I love Little Sheep Mongolian Hot Pot. So, during a visit to Southern California, I was quite excited to try the Los Angeles Little Sheep Mongolian Hot Pot. Sometimes, Chinese businesses confuse me. I’m wary of bootleg CDs, DVDs and handbags. But, bootleg restaurants?
So, as I approach the restaurant, I see 小肥羊, the cute little lamb, and 中国内蒙火锅; however, in 繁体 instead of 简体. However, when we were presented the menu, the restaurant suddenly became 喜羊羊.
Basically, Happy Sheep worked the same way as Little Sheep. Order a broth and a selection of meat, seafood and vegetables for your hot pot. The Happy Sheep broth was very close in flavor to the Little Sheep broth with that distinct Chinese herbal aroma. I could taste the difference between the meats though. The lamb and beef from Little Sheep were much more tender. Also, because the meat slices from Little Sheep curled into rolls, they didn’t clump together like the Happy Sheep ones. Also, I would give points to Little Sheep for presentation. The way they served their raw vegetables, meats and noodles looked more appetizing. Little Sheep is also a LOT cleaner.
Happy Sheep did offer some complimentary appetizers, including sweet rolls that were delicious. They also had an outrageously tasty 鸡肉炒面, which was very popular at my table.
Out of curiosity, I looked up Little Sheep at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office website. Both Little Sheep and 小肥羊 are registered trademarks of Inner Mongolia Little Sheep Catering Chain Co., Ltd. Corporation. Was this the reason why the Los Angeles Little Sheep became a Happy Sheep instead?
I returned to Little Sheep Mongolian Hot Pot last weekend. I still need a copy of their menu, but at least I took photos this time. Sunday night is hot pot night for no particular reason other than parking is free that night. This time, we ordered far less food than last time now that we had a better gauge on portion size and all. Like the first time, we stuck with the non-spicy broth and started with the lamb and beef slices. I really liked the tong ho this time. After its been cooking in the broth for some time, I totally loved the texture of the tong ho. We skipped the vermicelli and wide rice noodles, and opted for the udon instead. I think I liked the wide rice noodles the best so far. For variety, we also ordered the corn pancakes, which were sweet, and the meat pie, which was savory. I really wish I had the menu so I can post the actual names. When we left, the lobby was packed and I overheard that the wait time was about an hour. Glad we arrived early.
A stuffing recipe that I am attempting calls for 8 ounces of cremini mushrooms. I don’t have a kitchen scale. However, I have three packages of mushrooms. One package lists the weight in pounds and the other two weight in pounds. Instead of grabbing pencil and paper, I grabbed the iPhone:
.8 lb + 8 oz + 7 oz in oz
Google says:
(.8 pound) + (8 oz) + (7 oz) = 27.8 ounces
Thanks!
In general, I am a skeptic of boiled food. I have tried hot pot at many different places, both at restaurants and in the homes of friends and family, but never quite found it to my liking. So, I was in for an unexpected treat when I visited 小肥羊 Little Sheep Mongolian Hot Pot in San Mateo, CA for dinner recently. I really wished I had blogged about this sooner while I still had a copy of the menu. So, much of my recollection is based on my fading memory.
First off, you have a selection of soup bases to choose from. We opted for the non-spicy soup which runs for (I think) $3.95 a person. Then, you can pick from a list of various meats, seafoods, vegetables, tofus or noodles. For meats, we ordered the premium lamb shoulder slices and the supreme fatty beef slices. Both were absolutely delicious. Is it even possible for thinly sliced meat to absorb so much flavor from a quick swirl in the broth? I wasn’t curious enough to eat a slice of raw meat to see if it’s been pre-seasoned for obvious reasons. No satay sauce. No peanut sauce. I ate the meat as it came out of the broth and I was sold. We skipped the seafood. Is it even authentic to pass seafood as Mongolian cuisine? It is a land-locked country after all. For vegetables, we had tong ho and 大豆苗 pea sprouts. I’m not a fan of tong ho. Pea sprouts are more my type of vegetable. We also ordered enoki mushroom, which didn’t add or detract from the hot pot. For pasta, we had both the 粉絲 vermicelli and the wide rice noodles. I liked the wide noodles better. For desserts, we had the red bean paste yam cake. I wasn’t too fond of that because the yam cake had too strong a pumpkin taste to it.
However, the star of the night was the broth and the broth-infused lamb and beef. Outrageously delicious and a bit pricey, but entirely worth the experience.
After having some success with Wei-Chuan’s Chinese Cuisine
(中国菜), I decided to pick some some of the other Wei-Chuan cookbooks to diversify, namely Chinese Snacks (點心專輯)
, Chinese Cuisine: Beijing Style (北京菜)
and Chinese Cuisine: Shanghai Style (上海菜)
. I really like the bilingual cookbooks produced by Wei-Chuan. While I prefer to read through recipes in English, I like the title of the dishes to be in Chinese because I am more familiar with the Chinese names. I also like that I can consult with the Chinese recipe if the English directions are unclear.
Last weekend, I made the 糖醋瓦塊魚, which was inartfully translated to Sweet and Sour Fish Tiles. Another reason why I like the Wei-Chuan cookbooks is because the recipes all include a color photo of the final dish. If I had to rely on the awkward English translation, I probably would not have attempted the dish. Anyways, the recipe called for 1 T. of brown vinegar. Since I was unsure what was brown vinegar, I looked at the Chinese recipe which listed 鎮江醋. The bottles I see at 99 Ranch are labeled Chinkiang Vinegar, not Brown Vinegar. So, having the Chinese recipe with the English translation really helped in this instance.
I did notice that in some instances the Chinese and English recipes differed. Specifically, the Chinese recipe for 槽溜魚片called for 味精, but its English translation did not. I guess the translator was aware that Americans are not exactly fond of MSG. However, this cultural sensitivity theory fails if you look at all the dishes in the Chinese Snacks book that requires lard or shortening. I guess that’s the only way to make pastry dough light and flakey, but it’s definitely not a product I stock in the kitchen.
Lately, I’ve been running through woks. On the cheap end, the $10+ wok from 99 Ranch is okay. If it doesn’t work out, you’re only out 10 bucks. No big deal. However, the wok is really light and the non-stick surface, while decent, is not durable. The last one I had only lasted a few weeks because someone (not me) first scratched the non-stick coating by using a metal spoon or other utensil while cooking and then later burned some vinegar in the wok so severely that it hardened and bonded with the non-stick surface. Just scrubbing the wok with a Dobie Cleaning Pad managed to exfoliate the non-stick coating from the wok.
Wok #2 was the Sur La Table 14″ Nonstick Wok. This was my first time using a carbon steel wok. The rest of my cookware is anodized aluminum. Anyways, while the carbon steel wok heats up very quickly, I was not impressed with the non-stick surface. This wok had the stickiest non-stick surface that I’ve ever encountered. Unfortunately, this wok also passed away prematurely when someone used sandpaper to clean the wok? Who uses sandpaper to clean cookware? Non-stick cookware!! So, another 50 bucks down the drain. At this point, I’m thinking that I should have just bought 5 $10 woks at 99 Ranch.
So, I’m stalling and thinking about my next step. I really like the $20 Tramontina wok I picked up last year at Costco. Made of anodized aluminum, this wok lasted about a year before the non-stick surface gave out, which really isn’t bad. One $60 wok that lasts for 3 years or 3 $20 woks that last for one year each? Finally, I ended up picking a Calphalon Contemporary Nonstick Flat-Bottom Wok for $80. The alternative was a pair of Calphalon Contemporary Nonstick Omelette Pans for $40, both prices factoring the 20% off BBB mailer coupon. I actually think the omelette pans were the better buy, but I really prefer the higher sides that the flat-bottom wok offers since it’s better at keeping all the food and oil in the pan. I’m hoping for this latest wok lasts for a few years. If not, that omelette pan looks very tempting.
Some colleges offer conversational Chinese. Others teach business Chinese. However, for Chinese Americans, the real deal is Restaurant Chinese. If you want to order off the Chinese menu, but can’t quite figure out a few of the characters, what do you do? At one point in time, I could only order dishes whose names I had memorized. I couldn’t experiment or try something new because I couldn’t read the entire menu. Now, I have a solution.
Last weekend, I used the DianHua Dictionary iPhone application to order 红烧划水 and 京都里肌. For the first dish, I didn’t recognize the third character. For the second dish, I didn’t recognize the fourth character. If I used a typical Chinese-English dictionary, I would have to count the strokes of the radical, look up the radical, then count the remaining strokes and look up the word. A slow and sometimes unreliable process. However, in DianHua, I copy the character with my finger and the application tells me the pronunciation and meaning of the character. Yum!
My National SR-MK18N rice cooker still works. However, the cooking insert had developed a scratch on its non-stick surface. And, as consumers of non-stick cooking products all know, today’s scratch is tomorrow’s flake. So, who used a metal utensil in my rice cooker? Anyways, Panasonic sells a replacement pan for $49 (which seems a bit steep to me), so I headed online for some comparison shopping. Sure, I can buy an entirely new Zojirushi 10-cup rice cooker from Costco for $99, but the item that really caught my attention was the $470 Zojirushi NP-HTC18 Induction Heating 10-Cup Pressure Rice Cooker and Warmer (via Amazon). The bonus? Amazon had already discounted the rice cooker from $550! For $470, I better be able to watch HD movies from the rice cooker’s LCD panel while the rice is cooking.
Just had two wonderful bowls of fennel 年糕 (nian gao). Nothing you would find in a Chinese or American cookbook, at least one that I own. Basically, I had a bulb of fennel that has been sitting in the refrigerator and needed to use it up. I also had a bag of nian gao (or rice ovlets). So, the two leftover ingredients became one.
- Heat oil in wok over medium high heat. Saute 2 cloves of minced garlic and 1 small brown onion (diced) until golden. I use whole quantities to avoid leaving more leftover ingredients in the refrigerator.
- Add I bulb of fennel (shredded) and continue to saute until caramelized.
- Add 6 shiitake mushrooms (sliced) and cook until the mushrooms have started to wilt.
- Add a dash of ground pepper.
- Heat 1 cup of canned beef broth until boiling.
- Add one package of nian gao. Stir fry until soft. If the nian gao gets too sticky, add the warm beef broth a little at a time to moisten.
- Add 1 T of light soy sauce, 1 t malt vinegar, 1 t sesame oil, 1 t brown sugar and 1 t oyster sauce.
Yes, this is a totally random creation that might appeal only to me. It was a bit sweet and savory with a hint of licorice flavor from the fennel.