Hot Pot: The Art of War

In raiding and plundering be like fire, is immovability like a mountain.
Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt. [6:19]

Sun Tzu's pearls of wisdom from 6th century bc is still a point of reference for modern warfare. It is believed that he wrote The Art of War after laboriously and tediously analyzing the history of war in China. I, however, have a different theory. Being of Chinese nobility, Sun Tzu likely grew up in a very large family, with siblings as numerous as sheep. During the harsh winters, he and his siblings would eat hot pot to keep warm. As battles hard won and lost, it would be these strenuous meals that first taught young Sun Tzu the critical importance of positioning and strategy for ensuring one's survival.

Let us here, then, pay proper homage to the Art of Hot Pot (or, literally, Fire Pot), that most lovable and ubiquitous, trying yet supremely fulfilling, wintertime activity. As relentless food warriors, my friends and I fought the good fight twice in one week -- first to herald in the year of the rat, and then in celebration of our dear Meex's big two-five -- at glorious Grand Sichuan on Canal and Chrystie (no relation to Grand Sichuan in midtown).

At Grand Sichuan they prepare their hot pot in the Chongqing style, making the resultant experience even more closely resembling that of war. The Sichuan peppers and peppercorns flavor the boiling broth in which we cook the food to effect mouth(and mind)-numbingly spicy flavors, creating a full body experience that is at once stupid and euphoric. My body shakes, my skin sweats, and the color of my face emulates that of the Sichuan peppers. But I irrationally persevere.

The Battlefield (The Terrain and Laying Plans)

Here we have the stage of our battle. Grand Sichuan provides a split hot-pot, one side for the warriors, and the other for the not-so-warriors. Guess which side this is.

The Accoutrements (Waging War and Attack by Stratagem)

This here is a sample of the thinly sliced beef that we dipped in our war stew. Other accoutrements included bamboo shoots, tofu, chinese vegetables, pork, scallops, rice cakes, fen si, fish balls, golden-tipped mushrooms, tripe, and much more. Although I have stated that there is no ownership in Chinese cuisine, the art (and fun) of this war is to manage to retrieve your selected accoutrements from the battlefield before other warriors cunningly "handle" them. Once retrieved, the warrior has the choice to bathe his spoils in several dipping sauces. As the daughter of Chinese parents raised in Taiwan, my sauce of choice is the "sa cha," mixed with a raw egg. Sesame, peanut, and pungent tofu were also favored by the other warriors.

The Opportunity (Energy, Weak Points and Strong, and Maneuvering)

Unfortunately a warrior is not so free to stop and take commemorative snapshots in the midst of battle, and I could only sneak in a few photos towards the end while opposing warriors rested. Keep in mind that this was to the detriment of fully capitalizing on my own endurance, but I did it for you dear reader.

The Side Battles (Variation in Tactics)

Besides hot pot, we also waged war and kicked the ass of some other great Sichuan dishes. This here is the pathetic remains of some oil-boiled-fish. I would also highly recommend the red oil wontons, dan dan noodles, double-boiled pork, mahpo tofu, gan bien string beans, sliced beef tenderloin, and so on and so on.

The Aftermath (The Army on the March and Attack by Fire)

We are such bloodthirsty warriors that after the battle had been fought and won by all, we continued plundering. Here you see our greedy spoons sipping the blood (or broth) of the conquered.


In the end, with our our battle wounds on full display, faces freshly scarred by the mighty touch of hot oil fervently splashed by our thunderbolt moves, each warrior emerged victorious, and ready, as always, for many more battles to come.

TANG

As we successfully manage to just completely skip fall the way Foxy Brown manages to just completely skip court appearances, we begin to head into hibernation season, and my thoughts inevitably begin to drift to the warm, comforting, motherly aspects of Chinese cuisine. Particularly, I dream of soup, which also happens to be my last name in Mandarin (tang, but pronounced tong). Like all aspects of Chinese cuisine, tang is widely varied - from the ultimate decadence of the south, shark fin tang, to watery peasant tang; sweet dessert tang with tapioca and taro, to weirdly bitter herbal medicinal tang. Tang is so pivotal that the Cantonese serve it both at the start and end of a meal. Most Cantonese restaurants in Chinatown serve both complimentary house tang and dessert tang. If you are not getting it (probably because you are not Chinese) you are missing out, and should ask your waiter for it.

Fish Ball Tang, one of my favorites.


Chicken Curry Noodle Tang



There are also those lovely little delectable tang dumplings, which are really not considered tang at all, and actually literally translates into "little dragon buns (more or less accurate). But because i love them so much, be so kind as to entertain me and pretend that they too are tang. Since so many people seem to have difficulty mastering the art of eating these little devils, i provide here my very own Food Genius trademarked pictorial tutorial:

First, pick up your chosen darling with extra care (if you pierce the skin it's all over), preferably ones with crab meat inside:


Next, tenderly bathe chosen dumpling in the vinegar and ginger provided, and delicately place it on your spoon. Puncture the skin ever so slightly so that you can carefully slurp up the broth inside, like so:



Finally, gobble down the remainder of the dumpling, and hope that you haven't just burned off all your taste buds, because that would be a damn shame for the rest of the meal:


It's not easy to find little dragon buns here like the kind they have in Shanghai or Taiwan, but I am always relatively pleased at Joe's Shanghai on Pell Street. It's also always a fun kitschy stop in Chinatown, especially since you sit family style with random strangers. When I went last year with some friends, we were seated with some clueless tourists and some equally clueless hipster boys.


Even though these dudes (there were four of them) were hipsters and clearly from some part of Williamsburg, I was shocked at the fact that they only ordered two bins of dumplings and nothing else. I wonder what they thought of us four girls when we had our own two bins, plus:

Duck


Clams


Fried Noodles


And My favorite Chinese vegetable - kong qing cai


Plus we had way more Tsingtao then all of them.


SUCKAAAS!!

Week in Review

You know how marathon runners train the week before the race? Well, I don't, really, but I assume they do something of the sort. Anyways, this week was the week before Thanksgiving. Like any good fat kid, I did as much eating as humanly possible in order to prepare myself for the big day. Here are some highlights.

TRIBECA BREAD
I think shopping at Uniqlo whet our appetites for the finer things in life - after a show at the Knitting Factory, Trent and I were feeling particularly fancy and came here to eat. We found it about two blocks north.

This is what it looks like inside.

All high ceilings, wine barrels in the wall, loft-like Tribeca feel, with an open kitchen. It made me feel like I was in a restaurant in the French Alps.

Tribeca bread.

Or rather, what was left of it after about 2 minutes. I was really hungry.

What I ate:

Sauteed squid, potatoes, tomatoes, and olives. the combinations of textures, flavors, and colors made this a really intense, but delectable, appetizer. The squid was perfectly tender and just the right amount of chewy (which is not a lot, but with a healthy amount of elasticity)


You can see Trent's vegan pasta with tomato sauce in the background. Boring, but still pretty good.

Since my meal was an appetizer and we didnt' get drinks, I think our meal only came out to $40 or so. Not bad for a really decent place.
Food: 8.5 Service: 8 Atmosphere: 8.5 Value: 6 Overall: 8


TOMOE
I've been coming to this sushi joint for about ten years now, and this was the first time I've been there when there wasn't a line. I think that was an indication, because I found this experience to be both sup-bar and overpriced, which is truly sad for what was once my favorite Japanese restaurant in the city.

Toro Nakitori (around $9)

This is cooked toro ina sweet sauce. It was really tender, and the flavor was quite nice. However, I found it to be a too heavy, especially eaten as an appetizer.

Sashimi Regular (around $27)

The sashimi, which is really what makes Tomoe stand out, did not let me down. It is still amazingly fresh and well-cut into the biggest sashimi pieces I have ever seen.


It's a great deal - so much sashimi that even I couldn't eat it all. It's so beautiful.

What made the experience subpar was really owed to the uni handrolls, which were shameful. The uni was too mushy and had a bit of an aftertaste - not fresh. Plus they were $8.50 each. I was so sad I couldn't even take their portrait. The ones I had been eating all week at Marumi (on LaGuardia between Bleeker and W. 3rd), which were only around $5 each, were much better.

Food: 6.5 Service: 7.5 Atmosphere: 6.5 Value: 5 Overall: 6


WINDSOR GARDENS RESTAURANT
2nd installation of the Chinatown food blog: This is another random place my mother and I stumbled into tonight. We'd never been there before, but decided to go because it was raining, I was starving, and it was right next to the parking garage. All excellent criteria for choosing a Chinese restaurant. 81 Chrystie Street.

This was a Cantonese place, which, in Chinatown, is really hard to go wrong in since the Cantonese are more obsessed with food than any other Chinese (as the saying goes, they'll eat everything with legs except the table, and anything that flies except the airplane). Actually the same can be said for most restaurants in Chinatown since they are primarily catered towards Chinese people and not "westerners." But the caveat here is that you have to know how to order. That is why, Jeffrey Max, you are wrong, wrong, wrong.

Pork lo-mein, Hong Kong style ($6.95)

There are infinite varieties of lo-mein, and each restaurant does it differently. This is not what we were expecting, but it was very good. The noodles were thin but bouncy, the bean sprouts added a pleasant crispy element, and the flavor was just right.

Fried Japanese tofu with assorted mushroom (regularly $12.95 but part of the weekly special, so $6.95)

A great choice for vegans and those who love mushrooms of all kinds. There were four, to be exact.

T-bone steak with black pepper (also a special - normally $16.95, but $10.95)

Cooked just right so that the meat was melt-in-your-mouth tender,and NOT well-done, which is a sin. The sauce was typical Cantonese - thick, soy, and robustly flavorful. It worked very nicely.

Dessert

Cantonese restaurants usually provide complimentary "sugar water" for dessert, and soup to start. We didn't get a soup, but settled for the "sugar water" (this one was sweet red bean soup with an orange zest) and the honeydew.

This was one of those Chinese restaurants that I had an immediate prejudice against because they sold sushi. Of course we didn't order any of that nonsense, and the dishes we did order were quite satisfactory for what we were looking for - quick, filling, and delicious. Oh and cheap.

Food: 8 Service: 6 Atmosphere: 6 Value: 8 Overall: 7.5