Element Fresh and Boxing Cat Brewery

Boxing Cat Brewery (and a foot massage) -

So on Saturday night (October 9th) Bob took me to the Boxing Cat Brewery for dinner, and omg it was delicious!  (http://www.boxingcatbrewery.com/enter.html)  It's a micro brewery in the French Concession serving typical pub food, the only difference is that it's delicious!  Delicious to the point of mouth watering goodness.  We ordered a 4 appetizers to share: the baked mac and cheese, chili cheese fries, pulled pork quesadilla, and pulled pork sliders.  The pulled pork quesadilla was my favorite, the pork was so juicy and tender and had a real kick to it.  We could have been eating at a great place in the states.  The mac and cheese was pretty good but needed a little something more to complete the taste, we were thinking jalapenos would have finished it off nicely.  The pulled pork sliders were also really good, but I preferred the pulled pork on the quesadilla, still good though.  The chili cheese fries were okay, the chili itself was good but the fries were kind of blah.  I will definitely be back for the pulled pork quesadilla.

The beers they brew were only so-so and they didn't have the two kinds on tap that we wanted to try.  But it's not like we went there for exceptional beer, we went for awesome food, and got it!  AND  we found out they do brunch!  I can't wait to try their breakfast burrito.  Yummmy!

After dinner Bob and I wandered around the neighborhood and found a little strip with a bunch of bars with patio seating.  We played liars dice for a while, and I was terrible at it so I was the one who ended up drinking more.  After cutting myself off we finished the night by going to our favorite massage place.  We were getting foot massages when the woman rubbing Bob's feet told us we were fat!  It's true, we're not skinny, but really.  And then she told us that I was fatter than the last time she had seen us, I was horrified.  She followed it up by telling me I was adorable, so I'm apparently fat and adorable.  I vowed never to eat again.....until.....

 

Element Fresh -

I woke up the next morning and wanted pancakes.  I had wanted pancakes the morning before but we ended up eating stir fry at home that Bob made.  That's right, Bob made us lunch and it was very good, he did an amazing job.  It was beef strips, broccoli, mushrooms, onions, tomato and garlic in a chili sauce.  I told him he can cook whenever he'd like :)

Anyway, we went to Element Fresh for pancakes because I'd read in one of the local magainzes that Element Fresh had the best pancakes.  After getting to the restaurant though and looking at the menu, neither of us had pancakes.  Bob had steak and eggs and I had peanut butter and banana french toast which was pretty good.  The place over all was only so-so, I don't think we'll go back for breakfast, maybe for lunch, but not for breakfast.

We spent the rest of the day shopping for snacks and things to stock up on while Jay and Staci are in town.  (For more info on this read the MargaretOnTheGo blog)

 

 

Mongolian Beef Cheesesteak Sandwich

There this one restaurant Ryan and I like to go to once a week called HRD Coffee Shop. I suppose you'd call it a hole-in-the-wall-grease-spoon place, but in actuality, it's probably a lot better in both quality and value than your average fast food chain. Heck, a newspaper dipped in soy sauce is probably better in both quality and value than your average fast food chain (except Newspaper Soy Joy, a fictional national fast food chain I made up for the sake of this post).

After going to this place for the last few months, the staff have gotten to know us pretty well. Anyway, to the sandwich.

I'd say it was overall a very filling meal. A Mongolian beef cheesesteak sandwich is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: Mongolian beef on a roll with some cheese melted on top. The idea is pretty ridiculous, but the results were pretty amazing. The Mongolian beef they serve here specifically is a little drier and chewier than I'm used to, but by no means was it unsatisfying. You couldn't taste much of the cheese and it seemed to just add color than anything else.

However, at $5.95 in the city, this is one of the best deals in town.

Pin Chuan (Spicy Sichuan) in Shanghai, China

Last night Bob and I were actually going to go to Haiku, a sushi restaurant, but apparently you need to make reservations for the place on a Friday night. We'll know better next time. With out any idea of where we should go, we wandered down the street and ended up at Pin Chuan, whose tagline is "Simply Spicy Sichuan," and we were quite pleased with the meal. To be honest, we didn't know the restaurant was a sichuan place until we sat down and saw the menu, everything outside the restaurant was in Chinese, so we took a chance. I'm glad we did.

We ordered 4 dishes and shared a dessert. We had pan fried green beans with bacon. The dish wasn't spicy, but it was very good. The green beans were so fresh and were only cooked a little bit, so they had a nice bite. They were a little oily, and we could have done with out that, but they were still very very good and I would recommend the dish to anyone. The bacon was pretty salty, but a nice pairing with the green beans.

We also ordered a spicy chicken cashew dish that I thought was awesome! It was a spicy/sweet dish and we hadn't expected the sweet part, so Bob was a little disappointed, but I thought it was wonderful. The chicken had been cooked in some kind of spicy vinegar and it was melt in your mouth tender. Plus, I'm a sucker for any kind of dish with cashews in it.

We ordered a spicy beef and prawns dish that was the perfect spiciness. As Bob pointed out to me, we need to be careful when ordering spicy dishes, mostly because if the meat hasn't been specifically mentioned as a part of an animal you usually eat, it's possible that you're eating stomach, which is no bueno. The spice acts as an anti-microbial on dishes like intestine and stomach. Lucky for us, the beef was great and the prawns were even better. I have noticed that the spice they use here leaves a metallic after taste in my mouth. I asked Bob about it but he hasn't noticed any such thing, so it must just be me.

We had shrimp dumplings in a spicy chili sauce, but they were only "eh." They didn't really have a lot of flavor and were pretty greasy. I wouldn't order them again, they didn't bring anything special to the meal.

Lastly we ordered sesame balls in egg/vinegar/sugar sauce/soup thing, called glutinous rice dumplings. The sesame balls were great! That's definitely something I'll miss when we eventually leave China, sesame is soooo good. Bob just told me the sesame balls are made with sesame paste, sugar and lard. No wonder they're so good.

I would definitely recommend Pin Chuan, it was great and the price was great. We enjoyed our dinner with the local beer and Chrysanthemum tea. They actually crush up the flowers and throw it in the tea pot, it's kind of perfumy but it was a really good compliment to the food.We had all that food plus Chrysanthemum Tea and three beers for about $55USD. I think we'll probably take our friend Richard there while he's staying with us.

After we finished dinner we walked around the French Concession and stopped at a bar with an outside patio. We enjoyed a beer there and then walked on to find another place. We ended up at a bar called the Bulldog Pub. It was 4 stories tall! They had a pool, boardgames and drink specials, so we hung out there for the rest of the even. We'll likely go back to check out their 2 for 1 burger deal that they have on Friday nights. :)M

Snacks - They're awesome! (In Shanghai)

"NomNomNomNomNom" (That's the noise I make sitting at my desk all day.)

I'm a big snacker, and it's been a little difficult trying to figure out snacks while in China. Mostly difficult because I don't always want a sweet snack covered in some kind of pork product, which seems to be fairly common. I have found a few things I really enjoy though, and of course they're sweet and I don't need to eat them, but I still do.

SNACKS!!!!

1- Pejoy - I love Pejoy, it's like Pocky but instead of a long stick pretzel covered in chocolate or whatever you like, it's a hollow pretzel/waffer thing filled with different kinds of wonderful creamy insides. I've managed to find: matcha (green tea), chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, cheesecake, tiramisu, chocolate/vanilla combo and a wine flavored one which I haven't tried just because it looks gross. The Tiramisu one is by far the best because it's like a really sweet coffee. Mmmmmm. Each box of Pejoy comes with two little packets of about 8 sticks. They're delicious and I can't help but eat a whole box by myself sometimes.

2- Pillow - OMG! I don't even really know what these things are, but I love them. They come in three flavors (that I've found so far, there could be more) Taro, Red Bean and Chocolate. Taro and Chocolate are my favorite, the Red Bean is okay, but not as addictive. They're about the size as mini-wheats cereal and they have a Captin' Crunch consistency, and are filled with one of the three flavors. The Taro Pillows actually taste like Captin' Crunch on the outside and then have the yumm

y Taro flavor on the inside. The Chocolate ones are like Coco Puffs on the outside with a Chocolate center. The Red Bean Pillows are less flavorful and kinda wheaty on the outside, red bean "eh" okay on the inside. Bob and I particularly enjoy the Pillows on top of ice cream, it's amazing.

3- Milk Tea -This is not my first experience with Milk Tea, I've been enjoying it since about Spring Break of 2003 when I road tripped to the OC with my friend Kelsea. She introduced me to the drink as (phonetically) "Bow-ba." It's a drink/slushee/icee/ usually with tapioca balls the size of your thumb in it. You drink it through a large straw to suck up the balls of tapioca. At first it's a little weird to be chewing your drink, but I've come to love it soooo much. Anyway, here it's a milk tea, mostly because if you order a regular milk tea, it's a milky consistency and it's got kind of a soy milk sweet taste with the tapioca balls. You can also get (again, phonetically) "say-go" which is a smaller version of tapioca balls. There are also different kinds of flavors you can get. It seems like there are typically 4 different kinds of the "Bubble Tea" (another name for them, because of the Pearls, aka tapioca balls), juicy, dessert, coffee, and strangely enough salty. The regular milk tea falls into the coffee category. I usually get a coffee based milk tea or a dessert milk tea. Back in the US though I'm a fan of the Avacado Slurpee-esque Bubble Tea from a place called "Quickly." Yum! Here my favorite is a chain called "Happy Lemon." I usually pick up a milk tea whenever I'm at the mall, it's a ritual.

4- Flavor Rolls - Sorta in the same line of thinking as Pejoy, these are about the size of your thumb, waffers filled with different kinds of cream. I picked up a bunch just the other day at a grocery store. I bought 16 for less than $1USD. So far I've only tried butter(vanilla) and chocolate but I must say they're pretty decent and it's nice that they're individually wrapped. I also picked up: strawberry, pineapple, mango and apple, so we'll have to see if I like those as well. I would say they're like those little waffers you can buy in the states with the cream in them. I can never remember what they're called but I promise, these taste about the same, just with more variety.

5- Tea - What kind of person would I be if I were living in China and not drinking mass quantities of hot tea? A bad person, that's right. Right now we have three different kinds of teas in our house and every morning I wake up, I wash out my mug and throw in a new bag of tea and I just re-fill my cup all day long. Yes, the tea bag lasts that long, it's truly amazing. We currently have your basic Green Tea, Oolong Tea and another kind that I cannot remember the name of for the life of me. Our friend Eric picked it up for me because I told him how much I love the tea we get whenever we go out to restaurants. So I guess it's just basic Dinner Tea. Bob and I bought special mugs that are like mason jars with handles. This way he can take his tea with him in the morning to work. The mugs also came with a little siv thing for loose leaf tea, which is pretty nice.

I'll continue to check out snacks and report back. In the time I wrote this I ate an entire bag of Taro Pillows. They were delicious. :)M

Hot Pot Lunch

For those of you who've never had hot pot, it's kind of like going to a fondue place. You cook your own food in a giant pot of boiling broth of your choosing. I find it to be rather messy, but delicious usually. I went to one hot top place that provided aprons to the patrons of the restaurant, which I loved because too many of my nice shirts have been destroyed by hot pot grease. (Take a moment to say ew, it's okay.)

Anyway, when you go for hot pot, there's a burner in the middle of the table that they place the giant pot on. Bob and I chose the spicy broth today, and let me tell you, we can handle spicy but this was burn your lips off spicy. We've decided that from now on we're going to order less spicy and then adjust the spicy-ness using the spice and fixin's bar. Speaking of the fixin's bar, you'll love it, I know I do. It's just a counter usually with all the different kind of spices you can use to adjust your hot pot's flavor and yumminess level. We went with garlic, chives, onions and chili flakes today, although the chili flakes were entirely unnecessary.

I'd like to tell you the name of the place we went for hot pot today, but I truly have no idea. All I can say is that it's 4 blocks away from our apartment on Haifang Lu. Yeh, I know, that's not very helpful. The name was only in Chinese and of course I forgot to take a picture. But don't worry, I plan on going back, so I'll get a picture of the name of the restaurant next time.

We ordered lotus, mushrooms, tofu, pork slices and beef slices for our hot pot. I LOVE lotus, if you've never had it, it's reminiscent of okra but even better! It's kinda sweet and savory at the same time, go out and find some to try now. The pork was kinda blah, it didn't even really pick up anything from the spices in the hot pot. The beef slices were good, and cooked up very nicely. The mushrooms were okay, I'm still not use to my mushrooms being chewy. The tofu was great, it worked wonderfully like a little sponge and soaked up all the great flavors of the pot.

We threw all the lotus, tofu and mushrooms in right at the beginning so they could cook up and get tender, then we cooked the meat slice by slice as we ate it. Some places will provide you with a little fork thing to throw the meat in the hot pot, but this place didn't. I like the fork thing because then I'm not picking up my uncooked meat with my chopsticks. To make me feel better I'd always stir my chopsticks around in the broth while it's boiling before eating off the chopsticks again.

We had an interesting experience with the way the broth was prepared, that we'd never seen before. It was like a big chunk of spices and flavors had been frozen and then thrown in the hot water, so originally before everything began to boil there was a big chunk of flavor floating in the water. Our tofu, lotus and meat was also frozen to begin with, which made putting the tofu in the pot a little difficult. We ended up picking up the tofu with our fingers and delicately dropping it in the boiling pot.

Overall I liked the place. I don't think it's the best hot pot I've had but the staff was really nice and the place was big, open and airy. The spice/fixin's bar was well stocked and had lots of choices. And I feel like the price was pretty reasonable. (Reasonable being about $26 for both of us to eat, including my coke, and watermelon for dessert.) I would say it's too much for lunch, the quantity, not the price. The only really down side for me, although it's not that big of a deal, is that there isn't an english menu. We did all our ordering by looking at pictures, and there aren't pictures of everything. I guess it's just a sign that I need to be working on my Mandarin.

We're going to go back and try a different broth, so that we'll have more control over the flavors and spice factor. It seems like if you order spicy here, you lose some of the flavor and it's all spice, but we'll see.

I think tonight is Sushi night, stay posted. :)

Juicy Lucy

Josie and I watched this one episode of Man vs. Food via Netflix streaming and were bombarded with images of hamburgers that didn't have cheese on them, but cheese in them. We decided that this would be a simple recipe to try and complete. I decided to use my standard hamburger mixture for this little experiment.


Ingredients
- 1 egg
- 1/2 cup bread crumbs
- 1 pound grass fed beef
- 1 slice of 4-year old aged cheddar from Seattle
- 1 slick of pepper jack
- A tomato
- Romaine lettuce
- Salt and pepper to taste


Putting It All Together
0. Prepare the hamburger by adding the egg, bread crumbs and mixing it all around until your hands are cold. Add salt and pepper to taste... but don't taste it with your finger. That's e. coli country. Just use your best judgment.

1. Split the pound of beef into four equal sized patties. This makes four quarter pounder patties.

2. Split each quarter pounder in half (making eight 1/8 pounders).

3. Flatten each of these halves into patty shapes. The thinner the better as thick burgers, as we found out, have a hard time cooking all the way through evenly.

4. Break one of the cheese into small pieces so it fits in the center of one of the small 1/8 pound patties.

5. Take another of the 1/8 pound patties and put it on top. It should look like you're hiding a tiny mound of cheese under a hamburger patty.

6. Pinch the sides of this new quarter pounder with cheese ON THE INSIDE.

7. Do the same for the three (3) remaining quarter pounders.

8. Grease up a pan and start frying up the burgers. This should work just as well on a grill.

9. While the burgers are cooking, cut the tomatoes into slices of your liking as well as the romaine lettuce.

10. After the burgers are cooked all the way through (check by cutting closer to the outside so cheese doesn't spill out yet), remove them and place them on a plate.

11. Place vegetables as needed. Add salt and pepper on top of tomatoes for a nice kick in your face.

12. Eat heartily and don't forget to turn off the stove.


Man! Look at that cheese! Using toasted buns is also an option, but we found ourselves completely full without. In hindsight, there's not really too much different between this and a standard cheeseburger... except that the beef juices cook into that delicious cheese and all over your stomach. I mean mouth.

More Stir-Fry from my Kitchen (Apple Pork Potato)

So, again I speak of my love of stir-fry. I couldn't help myself, I blame the blog post I wrote about the last stir-fry. Last night I created a sweet and citrusy concoction that truly was one wok stir-fry awesomeness. And I'm going to tell you how to do it. I shall hence forth refer to it as "Apple Pork Potato Stir-fry," you of course can call it whatever you like when you make it.

This dish is not spicy at all, it's more sweet and tangy/citrusy. Here's what you'll need (and no, I didn't provide quantities because I didn't measure anything, I just threw it in.)

Ingredients:

- pork (cut up in small chunks)

- green beans (although you could probably use broccoli or asparagus)

- potato(es) sliced in very thin slices so they cook easily (I cut my potatoes in half and then slice thin half medallions

- onion (chopped up however you want)

- garlic (coarsely chopped, at least I like it that way)

- apple cut into small cubed pieces

- orange, I pulled it apart and kinda mushed it around in a container

- honey

- soy sauce

- brown sugar

- lemon juice

- butter

- rice (or whatever you want to serve it with, I bet noodles would be good too)

Cooking Implements:

1 wok/or flat frying pan

1 rice cooker/or pot for cooking rice or noodles

Okay, let's begin:

Step 1: As mentioned previously, I like to take care of step 1 around lunch time when I'm in the kitchen anyway.

- Put pork, onion in a zip lock bag. Toss in some brown sugar and then pour in some soy sauce. You don't need a lot of soy sauce, just put in enough soy sauce to mush everything around and get it all covered. Okay, put it in the fridge.

- Cut up your greens and garlic and put them in a container in the fridge.

- Cut up the potato, you could probably also cut the potato into cubes, but I think the slices look nicer and cook more easily. Put the cut up potato in a container and put it in the fridge.

- Cut up your apple and put it in a container. Now, as we all know, after you cut open an apple it starts to get brown and dry out, so to prevent that from happening and to mix some flavor peel your orange and mush up the inside and throw it in the same container as the apple cubes. Now put it in the fridge for later.

Step 2: (1 hour before you eat, for rice prep and other fun.)

- As taken directly from my last post "Start the rice. I love my rice cooker, if you have one I suggest you use it. If you don't then the easiest thing to do is what my mom taught me. Measure your rice and throw it in a pot with out water in it. Okay now stick your finger in there and note where the rice comes up to on your finger. Okay, now put in enough water that when you put your finger on top of the rice the water goes up to that same mark. (It's roughly twice the amount of water to rice.) Now put a lid on the pot and bring the water to a boil, after it's boiling turn the burner down to just barely on (or a simmer if you will) and put the lid back on and let it sit and cook slowly for 45 to 50 minutes."

- If you're not having rice, I suggest you wait until about 20 minutes before you're ready to eat to start the noodles.

- Set the table. I'm a big believer in eating at the table. Don't get me wrong, I will also eat in front of the tv, but I think eating at table is much nicer.

Step 3: Half an hour before dinner.

- Pour some lemon juice in your wok, and throw in about a 1/8th a stick of butter. Throw in your green beans and garlic. Stir them around for a few minutes with the heat way up. (Put the container in the sink.)

- About 5 minutes later put in the potatoes and drizzle some honey over everything and stir it around. (Put that container in the sink.) Turn down the heat and stir everything around for about 10 minutes. You don't have to constantly stir, but you don't want things to burn either.

- Now add your apples and mushed up orange and stir it in real good. (Put the container in the sink.) After you've stirred everything around you can let it sit for a little bit with the burner turned down low. And while it's sitting you can clean up your mess in the sink. Do it.

- Okay, now add all the yumminess from the ziplock bag to the wok and stir it in really well, and turn the heat up to about medium. Stir everything around until the pork is cooked all the way and you're done!

As you can see in the picture above, I enjoyed my stir-fry with a nice glass of coconut milk. Mmmmm, delish.

I think when I make this recipe again I'll add peanuts to it, and maybe try using sweet potatoes instead of regular potatoes. That's the beauty of stir-fry, you can make anything you want.

:)M