Restaurant A. Wong, London Victoria

Raise your hand if you like dim sum. No, the prawn toast doesn't count. Put the prawn toast down. Good.

Aahh...dumplings. Now we're talking :D

This dim sum post kicks of a series of restaurant related posts I've got coming up. I haven't found the time to bake very much in the lead up to this exam I have in June (I've somewhat called it a "baking ban" I'm going on but I think that's just a paraphrase of "gotten a bit lazy and time constrained"). However, I have remained to find the time to eat, whoop whoop! Which, you know, is great.

Moving on to restaurant A Wong. It's a small restaurant just off Victoria station which, in my opinion, looks a bit takeaway-ey from the outside, but in the inside it's an oasis of dim sum related well cooked and beautifully presented upmarket Chinese food. I came here with my boyfriend a few weeks back after hearing some pretty damn good reviews. We were not disappointed, hurray!

Chinese New Year 2013

Happy New Year!

The best part of Chinese New Year? The food. Hands down. The bringing together of families over sticky rice cakes and dumplings, the smell of delicate steamed buns and spicy lions head meatballs, the effort put into cooking fabulous feasts for your loved ones.

And the inevitable part where you stuff your face and can't move for hours for fear of exploding.

And boy, did I experience a lot of the inevitable.

Last weekend, I came back from China after spending New Years there with my family for the first time since I can remember. So what do we do at New Years, you ask?

Well, the first thing I did as soon as I got of the plane in Shanghai was to find the nearest restaurant in the airport that served xiao long bao (steamed buns), shove about a dozen in my mouth, and only then was I able to carry on with my life.

So, let's start with food. In fact, let's begin, middle and end with food. That sounds good.

Zhonghua Traditional Snacks, Cambridge

I miss Cambridge.

I miss being a student. I miss the may ball chat, the not being allowed to walk on the grass, the tourists with the big cameras who wander around looking lost, and yes, even the supervisions (!).

I mean, where else will it be acceptable to cycle around wearing a gown and black tie??

So, last weekend I went back to Cambridge for a friends birthday, and we went to formal at Trinity College. Which was fun! Aside from the part where two of us got on the wrong train, ended up in Biggleswade, taking a 45 minute taxi to Cambridge whilst changing into black tie in the back of said taxi, and running into formal hall 15 minutes late.

At first I got angry. And then I got sad. And then I got hungry.

So the next day (after formal hall and a few bad headaches), a few of us wandered over to Zhonghua Traditional Snacks, a new(ish) cafe that opened sometime after I graduated in June. I've heard a lot about it from my Chinese friends in Cambridge, so here is the rundown!

(Please excuse the photo quality, I only brought my point and shoot to Cambridge.)

Zhonghua Traditional Snacks serves Chinese dim sum including jaozi (dumplings), bao zi (steamed buns), noodles and wontons.

The food is good, quite traditional in that I would expect this on the cafes in China. I don't think the food alone is enough to rant and rave about but I would definitely recommend purely because its such great value - one of the great points about this cafe is the price. You'll struggle to spend more than £10-£15 per head, with drinks.

Well, I mean, unless you're reeaaaalllllyyyy hungry.

The cafe is quite small, located near the Grafton Centre off Newmarket Road. We came at about 12pm and managed to get a table, although it got quite busy afterwards. The owners were really nice though and tried their best to fit everyone in. On the walls inside there are posters showing how to make dumplings, which was pretty cute.

Panda Bento

Meet Pandi :)

Pandi was a present to me when I was 7, and as all imaginative 7 year olds are I gave him a very creative name, obviously =p Pandi has been with me through thick and thin, through when I was 10 years old and playing dens behind the sofa to coming to New York with me and being a lucky charm for my exams. So I'm dedicating this post to you Pandi! (You talk to your pet dog. I talk to my teddy bear. Same thing really, except mine doesn't come and sniff my bum. I think of that as a good thing :)

The Awkward Moment When Your Dad Starts A Blog

The even more awkward moment when you realise that blog is about you.

I won't post the link here to my dad's post here, because it's a little embarrassing. Probably because it depicts my life. Mostly because he's got more page views than me.

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p.s. update! Okay, I give in. Some people have asked for the link and I feel rather mean so....Here's the link!(It's all in Chinese though, apart from a few words here and there but that could be enough to get the gist!) 
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(Before I go on, these are lotus root and pork fritters. It's a Chinese dish so quite fitting for what I'm going to say next.)

Bento Box: Walrus(es Law)

The title of this post is dedicated to all those Economists out there... you know who you are!

(It's something called Walras' Law, which says that excess supply in one market must be matched by excess demand in another so it balances out. Kind of like Ying-Yang. Kind of not.)

And to any budding Economists out there (you know who you are!) I challenge you to make this bento box before you apply for an Economics degree, see how dedicated you are ;)

Happy Chinese New Year!

Xin Nian Kuai Le, Gong Xi Fa Cai! Today we begin the year of the rabbit. May lots of luck and happiness and fortune hop your way! In China at the moment everything is a blur; its that time of year where phone lines get jammed and train prices cost a gazillion yuan and everyone eats until they want to pop and then sit down around the tv to watch the Chinese New Year Gala.

And whilst I've got your attention, this is my all time favourite performance of the galas - the deaf troupe's Thousand Hand Buddha's performance.

I do miss being in China around this time of year, as I have never spent Chinese New Year in actual China, but that’s fine, because I celebrated with some Chinese friends at Uni yesterday. We made dumplings, and as they say: Luck is like having a dumpling fly into your mouth.

Although we didn't having any flying dumplings, a group of my Chinese friends got together last night and made dumplings, and I made fortune cookies. Fortune cookies? Yes, the ones they give you at the end of a chicken chow mein meal in restaurants in Chinatown that say stuff like:

Chinese Dongpo Pork 东坡肉 (Braised Pork Belly)

I am proud to say that this blog post is the first recipe on the Cambridge University Gastronomic Discovery website - you saw it here first!

Update: I've also added it to the BBC Good Food website (you can see it in all its delicious soy saucy glory here), it's pretty much the same thing, but it's on an ACTUAL WEBSITE!

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A little bit of research tells me that Dongpo pork is a very famous dish from Hangzhou in China, named/insipried/something-along-those-lines from the poet Su Dongpo, some almost-millennia ago. He was very wealthy (I’m guessing therefore he could afford to buy meat) and made a modified version of the very famous Chinese red-braised pork, by simmering it for a longer time in the traditional sauce plus caramelised sugar.

The emphasis on this dish is really on the fat; the cooking method means that the oiliness seeps out and leaves a gelatinous wobbly bit left, which no longer makes you feel queasy when you eat too much. So you can keep on eating!

I bet Su Dongpo died of a heart attack.

From China With Love: Departures

01/01/2011

I’m not sure that I will be choosing to fly on New Year’s Eve again.

It was –6C outside, it was about –4C inside, but this time, I wasn’t sure if I had just lost the feeling in my toes, or if they had actually fallen off and I just hadn’t noticed.

We were catching the coach from Nantong to Shanghai airport, which was pretty standard. Except we forgot that it would be heaving with people, so carrying four suitcases between two people across a sea of people who don’t seem to quite grasp the concept of personal space was an effort. But (hurrah!) in the end we made it to Shanghai, to the airport, and to the check in desk. Happy happy :)

Only problem now was that our hand luggage exceeded the allowance. But, being Chinese (gross generalisation here? I hope not?) they were stuffed with… food (and, you know, good food, the sort that your mother would tell you off for eating the whole packet of when you were little). So it was either throw it away or eat it all.

We choose the latter option.

However, we realised after about 20 minutes of furious power-snacking that if we were to munch through 7kg of food (it was like Mary Poppins’ bag… don’t underestimate our packing skills!) we’d die. Feeling sick is probably more likely, but saying dying makes me feel less guilty about the amount we had to throw away.



We’d also come up with a ingenious plan – fill our pockets with the excess food – they won’t weigh our coats.

…there’s nothing quite as satisfying as walking around an airport with a bag of pickled cabbage smuggled in your hoodie pocket. One word: stealth.

Then we got on our flight and went home, spending every single time zone’s New Years on the plane. (But I think next time, I will rather be out in the garden watching the fireworks instead!)

I’m always ready to leave China when I do, then on the way to the airport I always miss it. I don’t really have a photo to sum it up, just a collection of some more (mostly foodie) photos to end my trip.

Lesson learned today: Chinese food rules! (And puddings and pies, too, of course.)



This is the Dong Po Pork (braised pork belly) that I made for my family the day we left. Recipe blog about this to some soon – a bit time consuming to make but definitely worth it!


Three little pigs: steamed custard buns. I can’t make these…yet ;)

And now, me sat at the airport waiting for my transfer flight, typing and finalising my blog posts.


Oh and…


HAPPY NEW YEAR!

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Copyright Pudding Pie Lane 2011 at puddingpielane.blogspot.com

From China With Love: Christmas

25/12/2010

I’d say Christmas in China is more of a thing than Chinese New Year in the UK. I even managed to find a Santa walking around the electricals bit of the department store handing out leaflets. He was evidently embarrassed by the outfit and didn’t want to be recognised; either that or didn’t know that beards don’t usually grow around the eyes…


But the main part of this post is of course: CHRISTMAS DINNER! We had two meals, the first was in a restaurant with about 40 family members, and it wasn’t really a Christmas meal. As in, my grandparents invited all of these people for a meal because we needed to thank them for visiting my granddad in hospital, and the 25th worked – not because it was Christmas, but because it was a Saturday. But hey, beats turkey and pudding any day :)


And three guesses as to what this is…


So that was lunch. Moving on (absolutely stuffed, so we were moving on pretty slowly), we took a quick walk to work up the appetite again.


Next stop, sushi!


There was salmon sashimi, tuna, octopus, some white thing, squid maybe? And something else yellow and slushy which I just ate and it tasted…slushy (if my taste buds allowed for colours, I’d say it probably would have tasted yellow too).


I don’t think I’ve ever eaten so much raw fish in my life.

And I liked it.



This was a platter thingy that we ordered. Most interesting was the chicken heart (second from left). I was offered some – “Xinmei, have some chicken heart!” and my gut instinct was to reel away and protest “euurrgghh, no.” Which as soon as I said that I regretted but it was too late and was snapped up (or chewed up and swallowed) by my cousin.

It came out to about 158 yuan per person (about £16), which is very very expensive in China (though that might have just been the restaurant, I have no idea, I followed my uncle… and the smell), although I would choose this over Yo Sushi any day!

Lesson learned today: Christmas isn’t just about turkey and stuffing, it’s about food that brings people together, for instance, duck tongue. (Yes, that’s what it was, how many guesses did you use? Ha! Bet you weren’t expecting that! ;)

p.s. duck tongue tastes like rubber.

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From China With Love: Rice.

22/12/2020

So originally I said I was going to leave out the boring part where ‘we eat lots of rice’, but my friend wanted a post on it, in which I replied that I had already done one, but he was persistent, so I took up the challenge and wrote…an ODE TO RICE! Oh yes, you’d better believe it.


Ode To Rice
by Xinmei Wang, age nine…teen.

Oh rice, oh rice, why are you so nice?
You fill me with carbs but I guess that’s the price.
”I just made some rice dumpling, would you like to try it?
Oh, I’m sorry, you’re on a gluten free diet”.

It’s rice, it’s always rice! Can even make it into drinks,
Let it ferment, it’s alcohol in two winks.
Be careful not to boil too much, remember 8 cups is a lot,
It would be heart breaking just to see all of this rice rot :(

And rice, and rice, my bowl is full of you,
Wouldn’t have it any other other way, and that is the truth.
So dedicated am I, that I eat you with chopsticks,
Hope you appreciate that, I can’t use them for…toffee. (I know, let down, sorry)

Dear rice, dear rice, you’re so easy to make,
But saying that, you’re quite versatile to bake.
I can cook you in the oven and I can cook you on the hob,
I can even cook you in the microwave slot!

My rice, your rice, his rice, her rice,
That old lady who works at the checkout’s rice!
We all eat rice! We all love rice!
And now I’m at the end of the poem, if I say rice one more time I think I might die.

Authentic Chinese ‘sao mai’ – gluntinous (sticky) rice wrapped in wonton skin type things and steamed. Nothing like the Hong Kong version of ‘siew mai’, which doesn’t even have rice in it! :O

Lesson learned today: You can love the afore mentioned foodstuff, then write a poem on it and lose all craving to ever eat it again (note to self: never, EVER, write a poem on desserts).

Copyright Pudding Pie Lane 2011 at puddingpielane.blogspot.com

From China With Love: Out and About

17/12/2010

As soon as I got used to the freezing temperatures and accepted the fact that I probably wouldn’t regain the feeling in my toes for the next two weeks, I finally left the house and went scouring the streets for food and photo opportunities. There are loads everywhere, literally about 2 minutes down the road from my grandparent’s house will be someone selling fruit and vegetables:


And two minutes down the road from that, will be street vendors selling ‘little eats’. I once found the best Chinese sweet onion pastry thing, and wanted a fresh one for breakfast the next day.


Except breakfast for everyone here is about 8am, which (ha!) isn’t going to happen, so when I woke up at 10.30am, I ran out in my pyjamas (it’s er…a fashion statement back in England), but to my dismay, they had gone :(

Most of the street vendors set up at night, usually on a busy road or next to the street markets.

Xiao Long Bao (‘Little Lion Buns’), are like steamed buns but with soup inside, which annoyingly always seems to dribble out when you bite into it. Tasty though!


Here, she’s making omelette with potato strips, egg, frankfurter sausage, and seaweed. Who would have thought, “I think it’s missing something… I know! Let’s add ALGAE!!”. And this wasn't the type that you normally put into soup, it was the crunchy, and slimy (does that have bad connotations? Is there a way of saying nice-slimy?). Just to Asian-fy what could have turned into a Western dish.


All the tea you could ever want – or think of – in your life. Also makes great pot pouri.


’Old Beijing’ toffee apples…and now they’ve also branched out to strawberries, pineapples, kiwis, oranges, even cherry tomatoes. Which is probably good, because I swear those apples were a bit rotten under that mountain of sugar crust.


And last but definitely definitely not least, cakes! Surely they can’t beat my ‘baked with love’ cakes? We shall see (I bought two of each, came to about 80p)….damn, these things are nice.

Lesson learned today: it’s not just sugar that you can put onto anything to make it taste nicer, it seems seaweed does the trick too!

From China With Love: Arrivals

15/12/2010

A big snowy dizzy blur. No update on the food front as of yet, having been in China for four hours and only managing to briskly stomp past the ‘restaurants’ selling 20p dumplings and noodles.

This was because my mum and I needed to catch the train from Shanghai to Nantong. See now, I am going to emphasise the plan to ‘catch the TRAIN’. So obviously as soon as the bus from the airport dropped us off some half mile or so away from the train station,, we were bombarded (and I wish I were exaggerating) with private (i.e. illegal, but we shall use that term very loosely here) taxis asking us where we were going:

”Where are you going? Take our taxi!”

”To Nantong, but we’ve already sorted out our transport.”

”What, no! Take our taxi, only 300 yuan! You’ve got too many suitcases. There’s no way you can carry those yourselves!”

”We’ve already got transport, we’re taking the train.”

”Don’t be absurd. Take our taxi, 280 yuan.”

”We’ve got transport!”

”Take our TAXI!!! There’s no fricking way you can carry all of those suitcase by yourselves!!! We’ll drop you by your door!”

”No, we’ve got transport, okay?! Leave us alone.”

”260 yuan?”

”Aaaarrrghhhhh!!!!”


Oh, I have missed China ;)


Lesson learned today: The customer is ALWAYS wrong. Or absurd, apparently.

Update: when we got to my grandparents home, my grandma was so sweet and waited up for us, and cooked us a lovely dinner (which I preceded to take many photos of) which we were eating at 11pm:




All I can say is nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom.

Leaving On A Jet Plane

Today I fly to China! Which means, no baking for TWO AND A HALF WEEKS! No melting 70% dark chocolate in short bursts in the microwave, no licking of the mixing spoon clean afterwards, no dropping of the cake mix on the way upstairs to use my neighbours oven (not that I’ve er, ever done this)…

However, this does open up a whole new blogging opportunity to me. What do they eat in China? Chicken’s feet, pigs tongue, rotted duck egg, oh and smelly tofu – a favourite! I shall try my best to be the weird obnoxious foreigner at the dinner table in restaurants and take lots of photos of the meal. I would say I’ll also go round the food markets and wade around in fish slime and take photos too, but this will be heavily dictated by what my family want to do – my grasp of the Chinese language isn’t fluent enough for me to venture on escapades alone and not get mugged/ thrown fish at.

Hey, could happen.

Then, hopefully I might write something vaguely interesting about it (think the food speaks for itself), and post it up (I’m going to ignore the boring part where we eat loads of rice). But you won’t hear from me for a while, as the Great Firewall of China also blocks Blogger, so you will have to be graced by these posts upon my delightful return :)

So that’s it for now! I’ve got two photos to show you; presents from the UK to friends and family back home:


We’re trying to fatten up our family, whilst giving them type II diabetes, obviously. And judging by those Burberry perfumes, we think that they smell, too.

Anndd some delights from China (this photo was taken in on a trip to Beijing in 2007):


Regrettably I didn’t try any. I really should have, because, you know, at least these maggots were cooked. And dead.

Lesson learned today: always be prepared for mugging or spontaneous fish throwing. Always.

A cake….in the shape of a dumpling?

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s a GIANT DUMPLING CAKE!


This cake was made by a friend and I for a friend’s birthday, and we decided on a ‘Chinese Themed Cake’, for reasons that, to this day, I am not sure of. Plan A was to make a steamed Chinese cake, but this was impossible because neither of us had a steamer, or a big pot, or a steaming tin pot thing. So we moved on to Plan B: a Chinese-y decorated cake, with three tiers and dragons spiralling down them and painted Chinese symbols and lantern shapes; but you just reading that will guess it’s pretty difficult (if not, my birthday is at the end of August). But we were on a strict time budget.

Birthday card recipe no. 6: Ayo’s Rice For All

There is a story behind this recipe (well…’recipe’ is a stretch). Our rations included three one kilo bags of rice, and we chief rationers calculated that to be 8 cups of rice for a meal, and overall we’d be able to have 4 of those meals. However, we didn’t really specify how big those cups were. I presumed we’d just use the cups we brought with us. Problem was that everyone’s cups ranged from small tea-sized-cups to massive travel mugs. Ayo’s cup happened to fall into the latter.

Surely a recipe that doesn’t even fill the whole page can’t take that long to make, photograph and blog?? Read on…

A Digression into Dumplings

This was an article I wrote for a magazine at uni on how to make dumplings, and I was so proud of it (mostly of how I managed to stand up for 4 hours on end making them no not complaining once) that I wanted to share it on here! So taking a step back from the birthday recipes, dumplings are dominating the day.

Foodie goes North

Angel of the North, Lake District, Hadrian's Wall, Yorkshire moors....Yorkshire pudding...Yorkshire tea...

I think you know where I'm going with this. The five hour something train journey up to visit my boyfriend bought a whole new culinary experience; though not all of it traditionally Northern, might I add. There was a good bit of Chinese food and Polish food (I think?) thrown in there too.

Now let's see... first experience of Northern food was Pret, much of the same, really. Crayfish sandwich and Jalapeño chicken wrap for him, butternut squash and spinach soup for me (no pictures unfortunately - would look rather touristy taking photos in Pret, I feared). However, it was still REALLY YUMMY. Maybe it was the Northern weather, maybe it was the company, maybe it was the E numbers and MSG; it was goood. But, as I was inspecting my napkin (thought I should pay it some respect before viscously crumpling to wipe my hands with), the message of "Pret creates handmade natural food avoiding the obscure chemical, additives and preservatives common to so much of the 'prepared' and 'fast' food on the market today." let me conclude that it was definitely the first two reasons as to why it was REALLY YUMMY.

Getting on to photo-worthy food, Thursday involved a trip to Betty's and Taylor's of Harrogate (pictures taken stealthily - don't really think paparazzi would be Betty's cup of tea), for a Nice Cup Of Tea And A Sit Down.

It being the home and producer of Yorkshire Tea; I immediately went for that, and my boyfriend opted for the Yu Luo white tea - sharing the name last name as him, which is fate. Obviously. We shared a Yorkshire Fat Rascal scone, still hot from the oven, served with creamy white butter. I have to say, never has tea serving been more confusing. The tea come in a teapot (fine), with hot water to top up and a jar of milk (all fine), but there were these strainers that looked like standard headgear of the The Saucepan Man from the Faraway Tree. I figured it was to pour the tea through. And that is what we did. And boy, was the tea good; there must be something about Betty's water supply.

Now, the scone was one a different scale. All crumbly and buttery and rasiny, perfect.

I've just realised the next bit's not in chronological order, but I just HAD to share the Betty's bit first. Before filling ourselves with tea and cake (what a combination), we went to watch the much anticipated Toy Story 3. I won't get into the details, but this is definitely a Pixar triumph and worth the 10 year wait between the movies.

So in terms of movie snacks, we stumbled across a strange Polish shop selling all kinds of things that I couldn't read. It looked colourful, it looked cheap, it looked interesting, so we went in. Well, definitely cheap, as a 1.5l bottle of ice tea came in at 59p. Taste, on the other hand, was yet to be questioned.

So, in the strange new shop, I saw something that caught me eye. Banana? Chocolate? Banana chocolate? Yes please! Banana is the only fruit I really like with chocolate; it's just the right amount of creamy to fit the texture of chocolate. Anyone agree?

But, like I said, taste was yet to be questioned. When I tasted this, it was...slightly strange. The banana was a layer of jelly like substance that tasted more mint-beer than banana, and I'm not sure what the chocolate on the outside was (my Polish in unfortunately still in it's early learning stages, I can just about manage 'vodka' ^^). It was Nestle though, so I'm guessing some kind of dark chocolate Kit Kat like exterior would be best to describe it. Anyway, I ended up chewing round the edge and just eating the chocolate, leaving a gooey yellow...thing in the wrapper. Rating out of 10 would probably be a 3; nothing compared to the Elderflower cake my boyfriend bought me in Betty's!

This pretty much concludes the culinary side of my trip Up North. I haven't included much of the Chinese food, but it included a visit to Red Chilli (possibly the best Chinese restaurant I've been to) They had xiao long bao dumplings, nuff said. On top of this, boyf's household were lovely, and I took back zhong ze (glutinous rice in reed leaves) to stuff my face with at home =)

Lesson learned today: Don't buy banana chocolate. It's weird.