Thanksgiving Leftovers: Egg Rolls

This is a utility leftover maneuver. I keep spring roll wrappers in the freezer ready to go for just such opportunities. This dish has nothing to do with Asian food beyond the wrapper that we are using. They provide the usual mushy leftovers from a Thanksgiving meal a welcome crunch. If you think about it pretty much all of the staples of a Thanksgiving meal are quite geriatric. There is nothing crunchy in a Thanksgiving meal. If you cook your turkey well, there isn't anything tough there either!

How do you go wrong deep frying anything? If you fried your turkey, then this is a Meta egg roll; fried, fried turkey egg rolls! If you use stuffing you are Frying fried turkey stuffed with stuffing eggrolls. Maybe you should cram some cranberries in there too... I'm sorry, I'll go now.

These are a pretty simple assembly process. Three ingredients wrapped in a tight roll.

Restaurant Review: Sujeo

Sujeo is Tori Miller's newest enterprise after the success of L'Etoile and Graze. He is letting his Asian pride fly in his newest venture.  Graze has long had some Korean flavor throughout the locally sourced menu: Bibimbap, a Korean stone bowl cooked rice dish, and Kimchi gracing its Ruben for a garlic-y spice kick.

Sujeo is a complete departure into Pan-Asian flavors. All created with local fresh and extremely high quality ingredients. Chef Miller is straying into some seriously deep Asian waters for the Cuisine at Sujeo.

With a single visit to Sujeo with a few dining companions we visited China, Vietnam, Korea, Indonesia, Japan, Singapore and Sri Lanka. Chef Miller has cherry picked some of the best dishes from the wide Asian World and made them his own. Each dish is well prepared, using the highest quality ingredients from around Wisconsin and the US. Each dish has been refined to the point of culinary masturbation. Can great food be so rich and flavorful that it makes you feel dirty?

Dumpling bowls and Chinese Liquor

These are a unique item. I only saw it once in all of my time in China, These are mantou dough which is a yeast dough that has been steamed. I believe they used some molasses and whole wheat to give these little bread bowls their distinctive color and sweetness.

Each person took a bread bowl and used a spoon to add some of the dark mixture in the middle. As far as I could tell there was ground pork, chilies, soy sauce, vinegar, sugar and some very interesting spices in that mixture. Very strong flavored and a perfect accompaniment to the bread bowls

It might have been a ravenous desire for a carbohydrate other then rice, but I remember eating about 4 of those in a dinner with 75 other dishes.

Chinese Liquor:

One of the main reasons Chinese meals tend to get a little fuzzy is because of Chinese Liquor. Chinese liquor is a sorghum based liquor, although smaller amounts of wheat barley and millet can be substituted for the sorghum.

Chinese liquor is anywhere between 40% - 75% Alcohol, compared to vodka's in the US which are usually 40%.

Madison Restaurant Review: Hong Kong Station

I will admit I was first interested in Hong Kong Station's unique noodle ordering system. You are given a pen and a sheet where you can choose from 8 different types of noodles, 3 different broths and more then a dozen mix ins and toppings. It's like the Coldstone of Noodles.

On my first outing to Hong Kong Station I shared a nice meal with this cutie.

She was (un?)fortunately more interested in the magna-doodle then the food, though she seemed love the broken flakes of eggroll wrapper.

I tried the beef broth with Ramen noodles, beef tenderloin, and beef meatballs. The ramen noodles were good but nothing to blog about.  The beef broth was fairly flat. There are a few condiments on the table which make it better. Personally I think what this broth really needs is a deeper roast on the bones before they make the stock and another 4-6 hours of simmering. It is a beautifully clear broth, which means it hasn't come to a full boil, which causes a stock to become very cloudy.

Beef Broth with Ramen noodles beef balls and tenderloin.

I also tried the spicy broth with Chinese egg noodles shrimpballs and shrimp dumplings. The Chinese egg noodles are nearly identical to Wah-Kee's noodles, maybe their source? The Spicy broth had a tiny bit of a kick, but more importantly Szechuan peppercorns floating on top. I told Pete chew on one of those and he spent the rest of the meal asking me "Why would you do that to me?" The analgesic effect slowly wore off as my amusement faded. Chewing on these fills your mouth with a unique flavor and numbs your mouth completely.

Szechuan Frog Legs

Szechuan Frog Legs are actually a very popular and common dish in Shanghai

This, along with all great Szechuan food starts with Szechuan peppercorns.

Restaurant Review: VIP Asian Cuisine

This is a relatively new establishment on Odana road. They specialize in Chinese and Japanese food with two separate menu's.

Since this was a work meal and the restaurant was dark, I didn't take pictures of the food. I know, "excuses excuses," I'll just have to be extra descriptive! Everything was eaten family style.

We started out with appetizers:

Chef's Roll:
(rock shrimp tempura and crab, rolled in bean paper wrappers with brown rice)
This was a weekly special. The flavors were well balanced and the sushi rice was well made. I wasn't left missing the more traditional seaweed wrapping, the alternative wrapping did a good job of highlighting the flavors of the rice and tempura.

Veggie tempura:
Fried broccoli, carrot, asparagus, etc. This restaurant is a fine purveyor of the fry-o-later arts. Everything was very lightly battered and fried tender but not overdone.

Pork dumplings in sweet Szechuan chili sauce:
Yowza! This one was good. The sweet chili sauce almost reminded me of a Thai chili sauce that I get at Suwanasak. Great pork dumplings come swimming in that spicy sauce. Szechuan food is characterized by the interesting peppers that are used.

Szechuan peppercorns. Photo by Nocas on flickr.com

These are highly aromatic peppers which are not very spicy, however they to have the odd effect of numbing your tongue when you bite into them. This can be helpful because they are usually paired with huge amounts of other extremely spicy peppers.

Workplace Cafeterias: China

Would you like to see a workplace cafeteria in Shanghai?

This costs less then $5 at a Cafeteria in the heart of Shanghai's industrial district. A whole steamed fish, soup, a plate of steamed greens, a plate of noodles and of course rice.

SNACKS! Seven eleven style!

One of the greatest things about traveling to Asia are the ubiquitous 7-11s.

They seem to be on every corner. These are kind of like an American convenience stores but it's filled with Asian snack foods. My sister even swears by the hot food at these places. I try not to come within 10 feet of the hot food cases in the US for fear of picking up a case of cancer or... syphilis?

They have potato chips in China, in Thailand, in Japan, just like us. But there is no BBQ flavor, there is no Sour cream and Onion. The have Lobster flavored chips, and stuff like this:

FUN WASABI SHRIMP FLAVOR!

I'm not too sure what FUN tastes like but these were pretty decent chips, a little sweet a little kick from the wasabi but not as spicy as a wasabi pea or anything. There was a little sea-flavor. All around worth trying out a bag with some friends.  But I feel like I've also never seen the same flavor twice. So there is always something new to try.

Ancient Chinese Secret

What is the ancient Chinese secret?

Garlic.

Grilled Oyster with Garlic.

Start with a live oyster, scallop, etc. Open and insert cellophane(bean thread) noodles, and cover in a pureed Garlic sauce. Grill over charcoal.

Wow. just just... wow. The garlic caramelizes in it's own juices turning this glorious golden color and becomes sweet and smokey. No one would tell me what was in the sauce other then garlic. I guess thats why it's an ancient Chinese secret. I think it must be minced garlic and ginger with some oil. Fear not, I will be doing some experimenting and perfecting this, anyone want to come over?

Eggplant stuffed with Jesus.

I... like eggplant. It's you know... a good filler. It can bulk up a stir fry or ratatouille nicely. Baba ghanoush is tasty if not something that I crave.

I mean this guy is pretty cool.

Huggable Eggplant

He's even got his own Cartoon along with this guy!

Saucy Daikon!

Check out their hilarious hijinx at http://imgur.com/gallery/j3tyG5V Thanks Kantackistan!

What I'm trying to say is, unless a eggplant is trying to hug me I couldn't really get excited about eggplant.

This dish showed me how exciting eggplant could be.

 Eggplant Stuffed with pork