passers-by as well as in the restaurants. Delicas now caters to all tastes. If you want to eat Ethiopian, there is an Ethiopian restaurant: Habesha . Want to try Korean? There is a great Korean place: Go Hyang Mat. Fancy Cuban food? Head for the fantastic Havana Blues.
Chinese food had gone somewhat under the radar in this neighbourhood, but this has now changed with the opening of the Three Little Pigs restaurant.
Authentic Sichuan Food in Madrid. Madrid is a fabulous city for eating out. For the adventurous, boundless opportunities for exciting dining exist all over the city. However, those who crave spicy food, and I mean really spicy food, are often disappointed by the dearth of options.
Some Peruvian restaurants make brave attempts to keep up their spicy tradition, but most succumb to the whims of their autochthonous diners by watering down the kick. Kitchen 154, a mecca for spicy food in the market of Vallehermoso, does a pretty good job. Cruel, there own chili brand, is pretty fiery .
This after all is the country were the giant Tabasco Sauce company has almost given up the ghost. Sales in Spain are about its worst in Europe. Spanish tolerance of hot spice or chili is pretty low.
Thank heavens for Sabor Sichuan (Taste of Szechuan) 川辣香都 The Sichuan Capital of Fragrance and Spice . This small little restaurant in the barrio of Usera , south of the River Manzanares, and in the heart of Madrid’s China town is a godsend. It has recently changed owners and name, but the food is just as good as before.
If you have ever been to Sichuan or Chongqing and continue to crave that lip burning and tongue numbing Mala 麻辣 spice then Sabor Sichuan is Continue reading “Authentic Sichuan Food in Madrid”
Wanzhou Kaoyu 万州烤鱼. A local specialty from Chongqing, China called Wanzhou Grilled Fish (Wanzhou Kaoyu 万州烤鱼 ) is now all the rage in many restaurants in Madrid’s Chinatown neighbourhood of Usera.
It is a grilled /roasted whole fish covered in a dry dressing of Sichuan peppercorns, dried chilies and and served in a big pan filled with a soup like sauce that is not to dissimilar to the stock used in Sichuan hot pots 火锅 (huoguo).
The dish originates from Wanzhou (formerly WanXiang) in Chongqing municipality: It’s now popular all over Mainland China.
The original way of making this dish is to first grill a freshwater fish (Carp 鲤鱼 is popular) over charcoal and then cover it with various condiments that you order from the menu.
Some of these condiments might include lotus roots, potatoes, bamboo shoots, glass noodles, edible fungus, and beansprouts.
In Madrid the fish is usually Sea Bass (Lubina in Spanish)鲈鱼.
Wanzhou Kaoyu 万州烤鱼
Wine seller in the old Kunming 昆明 suburb of Guandu 官渡.
Guangzhou Youth Hostel, March 1991, Shamian Island
Qingping Market An Urban Legend; The rumor going round the hostel was about an American tourist who had fled China in tears after only 2 days into her 1 month trip.
The Legend
The unfortunate young girl had passed through Guangzhou’s notorious Qingping Market (清平市场) and seen two kittens kept in a tiny cage. The kittens were destined for the tables of Guangzhou’s restaurants. Thinking she would do the kittens a good turn, she negotiated a price for them. Expecting to save the kittens, she hadn’t counted on what would happen next. The store holder took the kittens out of the cage snapped their necks and handed their lifeless bodies over to her. She freaked out and was on the next express train back to Hong Kong.
Whether this is just an urban legend or a true story any visitor to Qingping Market in 1991 could believe it. The variety of animals waiting to be butchered made it feel like a zoo rather than a normal meat market. I remember Monkeys, Pangolins, giant salamanders, snakes, deer, dogs and even owls. The orangey color of dog meat roasting on spits was a common sight as were the restaurants with cages outside full of exotic fauna that made eating out a bit like dinning in a slaughter house.
However, we could never be certain that the cat story was true. Maybe it was just an urban legend.
Today Qingping Market is a far mellower place. It is not that the Cantonese have given up their love of wild food. The famous Yeweixiang Restaurant (literally; the Wild Animal Restaurant) has a menu that reads like an A-Z on Fauna. It is said that it once served Tiger.
Continue reading “Qingping Market An Urban Legend”