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.