Quick Reviews - By the Docks (crab cakes) and Margaret Kuo (Chinese food)

I've been wanting to write up reviews for some the restaurants we went to while I was in US, but I'm lazy to write up full articles. Instead I'll just write a few short blurbs.

Ma, Ba, and I went to an outlet mall in Lancaster, PA to do some shopping, and for dinner they decided to drive all the way down to Baltimore, MD for crab cakes. Ba took us to one in Aberdeen a few years back which was pretty good, but fairly recently his colleagues recommend this place By the Dock Restaurant and Lounge (3321 Eastern Blvd, Middle River, Maryland 21220). This place was packed with people even around five in the afternoon. This place is famous for their crab cakes so we ordered two single crab cake dinner (one fried and one baked) and crab stuffed with shrimp platter. The waitress even suggested that I order the baked one for extra crab flavor (more crab meat and less filling) The dish came with baked potato, a gigantic crab cake, and salad. The portion was huuuuuuuuge! Even though we skipped lunch, we still couldn't finish all the crab cakes. The crab cakes were very flavorful and choke full of real, fresh crab meat. At around $16 per plate, it was a very good deal. I also ordered the French onion soup which was very hardy and very, very tasty, full of beefy, oniony, cheesy flavor. Definitely the best crab cakes in MD, and I loved it even though I'm generally not a fan of crabs.

My sister took us to Margaret Kuo's (175 E. Lancaster Ave. Wayne, PA), a very fancy Chinese restaurant, to celebrate her promotion at work. We ordered a bunch of dimsum and other Chinese snacks and well as sukiyaki from their upstairs Japanese section (The Akari Room). All the dishes were very well made and tasted very fresh. The dishes are like the refined version of snacks found in other Chinese restaurants. The sukiyaki consisted of lots of veggies, noodles, tofu, and thinly sliced Kobe beef. I noticed the cooking sauce was different compared to the ones I had before, and the waiter said the broth they used for the sauce is vegetable broth instead of bonito broth. All this tastiness came at a very high price, but it was well worth it considering the ambiance, the service, and the food were all top notch. I think we were treated extra well because we spoke Chinese. Haha. I was amused by a couple things in the restaurant. The gong was sounded to announce the arrival of Peking duck and the waiter carved the duck in front of the table who order the dish. We also had a very friendly chat with the manager (who is also a Taiwanese?) of the restaurant. She recommended the turnip cake, and when she found out my mom can make Chinese snacks (particularly the turnip cake), she asked for the recipe.

Too bad Wid missed both the awesome crab cakes and the Kobe beef sukiyaki because he had to go back to Bali early.

Maranatha

For future reference:

Maranatha
Jl. Gatot Subroto No. 100 Ka(?) 3
Denpasar, Bali

Tel: 0361-236337

Excellent pao/bao place. I ate the mung bean one and Bonnie was eyeing the pao the whole time. Silly doggie, buns aren't for dogs.

Happ New Year!

Happy New Year to my friends, who are the only people who actually occasionally read this blog. Haha. Oops, I haven't updated this blog for over two months. Hopefully I'll post more in 2008. I was in US for Thanksgiving and I still have a couple of restaurant reviews (fancy Chinese restaurant and a crab cake place) to write up from the trip.

Thanksgiving wasn't as awesome as it could have been because of family emergency, but it was still great spending time with my immediate family and eat my mom's cooking. We were supposed to have a big dinner with the entire extended family but because of the emergency, we stayed home and my mom improvised to provide a feast with stuff in the fridge. One of the dishes she made was salmon sushi and we also ordered a Peking duck from our favorite Chinese restaurant Golden City. The sushi and duck combo was actually a bit of an inside joke because our cousin's fiance and his mom were supposed to join the entire clan for Thanksgiving and the fiance (not Asian) freaked out his mom by telling her that Chinese people eat sushi and Peking duck for Thanksgiving. I think they ended up bringing a Cajun-style deep-fried turkey, but we didn't see it because we weren't there.

Fire Update

I mentioned a while back about a fire that burned down one of the biggest markets in Denpasar. Our favorite Chinese-Indonesian restaurant was located in that complex, and we thought we'll never taste the goodness of Ma Fong Sen (aka Honey's Restaurant). Then, we found out from one of Mami's relatives that the restaurant survived the fire and in fact it's still open! We ordered take out last night, and the food was as delicious as before. All the dishes are still there and they tasted just the same as pre-fire. Yay, so happy!

Kowloon (Review)

Last night we checked out the new Cantonese-style seafood restaurant Kowloon (Jl. Raya Puputan Renon, Duta Wijaya No. 15-19 in Denpasar) which is partially owned by the cook who formerly worked at Bandar Seafood. Our friend Lexo is a friend of the cook Mr. Yip so we received a special invite for food tasting. I do not know if the menu we had was a special menu or the dishes are part of the normal menu, but it was fantastic. The starter was seafood and tofu soup and while I'm not a fan of squids and similar seafood, the soup was great. It was light yet full of flavors and the seafood and the tofu were perfectly cooked. The seafood remained tender while the tofu kept its form. Wid said that you're not a Hong Kong chef if you can't cook tofu. Hehe.

I also liked the addition of nori seaweed which gave the soup an extra flavor dimension. First surprise of the night was green bean. It wasn't any ordinary green bean. It was coated with deep-fried, spiced flour coating and mixed with cabbage and other things. It was spicy but not hot. The black pepper beef was good but not spectacular like the rest of the menu. Fish in a sweet and sour sauce was nice. The fish was tender and juicy. The stuffed chicken (with mushroom, carrots, etc.)with steamed broccoli was excellent. The crayfish deep-fried had a good flavor but the cray fish was tiny so it was hard to pick out all the meats. A turtle dish was also on the menu, but I didn't have any of it since I feel bad for the turtle.

The bit surprise of the night for me (and probably no one else) was the last vegetable dish. When it first came out, I thought it looked very familiar and I had a feeling that it was my favorite vegetable in the whole wide world. I have given up looking for it here. When I tasted the dish, I immediately knew I was right--it was 絲瓜 (loofah). Honey said that she's found the gourd in the local supermarket Tiara so now I'll be hunting this vegetable down. Now I just need to find its Indonesian name. The 絲瓜 was stir-fried with soy sauce and garlic, and it just tasted heavenly.

The service was quite good, and the food came out surprisingly fast. I think we spent more time waiting for our friends to show up than eating. I was surprised that the food didn't taste anything like the menu at Bandar Seafood, but it really shows Mr. Yip's versatility. This is definitely the best Cantonese food in Bali, and I have a feeling we'll be frequenting this place very regularly.

Dinner with Friends

Last Saturday we went to an acquaintance's villa for dinner in Ubud. Since our friends were all bringing something, I decided to make something to bring to the dinner also. In the end I decided on the salty cake (鹹蛋糕) because at least two other people (turned out there was another person) who were Taiwanese, and I figure they might want something familiar yet unusual. I had surprisingly little problem with this cake, and it turned out fluffy and goregous. Too bad I didn't get to eat the cake so I don't know if it was as fluffy as it looked. At least everyone seemed to like it, after recovering from the initial shock that there's meat on the cake. Lexo, our friend from HK, really loved the cake, and he requested Ma La Gao (馬拉糕) next (steamed cake that's commonly found in dimsum).

The villa was goregous and cozy. The host provided so much delicious food. Her dishes seemed like a mix of Asian (Chinese and Indonesian) and western style. Once example was the baked rolls, which had the consistency/density/taste of Chinese buns. My favorite was the dumplings and its spicy, gingery dipping sauce. One couple brought egg rolls which were fanastic because they fried the rolls at the villa. Lexo brought his Cantonese-style chicken soup which was very light and delicious. I managed to figure out the "secret" ingredient by tasting the soup. The interesting thing is that locals aren't very keen on Chinese soup because the soup is not salty and therefore the locals think it's bland. Wid said that many of them judge the saltiness of the dish by how well it salts/flavors the rice.

After the food was the drinking and talking. Carol the host invited a bunch of other expats so it was nice meeting new people. We tried a bunch of wines while others had beer and whiskey. Wine of the Gods brand wines (Pinot noir and a red whose name escaped me at the moment) weren't too bad, but the rose from Hatten was pretty gross.

Next week we're visiting one of Honey's friends' place for early dinner (We met the Australian dude and his local wife at this dinner in Ubud).

I didn't take pics of the dinner, but here's my cake:



Some quick notes about the cake for my own purpose. The pan is around 23.5 cm in diameter. Almost exactly the same preparations were made like the previous cake, except I shortened the cooking time to 16-17 min for the first layer and 10-12 min for the second layer.

More Chinese-Japanese Food

Wid's parents and their chums were so intrigued by our comments of Mozaic, that they decided to go try out the restauant. While the parents were away (and us being forced on a diet because Wid's parents wanted to save room for the big dinner at Mozaic), Widhy and I decided to go to Ippin Nyukon for dinner again because we couldn't get our mind off of last week's mapo tofu. Wid was interested in trying the chili and garlic shrimp because he figured that, like mapo tofu, it's a favorite of the Japanese.

This time instead of getting ramen, we got mapo tofu and chili garlic shrimp dinner sets and for appetizer we ordered chilled chicken with sesame sauce. The appetizer was more of a chicken salad with cucumbers, fried noodles/friend shredded wonton noodles, tomatoes, and lettuce. There were two kinds of sauces on this dish, and in some ways it reminded me of the salad I had at this restaurant during my second visit. The portion of the appetizer was extraordinary, and after eating all the food and being too stuffed, we decided that next time we'll get people to come with us so we can share the food.

The mapo tofu was still as good as the last time. Wid really loved the chili shrimp dish though he wished that there were more shrimps. The shrimps were deep fried and then drenched or cooked in the red chili sauce. After he ate all the shrimps, he felt bad that all the sauce was going to waste because it was so good. In the end the hostess gave us two small cups of a strange smelling tea. I couldn't figure out the tea variety, but it was ok.

Next time we'll try more of the Chinese-sounding dishes. :)

Beijing-Style Noodle Soup (麵疙搭)

Last night for dinner I finally had the opportunity to try out a recipe from my new Chinese Rice and Noodles cookbook from Wei-Chuan. This dish is called "home-made noodle soup with green onions," but its Chinese name (麵疙搭) is actually more descriptive and interesting. This dish is Beijin cuisine. What makes this dish interesting, I think, is the shape of the home-made noodle, which is basically bits of pulled dough.

First, I made the dough for the noodle by mixing flour and water. While I let the dough rest, I prepared the broth which is used to cook the noodles. The sections of scallions were stir-fried in oil before the dried shrimp and pork were added to the mix. Once the meat changed color, I added some soy sauce and lots of water. I brought the stock to boil before adding the bits of dough teared off from the big chunk of dough. I actually saw this method of cooking on a show on Discovery or National Geographic and I thought it was something fun to do. Wid joined in the fun and threw in bits of dough. To flavor the broth, salt, pepper, and sesame oil were added. Then, right before serving, some chopped scallions were added.

The taste was surprisingly light even though it was a bit oily. The cooked sections of scallion were surprisingly sweet and flavorful. The slices of pork was too large so next time I'll try to cut smaller pieces. The noodles were good too, but Wid's dad wasn't too keen on it. I guess it's because that's not what he expected of noodles.

Wei-Chuan cookbooks are awesome. They haven't failed me yet!

Tsao Bing (燒餅)

Earlier this week I tried to make tsao bing (燒餅), which is a delicious pan-fried or baked breakfast treat that is often stuffed with meat floss or Chinese crueller and washed down with a nice, steaming bowl of soy milk. I made one attempt before when I first got my awesome Chinese Snacks cookbook from Wei-chuan, but it failed miserably (bad flour, bad cooking technique). In order to learn the proper method of cooking tsao bing, again I relied on my mom's example.

To make the tsao bing, I had to make the roux first, which is basically flour cooked in hot oil. While the roux cooled, I started on the dough. Like the "hot dough," I first mixed hot water into the flour, and then cold water was added to the dough mixture. Once the dough was rested and the roux cooled, I tried to assemble the bing. First, the dough was rolled out and roux, salt, and flour were poured on top of the flatten dough. Then, everything was rolled up jelly roll style before cutting into small pieces. I tried to pinch the ends before each cut, but the roux still spilled out of the dough, which made the counter, the hands, rolling pin, etc. oily and gross. I still don't know how to fix this problem, but even though the result wasn't very pretty, the bing was edible. Once I folded all the dough pieces, dippd the pieces in sesame, and rolled them flat, I pan fried them. I had to make sure the pan and the oil were hot before adding each piece. Once the bing was placed on the pan, the temperature was lowered. The tsao bing was done once each side turned slightly translucent and golden brown. Like I said before, the tsao bing wasn't pretty but it tasted really good so I guess mission (sort of) accomplished.

Pot Stickers (鍋貼)

After the third attempt, the pot stickers (鍋貼) finally looking and tasting more presentable. I never had any problem making the dough or the pot stickers themselves. The problem lie in the cooking. A couple months ago, when I tried to make the pot stickers for the very first time, they got stuck to the pan, and we had no idea why that happened. When Wid and I were visiting my parents, Ma showed us how she cooked the potstickers, and I wanted to see if I can try out what I learned. Thursday night we made some pot stickers. The filling consisted of pork, Chinese chives, a bit of sesame oil, salt, water, and soy sauce. I wanted to have some shrimp added to the mixture, but we didn't have any in the house. The dough was the so called hot dough which consisted of flour, boiling water, and cold water. Making the pot stickers was time consuming but relatively easy, but when it came to the cooking, things started to go wrong. The pot stickers were stuck to each other before going into the pan. I though the dough was too wet and others suspected the juice from the meat mixture seeped into the dough making everything stickier. Too much oil was added to the pan, and someone kept moving the pot stickers during the cooking so the bottom didn't get to brown. Then I added the flour/water/sesame oil/vinegar mixture, but it was thought that not enough liquid was in the pot so more water was added. In the end, while the pot stickers didn't get stuck to the pan like the first time, the texture was not correct either. The bottom was not crunchy and golden brown enough and the top was too soggy.

I had some dough and meat mixture left over so I tried again next day for lunch. This time the plate holding the pot stickers were coated with plenty of flour to prevent the pieces sticking to each other or to the plate. I tried to lessen the amount of oil this time, and I laid the pieces in a more orderly manner once the oil and the pan were hot. I waited until the bottom started to brown, and I checked to make sure the pieces were not sticking to the pan before adding half a cup of water and covered the pan. The pot stickers were allowed to cook for about 6 minutes, and then I made sure most of the water evaporated before taking the pot stickers out. In the end the pot stickers were getting a bit stuck to the pan, but we were able to remove all of them from the pan without the bottom getting fixed on the pan.

Wid made the dipping sauce which consisted of soy sauce, water, vinegar, and ginger. The end result is the following:


Wid suggested to add a bit of minced ginger into the meat mixture, and I think that'll be quite good. I'll also add shrimp to the mix. I think the lack of shrimp made the meat filling tasted a bit too dry. Wid's mom was telling me about the time she saw a dumpling master making dumplings/pot stickers. She seemed very impressed, and I wouldn't mind seeing a professional do it.

中秋節 and 月餅!!!

Happy Mid-Autum Festival!!! Today is the 15th day of the eight month of the lunar calendar, and people are supposed to go out tonight to look at the full moon and eat moon cakes. I already had my share of moon cakes (月餅) when I was in US. Ma made some really good moon cakes. Unfortunately, because of the dough and the fillings were a bit too soft, the cakes didn't look as good as usual (Ma said so), but it was still very tasty and much healthier than the ones found in stores. Whenever I tell my friends my mom can make moon cakes, they're all very impressed. Heck, I'm impressed by her skills too. This time she made two different types of mooncakes. One is a flaky crusted version filled with mung bean paste and a bit of 肉鬆 ("rho-song" which is dried meat floss). Another type is the Cantonese style. This version the shape of the cake comes from a mold. My mom uses the really cute one of a bunny pounding rice with a mortar and pestal. One version she made was filled with pineapple paste, and another version was filled with red bean paste and a piece of water chestnut in each cake. I'm glad she didn't make the lotus paste version because I find that one too sticky and sweet for my taste. Good times.

I can give you the whole history and the folktales/myths behind this holiday, but I won't.

Spring Roll (潤餅/春捲)

The last weekend I was at home in PA, Ma made some Taiwanese egg rolls (潤餅/春捲) for us. I actually like it a lot more than fried egg rolls because it has a bit of sweetness and it's fairly rare to get this treat. Restaurants everywhere sell fried egg rolls but if we want this other kind of egg roll, we have to wait for my mom to make it.

Ma actually made the skin for the egg roll from scratch. Traditionally, the skin is made with a thick, gooey dough, and the way you apply the dough onto the pan is to hold the glob of dough in hand and in a circular motion, you wipe pan with the dough. You can see this if you watched the film Eat Drink Man Woman. Ma modified the recipe so it's easier to apply the dough onto the pan. It's still very tasty and impressive though. She started by mixing a watery batter with a blender and then let it sit for a while. To make the skin, she brushed the batter onto a lightly oiled hot pan. Because the sheets were so thin, they cooked really fast. As soon as the sides started to pull off, she flipped it over and let the other side cook.

She toasted peanuts in the oven, and then Ba grounded the peanuts and added some sugar to make the sweeten peanut powder. While Ba was dealing with the peanuts and I was separating and folding the cooled skins, he told me that in my mom's hometown there's a shop that made the spring rolls and the staff there could work really, really quickly while cooking the sheets on multiple pans. I would love to see that and eat the product. For the filling, Ma prepared many different dishes so we can customize our own egg rolls. There were boiled bean sprouts, shredded carrots, stired fried eggs, celary, shredded chicken, etc. Instead of just using hoisin sauce straight out of the jar, she cooked the sauce a bit.

Each of us got to roll our own spring roll. Ba, sis, and bro were making ones that were so big that the filling burst out of the paper thin skins. Ma, bro's girlfriend, and Ma made smaller ones that didn't spill out as soon as we bit into it. Ba and I of course used lots peanut powder because it's so good. I don't think I'll be able to make this on my own because the skins are so delicate and I don't have the skills to do that.

Almond Tofu

Yesterday Wid's mom requested almond tofu (杏仁豆腐) for tonight's dinner party. I made this dessert several times a couple times already, but the first time, it was kind of hard to convince Wid's mom that I knew what I was doing (i.e. I was using too much water). My guess is that people here haven't had "real" Chinese almond tofu and the only ones that they have tried are stiff cubes of agar agar. Almond tofu isn't made of soy bean; it's agar agar, flavored with almond extract and evaporated milk and sweetened by white sugar. Because of the large volume of liquid, the solidified agar agar is soft like tofu and quite slurpable. This dessert is often served with fruit cocktail. The guests at the party dinner loved the dessert because it's not too sweet.

The dinner consisted of Indonesian and Indo-Chinese foods (satay, fried meat balls, meat ball soup, grilled fish, gado-gado, etc.) and quite tasty. Some of the food were spicy (of course!) but I was able to eat them anyway.

I also made a Japanese cheesecake yesterday, but I'll post something about it tomorrow.

Taiwanese Cake (part 2)

A few days ago I decided to try the salty cake recipe again. I made this cake for Wid's dad who wasn't feeling well and didn't have too much apetite. Because of the Chinese medicine he was taking, he couldn't have pork so I decided to make the salty cake except this time I use chicken instead of pork. I managed to break the hand mixer when I tried to beat the egg and sugar. The mixer made a large pop sound along with a bright spark; the mixer shorted out the fuse in the house so everything went dark.

Besides almost electrocuting myself, everything went pretty smoothly. I modified my protocol (sounds like a science experiment. haha) a bit in an attempt to fix the texture problem from my previous attempt. I believed that the dense, doughy texture was due to the overly long cooking time and not enough steam. First change was to use a bigger steamer. Not only more steam would be generated and go through the slots, I could also use a larger baking pan (22 cm instead of 20 cm). Instead of moistening the paper that lined the bottom of the cake pan with butter, I just laid the paper on the very lightly buttered pan, like how we place a small piece of paper under buns for steaming. I tried to maximize the amount of steam produced as well as trying to cut down the total cooking time. I kept the fire on high for full boil during the entire time the cake was steamed. I also cut down the amount of cooking time down from 1+ hour to total of around 35 minutes (about 25 for the first layer and 15 for the second layer), and I checked on the doneness of the cake periodically with the toothpick. Because of these changes in the equiptment and cooking, the cake was perfect! Instead of being doughy and dense like the last cake, the cake had the perfect soft and fluffy texture.

I'll post the pics of the experiment later.

Taiwanese Cake

Last night I made some salty cake (鹹蛋糕) which is a Taiwanese speciality. The cake is actually sweet but the topping consisted of minced pork and fried shallots which give the cake its unusual taste. This is the third time I experimented with this recipe. The first time I was forced to use the oven to bake the cake because I didn't have a large steamer. The second time I used a steamer but because I cut down the amount of ingredients, the cake was a bit too flat. This time the result was much better and the cake is much fuller, but I still have to experiment with the cooking time.

Before making the actual cake, I cooked the minced meat. Instead of following the recipe, I went with my mom's way of preparing this dish. The meat was normally used as an awesome topping for noodles or rice, but it is great for this cake. The pork was stir-fried with garlic and ginger, followed by the addition of water, rice wine, soy sauce, sugar, black and white pepper, and salt if necessary. Fried shallots was added right at the end before everything was transferred to a pot for slow cooking.

While the meat is being slow cooked, I started with the cake batter, which consisted only of eggs, flour, and sugar. Once the eggs and the flour were beaten until stiff and cream-colored, flour was sifted and folded into the egg-sugar mixture. About half of the batter was poured into a 20 cm pan that's greased and lined, and some of the meat and fried shallots were added on top of the batter. After about 10 minutes, the remaining batter, meat, and shallots were added, and the cake was steamed for another 10 minutes. Wid's mom complained that the cake was not completely cooked so she steamed it for another 40 minutes, which I thought was too much time because the cake ended up being more doughy than it supposed to be. Oh well. I'll try again next time and cut the cooking time to around 40 minutes instead of over an hour.

With the exception of the chewiness, the cake turned out well. The taste is perfect, and the saltiness of the meat and the sweetness of the cake complemented each other nicely. Besides trying to perfect this recipe, the next steamed cake I'll try is Ma La Gao (馬拉糕), which is a Cantonese style cake that you often find in dimsums.

Here's a picture of the cake. Click on the image for a larger version