VanEats

Apparently I have violated the Google AdSense terms of service in this post! I have removed the "offending language" but really this is a bit much.

Eastern style Chinese food, what's it like? First off, we need to get oriented. As our instructor, Lang Sun, taught us, Eastern style Chinese food comes from the area around Shanghai and his home province, Anhui.

The food is flavourful but not spicy like Szechuan or Hunan food. To me it's generally a bit sweet and not as colourful as Cantonese cooking but just as tasty.

We had a great feast but my favourites (together with their Manadarin transliterations) were:

Derek Miller, an excellent Vancouver blogger and writer, sent (thanks!) us the following short piece on Samosa Garden (3502 Kingsway, 604 437-3502) which we quote here with his permission:

QUOTE

Check out our Mini-Review of Green Village, a great place for a northern style Chinese lunch.

Here are some pictures of our lunch there last Saturday:

Deluxe stuffed sweet rice ($3.20):

Hot and Sour Soup:

Here are some photos of the Chinese snacks we enjoyed at my first Chinese Culinary Arts Class.

Chinese Dates, a new experience for me (taste a little bit like small tart Granny Smith apples):

Chinese Pears (mild flavour, juicy, not as sweet as other pears):

Don's experience at Dine Out Vancouver 2004 was more positive than ours, but of course he got the red carpet treatment.

I love his rant later on in the piece on the circus that the quest for a medal in the Vancouver Magazine Restaurant Awards has become. I hope that the other critics are as ethical as Don.

I love the Georgia Straight. But its web site just isn't up to snuff. In particular, it would be great if they would check the URLs in their online articles!

Anyways, if you read Ross Crockford's Seafood guide helps people eat ethically, spot what's fishy are, in this week's Straight, here is the link to the PDF file of the Sierra Club's Citizen Guide to Seafood

Are the Barberton Birds the best fried chicken in the world? Yum. I would love to find out. But with the upcoming baby, we don't have the time to travel to Ohio! If anybody has been there or has a good fried chicken recipe, please let us know!

Tonight's UBC Chinese Culinary Arts course first class was informative and fun.

Two of the many useful things we learned are:

How to pick Chinese green tea - You want small, very green, almost transparent tea leaves from a high altitude and the earlier the leaves are picked the better.