Peking Duck

This is the delicious Peking Duck - the steamer in the background holds the crepes (pancakes) and the head of the duck has been cut in two and is beneath the slices on the plate to the back right. Oh yeah - we ate everything!
Oh - and the dish on the left is pickled cucumber - nice and sour!




Can you see the lovely ducks in a row - (hanging inside the oven!)

The moment we've been waiting for...some pictures of the food - just in case the description wasn't enough!


Pig's ear - I was told it's kinda rolled into a terrine kinda thang - the white bits are chewy and the pinky bits are deliciously porky!




MMMMMM dumplings! Careful, there may be soup inside and you don't want to miss a drop.

Beijing August 8

We spent the day hanging out in Beihei Park - with a white Pagoda, a beautiful Lake and Lotus flowers blooming! We heard people playing music on erhu and pipa as well as some women singing and dancing. There were loads of boats in the lake - paddle boats (with duck heads) and small motorboats. It's supposed to be cooler in Beijing - but it's 100% humidity and around 33 C.

We had dinner in a little place north of our guest hotel - delicious salad of fava and kidney beans, a seaweed salad with chilies and sesame seeds and roast duck (not THE roast duck). We are staying in a guest hotel down a maze of alleyways called Hutongs in Beijing.

Next Day
According to a guide, there are 3 things you must do when you come to Beijing: eat Peking Duck, go to Peking Opera and visit the Forbidden City. (I think maybe the Great Wall should be in there as a fourth). Well, Mr. Grumpypants and I managed the 3 must-do's in one day! We spent the day at the Forbidden City - super crowded, enormous and loads of construction. Mr. Grumpypants was grumpy about it - felt like we were in a theme park. I was awed by the size and particularly the beautiful gardens at the north end of the city.

The Peking Duck was NOT disappointing! On the way to your table in this crazy 4 storey, 140 year old restaurant, you pass the brick ovens where the ducks are roasted. There are stacks of fruit wood logs ready for stoking the fires and you see the glorious birds cooking away inside. When your bird is ready - and we did eat a whole duck - a chef wheels it out to your table and carves it in front of you - the first pieces of skin are deftly removed and handed to you to taste. They use cleavers for the carving and it is precise. The skin is perfect - crisp, fatty, and brown. The meat is succulent! The way to eat the duck is to wrap it in a crepe (called pancakes here), with plum sauce and thinly sliced scallions (white parts only). Though all we wanted was the duck, we did manage a lovely salad of celery and lily bulb as well as some pickles to start.

The Peking Opera was also fantastic. We went to the Huguang Guildhall where opera has been performed since 1807. The space has over the top decoration - bright colours, small landscape scenes and decorative elements filling all space on the walls and ceiling. The tables are crammed in to the main floor with a balcony above. The stage occupies half the main floor, with a yellow silk embroidered backdrop. There were three pieces performed. The live band was great - Mr. Grumpypants thought the drummer was particularly lively. The show is part opera, stories based on the emperors or folk tales, and part acrobatics, so the main players have to sing, dance and be able to do tricks. Audience participation is encouraged - fun!

Shanghai, August 5

Had Lychee martini's at a bar called Manifesto. They served tapas - pay per item - so we had two of a few different things - like crostini with goat's cheese and with fruit compote, teeny pita with felafel and minty/cumin yogurt and sesame seeds, chicken sate with peanut sauce, and ciabata crostini with crispy eggplant, fontina and beets...Chinese? nah - a little western food for a change. The bar was all style but we really enjoyed the sister sledge CD track that skipped for about 20 minutes before anyone noticed.

For a quick food (somehow, not really fast food), we often go around the corner to a little place that does barbecue duck, pork etc...they have quite an extensive list so we try all kinds of things, the other day it was leek shoots with pine nuts, dry shrimp, clams, ginger and red/green peppers...lovely! I'm not sure if I mentioned that this place also does fabulous wonton's - loaded with huge shrimp.

So I decided to try a cooking class - the advert said fully equipped kitchen etc...a total bust. We ended up in a small room in a hotel - probably only 10 by 12 feet with 12 people in there - the table had a small table top stove and we learned to cook stir-fry - not sure if anyone outside of China has heard of this before, but you take a roundish fry pan called a wok....blah, blah. The only new ingredient was the fermented rice (rice soaked in light vinegar - kinda tastes like Sake/japanese ginger) really delicious. So we had a demonstration on Sichuan shrimp and as my class buddy suggested "tofu snot soup" since the consistency looks like snot.

The latest favourite is a Shanghai specialty - Shanghai dumplings - where the dumplings are filled with a ground pork mixture and fatty flavourful gelatin that becomes liquid when steamed - to eat them, you pour a light vinegar onto the dumpling and try not to spill or shoot the dumpling juice at anyone else - you don't want to waste the precious fluids!

Off to Beijing tonight on an overnight train - next post from there.