My Little Dragon Bags

I've sure most of you have already been to the wonder that is DinTaiFung in Arcadia, California. The only American branch of the famous Taiwanese "little dragon bag" restaurant, DinTaiFung serves up xiaolongbao, succulent little pork dumplings inside a thin layer of dough, like you've never tasted before. The secret is to inject almost-frozen meat juice into the piece of pork before it's cooked, and then wrap it in the dough skin, steam it, and then juice melts into the juicy soup that xiaolongbaos are famous for.

Since we don't have any DinTaiFung chains up here in San Francisco, though, the closest thing to authentic is: Shanghai Dumpling King, located on Balboa Avenue in the Outer Richmond, between 34th and 35th avenues.

This tiny restaurant is literally a hole in the wall, but it's not a secret that this place is good. The Chronicle's reviewed it before and it's known among SF circles to be the best place in the city to get our little dragon bags of pork.

Shanghai Dumpling King serves up Shanghainese cuisine, which means lots of sweet and soy-sauced dishes. Now, here's my honest opinion of the restaurant.

There are only three good dishes on the menu, four if I'm feeling generous and not-so-picky. I'll run through all of them right now.















Our first candidate is the obvious one. Our little dragon bags. Xiaolongbao. They may not make them pretty as one can tell from the picture, but these are pretty darn authentic. I already wrote an entry on how to eat them properly, and these don't disappoint when it comes to juice-sucking. $5 will buy you a steamer of 10. A good deal for some good dragon bags.















Lucky number 2 is the Shanghai rice cakes, or chao niangao. This is super soy-sauced, chewy, hearty, and the tiny slivers of meat and vegetables are perfect for balancing the soy-saucey goodness of the rice cakes. The texture is the best part. Wait, no. The taste is the best part. Wait, no. Okay, they're both good. This is also a must order when you come here.















And our last finalist is the green onion pancake, lovingly known to many as congyoubing. It's got green onion. It's flaky and crispy. I think I've said enough. Go eat it.

There you go. The three good items on the menu. Everything else is standard Chinese food. The shengjianbao, or pan-fried dumplings, can be pretty good too, but sometimes I think they're just a bigger version of our little dragon baos.

So if you're somewhere in the Outer Richmond, braving the fog and the cold on one of Mark Twain's favoritest of summer days, come inside and let the juicy pork warm you up. It's gooood.

Shanghai Dumpling King
3319 Balboa Street
(between 34th Ave & 35th Ave)
San Francisco, CA 94121 (415) 387-2088

After you have a bite to eat here, stroll down Balboa Street and visit the grocery shops, go to the bank, or catch a movie at one of the few independent art-house theaters left in the city: the Balboa Theater. The Outer Richmond is a pretty boring place, but it's still a very San Franciscan neighborhood. There's the local public school where my little sister attends, with all the ghetto fabulous Chinese kids; there's the small eateries spanning from 35th Avenue downwards which the high schoolers frequent during lunch time; there's the fog, of course; there's Muzzy's Attic for your quirky and eclectic furniture needs.

So, yes. Eat your dumplings. Take a walk. Embrace the fog. Watch a movie.

Maybe this popcorn from the Balboa Theater will be enough to entice you.















Till next time,

Peace, love, and little dragon bags!

My Soymilk Brings all the Boys to the Yard

Okay, not really. No boys. No yard. I live in the city.

It's still tasty, though.

ANYWAY.

It's been a while since I last wrote an entry! The last time I posted was almost three weeks ago! During that hiatus, I spent two weeks in Yunnan, China, traveling in a tour group with my family, which means trying out lots of different foods and having a lot of fun. Expect a long post of Yunnan foods in the coming week, but for now, as promised, a step-by-step tutorial on how to make soymilk in your home.

Let me warn you, though: this takes quite a bit of time, and if you're doing it alone, it can be a bit painful if you're making big batches of it. I'm talking about making soymilk from scratch, with soybeans, and without the aid of a soymilk-making machine. This is all done by hand--no fancy machines.

But, if you have the time and energy, I highly suggest you consider making this homemade, ORGANIC drink! It's quite labor-intensive, but worth it. You don't have to go to some fancy-schmancy Whole Foods or Trader Joe's or any other bougie organics-loving expensive supermarket to get your organic fix. This is REAL organic for you. This is how we do. It's:

1) Cheap! (less than a dollar to make several gallons of soymilk!)
2) ORGANIC, for all you healthy organic-loving kids! (you know exactly what goes into it! no preservatives or additives!)
3) TASTY! (It's thick and fresh. Imagine fresh-squeezed orange juice, but with milky. AND, you can control how much sugar you put into it, so the sweetness level will be perfect for each individual!)

So, let's go. Ingredients first.
-a ton of dried soybeans. You can buy these at your local Asian supermarket. They're beige/tan colored and dried.
-a ton of sugar
-water, of course
-a cheesecloth, or any type of semipermeable cloth for straining
-a POT

Now, onto instructions, with pictures:

1) Soak your soybeans overnight in water. The soybeans will soak up the water and grow in size, and end up looking like this.
















2) I'm not good with measurements, so I'll just say that you fill your blender with this much soybeans and this much water. If I were to guesstimate, I'd say 1:3 soybean to water ratio. Usually, you want to add more water if you want your soymilk to be more watery; or less water if you want it to be really thick. But it tastes better when it's more diluted, I think. So yes, eyeball it.




















3) Liquefy! Liquefy! Liquefy! Blend for several minutes until you can't see bits of soymilk floating around. Once you turn off the blender, you'll get a mixture which looks something like milk with a layer of foam on top. Just like this.














4) Get ready your cheesecloth! And pour your milk into the cheesecloth but remember to have your pot under your cheesecloth to collect the milk!















5) Oh, look! All that yummy milk inside the cheesecloth!















6) Start squeezing! Squeeze until you can can't squeeze anymore milk out!















7) Okay, once you finish squeezing, you'll have soymilk in your pot, and in your bag you'll be left with the soy hash, and it'll look something like this. You can use it again. Put this hash back into the blender, and add about twice the amount of water, and repeat the above steps. Generally, after the first squeezing/straining, you can use the hash one more time to get more milk out of it, but I wouldn't recommend using it a third time because then it just gets too diluted. After blending/squeezing the hash for the second time, you can put aside the hash. SAVE IT. I'll tell you what to do with it later.















8) Okay, so after all that blending and squeezing and re-blending and re-squeezing, and after you've used up all your soybeans, you'll have a pot (or two or three, depending on how much soybean you bought) of soymilk. There'll be a thick layer of foam on top, and you need to take a spoon and scoop it off the top and trash it.














9) No more pics from here on out, because now it's all descriptive, no pictures necessary. You take your pot of soymilk and cook it on high until it comes to a boil. AFTER the soymilk starts boiling, add your desired amount of sugar. A word of advice: more is better. You might think you're putting too much, but believe me, it takes a LOT of sugar to make your milk sweet. And also, never put in sugar before your milk starts boiling because the sugar will sink to the bottom of the pot and burn, and you'll end up with a burned pot of milk--not so tasty.

Believe me, this is MUCH the TASTIES. Usually, there's a thin layer of film that forms over your cooked soymilk, and it's really delicious and hopefully you're lucky enough to be the one to get to eat it. This soymilk is best either REALLY hot or REALLY chilled.

So, like I said before, it's

Cheap.
Organic.
Tasty.

Oh! And the hash that's left over after all the straining can be used to make soy green onion flour PANCAKES. I haven't figured out a great recipe yet, but I'm trying it out tomorrow, and as soon as I figure out a decent way of cooking it, I'll post it. So, yes, we shall not waste any bit of the soy. This is totally efficient and sustainable cooking.

Much better than Vitasoy. And that's saying a lot, because I really like Vitasoy.*

Anyway, till next time,

Peace, love, and twice-baked brownies!

*Only the Chinese version, though. The white box with the blue "Wei ta nai" lettering. None of that American Vitasoy trash for me.