Stir-Fried Whelks

Do you remember that I went to Han Dynasty try whelks dish, but slightly frustrated because whelks were frozen, thus probably not British? (If you don't, please read here).

To not to remain defeated, I bought boiled whelks from the Indoor Market and stir-fried them myself.

These are 200g of boiled whelks, £1.20 per 100g, so these cost £2.40 (I bought them on 24th December, so I might have paid Christmas Eve premium; don't know).

I don't know this photo does justice, but 200g was too much for me; if you are going to making a similar dish as I did, you can count 100g per person.

[Sorry for the lack of presentation, but I cannot be bothered to make an effort only for myself.]

I chopped up random vegetables sleeping in the fridge and in cupboard, and stir fried with hoi shin sauce.

The whelks were actually delicious, better than the ones I ate at Han Daynasty (OK, it is rather predictable, isn't it?) I thought, however, hoi shin sauce was too strong for delicate whelks, and next time I will cook them with less strong flavoured condiments.

If you like whelks, it is really well worth trying. Recommended. Just a few pieces of advice are that whelks should either be sliced or chopped in smaller bits, as they are not softest thing and that they should not be cooked in wok too long, as they are already boiled and if you overdo, they become even more rubbery.

Buon appetito!

Return of the Wokmania

Walking in Chinatown Friday evening, I picked up a flier.

Surprise surprise. It was a flier of Wokmania. Yes, that Chinese buffet restaurant in Hurst street, closed down earlier this year. For a while there was a poster promising opening of an "Exciting New Restaurant" on the window.

Now, the new restaurant turned out to be the old Wokmania. This photo was taken today (16 Nov. 2008, Sun.)



A friend walking with me Friday night warned me off as she had not eaten well in the old Wokmania, but, checking the food through the glass wall today, it did not look particulary unappetising comparing other Chinese buffet places. Or, rather, it looked rather good and plenty. [NOTE: please don't take me wrong; I am speaking within the category of cheapo Chinese buffet places].

As I got the flier, I can even tell you how much it costs.

Lunch: noon-5:00, £6.99 (Mon-Sat), choice of over 50 dishes
Dinner: 5:00-23:00, £12.99, choice of over 70 dishes
Sunday buffet: noon-22:00, £8.99, choice of over 70 dishes

There is a significant reduction for children. Under 4 eat free, between 4 and 11 £2.99, between 12 and 16, £4.99. Students with student ID also get better deal: lunch & Sunday buffet for £6 and dinner for £10.

I have an impression that the price has increased by £1 (correct me if I am wrong), but if the quality measures up, people won't complain.

Cha Cha Dessert

In Day-In Chinese supermarket, I found Interesting looking Chinese retort desserts and decided to try.



There are 4 or 5 different sorts and I picked up the most familiar looking one. This looked like a Japanese sweet called "Zenzai", which is a sweet soup of azuki beans. Promising enough for me, it is made by Nisshin - Japanese company, although the product itself is made in China.

I don't remember exactly how much it cost, but was around £1.60, and there are two bags (two portions) inside.



The instruction says that it can be served either cold or hot.

It contains, apart from water, sugar and additives, red beans (azuki), taro potato, black-eye beans, kidney beans, coconut milk, and milk (without melamine, hopefully).

As eating it as it is looked a bit gloomy, I added "mochi" (glutenous rice flour cakes).

The result was pretty good. Maybe little bit more sugar would be better, as I added un-sweetened mochi. I will try out other types as well.

New entry from the 18th to 25th August 2008

The new page of this week is a review of the restaurant Edward Moon in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Edward Moon

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From this week we will go for a vacation in Greece for 2 weeks and, consequently, I won't be writing about Birmingham for this period and maybe a bit longer, as I should write about Greece somewhere else instead.

Before I go, I want to show you a dish I had in Malaysian Delight in Chinatown, Birmingham. Usually I order Malaysian dishes here, but on this occasion, I wanted to do something different and chose a dish called "Salad Pork" without having any idea what it should be. A food exploring adventure.

Here, this is salad pork:





'Salad Pork' was basically sliced, battered, and deep-fried pork served with salad cream mixed with chili paste. Ah, yes, and some "salad" consisting in shredded iceberg lettuce, sliced cucumbers, and wedges of tomato.

I was not quite expecting to be served with that amount of salad cream in a Chinese cafe (Ok, Chinese-Malaysian Cafe). Chinese do adopt mayonnaise from time to time, as you experience in some deep-fried dim sum dishes, but this one looked far closer to "Western" dishes than to any Chinese dishes I have ever seen in Chinese places. Fusion dish? Maybe... The pork itself was very tender and flavoursome, though.

It is priced £6. And I noticed that they started to charge 50p for Chinese tea that used to be free here. Food price inflation everywhere. Mmmmmh.

Chinese Roast Duck

As it happened last Saturday, we could not go out to have lunch in Chinatown because of rain this Saturday either. Damn!

But, eventually, we went out and, being quite unable to eat something Chinese, I decided to take out a Chinese roast from one of Cantonese places in Chinatown.

I am not particularly keen on the spices used for the Chinese roast, but today I wanted to eat duck, so I compromised.

I ordered half a duck for £8.50.

I looked carefully how the cook chop up the duck (you can buy it un-cut, but as it is quite boney, it is better have it cut). He separated the brest from the leg, and threw away some pieces of fat. Oh my God! It was such a fatty bird!

This is a close-up.





Do you see the white fat under the crispy skin? Yes, that is what I am talkin' about! When you bite into it, the liquid fat fills your mouth.

Mmmmmm. Heaven...

And don't forget the meat. They say that for the Peking (Beijing) duck, all you can eat is the skin and the meat is for dogs. It is not the case for this type of roast. The meat is perfectly moist and tasty. Mmmmmmmmm again.

The smell of the Chinese spices wasn't overpowering either. It was a subtle, complex flavour.

Although it is super-good, I cannot eat it in big quantity (which is a normal portion for other people) and take-away looks to be the best solution. Buy a portion and eat it in some installments. How clever I am! Ha ha ha!

Woktastic Open

The new noodle and sushi bar in Paradise Forum, Woktastic, is now open.



I don't know exactly when it opened, but in should be this or the week before.

In front of the restaurant is this sign advatising an opening promotion offer. It promises sushi from £1 and noodles from £5.75, and 15% off for students.



I am not sure if the food should be more expensive when the offer ends, or the "promotion" is only about 15% discount for students. I don't know about sushi, but noodles FROM £5.75 is about right and should not be more expensive. Even sushi, three pieces of cucumber roll can cost £1.

I looked inside through the glass wall. It was rather dark (or maybe because it was too bright outside) and I could not see well, but definitely recognised a belt-conveyor.

Birmingham is suffering from lack of decent sushi place, and I hope Woktastic can fill the gap.

Cakes from a Chinese bakery

The other day, I bought some cakes from the China Court Bakery in Birmingham Chinatown, as there was something to celebrate. I had bought bread from them but this is the first time I bought sweets.

They sell cakes by slices as well as whole. There were about 10 types to choose from, and I got a cheese cake (left) and a mango cake (right)



This is how it looks like from the side.




There are layers of mango mousse and slices sponge cake. They tasted fresh and were very light. For £1.80 a slice it does not come cheap, but not too steep either.

I saw also blue cream cakes. Interesting.

I bought also these pies. £3 for 4 pieces, they are rather expensive.



The label said it contained "custard", but it actually contained something we would call egg york paste.



There was also another version with lotus seed paste for the same price. They were also fine, and I thought they would keep a good company to green tea.

And I bought also Chinese egg tarts. 6 pieces for £3, they were bargain.



I gave them all to other people and they said that they enjoyed them. I need to try them by myself.

Sweet Buns from Birmingham Chinatown

When I went to have dim sum lunch in China Court, I bought also some Chinese sweet buns. I am not sure if I call them "Chinese", purely because I bought from a Chinese bakery, not because they are particularly Chinese in taste.

These are the buns. I paid £2 for three (buy 2 get 1 free).



This is a custard cream bun.



The custard cream was not of the highest quality in a patisserie way, but sufficiently enjoyable.

Then, this is sweet red bean bun.



Sweet red bean paste is made of azuki beans and sugar, which is hugely popular in China and in Japan (and also elsewhere, but I don't know). Some European people find the mixture of beans and sugar disgusting, but some, including my Greek husband, like it.

Lastly, chesnut paste bun.



I expected the chesnut paste to be yellow, as it is usually yellow in Japan, but it was brown, meaning that the paste is made also with brown skin (not to confuse with the brown shell) of chesnut. It was different from what I expected, but was also enjoyable.

In all these three buns, the quantity of filling was not as generous as it is in Japan, but as the bread was so moreish, it was fine nevertheless.

If you have never tried, I recommend you to do so.

I bought these from
China Court Bakery (just below the China Court restaurant)
中華閣麺包
24 Ladywell Walk, Birmingham, B6 4ST
Tel. 0121-666 7031
Fax. 0121-622 1860

The Chinese bakery next to Day-In Supermarket, and in front of Cafe Soya in Arcadian makes the same kind of things, and just as good.

Chinese food and chips

Yesterday, D and I went to one of our favorite Chinese diners for dinner, because, according to D, yesterday was the Earth 60 Day (or something like that), and we had to turn off all the lights of the house for 1 hour from 8 to 9 o'clock. I have not heard anything about it from BBC news, but it seems that it was a big thing in Greece and in some other countries.

I really did not want to go out, as it was rainy but D insisted and I gave in. (sigh)

Anyway, the diner was busy, but not full (it is a very small place with less than 20 covers). Every time we come here, we feel as if we are in Hong Kong, and this place serves what I think as the authentic Hongkongese popular food.

While we were eating our lovely food with huge mounds of rice, an Asian young man, in early 20s, came in and tried to order take-away. He chose an egg fried rice, some main dishes that I missed, and lastly he said.

Asian guy: "And chips, please".

Chinese waiter: "Sorry, we don't do chips".

Asian guy: "All right, then".

And he walked out. (At this point, D and I started laughing).

The owner chef, who was not listening to the conversation, asked the waiter what happend. Having been explained what happened, he made face muttering "chips, chips" with thick Chinese accent. Then he walked out from the door.

I don't know what he did outside, but probably he felt disgusted and wanted fresh air. (I don't think he tried to stop the guy, as I have never heard him speaking in English; he would rather have the waiter go, if he wanted so).

This reminds me of my Korean hair-dresser's observation that the British people like Chinese buffet restaurants, because there they can eat Chinese foods with chips.

I don't mind the people eat the food in the way they want, but I also understand the chefs who want the people to eat their food in a certain way. (Reversing the case, I guess no one will be amazed if a French chef feels annoyed, if a Japanese or Chinese customer insists on pouring soy sauce on the food).

Anyway, what happened made me like more this chef.

Chinese Instant Noodles

When I visited H-Mart, Korean grocer, last time, I found instant noodles made in China & in Korea. Although I have read that some kids died because of poisoning eating instant noodles, I ventured to try. Considering how many people lives in China, the risk should be low. :D

This is the one I tried: Original Hot & Sour Flavour Instant Vermicelli. I am big fan of Hot & Sour flavour and also of the sweet potato flour noodles, and that was why I could not resist. I think it costed me 60p or so. Later I found the same thing in also Spa in the university (UoB).



These are the things contained in the packet.



The noodles are not usual rice flour vermicelli, but made of sweet potato starch flour. Sweet potato flour noodles are not sweet and do not taste of sweet potato. They are greyish and opaque in colour and tougher in consistency.

Then, the red bag is chili sauce & refined palm oil (!). White balls below are soy beans. The black bag is vinegar. Then the silver bag contains "gourmet powder". Yes, "gourmet powder", so is written in ingredients table. And I am afraid it is mainly MSG (Monosodium Glutamate).

The instruction said that I just had to keep the noodles in hot water, but I boiled them, as I like hot soup. Nutritionally, the instant noodles aren't good, so I put some stir-fried vegetable on top. Here is the outcome.



The floating white balls are soy beans. I have never seen this use before, and I don't think they added any flavour to the dish.

They tasted lovely... in a junk-food way. I was surprised that the MSG soup did not taste awful (and I am disappointed in my taste buds...). I started to wonder how much MSG I eat when I eat at Chinese restaurants.

It was an interesting experiment, but I still don't like the idea of eating that much MSG in one go. :(

Dim Sum @ Chung Ying Garden

As far as I know there are four Chinese restaurants that offer dim sum lunch in Chinatown. 1) Chung Ying（中英）, 2) Chung Ying Garden （中英花園飯店）, 3) China Court, and 4) Golden Pond. Each of them has its followers and when I asked around my friends and acquintances, I could not get the consensus. So I decided to try out all of them. This is the first one.

2/6/07 (Sat.) Dim and I went to a Chinese restaurant called Chung Ying Garden in Birmincham city centre.



This is the eating area inside. It was dim, although it was lunch time.



We had 5 dishes, no. 9, 19, 42, 70 and 99 from the Chinese menu. Obviously I don't remember exactly what we ate...

This is king prawn cheung fun (£3.00). Cheung fun is my favourite dim sum and I try it whenever I find it, so I have eaten in many places in several countries. These contained big chunks of king prawn (satisfying quality) , and cheung fun itself is soft and delicate. Very good.



This is mixed meat and glutinous rice wrapped in lotus leaves. Lotus leaves have particular perfume and it gets infused into the rice when they are steamed together. Very good, again.



This is how it looks like when opened.



Spring rolls. I ordered these for Dim who is more conservative in food than me. Indifferent to me.


Steamed pork dumpling "Shao Ron Pao". Nice but not perfect. The juice was not separted from the meat filling. I would liked some vinegar to go with. Dim did not like it as it was quite gingerly (he hates ginger).




This is rice with chicken and broccoli. Nice, but chicken had small bones and difficult to eat.




Total bill was about 18 pounds. A pot of tea is provided for free.

Next in the list is China Court Restaurant.