Rainbow Trout Onigiri

One evening this summer I tried my hand at making onigiri for lunch.  This, in many regards, is meant to be a quick-and-dirty way to turn some left over scraps in the refrigerator into lunch for the next day, or so I have read.  So how did I do?  Meeeh--it took me a lot longer to put things together as I fumbled with the rice and the filling.  I also bought improperly sized nori.

Instead of more traditional Japanese fillings and toppings, I chose to make a teriyaki rainbow trout filling, and used a teaspoon of laoganma Chinese chili sauce.  Also, I am not one for hand-sculpting aesthetically pleasing creations, and that tends to apply to food I try to sculpt.  Still, the form and taste turned out to be all right.

The rainbow trout was diced and sauteed in soy sauce with some sugar and diced onions.

Rather than inside the filling, I put a teaspoon of laoganma chili sauce on top.

Many times over, I also made the classic noob mistake when making any grain or rice wrapped Asian delectable: using too much filling because I have no spatial intuition for the volume of filling and the available surface area of the wrapping material.  I only got better at judging this for dumplings because I have made so many.

Along the way, I also learned how to skin a fillet using a large Chinese kitchen knife.  Cool, right?

The Pacific Northwest, a Tale of Food Porn

At the end of July, I had an amazing opportunity to visit, for the very first time, the Pacific Northwest region of North America with my family.  I hopped through two states and a province of Canada, hitting up

• Seattle, WA;
• Juneau, AK;
• Skagway, AK;
• Ketchikan, AK;
• Victoria, BC;
• Vancouver, BC; and
• Richmond, BC.

I saw live bald eagles (aMURRca!), wild king salmon measuring two feet long, and active glaciers, the majesty of which cannot be conveyed by diagrams in classroom textbooks.  I crossed over a gorge in a wooden plank bridge that swayed and rocked dreadfully with every brush of wind and footsteps.  I got to explore an old growth redwood forest top-down, by walking along wood plank bridges connecting tree houses built high above the forest floor.  I learned that much of the Pacific Northwest region of North America is actually classified as rainforest of the temperate variety.  Imagine that!

And I had a lot of good food.  In this post, I think I have managed to boil down two weeks of delicious food into the key highlights, organized by food types and section links for easier consumption.  Photos also have hover captions if no other descriptions are available.  Please enjoy!

1. Live Seafood
2. Dining Like Royalty
3. Sweet Persuasions
4. Best Brunch in Vancouver
5. Vancouver Japanese Food
6. Summary and Food Map

Live Seafood

I had very high expectations for seafood from the Pacific Northwest, affectionately named the PNW, so I am told.  And the PNW granted me every wish I made.  There were cheap oysters at Seattle's Pike Place Market, Alaskan King Salmon sashimi in the salmon capitol of the world, and fresh caught king crab and lobster off the shores of Vancouver.

The night before we boarded the Alaskan cruise ship, my family decided to buy some live clams to make a seafood ramen dinner.  The light broth was brought together with clams, two plum tomatoes, four fresh shiitake, eight green onion stalks, and some dashi to taste.  It was much lighter fare than the heavy ramen meals I prefer, complete with deep, rich broths that have been cooking for days.  But the playful tease of flavors combined from fruits of the harvest and fruits of the sea suited the rest of my family very well.  Unfortunately, all we had for serving were cereal bowls.

Dining Like Royalty

Haute cuisine applies specifically to high dining establishments in the French tradition, but imagine French and Chinese food pretending like it was prepared for nobility.  This is some of what I was fortunate enough to sample on this trip.

Below is a "creation of the day" by the French chef aboard the Alaskan cruise.  Four samplings of meats, potatoes, squashes, and mushrooms were each diced, prepared in unique enhancing sauces, and presented delightfully in crispy wafer cones.

When a president or monarch visits China, the Chinese head of state lavishly wines and dines his influential visitors in a guesthouse called Fisherman's Terrace (钓鱼台), a place with historical significance dating back nearly one thousand years.  Because the food served here is intended to represent the pinnacle of modern Chinese cuisine, you might imagine that it is pretty ballsy, even on the other side of the world, to name your restaurant after the Chinese state guesthouse.  That is exactly what this restaurant, located in affluent Aberdeen Center, has done.  And while I have never been honored by a Chinese dictator so that I can compare one establishment to its copycat, I can say that Fisherman's Terrace in Vancouver is very top notch.  Here is their five course lobster dinner set for four, including Seafood Soup with Bird's Nest (a gourmet Chinese delicacy), Lobster Platter, Crispy Halibut, Scallops and Abalone (another Chinese delicacy), and Garlic Snow Pea Tips (a well-sought after vegetable).  The house dessert consisting of Sweet Red Bean Porridge and Almond Cookie Biscuits is not pictured.

On this trip, I also tried risotto for the first time.  It was tastefully presented in the fashion of fine cuisine, but the flavor carried none of the herbal character I would think to find in even a mediocre Italian dish.  It left me wondering if risotto is just not my thing or if the Italian chef on board was hired straight out of Olive Garden.

Sweet Persuasions

I have written before about how Chinese adults from my parents' generation often have an anti-sweet tooth.  Added sugar, to them, is like the plague  Having grown up American, I look upon sweets with far fewer inhibitions.  Can you imagine what it is like on an Alaskan cruise line tailored for Americans?  The breadth and depth of the dessert spread rivaled that of every other food item on the ship combined, although many of the desserts were rather forgettable.  Here are new and/or delectable sweets I encountered on my trip through Seattle, Alaska, and Vancouver.

Beard Papa, a Japanese cream puff bakery that I have been wanting to try.  Pictured here is a matcha cream puff.

A chocolate parfait consisting of fresh fruit slices resting on a bed of fluffy chocolate pudding held in a little bowl made of thin dark chocolate.

Banana, blueberry, raspberry, blackberry crepe with chocolate sauce and vanilla ice cream on top.

I got to try three new fruits this trip, and I learned why we really do not bother to eat two of them here in America.  Pictured below are finger grapes (left), figs (upper right), and passion fruit (lower right).

I am always learning new things about food, and on this trip, I learned I was very mistaken about the delicious Chinese baked good called Wife Cake (老婆饼).  I always thought the sweet paste in the center was made purely of sugar, but that is not true!  It is actually a winter melon paste.  This is a chewy, flaky, sweet treat originating in Canton, China.  Arguably, the best cakes are made by Hong-Kongnese producer Maxim's (美心), and there are many Taiwanese producers that make delectable wife cakes for cheaper prices.  From personal experience, avoid at all costs the wife cakes made by mainland Chinese companies (you get what you pay for).

Being in Canada, I did find it necessary to order a donut from Tim Hortons.  Check that one off the bucket list.

Best Brunch in Vancouver

Consistently rated the best dim sum joint in Vancouver, Kirin (麒麟) Seafood Restaurant easily meets those expectations.  They also price like they know they are the best.  Their cheapest dim sum platters are nearly $6, which is double those of most other dim sum restaurants.  But know that every dollar you fork over at this establishment is a dollar well spent.  After all, even a $6 dim sum platter is cheaper than your run-of-the-mill mediocre plate of tapas, to say nothing of really good tapas.  Here are some of my favorite dim sum dishes as imagined and prepared by Kirin.

Vancouver Japanese Food

Vancouver's Japanese food scene is as rewarding as its Chinese food scene, although I did not find as much presence from Japanese folks as I did from the Chinese folks in the area (numbering nearly 40% of the metropolitan population, I am told).  Many of my Japanese meals did not get photographed for various reasons, so I will provide a Vancouver food map at the end of this post, and provide notable feedback in this section.

During my stay, I enjoyed an alarmingly mouth-watering bowl of ramen at Ramen Jinya; two platters of Japanese curry at Clubhouse Japanese Restaurant and Zac Zac; one beef donburi at Gyudonya; and some very succulent karaage.

Most notable of all was the bowl of Jinya Tonkotsu Black for $12.95 at Ramen Jinya.  I alluded above that I like my broths so deep and rich, the flavors would seem to seep into your tongue as if it were a sponge.  This ramen broth, tasting like they actually stewed a pig carcass for days, blew me away.  When I ordered it, I regretted not including any extra toppings; but by the end of it, I had forgotten entirely about the toppings.  All I needed or wanted was more of that pork broth infused with black sesame.  Pictured below is their downtown Vancouver menu with the Tonkotsu Black featured front and center.  Apparently, they have branches throughout the West Coast, Texas, and Chicago.

On my last evening in Vancouver, I was really craving Japanese curry.  So I found Zac Zac, a fast-food curry joint tucked away inside the food court at the H-Mart near the entertainment district.  I found the curry to be much thinner than I would expect and a lot less spicy than I would like, but the other flavors were done well.  I ordered a spicy beef curry thinking they would take the heat up a notch, but they only added a few jalapeno slices, which can be hit or miss on the spiciness scale.  These pepper slices were mostly misses.

Summary and Map

And that was mostly it!  I enjoyed a bowl of pho one night at one of Vancouver's better rated restaurants, but it did not really measure up to Pho 75 in the DC Metropolitan area, and it fell far short of the amazing bowl of pho I had years ago in Toronto.  I was also tempted to try poutine until I learned that it was (or seemed like), for all intents and purposes, cheesy fries.  And honeslty, I prefer my terribly greasy, heart-attack flavored, obesity epidemic inducing cheesy fries "Made in USA."  The map below shows my notable food excursions in Vancouver.

Sweet Onion Pork Belly Kebabs

Recently, I received a grill as a gift of sorts, which means a whole new branch of food (and additional challenges and experiments in preparing it) has opened up to me.  What piques my interests, of course, is that many different cultures and peoples, each with their own style and techniques, have separately developed the art of grilling over several millennia.  Being Chinese and American, it makes the most sense for me to explore these grilling cultures first, and then maybe converge on the old world spanning from Western Asia (or as Americans call it, the Middle East) through the Mediterranean to Europe.  Interspersed in that, I may also try learning how other East, South, and Pacific Asians grill.

First experiment: American Barbecue.  While I was at work on Friday, I got the idea that pork belly would taste amazing on kebabs.  I had no time to pick up the ingredients for dinner Friday night, so I let the idea marinate as I salivated through the night.  Saturday morning, I ran out to grab all the ingredients and began preparing the kebabs.  I bought pork belly that was prepped for Korean barbecue so that the slices were very thin and therefore stackable on a skewer.  I chose this approach rather than large cubes for two reasons:

1. Thinly sliced meat takes much less time to marinate.
2. I thought that thinly sliced meat would cook a little more evenly, rather than having a cube burn on the outside but still be raw on the inside because heat had not yet penetrated.

The marinade was prepared by combining half of an onion minced, minced garlic, minced ginger, laoganma (老干妈) chili peppers, some cayenne pepper powder, mirin syrup, vinegar, and a little soy sauce.  Many of the ingredients were substituted based on what I have at home versus what I envisioned to be a good American Sweet Onion sauce.  Because I usually do not cook Western food, I lacked ingredients like ketchup, apple vinegar, apple juice, and mustard powder.

The kebabs were designed to maximize the juices of the meat and the properties of the vegetables in a way that made sense to me.  Doing some online research, I initially learned that most folks do not stress too much about the design of their kebabs since this is supposed to be one food item that is quick and convenient.  Regardless, I thought I would try implementing what I have learned about ingredients.  The pork belly was always tightly cupped between two concave slices of onion to encourage the enzymes in onion juice to seep into the meat while the meat juices flavored the onion.  Following that, I placed two layers of green and red bell peppers to refresh the palate between bites of rich pork belly.  While grilling, I brushed the leftover marinade onto the kebabs generously on all sides to ensure that the flavor soaked into the kebabs.

The finished result was kind of beautiful and mouth-wateringly delicious, but the credit goes to the meat.  As one website said, making the best kebabs starts with selecting the cut of meat, so I gave myself a good head start by picking pork belly.  Next time, I would spice up the kebab even more as the chili and cayenne was mostly lost in the tangy sweetness of the sauce.

West Coast Gem on the East Coast

Those who know me know that I am always on the lookout for curious and/or incredible eats, and I found just that in A&J, a Los Angeles chain serving Taiwanese food in Annandale, VA.  I do not exaggerate when I claim that this place leaves most other Northern Virginia Chinese restaurants in its dust.

Walking into the small space, the restaurant immediately set off triggers in my mind.  Chinese people eeeeeverywhere.  And not predominantly Chinese-Americans--Chinese.  There were small dishes cluttering every table, with young and old folks alike slurping and chomping away.  The air was cooled but not modified otherwise as an enveloping aroma of good food hit me like a wall.  There was a clamor and sense of urgency to the customers eating and the employees working, giving off a bustling liveliness (热闹).  A lady from behind the counter shouted a question at me and caught me off guard: "两位?" "Two seats?"  She might as well have said "Welcome home."

I went with a friend, and we both ordered noodle bowls, despite the summer heat, and some side dishes.  I ordered a Taiwanese spicy beef tendon noodle soup, picture below.  When they asked us whether we wanted thin or thick noodles, I thought the thin noodles would be too thin so I ordered thick.  Turns out the thin noodles are fairly normal and the thick noodles are thicker than I prefer, but it did not ruin the overall taste.  The thick noodles taste like they were made in-house, but they are most likely made by machine, not hand-pulled.

For side dishes we ordered everything pictured below, in order from left to right:

• Chinese scallion pancakes (葱油饼)
• Steamed vegetarian dumplings (花素蒸饺)
• Spiced spare ribs steamed with rice batter (粉蒸排骨)
• Chicken and mung bean noodle salad (雞絲拉皮)
• Seaweed beansprout salad (芽菜海带)

IMPORTANT: This place only accepts cash.  I highly recommend this restaurant without any reservations whatsoever.  Thanks a bunch to a colleague who suggested I check it out!

There is No American Cuisine, But There Could Be

A friend shared this video with me from the BigThink YouTube channel.  I think it is the beginning of a very curious discussion about what could be an American cuisine.  Every other nation and/or congruous culture has had many hundreds, even thousands of years to develop a cuisine that was heavily driven by environmental factors.  America has existed for slightly over two hundred years.  In this video, Dan Barber starts to get into the idea that the lack of similar environmental pressures in a temperate, bountiful land has created a food culture of excess but no creativity.

Tots, Beer, and Grilled Cheese

A daily rotation of beers on tap, 24 of which are served each day.  Killer tater tots.  Heavenly Grilled Cheeses.  There may not be a better reason to come to Falls Church.

Before a friend in college re-introduced me to the tantalizing world of grilled cheeses, I did not have a very high opinion of these sandwiches.  At that point, my only prior experience with grilled cheese was the nasty chunk of questionable dairy product on bread that American grade schools serve for lunch.  Living in Cleveland for a long time, I did not even manage to visit Melt Bar and Grilled.

But this piece is not about the Melt.  It is about an unassuming 21+ dive bar tucked away between two corporate office buildings in Falls Church, VA.  I am writing about Spacebar.

I have been there a few times now, and each time I visit, there is something new to try.  Of their grilled cheese specialty, they serve 20 different house sandwiches.  If you do not like what you see on the menu, you can customize or put in an order with your own sandwich build.  Below are three sandwiches from the two times I stopped in.  Because the interior is pretty dim, some of the photos are grainy.

Bacon, roasted red pepper with feta and mozzarella on sourdough.

Pulled bbq pork, crispy fried shallot, sharp cheddar on rye.

Roast beef, garlicky sautéed spinach with feta and mozzarella on sourdough.

And of course, the meal would not be complete without beer (not shown) and their amazing tater tots.  Next time, I want to try out their other tots item, tatchos, which is tots with any cheese or ingredient on their menu added on top.