Although Patrick and I spent a considerable time at the Chinese supermarket, the true joy of the International Mall was in the food court. It seemed that each of the three restaurants in the food court had its own specialty: the leftmost one offered Taiwanese small dishes (xiǎochī; 小吃), while the one in the middle had Vietnamese noodles and fresh spring rolls. We decided to get ours from the Yu Ton Dumpling House (玉堂餃子館) on the right, however, trusting the large crowd that formed a line in front of its counter. As we waited for our food (for quite a while--the Dumpling House seemed to be hitting its lunch peak), I looked around. The entire food court, which sat probably around a hundred or so, were filled to the brim, with Chinese and Taiwanese families. As far as I could tell, there were only two Westerners, with one being Patrick. I couldn't have told if there'd been a few non-Chinese East Asians like myself mixed in the crowd, but I was pretty certain that we were the only group there without anyone who spoke Chinese.

Which posed a small challenge: when our food came out on a tray, I noticed that seafood congee wasn't there. I tried to communicate this to the young guy behind the counter, who looked at the order slip and understood my concern. He nodded, pointed at the slip and said something in rapid-fire Chinese, smiling at me. (He was very nice.) Not understanding any of what he said, I made a face--a universal sign of "what?" He looked at me with his eyebrows twisted, his eyes clouded with genuine concern. He repeated what he said again, which of course I didn't get. Then, one of the customers in line, a woman with a long hair swaying down to her waist, stepped in.

"He'll call you when it's ready," she translated. Ahh, I said, and thanked her. The guy seemed relieved, as I turned to carry the tray to our table. Wondering how we would recognize that we were being called when we were, I walked back to Patrick through the maze of tables and other customers with their own trays of food.

Soon, the same, gentle-looking guy behind the counter called out our number (in Chinese), and realizing that we don't even understand simple numbers, started to wave his hands at us. My seafood congee was ready.

With a chive bun, fried dough (which they called "twisted crullers"), dessert tofu (tofu fa, 豆腐花), and a house special of fried tofu and pork in black bean sauce--on top of that delayed congee, we definitely went overboard. But that was an overdose worth every bit of calories.

I don't even know where to begin--it was all very tasty, perhaps with the exception of the congee, which I'd had better ones. So, I guess I can start with the stuff in the first photo. Though (relatively speaking) not so rare in Chicago's Chinese food scene, the fried tofu in black bean sauce was fantastic. Something in the dish--maybe the tender, pouchy tofu--made it seem more down-to-earth Chinese food that might be served at someone's home. It may have been the sauce, too, that seemed a little homier than your usual restaurant kind.

But the real fun was in the items that appeared in the "weekend breakfast menu." I was apprehensive that the fried dough might be too oily and heavy, but that proved a worry over nothing. The oil only gave the dough a satisfying flavor and was never overpowering. I have no idea how they make it so un-oily, but it was. The flour dough was slightly salty and slightly sweet, with the reassuringly comforting flavor of the wheat flour. It was sort of like a toughened-up version of a really good "cruller" type doughnut. Quite a few people were dipping them in bowls of soy milk, but the fried dough was excellent by itself. It was huge--more than a foot long and three inches across--but I could have eaten the whole thing without any problem (other than my rapidly expanding waist line, that is).

The chive bun was a steamed-then-fried bun with chives and glass noodles. Compared to the sublime simplicity of the fried dough, the chive bun may not have been as good (a bit too heavy on the artificial MSG flavorings, and the bun itself could have been better), but it was still very, very good. Again, I could have eaten the whole thing, although it, too, was on the humongous side. Yu Ton Dumpling House must go through a scary number of chive buns and fried doughs; as I waited for our food by the counter with other customers milling around and constantly fetching their food, I probably saw 50 fried doughs and 30 chive buns come out of the kitchen, only to quickly disappear somewhere in the hands of happy customers. No wonder they tasted so fresh.

Now, all these were very good, but what really made my day was the tofu fa. Just around the time I left Japan in 2003, a boom of Hong Kong sweets was starting to happen. I never had a chance to try any of the interesting-sounding sweets, but I did have enough time to pick up bits of information on them. Made of familiar ingredients like sesame seeds, read beans and coconut milk, the Hongkonese desserts still sounded fascinatingly different. Tofu fa was among them. I'd been meaning to try one, but somehow never got around to it. Imagine my excitement, then, when I found two variations of tofu fa listed in the breakfast menu.

One option was the deluxe version with everything on it, but I opted for the other one with simply one ingredient: peanuts. It was (again) on the gigantic side. Bathing in a brown, chilled syrup was a few large pieces of very delicate and silky tofu, topped with peanuts boiled in the said syrup. (I photographed it, but it doesn't look as good as it tastes.) The ivory-colored tofu in tofu fa is much softer and smoother than normal tofu, but it has the same distinctive flavor of the soy beans. I was surprised by how well that tofu flavor works with sweetness: the tofu flavor gave depth to the potentially flat sweetness of the syrup. But this is not to say that the syrup was merely sweet, flavorless liquid; it was quite peanutty, which then complimented the tofu. All in all, my first tofu fa was a refreshing dessert. It would be an awesome replacement for morning yogurts, I thought, if I could get it around where I live.

We felt compelled to take a nice, long walk through the forest of the Morton Arboretum after this extravagant meal of $16. Stuffed to the brim and nothing less than euphoric, we scrambled into the car and drove to the Arboretum, where we did take a little walk in a quiet prairie at the Western end of the park. (A huge flock of yellow flycatchers!) I liked the Arboretum a lot, and we're thinking about going back with our bikes--the meandering, shaded, slightly hilly trails seemed perfect for a leisurely bike ride. And when we go back there, we're definitely getting those fried doughs again. One for each of us, next time.

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Yu Ton Dumpling House
International Mall
665 Pasquinelli Dr., Westmont, IL
630.323.2329
As a side note, the Dumpling House occupies two stalls in the food court. Next door to the ordering counter, they had half a dozen extremely fresh-looking Chinese vegetables for sale, which seems to assure the freshness of the ingredients they use.

I didn't even know the existence of the village of Westmont until very recently, but ever since I read about the suburban community west of Chicago on Drivethru (scroll down to Gino's comment), I'd been very curious. Apparently, there's a significant Taiwanese population in Westmont, which gave rise to something called "International Mall." I learned, from stray online bits, that the International Mall has a decent Taiwanese supermarket and a food court that offers weekend breakfast. Reading one reviewer on Yelp, who says the weekend breakfast is the "closest thing to an authentic Chinese breakfast" beside sailing across the Pacific to Asia, I almost drooled onto my keyboard: fried dough dipped in sweetened soy milk... chive buns... it sounded too good to be true. I just had to go.

The problem is that it's so out of the way, if not far away. By the intersection of Routes 83 (Kingrey) and 34 (Ogden), the Mall is at least 45 minutes drive from where I live. Driving out there just to get breakfast seemed, as appealing as an authentic Taiwanese breakfast was, a bit much. So, when we decided to spend what was possibly the last day of summer exploring the nearby Morton Arboretum, I grabbed the occasion. Drawing the plan couldn't have been easier: we'd catch the fried dough breakfast at the Mall, drive fifteen minutes to the Arboretum and spend a quiet day communing with the artificial nature.

Once at the Mall, we checked out the Whole Grain Fresh Market on the eastern end. Though much smaller if compared to Jewel and other chain supermakets, the place was overwhelming: an entire aisle was dedicated to noodles of different ingredients, shapes and sizes while another was occupied by more Chinese dried goods than you can imagine. Cookies and sweets spilled out of the two rows of shelves dedicated to them, and were pressing onto a few shelves in the front. At least 20 different kinds of rice--red rice, black sweet rice, black wild rice, Jasmine rice, short grain rice, long grain sweet rice...--were prominently featured by the entrance. But the most overwhelming was the collection of mostly Chinese sauces that occupied a whole aisle. Many of the sauces were familiar to us (sa cha djan, to ban djan, chi ma djan, etc.), but so many others were utterly mysterious and esoteric.

Abalone cookies/

We picked up a few confectionery ingredients (black sesame powder, almond powder and black sugar) and a few Chinese cookies. One of them, the abalone-shaped cookies, had quite an interesting ingredients list that included shallots and Chinese spices. The unique, sweet-and-salty flavor of the cookies went surprisingly well with jasmine tea. (I had them with and without the tea, and discovered that enjoying them with tea is the way to go.) I'm not sure if I would know that it was the shallots if it weren't on the ingredients list, but the cookies do carry a faint, fleeting aroma of the shallots, making it quite unusual in the U.S., I'm sure.

The cookies were interesting and quite tasty, but there were reasons for not picking up other things at the market. For one, it was too hot in the car for anything requiring refrigeration to survive for too long, but for another, the market's fresh produce and meats could have been fresher. "H Mart definitely elevated our expectations from ethnic markets," Patrick said, and I agree.

In the light of the freshness, variety and quantity of the produce, meat and fish at H Mart, the Whole Grain Fresh Market was sub-par. (Ethnic markets do face the indomitable challenge of a smaller clientele and a slower turnover rate as a result, which favors the behemoths like the H Mart--I know. But still, selling moldy mushrooms and gray beef didn't appeal to me too much.) Even with the occasional organic produce (as to be expected from their name evoking such organic-centered places as Whxxe Foods and Wxxd Oats, I suppose), I wasn't impressed by the Whole Grain market on this regard. But it's okay--the true joy of the International Mall was its food court.

To be continued (because I'm mean).

Been busy with moving. I'm still tired from all the packing, carrying the boxes up and down the stairs, and most of all, deciding what to throw away and what to take along. It's amazing how much stuff we accumulate as we live our lives. Most of them aren't that essential--not that I believe in a life that's made up of only the bare necessity--but it is so hard to throw them away. Though between Patrick and me I'm the Acting Minister of Toss-It-Out, it does give me some pang of guilt to hear the "thud" of something still functioning hitting the stinking bottom of the dumpster. I've known, all along, that the lesson is not to buy stuff that I don't absolutely love and/or absolutely need, but they still seem to find ways to infiltrate my life. Grrr....

So, we used the weekend to pack and move most of the non-furniture, non-essentials to the new apartment, where the current tenant let us fill up one of her unused rooms with our u-haul boxes. I'd been planning to hold on to my kitchen stuff till the last moment in the current apartment, but early on Sunday I was hit by an urge to be done with them, and ended up packing and moving most of them. My kitchen looks very white now--no more colorful condiment bottles and sundry sacks on the shelf, no take-out menus on the fridge door, no cooking utensils on the windowsill. All the walls, shelves and countertops are exposed, and white. It's so white that it feels like a hospital room, indeed.

Till we unpack the kitchen stuff in the new apartment, we'll survive on take-out food and coffee (I'm keeping the coffee maker till the last minute in this apartment; it's our life line). For lunch, I drove out to Hong Kong Buffet, a Chinese place on Lincoln Ave., figuring that it'd be a hassle-free meal. I filled up the styloform conatiner with noodles; stir-fried veggies and meats; and a peach-shaped steamed bun (my favorite); and paid a mere $3.76 for its weight. I came home delighted.

What I soon discovered should have been obvious: there was no cultery to eat the food with. I'd packed all the chopsticks, forks and knives. Even the plastic ones we'd saved from other take-outs had been packed away. Loathing my own thoroughness, I looked around the empty kitchen and the similarly (but slightly less) empty computer room. Nothing. Just when I started to consider the pros and cons of eating the General Tso's Chicken with my bare hands (or the alternative was to use the Dunkin Donuts' straw), I remembered last night's dinner. I recalled, specifically, a plastic fork. Carelessly thrown onto a bag of just-out-of-the-fryer French fries, the fork had warped in the middle, forming a rugged half circle. A warped fork is better than a straw or bare hands, when it comes to eating utensils, so I dug into the grease-spattered brown bag from last night (which was, shamefully yet conveniently, still sitting on the table). Sure enough, the fork was still there, and my lunch and my dignity as a civilized eater were both saved.

So, the lesson is, if you can't learn the first one about not buying stuff you won't need, to say "yes" to the crutial question at the take-out counter: "Do you need a fork?"

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Hong Kong Buffet
6249 N. McKormick Rd., Chicago, IL
773.649.0888
The food was good, a standard Chinese-buffet fare. Although some Yelpers absolutely hate this place to the marrow ("yucky" "msg" "filthy" "greasy" "peking duck resembles roadkill" "no wonder they make you pay before you enter the restaurant" etc.), I didn't find it any more horrific than any other Chinese buffet. Maybe my standard for Chinese buffet is lower than it should be, but hey, when I'm paying under $4 for a full box of meats and veggies, I'm not gonna complain.

It's been pretty mild for July, so I've had a chance to cook things not exactly for hot season. Although I do love eating refreshing salads and chilled noodles at the height of summer, the diet of chilled food does get dull after a few weeks. So I was happy to opt for a homey Chinese-inspired soup when the temperature came down to the 70's. It's a very simple soup with daikon, shrimps and tofu, but somehow very comforting and satisfying.

One crucial ingredient for this soup is shrimp shells, which make the soup base. Shrimp shells have an awesome flavor--it can work in almost any cuisine, from Chinese soups to Italian pasta sauces to American bisques. For this reason, I never buy pre-peeled or pre-cooked shrimps; I want the shells, raw. (Every once in a blue moon, I find a little ziploc bag of shrimp shells and legs from god-knows-when hiding in a back corner of my freezer.) Another crucial ingredient is the tofu. The tofu really should be extra soft. Most tofu available in generic markets, even ones that claim to be "soft," are too rough and tough for this delicate soup. You want a silky, soft texture that doesn't interfere with the low-impact rest of the soup. If you know an Asian grocer in your area, look for a Japanese "kinugoshi" tofu, or a Korean Soon-Dubu tofu, made for Soon-Dubu Jigae (Korean hot soup).

Ginger Daikon Soup with Shrimps (for two)

• 6-7 inches daikon raddish (if it's thicker than your wrist, make it shorter)
• 1/2 pack super-soft tofu
• 10 shrimps
• 1 inch ginger, minced
• 1 green onion, chopped
• 1/2 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1/2 tablespoon sake (or mild white wine)
• 1/3 tablespoon cornstarch (for shrimps)
• 1/2 tablespoon cornstarch mixed with 1/2 tablespoon water (for soup)
• salt and pepper to taste

First, peel the shrimps. (Don't throw away the shells!) Marinate the shrimps with soy sauce and sake, and sprinkle 1/3 tablespoon of cornstarch and mix to coat. The cornstarch should keep the moisture within the shrimps when they're cooked, and add nice, gelatinous coating to the shrimps.

Boil water in a pot and throw in the shrimp shells. Boil for a while to let the oceanic flavor seep out of the shells and drain. (Now you can throw away the shells...) Add ginger and daikon in the soup base and cook till the daikon is transparent. Turn the heat down and add tofu and shrimps. (If cooked at high temperature, the shrimps toughen.) You might want to break the tofu by hand, if it's very soft--cutting it on a cutting board and transferring the pieces to the pot could be tricky.

Give a stir to the cornstarch-water mix and pour it into the pot. Mix carefully so that the tofu won't be in shards. Turn the heat up a little and let the soup boil gently for about three minutes, or till it thickens a little. Add green onions and season with a little bit of salt and pepper.

The fun of this soup is to serve it in a large, communal bowl. In your individual soup cups, you can add other flavorings to your soup, as you have seconds and thirds--I like to have it "as is" for the first cup, then add a tiny dash of olive oil for the second, and maybe a bit of to ban djan (Chinese hot sauce) to the third. To do this, I keep the salinity low when I season the soup at the end of the cooking. You'll be amazed how different the soup tastes each time, and how good it can be without any addition at all.

Ma Po Tofu is an ubiquitous staple in Chinese restaurant in Japan. From dingy, family-run eateries to upscale restaurants, every Chinese restaurant seems to have this dish on the menu. The Japanese like this aromatic and spicy tofu concoction from Sichuan so much that there are a wide range of ready-made sauce mix for Ma Po Tofu available in supermarkets. As a result (?), I'm quite fond of the dish, and sometimes get craving for it.

Culinary history has it that Ma Po Tofu was first created by a common Chinese wife as a cheap yet filling dish during the Qing Dynasty. Its Japanese incarnation features cubed tofu, which is stir-fried in a thick and spicy sauce with ground pork and green onions. The signature aroma and tongue-numbing spiciness of the original Chinese version derive from two different spices--red chili (usually in the form of To Ban Djan and Sichuan peppercorn--but the Japanese version often skimps on Sichuan peppercorn to suit the less spice-resistant Japanese palate.

We spent the morning running some errands today, and when we got home a few hours past noon, I had a mild craving for the dish. Luckily, I had a package of tofu, ground pork and spices, so I decided to make Ma Po Tofu for lunch. For some reason, though, I didn't feel like eating the brown gravy (which is what Ma Po Tofu usually looks like), so I made a few adjustments to accommodate my weird temporary aversion to brownness. Because I omitted most of the brown ingredients (soy sauce and oyster sauce), the dish came out much lighter both in color and in flavor. I think this might be a good Ma Po Tofu derivative for a hot summer day. If you're interested in a recipe closer to the original Chinese dish, though, Food Network has a decent-looking recipe here, in a section appropriately titled "Budget Gourmet."

Greener Ma Po Tofu (for two mild appetites)

• 3/4 pack firm tofu
• 5 oz ground pork
• 2 green onions
• 1/4 bunch (about 20 stalks?) Asian chives
• 3/1 inch ginger
• 1 clove garlic
• 2 tablespoon sesame oil
• 1 teaspoon ground Sichuan peppercorn
• salt and pepper to taste

For the sauce, mix the following together beforehand:

• 1/8 cup chicken stock (or dissolve Chinese chicken bouillon in the same amount of hot water)
• 1 tablespoon corn starch
• 1 teaspoon To Ban Djan (Chinese chili paste)

First, drain the tofu by wrapping it in paper towel on a plate. I recommend using American-made tofu for this dish, because Japanese ones tend to retain more moisture and take more time to properly drain (plus they are more fragile). Chop up the green onions, Asian chives, ginger and garlic. Heat 1 tablespoon of sesame oil in a large enough pan (or in a wok, if you have one) and fry the aromatics till they start to emit their awesome fragrance. Add ground pork and fry till it's cooked. Season with salt and pepper.

Cut the tofu into 1/2-inch cubes. (If you get a Japanese tofu, this step gets trickier: because Japanese tofu is so fragile, it often requires that you place it on your palm and cut it by gently pushing a knife through, without forward or backward motion. Get a firm American tofu to avoid this excitement.) Add the cubed tofu in the pan and gently stir-fry for a few minutes so that you won't break up the tofu too much. Give the pre-mixed sauce a final stir (corn starch is quick to settle on the bottom) and pour it in the pan. You might want to turn the heat down a bit to let the sauce simmer to its appropriate thickness. Meanwhile, ground the Sichuan pepper. When the sauce is at the right consistency (not runny, but not blobby, either), drizzle one tablespoon of sesame oil and sprinkle the Sichuan pepper. Mix lightly, and serve.

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Spice House (with multiple locations) has excellent Sichuan peppercorns. This aromatic spice adds a wonderfully refreshing fragrance to everything from Asian cole slow to chilled shrimp noodles. At $2.09 for a small jarful (1 oz), it's worth the investment.

During the season, I get my supply of Asian chives from the organic Henry's Farm in Evanston Farmers Market, but they're also available in Asian grocery stores like my perennial favorite H Mart.

It's hot. I know it's not that hot, relatively speaking, but I feel pretty hot. I suppose I've become sufficiently Chicagonized...

It's so hot that our dinner table frequently features chilled noodles. I used to buy pre-made package of chilled noodles (called "hiyashi chuuka," meaning "chilled Chinese noodles") from Mitsuwa, but recently I've been experimenting from scratch. My staple sauce for Chinese fusion chilled noodles has been varying mixtures of aromatic herbs and spices in soy sauce, vinegar and a bit of sugar and sesame oil, but recently I tried a different, less saucy version.

I used the shrimp noodles from the Viet Hoa Plaza (link via Chicagoist). These thin wheat noodles contain powdered shrimp, and release a subtle, oceany flavor when cooked. Because I wanted to make the sauce a lot simpler than my usual fair, I figured that extra shrimpy flavor in the noodles would be a nice addition.

Chilled Shrimp Noodles in Oyster Sauce with Sichuan Peppercorn (for two; approximate amount, as usual)

• 1 tablespoon sesame oil
• 1/3 tablespoon oyster sauce
• salt to taste

It seems too simple to proudly present as a recipe... All you need to do is to boil the shrimp noodles, rinse them under cold running water (to give them a nice, resilient texture) and toss them in the sauce. The only twist I gave was a mixture of ground Sichuan (Szechuan or Szechwan) peppercorn and red chili peppers; I used a pinch each and pounded them in a mortar with a pestle. (For a Szechuan cole slow I made with this aromatic spice, see this post.)You can add whatever veggies you'd like to serve with it, but for this meal, I used a tomato and a few scallions.

The combination of two ocean-derived flavors--oyster sauce and shrimp noodles--turned out to be pretty good. Since most oyster sauces have sweetness added, this deceivingly simple list of ingredients can create a fairly complex mix of flavors. I really liked the dish; it was a nice departure from my usual fair of soy sauce, vinegar and lots of garlic and ginger. I'm definitely making this again this summer.

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Our Sichuan Peppercorn came from the always reliable Spice House.
1512 N. Wells St., Chicago, IL
312-274-0378

The veggie dish I touched upon in the previous entry features a spinach-like Japanese vegetable called "komatsuna" (photographed in the lower-left hand corner). I found a very fresh bunch in the stand of Henry's Farm in Evanston Farmers Market last Saturday, and couldn't resist. It's pretty rare to see komatsuna in Chicago, let alone a fresh one. Flavorwise, they're more subtle than spinach--komatsuna doesn't have that earthy, pungent flavor spinach has (or is supposed to have). The delight of komatsuna is more in the light, crunchy texture than in punchy flavor. Komatsuna is often used in miso soups, and marinated with ground sesame seeds, soy sauce and sugar (goma-ae). (By the way, other veggies in the photo are potted Thai basil, oyster mushrooms and asparagus, from the top, clockwise.)

I also had a fresh, firm bunch of oyster mushrooms, also from a farmers market stand. To use both of them and to enjoy their subtle flavors, I decided to lightly stir-fry them. The ideal recipe would call for real homemade chicken stock, but of course I didn't have one at hand, so I used the powdered Chinese soup mix. In heated oil, I sautéed a generous amount of minced ginger, and added the komatsuna and mushrooms. When they're about 70% done, I added some soup mix dissolved in about three tablespoons of hot water. (I wanted that restaurant-style wateriness; this worked well.)

The komatsuna was still nicely crunchy and the oyster mushrooms had soaked up the ginger and chicken flavors. I could have used all the komatsuna in the bunch; it was such a good accompaniment to steamed rice. The small bunch of komatsuna was (I think) about $3, so this isn't something we can do very often (which is kind of funny because I could easily spend $3 or even more for coffee in one day!), but it'll be quite difficult to resist the soft green leaves when we go to Henry's stand...

I'll probably use the rest of the bunch for miso soup one of these days. There isn't enough left to make the komatsuna a main feature of a dish, sadly.

We've done our first overnight backpacking trip, and have made it back home in one piece, sometime around three this morning. But before going into the food situation on the trail, I have to talk about the lunch on the first day. On Thursday, we caught an early flight to Seattle, arrived there at 9:30 and drove to the Olympic National Park via I-5 and 101. Before setting out to the 14-mile hike (round trip) in the rain forest along the Quinault River, we stopped at the town of Aberdeen, Washington, for lunch. I'd come across a favorable review of the Mallard's Bistro on Chowhound, so it was our first aim. We then discovered that the restaurant doesn't open for lunch, and opted for a Chinese restaurant next door.

When we opened the door, I felt like walking into a Veteran's Hall or something of the sort, for it was a large, dimly lit space with the ceiling two-story high and a wrap-around balcony overlooking the dining area. Quite a few number of elaborately carved teak tables were arranged around an open space in the middle, and booth-style seats accompanied the tables. Along the green, tiled wall were a bunch of decorative Chinese furniture, statues and scrolls, some for sale, others not. The wrap-around balcony was supported by faux-Doric columns, which gave an odd sense of lost grandiosity to the space. We should have been dancing in our best 50's-ish clothes, instead of eating Chinese food in hiking outfit, it seemed.

Despite the over-the-top space and decoration, the lunch specials were reasonably priced at $5.95. My broccoli chicken came with fried rice and sweet-and-sour shrimps, while Patrick's Mongolian beef came with the same fried rice and sweet-and-sour chicken. (By the time we got to Aberdeen, I was starving, and I wolfed the food down as soon as it arrived--thus no photograph. Sorry!)

The ingredients were fresh and the seasoning wasn't too bad. The only thing that took me aback was the color. The sweet-and-sour sauce was brilliant vermilion, thickly draped around the battered shrimps. The sauce for the broccoli chicken was less exciting yellow, but quite stunning nonetheless. Fried rice looked more like Spanish rice, in its bright orange tint. The all-natural, deep green of the broccoli added the finishing brush strokes to this Gauguin-esque canvas of colors. All in all, I felt like I was eating Americanized Chinese food from thirty years ago. Here's a photo of the mostly finished, one-plate lunch--behold the Technicolor goodness.

Again, this is not to say that the food was bad. It was a decent, passable Chinese. The sweet-and-sour sauce was a bit on the sweet side, but then again, it's supposed to. So, except for the stunningly vivid colors, there was nothing wrong with the food. (I'm sure it was chock full of MSG, but coming from the additive's country of birth, I don't believe in its harmfulness.) Combined with the odd space in which it was served, the lunch in Aberdeen was quite an experience.

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If you want to know which Chinese restaurant I'm talking about, leave a comment--I don't feel like badmouthing the restaurant in an overly public manner. The people there were very nice. When Patrick asked for direction, all the servers (and the daughter of one of them) milled around our table and discussed it, and when all of them couldn't be certain which way it is, they pulled out a local phonebook to show us the local map.

Monday was our first summer day, with the temperature in the mid-80s. The sky was blue with a few thunderstorms in the horizon. It was too nice of a day to waste indoors, working at computers. So we decided to pack a picnic lunch and spend our lunch hour at the lake.

I had a small red cabbage, half a carrot, and a bunch of snow peas (among other things) in the fridge, and I'd also wanted to experiment with cole slow with an Asian twist. Back in April, when Tom and I had an Iron Chef Battle (the not-so-secret ingredient was garlic), Tom made a fabulous Asian slow, and I had that in mind.

Recently Tom had also given me a portion of Szechuan Peppercorn from Spice House, so I decided to use it as the flavor backbone. Often used in Ma Po Tofu, Szechuan peppercorns have moderate heat and wonderfully refreshing, slightly minty aroma. This was actually my first time to see them in their original shape (I'd only seen them in ground form), and I really liked the reddish shell with subtle bumpy texture and the creamy green seed that showed between the cracked halves of the shell. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to remove the shells. Out of sheer laziness, I decided to just ground the whole thing, removing only a few conspicuous twigs from the ground peppers.

I shredded all the veggies, and made the vinaigrette:

1 table spoon of olive oil
1 table spoon of vinegar
1 chunk of ginger, minced
1 pinch of Szechuan peppercorns, ground
2 tea spoon of soy sauce
2 tea spoon of sugar

When I tasted the vinaigrette right after mixing, olive oil dominated everything else--even the Szechuan peppercorns. Since I thought the flavors might settle better as the veggies soak up the vinaigrette and the flavors from the veggies in turn seep into the dressing, I tossed the veggies in the vinaigrette and let the slow sit in the fridge for a while. Meanwhile, I baked the (frozen, out-of-the-box) battered cod in the oven and also warmed two pieces of French peasant bread. When, after about 20 minutes, I took out the bowl of cole slow from the fridge, the olive oil had been tamed by other flavors. Hooray!

We packed our lunch, stuffed a backpack with a beach towel, two cans of soda and eating utensils, and headed for the Evanston beach. It was a quiet day at the beach, and we managed to secure a park table. It might have been a bit too windy--while we ate, the tree above us kept adding its leaves and bark pieces to our salad--but it was nice to be out. A little boy raced on the lake shore path back and forth, back and forth, on his colorful training bike, while his mom read by the small mobile crib of his little sister. An older couple were having their brown-bag lunch at the table next to ours, and a young couple sweettalked, leaning on a rock. (It was so relaxing that I forgot to take a picture of the finished lunch box!)

We had to head back soon, but if we hadn't had to, we would have spent the whole afternoon there on the green grass, reading and talking. The Japanese say "I feel like my hair is being pulled back" when she doesn't want to leave, and it was one of those "hair being pulled back" moments.

For Patrick's birthday, my parents had planned a Chinese lunch on Saturday. We dropped the stuff we got from the annual organic plant sale in my parents' backyard and drove off to the restaurant in Glenview.

"Their food is really authentic," my mom raved in the car. "It may not be as good as in Chinatown, but you wouldn't think it's a restaurant in a suburban mall." Even with her rave review, I was skeptical, and so was Patrick, who politely kept his mouth shut. But we were to be pleasantly surprised. The food at the restaurant owned by a Taiwanese family, misleadingly named Szechwan North, was fantastic.

It was before noon when we walked into the dimly lit, overly decorated restaurant (there was a giant jade sculpture of a dragon-shaped sailing ship, about three feet tall, in the entrance, to give you an idea). A middle-aged man with decidedly unfashionable glasses came out from the back, and greeted my father, who immediately struck up a conversation. They both spoke stuttering English, but seemed to be having fun. The man told us (via my father) that he was from Taiwan, but named the restaurant Szechwan North because of the name recognition. My father told him that he'd been to Taiwan several times on business, and mentioned the name of an entertainment district in Taipei, which cracked up the restaurant owner. After a bit more of lively conversation, my father got beer for all of us, and the owner disappeared to the kitchen, still smiling.

The disappearance of the owner was immediately followed by an appearance of a similarly middle-aged woman in a white shirt and black apron. Strikingly red lipsticks seemed a little out of place on her otherwise childlike face. She hastily gave us menus, placed plates and chopsticks on our table, promised us to come back with water and disappeared quickly. Then, another woman, this time in a loose, white, collarless shirt and with her long hair tied into a pony tail, approached our table.

To my surprise, she started to explain what she had at hand for the day. She could steam a fresh, two-pound water pike she just purchased this morning and dress it with her special sauce. We should add a plate of stir-fried pea sprouts, she said, which she also got this morning. We nodded our heads in agreement, half perplexed by the burst of attention we were unexpectedly receiving. To those main courses, we added a bunch of goodies and waited with excitement. The brisk recommendations by the staff made it feel like we came to our regular hangout, where chefs and staff knew what we liked and cooked to our taste. The only thing we ordered right off the menu was our appetizer.

My parents got hot and sour soup, and the younger generation (us) got chicken corn soup. Both were excellent. The hot and sour soup was hot and sour (duh), but it didn't have the nasty, stinging sourness that I'm not very fond of. Our chicken corn soup was a true comfort food, with the slight sweetness of the corn and the robust flavor of from the chicken. I loved the thick texture of the soup as well.

This is the only thing we ordered off the menu: scallion pancakes. The thin wheat pancakes had bits of scallions inside (could have been more), and were served with sweetened soy sauce and hot chili sauce. I think the pancakes were baked with sesame oil, and the combination of the sesame oil and the sweet soy sauce was fantastic in a junk-foodish way.

The female cook (or the woman we assumed to be one) seemed to know that Japanese people tend to order stir-fried noodles at Chinese restaurant. So she included a combo noodles in our main courses. The noodles was the least impressive of the dishes we had at Szechwan North, but that's not to discredit the noodles. They were decent noodles, but the competition was way too harsh for them.

To accommodate Patrick's deep love of black bean sauce, the chef cooked up stir-fried beef with black bean sauce. A dish not on the menu, it had plenty of succulent beef pieces along with fresh onions and scallions. The pungent flavor of the black bean sauce was balanced out with the soy sauce, fresh garlic and ginger, and some sugar. It was one of the best black bean sauce beef in my life. (The dish in the back is the pea sprouts--lightly stir-fried with chicken broth, ginger and garlic. It is truly amazing what a satisfying dish this could be, considering how simple it is...)

Then came the main course--the steamed water pike.

The cook herself delivered the fish, cut the tender fish with a fork and a spoon, and distributed the pieces to our ready plates. When she said she was going to steam the pike, I was slightly apprehensive: I've had enough bland steamed fish in my life. But it turned out that the fish was deep-fried before it was steamed, just to give it the kick of oil (which we're all addicts of) and to coat it with a layer of flour. This extra layer of flour worked as a sort of sponge that picked up the sauce, which otherwise would slide right off the fish. The sauce contained large chunks of ginger, scallions and whole cloves of garlic, and the fish was covered with yellow chives, cilantro and green onions. These aromatic ingredients eliminated the fishy odor that the pike might have had once in his afterlife and worked well with the soy-sauce-based brown sauce.

Mr. Pike disappeared pretty quickly, leaving only his cheek-less head wondering where the rest of his body went. (He was cheek-less because cheeks are often the tastiest part of a fish's body. They tend to be much more succulent and firm than any other parts of the body.)

The tab came out to be about $100 for the four of us (including alcohol and tip). According to my parents, they don't always shower you with recommendations and other assistance. We might have bee just really lucky, coming to it when it was empty; people who came after us were given regular menus and were pretty much left to their own. So, the two recommendations when visiting Szechwan North are A) go there for lunch, and go there early to catch their "we're so bored, we want customers to chat with" mood, and B) if you're lucky enough to get this kind of attention, follow their advice, and don't hesitate to ask for stuff you like (like Patrick did).

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Szechwan North
2857 Pfingsten Rd., Glenview, IL
847.272.0007