an attempt at risotto

I haven't been able to find arborio rice here in China. I don't have my beautiful heavy-bottomed, perfect-for-risotto pot. Although I am perfectly happy to spend a long time cooking just for myself, I wasn't sure I could bring myself to spend an hour on my own stirring risotto in the hot, poorly lit kitchen. But my old uni friend S was passing through Beijing, and brought me a Chinese red wine that she promised was really good, and I thought maybe I could give it a go.

It turns out, despite all bottles of wine being sealed with corks in China (cork-corks, not plastic corks), cork screws are difficult to find. So I poked this one out with a chopsticks, into the wine, and decanted the remainder into a glass bottle I had lying around.

At the local supermarket I managed to find a short-grain rice, and though I'm not sure what it is it's definitely not arborio. I forked out quite a lot for some olive oil, and decided to make a mushroom and tomato risotto.



The risotto turned out softer than it should have, almost congee-like. I love mixing mushrooms, so I went for a couple of button mushrooms (delicious and familiar but fairly expensive here), and enoki mushrooms. I also caramelised half a red onion, and added a tomato in my usual risotto-y way, before heaping in the red wine and the stock.

It was a nice moment of familiarity, and I'm glad I had the wine to do it, and it was expensive compared to the other stuff I cook but not too pricy. But the congee-like consistency made it a little bit weird.

home style restaurant food / 家常菜

The area near where I work has many Beijing homestyle restaurants, and I've developed a bit of a repertoire for dishes I'll hint that should be ordered when we go so that I can eat. Homestyle cooking (jiachangcai / 家常菜) is unsurprisingly easy to cook at home, but also a style quite favoured by little hole-in-the-wall restaurants, and even some of the bigger ones.

Our usual restaurant doesn't have any English, and I'm actually not sure of its name, though I know it fairly well as we go there all the time. As a result this isn't so much a restaurant recommendation, but more of a things I eat because they're often vegan recommendation.





Shredded sour and spicy potatoes (算拉土豆丝) can be very sour and a little spicy, or very spicy and a little sour. I prefer a little sour and very spicy. This is a very dry dish, sometimes served with onion, and it's easy to go too far sour and too far spicy, but it's one of my favourites.





Okay I know you're going to notice a pattern, but sour and spicy cabbage (算拉白菜) is also pretty tasty. There is a whole lot of variation with this dish in the way it's prepared, unlike the potatoes, which are always shredded / 丝, but the result is always a slightly saucy, slightly sour or tart cabbage dish that goes really well with any of the spicier dishes you might have ordered.





Down the back of most menus, hidden away underneath and behind many other things, you might find something that reads suspiciously like cantonese vegetables / 广东菜. What they mean is gailan, and you can get them lightly wok-fried in soy sauce or with garlic or, if you're not careful, oyster sauce. I usually ask for them fried with garlic.





Eggplant has been a really awesome experience for me in Beijing. Almost every restaurant will have some sort of eggplant speciality. My favourite is 地三鲜, literally 'three earth treasures', which is potato, eggplant and capsicum and it's so good. Pictured above is an eggplant, capsicum and tomato dish, because when I asked for 地三鲜 on Thursday they said they didn't have any, which given they then gave me this and a potato dish makes me wonder but whatever. The sauce is amazing, the eggplant just soaks it up and so does the potato and it's so delicious. Sometimes you need to check the eggplant dishes to make sure no animals were harmed in the making of them, but this one is usually okay.

You might notice the lack of tofu dishes! That's because there's no tofu dish I can guarantee you is vego, so it's best to make enquiries as you go. But I have a tofu dish recommendation post lined up for soon!

broccoli in my pasta

I feel all out of the habit of writing recipes. It's not that I'm not cooking, it's that what I can do in my kitchen is limited by the equipment and ingredients. Some equipment I'm used to I can buy, but I don't want to purchase only to leave it behind at the end of my twelve months; some equipment I just cannot find. Such as last night's disaster where I couldn't get this bottle of red open. In the end I used a chopstick and pushed it into the bottle, but frustrating was the knowledge that the person who gifted me with this bottle of red had also brought a corkscrew for me, and forgotten to give it to me.


Anyway, PASTA. It's a comfort food for me here in China. As I'm blogged before, it's hard for me to order because very few places in Beijing do a good pasta and they almost always, even if I ask for it without, come with cheese. But I cheat here in Beijing like I never would at home. I've posted a previous cheatery pasta, but this one I cook probably a bit more often. And it's a bit cheaper and easier to get the ingredients.

You know how to make pasta, you don't really need a recipe, but in case you're interested (it's kind of like cataloging what I can get in China):

coloured broccoli pasta

slice three button mushrooms, and fry in a little olive oil. add half a dozen cherry tomatoes, halved, and saute until they start to soften. add some tomato pasta sauce, a little chilli flakes, and one or two cloves of garlic, and simmer on reduced heat for five minutes. in the meantime, cook 250 grams of coloured pasta, and when it's almost done, add one small head of broccoli that has been pulled apart. drain and mix it in with the pasta sauce and two or three or four tablespoons of nutritional yeast. the broccoli should be crisp and everything else should be squishy.

did I mention that in China, cherry tomatoes are considered a fruit, and found in the fruit section?

veggie table iii [lama temple area, beijing]

I've written twice before about my love of the Veggie Table, and I love it, I really do - located close to my house, with excellent cake and good pasta, they have free wifi and don't mind if I sit there working and drinking coffee made with coconut milk.

So it saddens me to say how much I disliked my lunch there on Monday.

I've never taken the opportunity to try any of their specials and, having previously tried everything that interests me on their regular menu, I thought I'd give their daily special of sundried tomato and mushroom pasta with pinenuts a go.







Unfortunately I struggled to eat this, and I regretted that I hadn't ordered the mushroom burger as I'd been planning (it's the best burger I've been able to find so far in Beijing). It was a little too oily for me, and filled with a combination of flavours that I'm not a fan of on their own. I'm perfectly willing to concede that others would like this pasta, and really, I should have known better.

My previous (and extremely tasty) visits: one (includes accessibility details) and two.

Other reviews: Lum Dim Sum had a very mixed experience, and Bespoke Beijing had a much more pleasing time.

veggie table
19 wudaoying hutong
dongcheng district
beijing

making baozi

One of the things on my list of things to achieve while I'm living in Beijing is to improve my cooking repertoire. Last week I made tofu from dried organic soybeans, which was lots of fun and the result was some of the most delicious tofu I've ever eaten, plus a whole lot of inspiration for making my own tofu (and also adapting the technique to make vegan, gluten-free haloumi).





This week I made steamed buns!

We started with making the dough, which was (unsurprisingly) quite similar to making pizza dough. We gave it just the one rise, though if we'd had more time the teacher recommended a second proofing, before and after going to choppy town with a cleaver and making balls. (Cleaver optional)





I was really interested to discover just how fast the dough dries out, and what a difference it makes both to my ability to finish making the bao, and also the final bao. It dries out very, very quickly, and the dough becomes very difficult to handle as you try to fold the shape and press in the filling at the same time.





I became much faster and better at this even after just a handful of baozi, though my skills in this area still have far to go!

We used a smoked tofu, bok choy and shitake filling for these baozi, and it was delicious! I wish I hadn't been feeling a little below average, because I would have loved to have eaten more. There was also a bit of sesame oil in these ones because my cooking teacher, who is also a nutritionist, insisted, due to the lack of animal fats in my diet. It's okay the reason, because it was definitely a tasty filling.





Unlike the tofu, which I will make again but not until I get home and can impress my fellow vegmel bloggers with how awesome freshly made that hour tofu is at a potluck, I plan to make bao often both here and at home, just as soon as I can get some yeast!

making tofu at the hutong

Yesterday I learnt how to make tofu!



I'd been eying off the tofu classes at The Hutong for a while, and finally I and housemate V got a chance to get down there!

The entire process took about two and a half hours, start to finish, though in a non-classroom situation I suspect I could do it in significantly less time. I learnt a lot of interesting stuff about timing, too, in terms of making silken or firm tofu. I also learnt about okara, which is a by-product of making soy milk, and can be added to vegan baking and vegan burger patties. I'm looking for ways to use it that don't involve an oven, and if anyone has any experience using it I'd love to hear.



It was a really interesting experience, and although buying tofu remains cheaper and more convenient (at least for me here in Beijing), I'm looking forward to making my own tofu on occasion when I get back to Australia, and have access to a full kitchen.

I'm also looking forward to more classes at The Hutong. I've got a bao class next week, and I've got my eye on the hand pulled noodles class. Because hand pulled noodles!

[beijing] sunao vegetarian, dongcheng district

I was lost and running late for a work dinner located somewhere in the Nanxincang complex when I saw a giant, well-lit sign declaring 'vegan tea.' I was intrigued and would have preferred to go there rather than the duck restaurant that was my destination, and so I followed this discovery with a visit the following weekend.

This was, coincidentally, the day it snowed, about which I was PRETTY EXCITED, so had spent two hours wandering around Ditan, taking photos and playing in the snow.



So I wandered over to Dongsishitiao and in to Sunao, covered in melting snow and wearing a hoodie under my coat, only to discover that Sunao was not a casual tea house, as I had expected, but a very fancy restaurant. The menu was all in Chinese characters with minimal pictures, and the staff were beautifully dressed (no English speaking) and the settings were awesome, and I sat down, intimidated.

The front of house asked me twice if I could read (I don't think he believed me). The waitress was super excited to see me reading, but when I ordered a salad and then a tofu dish, she redirected me to another dish. I wasn't clear on all the characters, but I thought I'd give it a go, see what I ended up with.



I ended up with a mushroom pepper steak, which, it's been a while. And it was unexpected. But it was excellent! Not too chewy, slightly hot mushroomy flavour, presented beautifully and served with roasted potatoes and carrots. Totally unexpected but an interesting experience.

I would definitely not go by myself again, but I would consider a group (booked, and well-dressed) visit.

Sunao
Ground Floor, East Side
Nanxingcang Business Building
Dongsishitiao
Dongcheng

Get there on line 2, exit C. Little step up to enter, well-lit but I was only there in the daytime.

thursday chinese animal miscellany

Dear readers of my blog, presumably mostly in Australia (I really should install some sort of tracker); I am pretty sure you don't know some of the animal things going on in China at the moment, so I have decided to share with you some of the stories I have been following in the last week! Maybe I will even attempt to do this regularly. Let me know if reading this interests you!

Protests in Shenzhen against the extraction of bile from live bears:Activists Protest Guizhengtang’s Live Extraction of Bear Bile. (not gonna lie, I'm looking for a new face mask and the ones the activists are wearing bear one might be it!)

In Panjin, it is super common for seals to be brought in to hang out for the rest of their lives in a little pool inside a restaurant. The pool is so tiny I would not want to sit in it! (I have certain Body of Water preferences, and I suspect so do seals). Netizens rally to aid of captive seals

In Chongching, hundreds of dogs were rescued but now they have nowhere to go! Dogged by misfortune (I see what you did there).

Another pun: To bee or not to bee. China's native bees are disappearing, due to a) encroachment by exotic bees, and b) environmental degradation. Story of everything, Y/N?

Beijing has a feral cat problem. I know it because I walk past at least two colonies on my way to work, one right beside my house and one inside the grounds of my work (which is a park with a temple! and a feral cat colony). Beijing's Feral Cat Problem Comes Back

a day of singapore makan

Thanks to the joys of Jetstar (don't do it), I spent a Monday in Singapore, and used this opportunity to hang out with the super awesome Ger and Em. We spent the day eating, and they distracted me from my Plane Delay Panic.

We distracted ourselves at Muji, before brunching on chee cheong fun (no picture) at the Jade Garden.



From there we headed on over to Real Food Cafe, which looks like a seriously delicious vegetarian cafe and I'm sorry we didn't get to eat there. I'm not sorry that we got to try the Brownice icecream, though, which was tasty and melted all over my hands. Since there was three of us, we picked three flavours: peppermint chocolate, peanut butter caramel, and the plain chocolate. It was all good. It's ice cream made from brown rice!



Next up was Hainan chicken rice at Pine Tree Cafe in the Fortune Centre. The Fortune Centre is so amazing, I can't believe I've spent so much time in Singapore and never been there. It's a shopping complex almost entirely filled with vegetarian restaurants and shops! So good.

This chicken rice was awesome. I know I spoke highly of the chicken rice I ate at Madame K's only a week later, but this was perfect. Nice little soup, sauce drizzled over the top, Singaporean and just the way I like it.



We followed this up with a visit to the Mustafa Centre (open 24 hours) and then a dosai at the Syed Alwi branch of Ananda Bhavan. This was my first dosai in about six months and I was very happy to be putting this in my mouth. Ananda Bhavan is a fast service place, a little self-service.

There was supposed to be a burger visit, too, but in my paranoia to get on my plan we gave it a miss and went early to the airport.

Go to Singapore! It's pretty great. As are Em and Ger.

Real Food Cafe
6 Eu Tong Sen Street,
#B1-52/53, The Central
Singapore 059817

Pine Tree Cafe
#02-09/13
Fortune Centre
190 Middle Road
Singapore

Ananda Bhavan
Syed Alwi Road
opposite Mustafa Centre
Singapore

madame k's vegetarian, fitzroy

Walking up Brunswick Street heading for Yongs, my eye was caught by a new restaurant fit-out and a nice blue sign announcing 'Madame K Vegetarian.' So of course we detoured!



We started with some awesome fresh juices, served in little bottles. My watermelon and apple juice was super delicious; Ju had orange and pineapple which she reported was also delicious (I elected not to sample her juice on the grounds that pineapple is my least favourite fruit).



I'm not usually a big entree person, but I couldn't resist trying the chicken and corn soup. This had an excellent corn flavour, and little stringy bits of mock chicken, and lots of spring onions. A perfect chicken and corn soup! And it was an excellent size - it could almost be a small meal.



Ju and I both struggled to select a main. I finally settled on the chicken rice; the rice was perfectly gingered, and the chicken tasted just as it should, with an accompanying soy+bean Thai sauce with an excellent chilli bite that set it all off excellently. Ju went for the laksa, which was a bit more red curry noodle than assam deliciousness, but was still a pretty good dish on its own.

Madame K's also has an excellent and tempting dessert menu, filled with an amazing-looking fruit salad, deep fried bananas, and other exciting things. We skipped this in favour of cocktails at Polly, but I look forward to a future, dessert-included visit!

Service here was good, and prompt. Vegan items are clearly labelled on the menu. A main costs about $15. I have been thinking about the menu for a couple of days now, and definitely will visit Madame K's again (though probably not until my triumphant return to Melbourne later this year).

Madame K's allegedly has a website, but it doesn't appear to yet be up and running.

No other reviews: despite living in Beijing, am I the first?!

Madame K's Vegetarian
367 Brunswick Street
Fitzroy

94156909

accessibility: step up to enter, tables are very close together and difficult to maneuver around. get there on the 112 tram (which is not an accessible tram).

vegan peking duck for cny

Just home from an amazing dinner at Baihe for CNY. Mandarins for starters (and finishes, and prosperity), then noodles, potatoes, gailan, pipa chicken, and the most amazing duck and pancakes:



Highly recommend, would eat again.

On the way home I passed so many fireworks and firecrackers and one lonely red lantern, drifting slowly into the sky and out of sight. My camera's no good for capturing these sorts of things, but I leave you with this, from the driveway to our apartment complex:



恭喜发财！新年快乐！Reports of temple fair food tomorrow, after I've eaten it.

previous visit (includes Englishness, directions and accessibility details)

Baihe Vegetarian / Lily's Vegetarian / 百合素食
23 Caoyuan Hutong
off dongzhimen nei bei xiaojie
Dongcheng District
Beijing

东直门内北小街草原胡同甲23号

timezone 8 [798, beijing]

I really like 798, the art district of Beijing. I've been there twice now (photos), and the second time was even more fun than the first, I came home with all sorts of art and had a really great afternoon. It's not the sort of place you can visit just once and be done with it, it's always evolving and it's massive and it's tiring.

On this visit we wandered in to Timezone 8, a gallery, restaurant, bar and bookshop. There's a soy latte on the menu and vegetarian pasta that I could get without the cheese, and given I thought I was going to be in a vegan wasteland I was happy already.



The pasta (eggplant, tomato and mushroom) was okay. It wasn't spectacular (the eggplant was a little tough), and the coffee was average, but Emilly said her pasta was good (vego not vegan) and her juice was excellent. We were seated at the bar and they juiced the watermelon in front of her! Service was friendly and helpful. I plan to take several of my visitors over the next eight months to 798, so it's good to know there's somewhere I can get food with minimal hassle.

The menu is in Chinese and English, the waitstaff speak a little English.


Timezone 8
4 Jiuxianqiao Lu (opposite UCCA)
798

Get there on the 401 bus. Steps to enter, nice lighting (during the day).

revolutionary tofu

At my workplace we have some very traditional food coming out of the kitchen, traditional in the sense of since the Cultural Revolution. A lot of the dishes we eat at work became common during the CR because they're fast, simple and nutritious, making use of the ingredients to hand and the conditions available. I plan to make a whole blog post about the food that gets dished up in the work cafeteria, which has been integral to introducing me to a whole lot of Northern Chinese food that I'm just completely unfamiliar with (being familially from a Southern province; and worse, being more immediately South-East Asian).

I've become a bit obsessed with this tofu dish, which made an appearance on my first trip to the cafeteria. I eagerly look forward to each reappearance, and finally I gave it a go recently. It's so simple it doesn't need a recipe, though I found a reference to it in The Cultural Revolution Cookbook, a cookbook I would seriously consider buying except it's still got a whole lot of meat in it.



sesame tofu with spring onion
recipe helped by the cultural revolution cookbook

This makes a great side dish or salad to a flavoursome meal. I've been eating it in winter but look forward to serving it as a summer salad. I know it sounds plain and boring (and the picture doesn't help) but the sesame oil does something magical to the tofu that makes it very moreish. You may want to adjust the amount of sesame oil you use depending on your tastes, and you could also sprinkle some sesame seeds on the top.

ingredients
1 x 300g block of firm tofu
1 or 2 stems of spring onion
2 teaspoons sesame oil
salt

method: In the microwave, heat the tofu whole (and drained and rinsed) until it's pleasantly warm to the touch; should need no longer than a minute. Alternatively, soak the tofu in hot water for a minute or two. In the meantime, slice the spring onion small and on an angle, along the bias. Use the green and the white parts! Combine the sesame oil, spring onions and salt. Dice the tofu into chunks about half an inch across, and mix the oil through a little roughly - the tofu can break apart somewhat. Serve warm.

baihe vegetarian [百合素食] [dongcheng, beijing]

After a long exhausting day out in the outskirts of Beijing (1.5 hours on the subway south of the city), no lunch, and three hours of facilitating a large group of people all on my own, I was so hungry I could barely talk, so Emilly met me at Baihe Vegetarian, less than a ten minute walk away from my apartment. We sat down and started picking food quickly, so I could eat as soon as possible.



We ordered the satay noodles, the chicken curry, and the dry roast potatoes. These came out rapidly, delicious and warm. The dry roast potatoes, despite being neither dry nor roasted, were my favourite. They were served in a tasty, mild sauce, in a platter with a flame underneath to keep it bubbling away. The noodles and the chicken were nothing to scoff at, though the potatoes in the curry were a tad underdone. They all were delicious though, and exactly what I needed after a long day of no food.



I really enjoyed Baihe and, with its close proximity to my house, is a place I plan to revisit for sure. Prices are moderate, about 130Y including fresh juices. Service is friendly and helpful.

Baihe Vegetarian / Lily's Vegetarian / 百合素食
23 Caoyuan Hutong
off dongzhimen nei bei xiaojie
Dongcheng District
Beijing

东直门内北小街草原胡同甲23号

Take line 2 to Dongzhimen station, exit D or B, walk directly West along Dongzhimen inner, at the first major intersection turn right. Caoyuan Hutong is the second alley on your left. The menu has English subtitles (and pictures!), access includes a step up and a step down and several ledges in the way. There is a toilet on the premises. Staff don't speak English.

veggie table ii [lama temple area, beijing]

After a massive NYE and needing to recover all day Sunday, we ventured out to nearby Veggie Table for a continuation of the recover process on Monday for lunch. I'd been hoping for the mushroom burger, all burgery and chips and mushroom is my hangover meal of choice, but alas it was not to be, for in the new year's rush they were all out of mushroom burgers.



So I went the pizza route instead (spurred on by Lainie and Alaine who had stayed in the entirety of the previous day, and ordered in two large pizzas they ate by themselves). The pizza at Veggie Table is eggplant, potato and onion, with the eggplant present in the form of baba ghanoush spread across the base, giving it a thick, moist underlayer underneath all that onion and potato. It was greasy and rich and delicious. I've never even considered such a thing before, baba ghanoush instead of tomato paste, and I would eat it again for sure, but maybe I will share it with someone. I had to go for a walk afterwards to work it off.



I supplemented it with a coconut milk latte. Served in a massive mug, this coffee has just a hint of coconut to it, beautifully supplementing the coffee, and it was exactly what I wanted.

previous visit (includes accessibility and english details)

veggie table
19 Wudaoying Hutong
Lama Temple Area
Dongcheng District
Beijing