SF in the New Year

Happy New Year, everyone! 2008 was a hell of a year, and I am glad to put it behind me, although I remain grateful for what it taught me. Here's to a light-filled 2009.

Over vacation, my family took a couple days to hang out in San Francisco. We stayed at a nice little hotel in Japantown, the Hotel Kabuki. The first part of our trip was rather Asian-themed, the second more food-themed. Well, things are always food-themed in my family!

Asiatica

This is the Asian Art Museum, located across a green from SF City Hall.
The special exhibit was "Afghanistan", which was great, but I was not allowed to take any photos.

This is from the Korean Art section, with various sculptures - many of them fabric and paper.

Delicate paper slippers. The character for "woman" is on the soles.

Detail from an illumination in the Islamic Art room.

Katsu donburi. Fried pork cutlet on rice, with onions and egg. Mmmmmm.

When in Japantown . . . This is my mom, being silly.

Making Taiyaki - fish-shaped pancakes filled with red-bean paste.
We had these in the morning - a perfect breakfast food.

The Farmer's Market

The Ferry Building, on Embarcadero, houses a fantastic farmer's market on Saturday,
along with a kazillion gourmet food shops. It was heaven!

Haven't you always wanted to eat pink mushrooms?

Fresh oysters. I had one and it was absolutely delicious. Just $1.50 a pop!

People mingle and eat whatever goodies they've bought (and samples they've scrounged - they're very generous with the samples there) at the market in this gorgeous setting behind the Ferry Building.

Oh-so-California.

Mom & sis, eating lunch on the sidewalk.

And here are some treasures we brought home to enjoy:

Mochi! The two on the left are what I call "inside-out" mochi - they're a piece of mochi wrapped in red-bean paste. The one on the right is a chestnut flavored mochi. There's a great mochi shop in the Japantown mall, filled with countless kinds of mochi.

A tea set my mom brought home. She says she likes its serene colors.

The Mid-Autumn Festival

Today is the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival, the day of the year when the moon is the fullest. To celebrate, my mom always sends me moon cakes. Here are some of them - they are beauties.

These are pastries filled with different pastes - red bean in the one on the left (you can read it on the molded characters). The characters on the other cake read "yuan yi," wishing the eater prosperity.

Here is a peek at the inside of a larger mooncake:

The filling is lotus seed paste - the taste is reminiscent of sweet pine nuts. At the very center is an egg yolk, baked. It symbolizes the luminous, round moon, brightest on this date.

Mooncakes are very rich and should be eaten with tea while sitting outside at evening, enjoying the full moon. For those less fond of these delicacies (even I can find them a bit cloying sometimes) here's a creative recipe for black sesame panna cotta from Dessert First, in lieu of the festival.

Zhang Yimou

Filipo Monteforte/AFP/Getty Images

I think we can all agree that the Olympic Opening Ceremony in Beijing were pretty fantastic. The artistic direction was done by Zhang Yimou, famed director of films such as House of Flying Daggers, Hero, and Raise the Red Lantern. Gong Li, whom I idolize as the most beautiful Chinese woman ever, was his longtime muse and amour.

When at the West Lake in China last summer, I got to see a production by Zhang Yimou on the lake. Not sure how they did it, but it was also quite fantastic, though on a much smaller scale. Here are a few (blurry) visuals. They retell well known Chinese tales, perhaps we would call them legends or fairytales, that center around the beautiful lake.

Dancers on the lake wave enormous feathers in unison.

Here the story of the White Snake and her husband are told on a floating pagoda.

Dancers perform the story of the Butterfly Lovers under a watery canopy. It's a story of star crossed love, but with a very slightly happier ending than Romeo and Juliet (the lovers meet as butterflies over their graves).

Happy 08/08/08!

Eight is a lucky number in Chinese culture because " bā " (八) sounds like " fā " (發) the word for becoming prosperous. Besides being an auspicious day for opening the Olympic games, today is also my sister's birthday!

I, however, have an unlucky Chinese number in my birthdate: Four, which is " sì " (四) sounds like " sǐ " (死), the word for death. Yay! Well, it's kinda cool, in a goth way.

Anyway, happy most auspicious day ever! I plan on watching the opening ceremonies tonight and maybe eating some " bā bǎo fàn(八寶飯) or Eight Treasure Rice. It is my favoritest Chinese dessert .

Eating My Way Through China: In the Countryside

Here is a rural village we stopped by on our way to Hwang Shan. It full of tiny streets and bridges over small streams flowing into the lake you see here, bordered by enormous waterlilies.

Although it's a tourist trap now, folks still go on making their living, cooking, crafting wares, and washing their laundry in the surrounding pools.

Here are some chilies, drying in the baking sun.

Flatbreads and cakes for sale in a quiet corner.

This villager is drying tea - when I took this picture he joked,
"Don't - I'm too old and ugly!"

Eating My Way through China: Beijing was Peking, but Duck is still Duck

Of course I'm going to write about food in China! What do you take me for? Let's begin at Beijing, where I was stranded with my sister and then with my sister & mom for a few days (my dad lost his passport the night before our flight!!). Luckily, we had Peking Duck to comfort us - and this was no ordinary duck...

We begin with pate de foie gras in gelee.

Then dry smoked duck in a nest of lettuce and fine fried noodles.

The main attraction follows: Peking Duck at its finest,
with crisp skin and lean meat.

The duck is eaten on thin crepes with the above accompaniments: (clockwise starting from top left) garlic puree, sugar, plum sauce, scallions, cucumber, radish. The bottom left dish holds sour pickled vegetables to clean one's palate. The sugar is eaten only with the skin alone. It is perfection.

Put all together, ready to be folded up and devoured.

Finished off with a soothing duck broth.

I like duck in all its manifestations - but Peking Duck has got be my favorite. Followed by foie gras.

China: The World of Tomorrow and the World of Yesterday

Yes, I've been in Asia again. This time there was some family business to be taken care of (long story involving my mob family and a fantastic car chase John-Woo style... well, not really), but we also had some time to tour around.

Of course I will be uploading lots of food pictures. But here are some general trip photos before we begin - I think they really reflect the absurd paradox that is China:

Here we are in the World of Tomorrow - Shanghai. Behind me is the Bund, a mix of old colonial buildings (old German, French, British embassies, etc.) now dwarfed by towering corporate giants of steel and glass.

But China is also still the World of Yesterday, the world of calligraphy, poets, scrolls, temples, and burning incense. China makes it clear that these things are not dead and are not actually "yesterday."

And then there's the In-Between, the FOB-China that is totally Bhabhian - "not quite, not right" or "not quite, not white." China absolutely mimics the West - but not quite. For example:

Everything is translated into English, you see, and here the English is perfectly correct. But something is just off, missing the cultural mark by a long shot.

Beijing 2008 Olympics should be veeeeerrrry interesting.

God's Country

That's what my sister calls the San Francisco Bay Area, where my parents have their home. I call it the Promised Land. I'm trying not to mourn coming back from it to New Haven too much. Especially since there was a heat wave, so we enjoyed 70-80 degree weather the whole week we were out there.

The sun beaming down on my parent's fruit trees. Hobbit country.

Cafe two steps from the Pacific at Half Moon Bay.

Sandwich and Ocean tableaux

Happy man on Spring Break.

Aunt and niece. That used to be my bear :)

Duck dinner at my parents - both of whom bought roast duck that day without knowing the other did too. An embarassment of riches.

Speaking of food, and I love to, this is the generally acknowledged order of the best places for Chinese food in the world:

1) Hong Kong/Taiwan
2) Beijing
3) L.A.
4) San Francisco Bay Area
5) Toronto/Vancouver

Sometimes 5) is placed above 4) - but I'm pretty biased. Any disagreements?

Eating My Way Through Taiwan Part 4: Finer Foods

So, I should be doing work, but it's much more fun to post food pictures. This will be the last Taiwan food post :( . Anyway, I've been writing about the 'down-and-dirty' yummy foods, by which I guess I mean food that is obviously and directly enjoyable. But subtler and more 'refined' foods are to be had in Taiwan as well.

One night we had the pleasure of eating at a hot pot restaurant specializing in organic foods and native herbs. Here's a selection on my plate of things about to go into the pot:


Tofu, fresh fish and paper-thin-cut beef and pork, what looks like spinach but is probably a native plant, and fish cake ("tien-bu-lah").


Here is herb tempura (like Italian fritto misto), a taro-coconut confection (I think), seaweed, fish ball, and inari (rice wrapped in deep-fried tofu skin). Here, only the fish ball and seaweed will go into the pot.

A great meal for a rainy day - look at the steam rising from the pot. And aren't they cute?

What do you bring back for relatives in the States when you go to Taiwan? Tea! Taiwan produces marvelous tea - better than China, by far. This was taken at a tea shop, where the shopkeeper poured us cup after tiny cup of the most aromatic teas.

The leaf - once dried but now unfurled from the hot water - shows the quality of the tea: it has been carefully hand (not machine) picked , and there are two whole leaves and one shoot on each stem (a standard of quality).

Finally, we can't talk about Taiwan food without mentioning mochi. It's actually a Japanese confection, but, of course, the Japanese had rule over Taiwan from 1895 (after the Sino-Japanese War) until 1945 (the end of WWII). The Taiwanese call mochi 'moah-ji' - it is a delicious chewy, soft rice cake, usually with a filling inside - anything from green tea to red bean to lotus seed. Here are some lined up in an amazing mochi shop:

Aren't they beautiful? They aren't usually this fancy - you can buy them like snacks at any 7-Eleven or grocery store. These, though, are special.


Here are two that we bought from that shop. The one of the right is green tea and the left is mango. Mmmmmmm.

Well, that's it for Taiwanese foods. What a life it would be if I could be a food travel writer! Someday, maybe.

Eating My Way Through Taiwan Part 3: Even Bad Food Is Good Food

Say you get the munchies walking around Taipei. You wouldn't stop by the McDonald's - right? Isn't it just full of stuff you could get in the States? No, no. It has the amazing rice burger!

The bun is made of rice, fried into a patty - the perfect complement to teriyaki chicken or fried shrimp burger!

Or, say you walk by one of a million 7-Eleven's (which, by the way, is a Japanese company, not American - I didn't know this til recently). Just terrible pre-packaged foods, right? No!

You can buy fresh steamed buns! At a 7-Eleven! What's more, you can choose from a plethora of drinks - it's all about drink variety, anywhere you go in Asia.

There's all the usual sodas we have in the States but add onto that juice drinks of every tropical fruit and dairy and yogurt drink you could imagine. And tea drinks - a million kinds.

Finally, there's a mini-street market behind the hotel in Taipei we stayed at ("The Leofoo" - like "The Peninsula," only not so glamorous) and there is a most amazing hole in the wall shop that serves pork knuckes like you've never had them. And tofu - stewed all day long in lovely meaty juices. It is to die for. And sooooo bad for you. There is pork fat in the rice! And the shop sells out of pork knuckles at 6:30pm so you've gotta get there early and stand in line!

I need to go eat something now.

To be continued...next time, esoteric foods. Kind of.