Dim Sum and Hot Pot - December 28th, 2007

So here's a little reminder about what was going on back then.

My aunt from Hong Kong was still over, which meant that we'd go out whenever we didn't feel like cooking - we, as in the large extended family. I didn't mind at all, because we usually don't go out as a family often. That wasn't the case as of late, because of our family visiting from out of the country (my great aunt from Paris, France, visited for the month of October).

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We went to have dim sum at Chu Shing and it okay. Just an average dim sum outing. Actually, thinking back, it was a bit better than average because we sat a couple of tables away from the doors to the kitchen. That meant that we'd pretty much get the first picks. I love when that happens. Erm. Yup. We had two large tables, one with most of the adults, my grandparents, and the other table with the "kids", my uncle and my aunt (from China).

Before I show some pictures, I would like to mention that when we were pouring our first pot of tea, my uncle got a dead bug in his cup. It looks like a fly or something. (Crappy photo, I know). When we mentioned it to the staff, they just took his tea cup, dumped the crap, and gave my uncle a new tea cup. They didn't even change the tea pot, until we pointed it out. Like, come on, it doesn't take a genius to figure out where the bug came from. If there was a bug already in the tea cup, I'm sure the people setting the tables up would've noticed. Also, we would've noticed it when we first sat down and definitely wouldn't poor tea into the cup that had the dead bug. I wasn't impressed with that at all. What do you think?

Here's the turnip cake that tastes like congee (in my opinion). But you know what, it actually looks good pretty tasty in this photo.

Here are the balls of deep fried shrimp. We didn't need the sweet sauce.

I believe the dish in the front is stewed tendons? Behind that is the chicken feet. I can't make out the other two dishes behind the chicken feet.


Finally, here's the bug I was talking about. How appetizing...

We ate more things, but I just didn't take pictures of them.

(Edit: I just realised that I've already posted about this, lol. You can see what I wrote here. LOL I can't believe this was the time Lucy was violated by the chicken feet.)

That night, we had hot pot for dinner. We made a quick broth using Campbell's Chicken Broth, water, napa cabbage, dried scallops, chicken bones and some other things.

The fixings included tofu, beautifully marbled beef (cut into thin slices by my uncle), enoki mushrooms, squid, bok choy, beef balls, and the green stuff at the top (I believe they're called watercress). As a dipping sauce, we mixed satay sauce and hoisin sauce, with Sriracha sauce on the side. Some of my relatives like to use fish sauce mixed with Sriracha sauce as their dipping sauce. I think it's too salty.

We also had glass noodles as a choice. Erm, we had rice too.

The only thing I really remember of that night, was the beef. Because my uncle sliced them very thinly, it only took a second to cook them medium in the hot pot. The beef just melted in your mouth. It was so good that no one touched the frozen beef. Oh, I didn't mention that we also had that? Well, we did, because I remember that once the beautifully marbled beef was gobbled up by everyone, I tried a couple of the frozen stuff, and it was just not the same. Not at all. So I remembered two things from that night. Woops.

For dessert, we had a coconut cream pie. Not sure where it was purchased, but it was pretty yummy.

As we drove home, it started to snow. It was still snowing when we got home, so I snapped this pic.

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Chu Shing

691 Somerset Street West

Ottawa, Ontario

613-233-8818