Made in China [Grand Hyatt Hotel]

This is part 3 of the China Series detailing my recent trip to Beijing, Xian, and Shanghai. Other posts in this series include part 1: Wander the Streets of Beijing, part 2: Xian'r Lao Man and some other preview posts: China: Lost in Translation, and Happy Birthday Bryan: an Ode to Noodles and Ducks.

Welcome to one of the most beautiful dining rooms I visited while in Beijing.

Even before we left for China, we had already heard about "Made In China," the elegant Chinese restaurant inside the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Beijing. People raved about the Peking duck, conceding that while the prices were high, the quality of the duck was definitely worth it.

After first having a minor taxi snafu where we ended up at the wrong Hyatt and had to pay our driver more than twice [grrrr - he reset the meter], we finally arrived at the beautiful Grand Hyatt Hotel (backpack, sneakers, and all) to get a taste of what the imperial palace would have enjoyed over a century ago.


Just a tiny bit of background first - Peking duck was something that only those in the imperial palace enjoyed. It was not until the late 1800's during the Qing Dynasty that Yang Renquan brought Peking duck to the masses by opening the first Quanjude (now a popular chain in China).

Made In China is a beautiful venue in which to enjoy this Beijing specialty. There are multiple open kitchens, many of which are surrounded by glass. It's fascinating just to watch the chefs expertly prepare handmade buns, dumplings, hot wok dishes, and (of course) duck.

I took the liberty to wander around the restaurant with my big fat camera. :)

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In one corner you'll see huge steamers cooking dim sum dishes.

In another corner, you'll find the dumpling guy meticulously rolling out dumpling skins, one by one.

Arguably the best seats in the house face the Peking duck station, complete with a roaring fire inside a massive brick oven.

It's fascinating to watch the chefs prepare the ducks, roast them, and then carve them.

In Beijing, the ritual seems to always be the same. First, they cut off slices of the crispy skin, which you're supposed to eat on its own dipped in sugar. Though it sounds a bit strange, it's surprisingly good.

Then you get slices that have both meat and skin. This is typically the leg meat, and maybe some other parts of the duck. Finally, you get leaner meat without skin, which is usually the breast meat. Of course, they also provide these wonderfully fresh, moist pancakes which you use to make your duck wraps!

Using chopsticks, pick up a few cucumbers / scallions and dip them in the sweet brown sauce (like Hoisin sauce). Add some duck meat and then wrap it up.

Enjoy! Smile while savoring the perfect, heavenly bite. Repeat until the duck is all gone.

At a traditional Peking duck place, they typically saute any remaining meat into a stir fry dish and/or bring out a huge pot of soup. We saw this in Taiwan at (what I still think is) one of the best Peking duck places in the world. Here at this fancier restaurant, they merely brought out a little bamboo cup of soup.

Though tiny, this soup was mind-blowingly good. It had an intense, fragrant "ducky" flavor (for lack of a better word). It had tons of umami, yet was not overbearingly salty at all. I slowly sipped it, deliberately savoring each satisfying taste. I silently wished for more, wondering why they gave me such a puny little cup when most restaurants give you a huge bowl.

As a side note, we actually went back to this restaurant our last day in Beijing (since Bryan decided it was his favorite one). Sadly, the soup the second time around was not as transcendent as the first one. It was still good, but more on par with other places.

Made In China serves a lot of other food aside from Peking duck. Between our two visits there, we tried several. All noodles are homemade (yay!). The za jiang mian (noodles with meat sauce) was very good, as was the tomato and egg noodles. I thought the dry fried green beans were only average (a bit too oily for my tastes), but the tong hao salad was refreshingly interesting. Tong hao is a vegetable that I associate with Chinese hot pots, so it was novel for me to eat it raw.

This spicy stir fried cabbage had the perfect crunchy texture. It was quite spicy, though, and I needed to take breaks from it!

These beautiful "snowflake" pan-fried dumplings had a delicate, intricate "crust" that resembled snowflakes.

This black sesame pancake was interesting, though I think at the end of the day I still prefer scallion pancakes!

Overall, the duck here is one of the best in Beijing. We tried three very reputable duck places in Beijing, and this one was definitely the best. On top of the excellent duck, you have unbeatable ambiance, excellent service, and solid dishes in general. Prices are considered high - a duck costs 198 RMB (close to $30 US). Compare that to a typical duck at a normal place, around 60 RMB ($9 US).

You have to call ahead to reserve a duck (or half duck - $140 RMB). I believe they accept reservations but only up to 6PM. Credit cards are accepted, and they have English menus and English speaking staff.

Made in China
Grant Hyatt Hotel
1 East Chang An Avenue
Beijing, 100738
Tel: +86 10 8518 1234 ext. 3608
Within China: 010-8518-1234 ext. 3608

Xian'r Lao Man (馅老满) [Beijing Dumplings]

This is part 2 of the China Series detailing my recent trip to Beijing, Xian, and Shanghai. Other posts in this series include part 1: Wander the Streets of Beijing and some other preview posts: China: Lost in Translation, and Happy Birthday Bryan: an Ode to Noodles and Ducks.

Even though Peking duck might be the first thing you think of when considering Beijing food, you can't ignore the humble little dumpling. In fact, in many ways, the dumpling is more of a traditional common man's food than the Peking duck, which was really imperial food until just the last century or so. Because rice was only for the wealthy, most Beijingers subsisted on wheat-based foods, like mantou, shaobing, and our humble little dumpling (jiaozi).

Nowaways, Beijing has plenty of rice to go around, though dumplings are still extremely popular and very prevalent all over the city. We scoured reviews and narrowed ourselves down to two dumplings places we knew we had to try when we came to Beijing.

"Xian'r Lao Man" (roughly translated, full of stuffing) is true to its name, and the dumplings have a wonderfully high filling to skin ratio. Prices are dirt cheap too, compared to US standards. A plate of dumplings (10 plump ones) costs about $1.50 US.  Our entire meal of 20 dumplings, tea, and a variety of snacks was under $5 US.

It's hard to enjoy a ton of variety if there's only two of you because the minimum per order is two "两" (50g orders / about 5 dumplings) of each flavor. They make all dumplings to order, and thus they will only make a whole steamer's worth at once (10 dumplings total).

The menu is vast and seems to have an endless variety of dumpling choices. Unfortunately, since we had to order 10 of each type, we were limited in how many different ones we could order. This was compounded by the fact that I couldn't really read the all-Chinese menu. In defeat, we just asked them for their recommendations. The server recommended pork & corn and pork, leek, & shrimp.

We both liked the pork, leek, & shrimp one better (how can you go wrong with this classic combination of flavors?), although both dumplings were excellent. The skin was obviously handmade, and the fillings were juicy and flavorful.

The server also recommended that we get a few "snacks." Unfortunately my Chinese was not good enough to really know exactly what these snacks were (I really have a hard time understanding the Beijing accent!). They turned out to be different varieties of mochi and red bean sweets. Although I love mochi and red bean, Bryan is not a huge fan, and he ended up not eating any at all!

My favorite was the rolled up mochi, red bean, soybean powder covered roll shown above.

We did have a hard time finding this place. OK, our taxi driver had a hard time finding it, so I'm not sure if the hotel concierge just gave us the wrong address or what. Most taxi drivers in Beijing don't really speak English, so you either have to tell them your destination (in Chinese), or hand them a slip with the location clearly written out in Chinese. Usually, we would just ask the hotel concierge to print us out a map and address. I'm not sure why it failed this time.

Anyway  . . we thankfully found our way to this excellent dumpling shop (the taxi driver was really nice and even got out of the car to look around for it). I definitely would return again (hopefully with a bigger crowd and someone who reads Chinese!) to try many more of their dishes. Overall, tthe ambiance is pleasant, the service is fast, and the food is delicious and cheap. For more information, this post has an excellent review and suggestions for what to order.

Xian'r Lao Man (or Xian Lao Man)
东城区安定门内大街252号
No. 252 Andingmen nei street,
Dongcheng district
Tel: 010-6404 6944

Wandering the Streets of Beijing

Hutong (alley) in Beijing

I really had no idea what to expect when I stepped off that plane to China.

I mean, sure, I had seen pictures of Beijing while watching the Olympics back in 2008. And I'd seen countless pictures in calendars - of farmers in their rice paddies, bicycles swarming the streets of Beijing, and temples soaring into the sky.

But I'd never set foot in China.

Just like a thousand words can hardly describe a picture, scores of television footage and photos can't even touch the experience of actually stepping foot in a country and immersing oneself in its food, people, and culture.

My favorite way to enjoy a city?

Walk it.

And that's exactly what we did in Beijing that first day. We walked and walked and walked the streets of Beijing, taking in as many sights, smells, and tastes (of course!) that we possible could.

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Welcome to the first official post of the China Food Series. A few unofficial posts already sneaked their way onto this blog, such as the one about Bryan's favorite foods or the one describing hilariously translated English signs and weird flavored snacks. Nevertheless, this marks the official start of the series where I will explore various types of foods, restaurants, and my general impressions of the country.

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You never know what you might find on the streets of Beijing . . .

Maybe a man painting Chinese characters with a water brush . . .

Or a really Chinese-looking Starbucks.

We stumbled upon the cutest little cooking school located in the back alleys of Beijing (called hutongs).

The owner was really nice, and invited us in to take pictures even though there was no class in session. Check out the mirror high up in front where you can see everything the instructor is doing.

Hou hai is one of three man-made lakes that used to feed into canals that served as waterways to the Imperial Palace.  Now it's a beautiful recreational area surrounded by a walking path lined with hip restaurants and bars.

We tried a very popular and well known snack called "shuang pi nai." It literally means "double skinned milk" and is this delightfully creamy and gelatinous cold dessert that sort of reminds me of custard, but much lighter. I believe it's native to Hong Kong, but we went to a place that was one of the most popular in Beijing. I loved it because it wasn't too sweet, similar to most Asian desserts.

Random Street Place
The best thing about China, of course, is the food. We randomly walked into this little restaurant on a random street in Beijing in the Chaoyang district (which is where we were staying).

Don't be fooled by its humble exterior!

Check out the fantastic meal we got!



The best part? This entire meal (6 dishes!) only cost us $15 US.

And it tasted better than most of the Chinese restaurants in Boston.

My favorite was the spicy fish (literally called "water cooked fish" / shui zhu yu). The portion was humongous (I swear there was a whole fish in there), and the flavors were addictively spicy, peppery, and fragrant. The beef noodle soup was great too, especially because the noodles were all hand-drawn! No misses here, really. It's amazing - you walk into a random street restaurant and the food is fantastic.

Up next: Our first dumpling restaurant in Beijing!

It's not to late to vote for this blog for Project Food Blog, Round 5. Voting is open until Thursday night, October 14th! You can check out my post and vote here.

Voting is Open for Project Food Blog Round 5!

Hi everyone,

I cannot thank you enough for your support through these last five rounds of this competition! Seriously, it's exhausting, but so much fun at the same time! I am totally stretching myself as a cook, writer, and photographer throughout this entire experience. I really do believe I will come out of this a better blogger in the end no matter what happens. :)

Anyway, just wanted to announce that voting for Project Food Blog Round 5 is now open! You can check out my entry and vote here.

For this round we had to make pizza. Come see my artistic interpretation of pizza (as flags!), as well as stories from the various trips I've taken to these countries in the past decade or so.

My vain attempts that throwing pizza dough

A Pizza Tour of My Travels

My family has always loved traveling. Even though my parents were incredible frugal with everything else, we somehow always could afford plane tickets to fly to various parts of the world. Heck, my paternal grandfather founded what became the largest travel agency in Taiwan. When you have something like that in your lineage, you know you're destined to travel.

To this day, the travel bug has never left me, and I'm always wondering what trip to take next.

The next round in Project Food Blog is to create our own interpretation of pizza. I decided to take this opportunity to reflect upon the last decade or so of travel and express those trips by creating the flags of the countries I have visited as pizzas.

Now mind you, I do mostly Asian cooking (although Bryan does have an affinity for fresh pasta, so I do make lots of various pasta dishes). Nevertheless, I have never ever made pizza before.

Pizza dough is easy enough to make, ha ha, if you have a bread machine, which I do.

Pizza Dough

3/4 cup warm water

1 T olive oil

2 1/4 cup all purpose flour

1 tsp salt

1 tsp sugar

1 tsp dry yeast

Just throw in water, oil, flour, salt, sugar, and yeast into the machine (in that order), set the machine to "dough only cycle," and before you know it, out pops some pizza dough. Of course, you can also purchase pizza dough, either from the supermarket or your favorite pizzeria. You'd be surprised to learn that they are often willing to sell the dough for a very reasonable price.

Silly me, I thought you had to toss the pizza dough and magically stretch it in this laborious way.

So Not true. Rolling out with a rolling pin works just fine.

In fact, it's a lot easier to control the shape of the pizza dough that way, which was important for me, since I needed rectangles for my flags.

You don't need a pizza stone, but it really makes the pizza taste so much better. It's best to heat the pizza stone in the oven for about 30 minutes at 450 to 500 °F before putting the pizzas onto the stone. After that, bake for about 10-12 minutes.

It's really surprisingly simple. And you can totally use your creativity for the toppings - heh, just like the way I did in creating these pizzas. I tried my best to incorporate bits of each country's actual cuisine into the pizzas (in some cases easier than others).

Sooooo . . . without any further adieu, allow me to take you on a short, virtual tour of my travels in the form of pizza flags!

Canada

I grew up about an hour's drive from Windsor, Canada, so my family went there frequently to shop for Asian groceries and eat good Chinese dim sum. However, my most memorable trip to Canada was a family trip to the Canadian Rockies in 1998. This is seriously one of the most beautiful places I have ever visited. The scenery is breathtaking, especially the soaring mountains and the unusually turquoise water.

Canadian Rockies, Canada

This pizza takes an ordinary pepperoni pizza and jazzes it up by caramelizing the maple-leaf shaped pepperonis with maple syrup in a toaster oven. The red sauce on the side is a simple tomato, butter, and onion sauce. Feel free to use your favorite tomato sauce recipe.

The United Kingdom

I visited London for the first time back in 1999 when my college a cappella group went to work with a Chinese church in London for a week. I have fond memories exchanging cultural ideas with those Chinese Christians in London.


This pizza is a play on "Bangers and Mash," a British dish I learned about during that trip. The pizza sits on base of purple mashed potatoes ("mash"), and has strips of sausage ("bangers") as the red stripes. Thinly sliced mozarella cheese act as the white part of the flag.


Italy

Bryan and I spent our honeymoon in Rome, Venice, and Florence. We enjoyed absolutely fantastic food in Italy, and learned how good, fresh ingredients can really make simple dishes shine. This pizza is inspired by the classic Italian salad Insalate Caprese (tomato, basil, and fresh mozarella). In this case, instead of using basil, I have added peppercress, a pungent and fragrant green that adds a lovely bite to the pizza.

A rooftop champagne toast in Venice, Italy

France

I studied French in high school and have always loved the beautiful language. For a special milestone birthday, Bryan and I spent a week in Paris, staying right on the grounds of Versaille. It was in Paris where I first discovered my love for the Pierre Hermes Ispahan macaron. 

This simple French flag pizza comprises fresh tomato slices, fresh mozzarella cheese, and mashed blue potatoes. The flavors are simple yet delicious when you use high quality, fresh ingredients. For a taste of France, you can incorporate a strong blue cheese into the mashed potatoes for a more unique flavor.

Versaille, France

USA

Bryan’s family loves to camp at national parks, and I’ve had the wonderful opportunity of seeing some of these beautiful parks with his family ever since we got married.

Capitol Reef, Utah

This USA flag contains blue potato slices, mozzarella cheese, and a simple red tomato sauce. The stars are sprinklings of feta cheese. For an alternative way, you can use a base of mozarella cheese and then make the red stripes using bacon.


Japan

I studied Japanese in college and spent a summer working as an intern right outside of Tokyo. I fell in love with the food and culture of Japan while I was there. However, it wasn’t until 10 years later that I had the chance to return, this time with Bryan. Bryan and I enjoyed incredible food in Japan (fresh sushi and Kobe beef, just to name a few). This rice-based pizza is inspired by the sushi that we had in Japan. Prebake a "crust" by baking a square of dough without any toppings. After the crust is done, top with sushi rice and sushi-quality raw tuna (maguro). Optionally, put a dab of wasabi right underneath the tuna (out of sight).

Kyubei in Tokyo (my favorite sushi place!)

Taiwan

Of course, my parents are from Taiwan, so I went to Taiwan frequently as a child. My favorite foods in Taiwan? Traditional Taiwanese breakfast, shaved ice, and dumplings! I gave this pizza an Asian twist by blending roasted red peppers and “spiking” the mixture with Sriracha sauce to create a spicy and sweet base sauce. The blue portion is mashed blue potatoes, and the “sun” is a sliced mushroom. 

Ice Monster, Taipei Taiwan

So that's it! I have hardly touched every country I've visited, but at least I've taken you to visit some of them, albeit brief! Thank you so much for joining me on this journey around the world in the form of pizzas!

Bon Appetit!

Thank you so much for those of you who voted for me the last several rounds. This blog entry is my submission for The Next Food Blog Star’s fifth challenge: Pizza! If you are so inclined, please vote for this entry. Thanks so much for your support!