Awesome Vegetarian Banquet

I visited the Chi Lin Nunnery in Hong Kong on a recent trip and had one of the best vegetarian feast I've tasted at its restaurant Chi Lin Vegetarian. What made it so exceptional is that there was no "pretend" food - there was no "vegetarian duck" or "vegetarian bbq pork"  kind of dish - no fake stuff made with soy or artificial ingredients. Most of the dishes were fresh vegetables in combination with innumerable varieties of fungi.  Lunch was an amazing ten courses (for our group of ten) beautifully presented and prepared. The meal was the crowning glory in the visit to this awe-inspiring temple complex - the ambiance was sublime, to say the least.  It is no wonder the restaurant is packed, with reservations made months in advance.

Mini baby zucchinis with fungus - love the contrast in textures between the crunchy baby zucchinis and the fungus!

Beet salad

Golden tremell (yellow fungus) broth

Mushroom stew

Mushroom dumplings with broccoli - the dumplings were delicious pockets of chopped mushrooms and bamboo shoots

Pumpkin and cheese tempura

Asparagus fungus stir fry

  

Tofu dish with fungus

Choy sum with fungus

Fried rice with white beech mushrooms

Healthy fruit dessert

Menu

Nan Lian Gardens is part of the Chi Lin Nunnery temple complex

A taste of Chiuchow (or Teochew) cuisine

Chiuchow or Teochew cuisine was the food of my ancestors although we only had it occasionally when growing up and always at restaurants because my mother was not from that area of China. It was therefore not household food for me as a child and as an adult it became just one of many regional Chinese cuisines that we might try if friends suggested it but ultimately we always go back to Cantonese cuisine which is more like "home".

Recently we had a private dining experience with chiuchow cuisine and I have a better understanding of it. The surprising thing is, it is in the dining room of a retirement residence!  Here is the description from Wikipaedia: "Teochew cuisine is well known for its seafood and vegetarian dishes. Its use of flavouring is much less heavy-handed than most other Chinese cuisines and depends much on the freshness and quality of the ingredients for taste and flavour. As a delicate cuisine, oil is not often used in large quantities and there is a relatively heavy emphasis on poaching, steaming and braising, as well as the common Chinese method of stir-frying".  That explained why it was chosen as the cuisine of choice for a retirement residence and over dinner, I found that it is quite an accurate description.

We had our special dinner at the Vintage Garden Dining Room 葡萄園會所 - prepared by the team led by chef Franky Yeung who is considered one of the top 10 celebrity chefs in Canada. The 10 course banquet was sumptuous but not overwhelming as the food is generally light and not fatty. Decoration of the plates were impressive but I was particularly impressed by the quality of the food. 

  Appetizers - tofu stuffed with shrimp and fish paste, shrimp, grilled chicken                        潮洲四弍拼盤

    Extra delicious duck soup with salted lemon and shitake                                                                       咸檸檬炖鴨

This was what was in the soup

Haven't had this in a long time - shrimp and bamboo shoot pouches in egg-white wrap - could have used some mushrooms in it to improve texture      䔵花石榴球

Bacon-wrapped scallop rolls served on snow pea shoots 彩帶玉龍卷 - love the contrasting textures!

Tea-smoked duck 茶熏鴨

This is the most unusual and interesting dish with vegetarian centre (different kinds of fungi) inside a winter melon bowl but surrounded by braised pork belly on the outside!      白玉藏珍寶

Vegetarian abalone with fried vermicelli 素鮑魚撈米粉 - this one looked good and I really like the crunchy vermicelli.  The fake abalone looked good but texture could be improved.

Refreshing dessert with green bean and tapioca 清心丸綠豆爽  and one that I didn't take a photo of, sweet mashed taro 福菓芋泥

Enjoyed the dinner very much and no ill effects afterwards even though it was a big meal!

Seafood in Patagonia

When I first started thinking about food in Argentina, I was a little concerned that we would be stuck with beef for the three weeks we were there as that seemed to be everyone's "must-eat" recommendation - and they were probably right, one has got to try it. So it was with relief that we saw a selection of river fish on the menu when we were in Puerto Iguazu even though we are always a little leery when trying fish in a new restaurant. We took a risk and were glad we did.

We tried Suribi (a type of catfish) and Pacu (a large freshwater fish), both river fishes.  Grilled at La Rueda, both were delicious, probably because they were fresh - we must be close to the river!  Then as we headed into Patagonia, we tried trout in Bariloche and a most delicious Hake fish at lunch in Puella, in the midst of our Andean Lakes Crossing. It was like a ray of sunshine in our drizzly crossing. The Hake is related to the cod with firm but tender white meat. I like it better than cod but then it could be the way it was cooked.

Pacu and suribi at La Rueda

The Hake in the Puella Hotel restaurant

When we got to Puerto Varas in Chile, we were pleasantly surprised by the Conger eel. It is not an actual eel, apparently, and certainly did not taste like one. It had a nice white fish consistency and texture. There were always salmon on the menu but with so much salmon at home, we did not want to waste our tasting opportunities on salmon - afterall how different could it taste from one end of the Americas to the other? I did try a small piece off our guides' plate just to confirm my guess. We had the rollizo (rockfish) instead and it was tasty, very well-prepared served on a warm quinoa salad.

Conger eel in the Mirador del Lago, Puerto Varas, Chile

Rollizo in La Jardinera, Puerto Varas, Chile

The high points of our trip to Ushuaia, other than the penguins, were our encounters with Southern King Crab and Merluzza Negra. We were lucky to have met with fellow travellers who were equally keen on food and had actually researched where to eat king crab before they left home. They were thrilled when it was the same restaurant our guide took us to - El Viejo Marino. We got to choose our own crab, big enough to share between two, very tasty and very reasonably priced. We could have gone back for a second meal the following day. But I was glad I did my homework this time - we have to try the Merluzza Negra in Ushuaia! And was I ever glad we did!

Southern King crab

We made sure we picked a restaurant that had merluzza negra (Patagonian toothfish or Chilean Seabass) on the menu - Maria Lola Resto. It must have been the sweetest fish I had ever tasted in my life, no exaggeration. I'm not a great lover of fish but this one really beat everything I have ever tried - even the tender lamb I also ordered paled beside it and I am a great lover of lamb. The fresh frozen Chilean sea bass we could get in Toronto is tasty, but not like this. The chef cooked it to perfection and of course, we were eating the fish closest to its source - Ushuaia being at "the end of the world"...

Merluzza negra - served with shrimp, squid and crab legs, but who needs those!

 

 

In all, Patagonia surprised me with its abundance of delicious food and expert chefs - totally not what I had expected in these small towns in the wilderness! Good job!
 

Argentinian Carne

You can't go wrong with beef in Argentina - whether you go to the best restaurants or eat at the roadside.  The beef is tasty and tender. There is no reason to eat a hamburger in Argentina because the real meat is so tender there is no need to grind it or chop it up.  In the two weeks we spent in the country, whether we paid 160 pesos ($10US) for a lunch beef sandwich by the roadside or 700 pesos ($45US) for the most tender cut in a high end restaurant, we know we would get tender beef. It is the safest choice when in doubt. Chicken could be tasteless or even tough, pork could be chewy (we had to send one order back to the kitchen at a German beer place in Bariloche) - but not the beef. It's quite amazing!  It is also interesting that while "carne" translates as "meat", when the Argentine referred to "carne", they invariably were talking about beef.

Bife de lomo or tenderloin is generally the priciest and most tender cut although I've been told different restaurants translate it differently. We tried it our first night in Iguazu Falls in Aqua, where it was actually called filet mignon on the menu; in Buenos Aires at a parilla (grill), they called it bife de lomo - both were tasty and tender; huge too, big enough for two of us.  We have also tried the rib steak - it too was very tender with higher fat content. 

There were parillas and asados - parilla is where the meat was grilled and asado is like a barbeque where the whole side was cooked over an open fire. I tried cordero (lamb), where they give you different cuts on the same order - it was tender and flavorful. The short ribs asado was not as tender but still flavorful.  There were various cuts and organ parts of the beef in the asado but dinner is usually so late, one can only eat so much. After gorging ourselves on meat for a few meals, we switched to seafood, which I will talk about in the next post.

Aqua called it "filet mignon" possibly because it's considered a fine dining restaurant but it looked the same as the Bife de lomo below from the Buenos Aires Grill in Recoleta.  May be too big, really for filet mignon, but certainly tenderloin.

And this is rib eye steak - with an egg on top! (homestyle cooking at Esquina Varela Restaurant, El Calafate)

Short rib asado - I think I was too keen on my lamb asado, forgot to take a picture of it!

All asado restaurants have this for show either outside or inside the restaurant.  This one was in La Tablita, El Calafate. Locals came here too and the place was packed on a week night at 10pm

And of course we had a most delicious beef sandwich (also big enough to share) at this roadside place "El Titanic de Homero" in Puerto Madero, Buenos Aires

Next post: Seafood!

Hearts of palm and chimichurri

Hearts of palm was the first thing that caught my eye on the menu when we ate at Aqua in Puerto Iguazu (the Argentinian side of Iguassu Falls). It was the most delicious I've tasted because I've only had canned hearts of palm in Canada.  We had it again the following night at another restaurant, La Rueda, and it was just as good. I ordered it a third time at our last dinner in Buenos Aires, and it was not as good.  The reason - hearts of palm is produced in Brazil, not Argentina.  The ones in Iguassu Falls were good because of its proximity to Brazil.  Once we're in Buenos Aires, we were farther away from the source and the result was obvious.  Should have done my homework!

Fellow travellers reported to me that when they were in Rio, they had an entire plate of hearts of palm for the price of what we paid for the appetizer in Buenos Aires.  An obvious example of why we should eat local food!

Aqua: Note the tiny pieces of hearts of palm tucked in between the bread - precious! This is part of an antipasti of local specialties offered on the menu: hearts of palm, local fish tart, avocado, fried manioc (yuca) and corn pie - all in tiny pieces for "fine dining", which Aqua can be recommended for.

La Rueda: hearts of palm as the centrepiece of a Tropical salad with mango and papaya.

We were introduced to three Argentinian sauce dips by our guide in Buenos Aires; Chimichurri, which comes in two versions - hot and spicy (the red one at the bottom), or the green one with parsley and garlic dip very similar to pesto; and a Salsa criolla with pepper.   The red chimichurri was a bit hot but it could vary depending on how much hot sauce and chili is in it.  Ingredients include parsley, garlic, vinegar, pepper, oregano, onion, olive oil in addition to the hot sauce and chili.  The green chimichurri is minus the hot sauce and chili.  Salsa criolla has tomatoes as its main ingredient, onion, garlic, bell pepper, black pepper, scallions, olive oil and vinegar.  These can be put on bread, on steak and anything else you eat!

Tarsin I Jane Seattle

We finally made it to Tarsan I Jane, billed as "Modern Valencian cuisine influenced by the Pacific Northwest", for their Sunday specialty paella. This is only served on Sunday lunch, requiring prepayment when making the reservations. Their menu:

As I don't drink coffee, I ordered tea instead,

The beet gazpacho, with citrus and yogurt foam, totally smooth, topped with smoked sea salt:

Next is seafood ceviche, with yellow tail tuna, a mussel, small potato chips (!,and you can see the chips on both sides of the front leaf), with avocado sauce, topped with some leaves (she told me what the leaves were, but I forgot; the menu says bay leaf, but I don't think so).

Then it sausage with egg and arugula. The sausage is fresh (as opposed to cured) chorizo, on a bed of chickpeas and quinoa, and an andoni egg. She explained that Andoni is the name of the chef who invented this egg technique, where the egg is cooked such as the white and yolk are the same consistency (sounds like sous vide).

Here is the chef, Mr Tarsin - real name is Perfecte Rocher - in front of the paella. The left and right pans are for 2 people, the center one is for 4.

I ordered an additional specialty item, the carabinero. which is according to there description:

"A large, deep-sea scarlet prawn. More distinct and robust in flavor than other shrimps or langoustine. They are also coveted for their large size. None of this prawn should go to waste as their heads are a delicacy"

I was told the way to eat it was to pull the head off, and suck the inside out. As soon as DH heard it, it became all mine. 😀 It was very messy, I had to wash my hands afterwards.

Here's the main attraction. The way to eat it is to use a spoon to scrape the bottom, holding on to the napkin covered handle while doing that, and eating off the pan itself. According to the write up in the Seattle times, the paella you get in Spain are usually sourced from the same kitchen(s), frozen and distributed to the different restaurants, hence they all taste similar, but theirs is made from scratch. Here is the write-up from the restaurant:

The combination of ingredients and cooking method determine the authenticity of the paella. Never will you see paella with shrimp, chorizo, piquillo peppers, and peas in Valencia, for those are not authentic paella ingredients. Authentic paella is a very thin layer of rice with very few "toppings" because the most important part is the rice itself. .. The favorite part is the umami crunch of the socarrat, the black crust that sticks to the bottom of the pan, also known as Valencian caviar. 

We couldn't finish all the paella, and had to doggie bag the remainder.

For desert we had 2 (actually 3 since it was my Bday) - a chocolate based one, a citrus based one, and the last one has a touch of truffle oil in the rosemary vanilla sauce, which again made it all mine as DH cannot stand truffle.

Finally 2 chocolate truffles with house made gummy bears, served on a rock.

It was certainly a new concept and experience for us; the food was obviously made with love and care. Although I can't say fantastic - a large part of it was when we got to the paella I was kind of full - it was certainly good, albeit a little pricey. The left-over paella that I had for dinner tasted better than the fresh one - which meant that either it had time for the flavor to mellow, or that I was really too full to enjoy it at lunch. I do still have my eye on their dinner tasting menu,which we may attempt in the future.

Fabulous Basque cuisine in Barcelona

We have never tried Basque food before even though we were briefly in Basque country visiting Bilbao.  We were surprised to stumble upon a Basque restaurant our first night in Barcelona.  This was the Irati Taverna Basca in a small street just a few minutes' walk from the Ramblas.  

It was a place known for its tapas but it had been a long day and we really wanted to sit down for dinner even though it was really too early for the locals - the place was empty, even too early for tapas! We overruled our own practice of avoiding empty restaurants and sat down. We ordered the grilled duck magret with bittersweet summer fruit and the surprising crispy suckling pig with pisto.

To our pleasant surprise, both dishes were superbly done, in fact, the suckling pig tasted better than any we have ever tasted anywhere and we have tasted plenty of these. The suckling pig meat was super tender and the skin super thin and crispy. The duck was very tasty although slightly too rare for me; the accompanying bittersweet summer fruit was delicious as well and "bittersweet" was the perfect description for it. 

The suckling pig was a rare find and totally unexpected - which made it even more memorable. I wished we had gone back a second night but our schedule the rest of our stay did not allow for it.  Next time...

Amuse bouche - Txistorra - Basque pork sausages

Roast pork suckling pig - melt in your mouth delicious!

Duck Magret with bittersweet summer fruit

Tapas section starting up as we were leaving