If by popular demand, I mean at the request of one person.
There was a showdown at San Tung last night. Original dry fried chicken: wings vs. diced. I was on the side of the wings and Kara was trumpeting the virtues of the diced. I'm not sure how the rest of our party aligned itself - or whether they were interested at all. As I expected, the wings triumphed. They are richer and their coating has a more pleasing crunch. An easy victory.
Unfortunately, not everything we ate was so exciting. The mu shu's extra pancake was hard. Like, crispy cracker crunchy hard. I, the martyr, ate it anyway, like a tostada. And the spinach with bean threads, which looked so appetizing on another table, was rather uninteresting. Apparently bean threads have very little flavor.
However, we were surprised by both the hot and sour soup and the tomato beef chow mein. These dishes sound so boring that you might be sleeping already, but they were not. The soup was peppery and had a nice helping of tree fungus (my favorite) and the chow mein was heavy on the garlic. Which can only be a good thing.
On an unrelated note, the January issue of Gourmet is engrossing. I parked myself on the couch for an hour on Saturday and read it cover to cover. "What is Southern?" According to Gourmet, a lot of fantastic recipes and beautiful photographs. I've made one recipe so far, the buttermilk cookies. Make them, now. You will want to eat all of them at once, so make sure there are a few other people around when you open the oven. And please, let the edges brown. The sugar turns into caramelized deliciousness.
1 comment:
martyr? pfff...you ate half my mu shu burrito. and for the record, the wings vs. diced battle-royal went down like this:
wings = superior taste, but only marginally
diced = superior convenience in eating since one's fingers are not covered in sticky goo after eating copious amounts
Post a Comment