The Noodle Loft In Beijing

Tags

China, Chinese, Food, Fruit, Meat, Noodle Loft, Noodles, Restaurant, Review, Soup, Sweets, Vegetables

On our final night in Beijing, we went to the Noodle Loft, a wonderful, stylish and definitely pricy restaurant focused entirely on many types of noodle, especially Shaanxi-Province-style noodles. Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations show visited the restaurant, which is how we’d found out about it.

The interior is very sleek and modern, with a nice color palette supported by chrome and elegantly clad waiters:

The menu was huge, and we decided to start with a napa cabbage soup before the noodle courses:

The broth was light and vinegary, perfect as a starter.

Now to tackle the many noodle options! Noodle Loft offers knife-cut noodles that are thick and chewy in texture, sort of like udon, “cat’s ears” noodles which are small, shaped like cat ears and reminiscent of gnocchi in texture, hand-pulled noodles, and “noodles made with one single chopstick,” which are extremely long.

My friend went with a buckwheat version of the cat’s ears noodles (a Shaanxi specialty) stir fried with vegetables and sauce. These had  lovely bite to them and were quite different from any other Chinese noodle dish I’ve seen.

My wife opted for the hand-pulled noodles with a spicy beef dipping sauce. These noodles tasted essentially like udon, but weren’t eaten in a soup:

Personally, I ordered vegetable noodles made with a single chopstick, which were green from the vegetables and so long, I felt like I gave half my plate away when I let the others at the table taste one noodle! I chose a typical Shaanxi-style dipping sauce consisting of a lot of vinegar with some dried spices. These noodles were wonderful, filling and just luxurious to bite into!

Now for dessert, Noodle Loft offers a variety of Western-style cakes (cheesecake, chocolate torte, etc), which my friend and wife went for. I on the other hand was determined to have a Chinese dessert on our last night in China, which left many obscure herbal jelly options (one had the character for turtle in the name…), as well as cooked birdsnests (outrageously expensive delicacy). I had initially settled for double-boiled hashima served in a papaya cup, because I love papaya:

The menu depicted it like this:

I figured hashima might be some fruit mash, or glutinous rice meal, but became slightly nervous. My friend’s smart phone and Google rescued me, as we quickly found out that hashima are frog fallopian tubes. Yes. Frog fallopian tubes. They are supposed to cure anything from a headache to tuberculosis in Chinese medicine, and they are a popular dessert.

Let’s just say I quickly regrouped and went with steamed Chinese yam, or hui shan yao, the air root of a climbing vine, with a sea-buckthorn, or sha ji, berry sauce.

I can’t even begin to describe how delicious this warm dessert was! The yam was buttery soft and sweet, melting in your mouth, and its starchiness was wonderfully contrasted bu the almost gelee-like consistency of the sweet but refreshing buckthorn sauce. I was already very full, but couldn’t stand the thought of leaving a single bite behind. I would do anything to get my hands on the ingredients and a recipe!

Bottom line? While somewhat difficult to find, Noodle Loft is definitely worth the trip. The noodles are amazing, and a special treat you won’t find many places outside Shaanxi province, and all other dishes we tasted were simply wonderful as well. On the downside it is certainly pricey, and we had some misunderstandings with the wait staff despite my Chinese-speaking friend doing the ordering. Meat in the sauces/noodle dishes is very sparsely used, so don’t expect Italian meatball sized amounts! I would say it’s a great treat for a special night – 4/5 from me.

Food Blogger Cookie Heaven!

Tags

FB Cookie Swap, Food, Meringues, Snacks, Sweets

That’s right, I participated in the Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap 2011, and just look at my awesome haul!

From XXX I got YYY

From XXX I got YYY

From XXX I got YYY

I sent out these cinnamon-spiced butterscotch-chip pecan chocolate cookies that I lightened up to get an amazing 40 kcal per cookie treat! In case you try to keep the cookie damage low over the holidays, like me, here are the nutritional stats to my best estimate: 40kcal, 1.75g fat, 5g carbs, 0.5g protein per cookie. Sound too good to be true? It kind of is, if I may pet myself on the back.

Ingredients:
– 3/4 cup sugar
– 1/4 cup margarine
– 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
– 1/4 cup fat-free egg product like Eggbeaters
– 1 1/8 cup all-purpose flour
– 1/2 tsp cream of tartar
– 1/4 tsp baking soda
– pinch salt
– 1/2 cup butterscotch chips
– 1/2 cup chopped pecans
– 2 tbsp baking cocoa
– 3 packets sugar substitute like Splenda or Sweet’N Low
– 1 tsp ground cinnamon

Steps:
1. Heat over to 350F
2. Combine egg substitute, sugar, margarine and vanilla in a large bowl and beat on medium speed until you have a creamy consistency.
3. Add flour, baking soda and cream of tartar and stir well.
4. Stir in the pecans and butterscotch chips and divide into 1-inch balls (I used a tablespoon for portioning). You should get about 3 dozen cookies.
5. In a small bowl, combine sugar substitute and cinnamon, then roll the dough balls through the mixture.
6. Place the dough balls about one inch apart from each other on ungreased (!) cookie sheets.
7. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes. The cookies should be lightly browned and set into a cookie shape. Immediately move them to a cooling rack.
8. Congratulate yourself on being “good” this Holiday season and dig in.

My Very First Thanksgiving, My Very First Surgery, And A Mini-Survey Of Thanksgiving Traditions

Tags

Fruit, Poultry, Sweets, Thanksgiving, United States, Vegetables

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m German. Want proof? Check out my dazzling Dirndl-action!

Obviously, we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving per se in Germany, although there are harvest festivals (which are not a big deal and which don’t involve turkey). So when I moved to the United States in 2005, my then-girlfriend-now-wife’s family graciously welcomed me into their home and shared their traditional Thanksgiving with me. What can I say? It was wonderful. Turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, fresh cranberry sauce made in an ancient meat grinder, fresh baked bread, and most of all, my mother-in-law’s unbeatable, incomparably delicious stuffing (bread, celery, sausage) and her famous chocolate-pecan pie. And pumpkin pie. And ice cream. I met other members of the family, had a wonderful time feeling at home away from home, and I ate, and I ate, and I ate.

Curiously, that night I woke up in horrible pain, which didn’t subside. When the tight, convulsive cramping in my right lower abdomen wouldn’t subside, my father-in-law first suggested appendix issues, then scratched that since the appendix is located on the left side. He gave me Tums. They didn’t help. When I didn’t get better the next day and following night, my mother-in-law and wife took me to the emergency room, where I was X-rayed, poked, prodded, and finally diagnosed with a collapsed gall bladder filled to the brim with gall stones. Turns out high fat meals can trigger attacks. Go figure. They wanted to operate then and there, at which I burst into a teary-eyed, stumbling explanation that, look, this was Kansas, and I had mid-terms in Ohio coming up, my first semester in America, and we have plane tickets already, and my wife has to go back, what will I do? Well, the doctors gave in, let me fly back to Ohio with instructions to immediately go to the ER there.

2 days later I had outpatient surgery. Before the surgery, a smiling Russian second-in-command surgeon asked “Ahhh, gall bladder, is from baby?” “No,” I replied, “is from turkey.” (Well, in all likelihood it was from the stuffing or the pies, but hey, I was under duress). When I woke up, I found out after 2 more shots of morphine that I lack morphine receptors. Since I didn’t stop convulsing in pain, the nurses fed me a cookie, gave me a painkiller to swallow, and I was much, much better. Two days worth of chicken broth and a very coddling girlfriend later, I was back to normal, passed all my midterms with an A and craved chocolate-pecan pie.

Each year, I get asked which organ I intend to lose this year. Ah, Thanksgiving. I loved it.

Now for a bit more interesting fare, brought to you courtesy of the suggestion by wonderfully helpful Oh Cake!. I went and queried friends, colleagues and acquaintances about their Thanksgiving food traditions, and where their families originated from. I sampled English, Irish, German, Danish, American Indian, Swedish, Hungarian, Mexican, Puerto Rican, Scottish, Italian, Spanish, Slovenian and Vietnamese, from 5th generation to directly immigrated like myself.

What I found was that the vast majority closely adhered to the gold standard – turkey, gravy, pumpkin and/or apple pie and/or pecan pie. Popular items all across the board were stuffing (bread or cornbread based), green beans, potatoes or sweet potatoes, mashed or scalloped, or with marshamallows, squash dishes and cranberry sauce. But there were a few standouts and particular stories I enjoyed and thought I’d share:

“My grandma also makes homemade egg noodles (roll out the dough and cut the noodles by hand with a knife). She makes them that day and they dry for hours on the dining room table. All the women sit around and cut them as they dry enough while chatting. And the kids always run by and steal the uncooked noodles.” – German descendent tradition

“With my sibling food allergies we didn’t have an extravegant thanksgiving, most of my childhold we had lamb cooked in a crock pot with banana squash, yams, and rice.” – British/German descendent

“We always do different things. I’ve made traditional japanese, indian, american, mexican and chinese food for thanksgiving (not all at once)” – Swedish descendent

“Wine-soaked cranberry sauce and tarhonya (a Hungarian noodle dish). Before my great-aunt died we had her amazing bread, now we buy baguettes to eat with our butter (did I mention the butter? we really, really love butter in my family). My grandmother makes sós stangli (Hungarian cheese straws), which get passed off to friends the next day because we’re all tired of them (she does nothing, ever, besides bake these). For dessert: Hungarian pastries, and a new version of rice pudding every year.” – Hungarian descendent, many recent immigrants

“My family goes with each family part making turkeys in different ways, but usually roasted and stewed. Also rice with different kinds of beans. In Puerto Rico pies aren’t very popular, but instead we make pumpkin flan. My aunt will make some escabeche of green bananas. – Puerto Rican studying abroad

“I try to make something native american, specially mayan or aztec, to show respect and appreciation.” – Mexican-American immigrant

“Butternut squash, corn, homemade bread, parnips – cut legthwise and fried in butter, rutabegas – boiled and mashed, sweet potatoes (no marshmallows!). My family is really adamant that we stick with very traditional food – Lots of root vegetables and what I would think of as late harvest food.  – Irish descendent

“An old Scottish recipe that has been in our family for years and its pretty simple – oatmeal, butter, and onions” – Scottish descendent (I am particularly excited about this stuffing because I was promised a sample!)

“Growing up, my family incorporated a lot of Italian-American food into Thanksgiving. We always had a lasagna and antipasto earlier in the day before the actual “traditional” dinner of roasted turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes etc.” – Italian descendent

“Empanadas as appetizers to honor our latin roots and I also insist that she make a tomato/onion/lemon juice “dressing” which you can drizzle on the turkey in addition to regular gravy.” – Spanish descendent

“Duck (or turkey, but only if the kids insist)” – Vietnamese immigrants

“We use mashed green plantains to make the stuffing, add some seasoning, usually a lil bit of bacon, garlic and some people like to add raisins.” – Puerto Rican studying abroad

I hope you enjoyed this mini-study of Thanksgiving traditions! I, for one, would like to try almost all of the listed menus! Who knows, if I stay here permanently, maybe I’ll add a German twist on my Thanksgiving dinners, too. Are there any specialty items inspired by your family’s roots that simply must be there come Thanksgiving?

Dia De Los Muertos Chocolates

Tags

Chocolate, Day of the Dead, Dia de los Muertos, Mexico, Sweets

Happy All Saints and All Souls days!

In many Latin American nations, dia de los muertos is celebrated very colorfully, with special edible treats to accompany the festivities. I just wanted to share these adorable handmade Mexican chocolates that I found at Galeria Quetzal here. Check out this assortment of skeletons, skulls, skulls with flowers, skulls with hats, bones, etc.!

Our favorite was this guy here, with a very impressive mustache and sombrero:

He was actually cast out of solid milk chocolate, and painted with white and lighter shaded chocolates. He was quite tasty, too!

Are you celebrating All Saints/All Souls day, or was Halloween it for you? Do you have special treats you make for the occasion? In Germany, we celebrate the former, not Halloween, but it’s a rather somber religious affair that is nothing like the colorful dia de los muertos. It also doesn’t have tasty treats, unfortunately.

Baked Apple-Cinnamon Crêpes and Chocolate-Strawberry Crêpes

Tags

Apple-Picking, Food, Fruit, Local, low-calorie, Sweets

Part two of using all those gorgeous apples I got apple-picking brings me to a favorite of mine – crêpes. Crêpes are really popular back home in Germany, especially during the upcoming holiday season – we’ll have little wooden food shacks pop up all over town that prepare crêpes to go. Typical toppings on the sweet side (which is what you tend to get at these shacks; restaurants will also serve savory versions) are cinnamon-sugar, Nutella, banana-chocolate, strawberry-chocolate and Grand Manier.

I get cravings and homesickness attacks, but most of all, my wife fell in love with the crêpes in Germany. We had to find a way to make them without fancy crêpe plates and knives, and preferably find a way to make them low-calorie!

So here’s what we came up with, a wonderfully delicious, easy crêpe recipe that my wife (she’s the crêpe-maker in the household) makes at least once a week:

Ingredients:
for the crêpes:
– 1 cup skim milk or light plain soy milk
– 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
– 1/3 cup all-whites eggbeaters (or 3 large egg whites)
– 1/4 tsp salt
– 1/2 tsp nutmeg

for the toppings:
– 4 apples (I used Golden Delicious and Red Delicious)
– 16 oz strawberries
– cinnamon to taste
– 1/2 cup sugar-free syrup
– 4 tbsp sugar-free chocolate syrup
– Splenda or other sugar substitute to taste

Steps:
1. Combine all batter ingredients in a small mixing bowl and whisk until bubbly and no clumps remain

2. Let stand for 15 minutes and use that time to slice fruit and pre-heat a griddle or large non-stick pan
3. Spray the hot griddle with PAM (don’t be shy, otherwise the crêpes might bake to the griddle!), pour 1/4 cup of batter in, swirl to get a thin layer

4. Cook for 2 minutes, flip, cook for another 2 minutes

5. Meanwhile microwave the slices apples for 4-6 minutes until soft
6. Top 4 crêpes with strawberries, sprinkle on Splenda and top with 1 tbsp chocolate syrup per crêpe

7. Top 4 crêpes with hot apples, sprinkle on Splenda and cinnamon and pour on 1/8 cup syrup

Yields 8 crêpes (4 apple-cinnamon & 4 strawberry-chocolate). One untopped crêpe comes in at only 45 calories using milk, and even less using a light non-dairy substitute. So dig in! 🙂

(Notes: When you sprinkle on the cinnamon, make sure it’s cinnamon, not ground, roasted red pepper. Yeah. Also, we once used red curry powder instead of nutmeg in the batter. Let me tell you, either mix-up makes for surprising first mouthfuls. What are some of the worst kitchen accidents you’ve had?)

What are some of the things you crave during the fall from when you were growing up?