So I was instructed to continue the trend of posting pictures of food. How can I say no?
But first things first. My parents drove up from Florida again on Saturday, and we spent our time together doing the usual things: exploring Doraville's immigrant haven. I stupidly forgot to bring my camera along, but toward the end of the day I remembered that I still had my phone. And thus, after months of gathering dust, I polished off that once-fabled camera function and snapped the first picture that phone has seen in months.
That's kind of sorta completely not really weird. I just thought it was worth taking a photo of, at the time.
Ok I can't stand it anymore. Onward to the food!
So as I said, I didn't actually have my camera with me all day. And by the time I thought of my camera, we had left our restaurant already. It was some hole in the wall Chinese place with the cutest and most awesome staff. The mother worked the kitchen, the father worked the dim sum cart, the daughter waited tables, and the son was the busboy. This picture is just some of the leftovers that I ravenously crammed down my neck earlier today for lunch.
Starting at the top and going clockwise, this is what I had. Green beans stir-fried very simply with garlic, shoyu, and pork cracklin' (I don't know the technical term for that stuff) and awesomely delicious. Next, after the patch of barely visible white rice on which everything is resting, is something that can only be described as the pinnacle of Szechuan cooking. What you can see is the white fish pieces (it was either tilapia or Dover sole, or perhaps flounder), napa cabbage, and tons of red pepper flakes. What you can't see completely is the deliciously saffron-hued broth that had made its way into the nooks and crannies of the rice bowl. When my parents and I divvied up the leftovers, I thought I had the better end of the deal when I got most of the fish. But I took that broth for granted as I ate my meal and realized how lacking my rice bowl was without that fish broth soaking every single grain of rice. My parents called me when a couple hours afterward and described the soup they had made by recycling the broth into a concoction of cod fillets, winter squash, and more napa cabbage. The bastards. Anyway, rounding out this bowl is something that looks like spinach, but isn't. They're actually the greens of the soy plant. I like to think of them as the collard greens of Chinese folk, though I'm sure some people would smack me in the face for making such a comparison.
Aside from what you see there, we also got some amazing little wontons of shrimp, pork, and leek that were eerily reminiscent of dimsum, but served cold in a bowl, drenched in a hot-and-sweet sauce that can only be Szechuan. There was also the ubiquitous Szechuan eggplant that we always get, and some fried rice noodles that managed to keep their crispiness despite the pool of sauce that they were sitting in. We snapped up that junk like we were starving, so there are no leftover pictures of them.
But of course, my parent's are not to be outdone by restaurants, no matter how authentic.
I don't know what else to call these except buns. But they're not buns, though my grasp of Mandarin tells me that the literal translation of what my parents call them is buns. In any case, these are filled with pork and some vegetables that (to this very day) I don't know names for. All I know is that I saw a lot of them while growing up. Normally, you would eat these right as they came out of the steamer, and you'd have to be careful because the juices inside from the meats and veggies would squirt out and dribble down your chin if you bit into it too eagerly. But alas, these had been sitting into an icebox and all the juices had soaked into the dough part of the bun already. Still, awesome.
Don't be fooled by the shadiness of this shrunk-wrapped pork. It's remarkably delicious. My mom (in her infinite wisdom) bought a vacuum sealer off of QVC and has been using it on everything. The only reason you don't see it in any of the other pictures is because those items contain liquids or necessary air pockets. In any case, if you've ever walked around in a Chinatown, you've seen those stores with the ducks hanging in the window. That's what they're famous for. Equally delicious but often ignored by the masses are the cuts of crimson pork that are produced from the same venues. Think of these places as Chinese
charcuteries. It's not quite ham, not quite barbecue. But they're very noticeable and very distinctive. I don't know how my parents found the time to make all of this, but I'm glad they did. I shall eat well for weeks. I'm sure if I did some research I could find out what they're called in English or Chinglish. But take note: study the red hue of this pork and keep an eye out the next time you're in the neighborhood.
TEA EGGS!! These require no further introduction or explanation. They are little bundles of delicious craziness.
The end.
Labels: family, food, home, stories
