Last Noodles of 2008 - December 1st, 2008

I was very excited to venture out to Chinatown this time, because I vowed to show my friend the authentic version of the nasty 'sweet and sour pork.' The last time I had this pork dish was back in the summer and I definitely missed it. I HATE the sweet and sour pork that most places serve. They use frozen pieces of battered pork, at least that's what they claim. I think that they throw in pieces of cardboard into the pork sometimes. Nasty. Okay, so the REAL version of the dish is served on a sizzling plate. There's REAL chunks of pork and ZERO traces of cardboard matter.

My friend and I went to the House of Gourmet blah blah blah restaurant, of course. It was going to be the last time I would get to have my noodles this year. We got there at the beginning of the dinner rush and were seated right away, more or less. We ordered 3 dishes to share between the two of us because we were starving. We ordered a bowl of stewed beef and wonton noodle soup, my noodles and, finally, pork in chef's special sauce on a sizzling plate. The soup came first, as it came from the front of the house. Okay, their shrimp wontons are pretty much huge siu mai. Seriously. Anyone who's had them there knows that I'm not lying. It's awesome! They're HUGE shrimp siu mai disguised as wontons. Sneaky ninja dumplings. Despite their skills, the shrimp 'wontons' failed to get ordered by us. My friend is sadly a

 shrimp hater and so I just go the pork wontons which are relatively smaller. I was sad. I took a picture or two of the bowl and thought they were fine, at the time, but I found out that they were blurry when I uploaded them onto my laptop. Boo... This is a picture of my brother's bowl of stewed beef noodle soup (without the wontons). The soup is there.. somewhere. The bowl that we got had more soup. Their soup kind of tastes weird. I remember when I tried my brother's bowl of soup two years ago, I thought the soup was kinda nasty. It grew on me this time. The meat is heavenly. It melts in your mouse and is sooo tasty!

I made sure to explain that the sizzling pork dish appealed to most of the senses. You can hear it sizzling as the waitress brings it over to the table, you can smell the sweet and smokiness of the dish, you can see the steam trail of the dish as it's carried to the table, you can see the bubbly sauce and  you can finally taste the tender pork with the sweet sauce. 

The sizzling pork dish came next. The kitchen already poured the sauce on the beef, so there sadly wasn't a huge spectacle. It smelt sooo good and I couldn't wait to dig in. It was really good. The pork was tender and the sauce was smoky and not too sweet.

My noodles came next. The only thing I can remember about it was that it wasn'

t as smoky. Oh, my friend, who I was with, commented that there wasn't "... as much sauce as we usually get." I had to tease him about it, because at the beginning of the semester, he only ate Canadian-Chinese food. Gotta love how one semester of Chinatown trips can turn someone really white, more asian than some asians are.

I'm going with my friend tomorrow and we're probably going order the same things.. I'm excited! Woot!

Enjoy the winter everyone! Make sure you bundle up so you don't freeze.

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House of Gourmet

484 Dundas St W

Toronto, ON

Photog Dim Sum Outing - December 5th, 2008

I wanted to get a bunch of us together since the middle of the semester but because we were always working on assignments, we didn't really have time to do so. Then came the first week of exams... there's an opportunity!

There were 4 dim sum noobies along with 4 dim sum pros, so there was going to be a lot of food. We needed to make sure everyone left full and happy, so we ordered a bit of everything. It was around 2:30 by the time everyone arrived at the restaurant and the dim sum ladies, rolling the carts, started to stop coming out. We just gave the manager-guy a list of what we wanted to order. The good thing about when the food came was that it didn't all come at once. I hate when that happens, cause everything gets cold so quick. We also ordered a plate of noodles with beef, soy sauce and bean sprouts. The plate of noodles were gone in no time at all, which is why they're MIA from the pics.

Anyway, nothing stood out so it made for an average dim sum outing - yummy!

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Sun Sun Restaurant

888 Dundas Street East

Mississauga, ON

(905) 566-1886

Korean BBQ and hot pot - February 13th, 2008

It was one of those nights where I was getting sick of our rotation of foods at home. How do I take a break from it? It starts with figuring out what I wanted to eat, and at that time, my brothers were craving Korean food. Sure, why not. I started to butter my parents up for it, with the help of my brothers of course. We convinced our dad and my mom was dragged along (not literally). To Bulgogi Garden!

Can't remember our exact order, but we had one of the marinated beef orders (for the grill) and one of the hot pots.

To start, we were each given some miso soup. Mmm..

Next, we were given a bunch of little things to eat with rice and whatever you ordered (called banchan).

I remember that when our waitress brought everything for the grill, she started placing everything on the grill for us. I'm sure she was only trying to be helpful, but it was kinda annoying how she kept coming back and checking our meat.

Our hot pot looked pretty impressive. It looked exactly like the picture in their menu. The bad thing about it all was that everything cooked all at once, when we didn't want to eat it all at once. The pile of meat turned into a cooked meat ball. That wasn't fun. The soup was good. I also liked the thicker and firmer glass noodles they used. If they want to keep the presentation, they just need to keep a platter of veggies and meat separate from the soup.

We found it expensive, but we were all full and it was a warm meal for a cold night.

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Address:

Bulgogi Garden

702 Somerset Street W,

Ottawa, ON

613-236-0001

The Making of Xiao Long Bao

I know I'm not finished my posting yet.. but my mom and I tried to make soup dumplings for the first time earlier today, and it was sooo good!

After reading about soup dumplings for so long (probably the past year), I finally decided to try to make it - with my mom's help, of course. My mom can probably make any food out there. How? No clue. But it's almost always really good. lol Almost. I found a recipe online for the dumplings, just as a guideline and made the jellied soup yesterday (by taste), meat filling (I used the filling for pot stickers.. same thing, right?), while my mom made the wrappers from scratch. I didn't take any pictures cause I was busy wrapping, then cleaning, then eating. Here's someone else's picture of soup dumplings though.

Photo courtesy of http://singapuradailyphoto.blogspot.com/

The dumplings just tasted like really juicy pot stickers. =) It was funny trying to watch my little brother trying to pop the whole thing in his mouth. I was expecting a scene like the explosive pissing beef balls in God of Cookery (skip to 7:09 to see what scene I'm talking about.. and watch part 6 to see them start up their business) Hahaa.. I love it!

Happy New Years!