Cow internal organs lunch @ Zhu ji (朱记)

I’m not a big breakfast person. Waking up early for work for nearly 5 years (and going to bed late) really messed up my eating patterns, and I’ve found that my lack of hunger in the AM has followed me to China.

The other day a friend called and asked if I wanted to have a late lunch/early dinner (it was about 3pm, I’d just woken up). I thought it would be ok to go with her and have a quick breakfast snack, and off we went onto Nanjing road to what she called a ‘soup place’.

Now, I grew up eating soup. Heinz tomato soup was a cornerstone of lunchtime whenever my Dad and I were spending ‘quality time’ together (watching Home and Away and Neighbous). This, however, had done next to nothing to prepare me for the PWOPER CHINESE VERSION. (Edit: Did I say China?! I meant TAIRANESE!)

So in we went to Zhu ji – an ‘authentic Chinese restaurant’ (finally!) (Edit: See bold above)…this translates to small, cheap and with a terrifyingly unique menu.

Ok, first dish…no suprises…it’s like beansprouty thing with peppers and an interesting (and rather tasteless) ‘meat’. After we’d finished I asked what it was, and found out it was tofu. I’m all for vegetarians getting their protein fix somewhere, but c’mon…not in my plate. Check out the brown ‘rind’ on it…I don’t know why the manufacturer even bother with trying to make it look like meat. /rant

Now THIS is what I’m talking about! Roast beef, thin strips, in my face. Thanks. I wish I’d had some Warburton’s thick crusty white bread, some mustard and a little butter to hand…Oh gawd….I’m a horrible expat scummy English…

Although I totally forgot pancake day this year (the best of all religious ‘holidays’), I felt a littler cLose Weight Exercise/”>Lose Weight Exerciser to God after eating this. Pancakes and chicken and beansprouts and peppers and hmmmm lovely. It was a bit like the calm before the storm because next up…

Soup time! Now, I like to try different things…and this looked pretty innocuous. Hot water, check. Green stuff, check. Meat? Well…if you can call it that…

Out of the soup popped a whole load of stuff which I sure as hell hadn’t seen in any butcher’s shop before (and I used to practically camp out in the butcher’s in Sturton le Steeple to buy drumsticks (the sweet kind not the chicken kind)). I made the terrible mistake of asking if these were mushrooms in the bowl…and my friend replied:

No, they’re all different parts of a cow’s internal organs.

Damn…but I’d come too far to back out, so I slurped down a bowl or two, trying desperately not to chew too long on the bobbly matter that was slipping down my throat. I needed something bland and safe to take away the fear…

…and here it is. A big block of tasteless tofu! With some onions on the top (I think they put them on everything to add the X-Factor).

Next time I go for soup, I’m asking for a full ingredients list and a quality assurance that the meat is organic and farmed away from nuclear plants (and I’ll certainly have a couple more beers before sitting down to eat).

Facebook chat emoticons, emotes and smilies

Want to add some spice to your new Facebook chat conversations? Here are the obvious (and maybe not so obvious) smilies/emoticons/emotes that you can use in your Facebook chats! Just type what’s under the picture and it’ll pop up in your chat!

Happy emote: :) or :-)

Really happy emote: :D or :-D

Wink emote: ;) or ;-)

Happy eyes: ^_^

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Cat smile: :3

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Sad: :( or :-(

Crying emote: :’(

Shocked emote: :o or :-o

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Glasses emote: 8) or 8-)

Cool shades: 8-|

Rude: :p or :-p

Woot?!: O.o

Dork emote: -_-

Duhhh emote: :/ or :\

Devil emote: 3:)

Angel emote: O:)

Kiss emote: :-* or :*

Love emote: <3

Pacman: :v

Robot: :|]

Weird guy’s face: :putnam:

NEW Shark emoticon: (^^^)

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NEW 42 Red emoticon: :42:

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If you find any new Facebook smileys add them in the ‘comments’ and I’ll update this list!

Thanks!

Goodnight MSN, Farewell Gmail…Facebook chat is here (finally)

It was just a normal day in cyberspace, when suddenly my Facebook window had a couple of grey buttons at the bottom:

I’d heard that Facebook was testing its chat client across a number of networks…I wonder if China just got added or whether it’s now ‘in the wild’. Either way, I had to click!

Oooh nice little notification window popup, not harming the normal ‘home’ page. It shows your Facebook status just like MSN or Gmail chat shows your status (in grey under the name). By default it is set to ‘offline’, so you just HAVE to click ‘Go Online!’:

Damnnnnnnn nice! All inside the frame, very smooth pop out, all online people at the top and offline or idle people at the bottom. Searching is, as always with Facebook, really slick too.

So I enlisted the help of my good friend CT to test it out…although we both were feeling the pressure of using it for the first time so we made a couple of spelling mistakes :S

Notice the grey bar which now stretches the length of the window, which carries all of your different conversations in (like the windows taskbar does for MSN). Magic. If you have too many chats open (not likely), then it auto hides a few:

It looks like Facebook Notifications have been moved to the bottom right now, next to the chat which seems sensible (and explains why I couldn’t find them yesterday!).

What’s left? Oh yeah…POPOUT! When I clicked on ‘pop-out chat’ I was a bit suprised by the size of the window (click to enlarge):

But it works very nicely, and there’s certainly plenty of space for…well…chatting.

So…it’s here and it’s easy to use and certainly undaunting (which is a major factor that FB had to face to get the ‘casual’ Facebook users onto a chat client). If they haven’t missed the ‘peak’ of Facebook interest (when the casuals were excited about linking up with their old friends from school) then it could be the app which keeps their interest in the medium term, and hurts other web based IMs like Messenger online and Gchat.

File transfer could be an issue which stops them from toppling the client-based MSN/Yahoo/Google chat emoticons, but hey…if you want to send a picture then just link to your Facebook gallery (links work but only if you include the http:// ).

Exciting times! Now where’s the ‘appear offline’ function…

Recipe: Reheating a Mcdonald’s Cheeseburger with a Foreman Grill

Many people buy McDonald’s (should that be McDonald’s's?) delicious food when their blood alcohol content is around 0.65, but the next day are left with the sneaky ‘extra’ cheesburger (the one that you eyes wanted but your belly couldn’t take) left sitting confined in its brown paper cell.

Today, I’m going to let you into a secret, previously hidden in the world of professional chefs, which will let you take that drab, limp, lifeless bread and beef patty combo and turn it into the hangover meal that it always dreamed of being!

Recipe – McDonald’s's’s Cheesburger

Ingredients
1 McDonald’s cheesburger (14-20hrs old)
1 Foreman Grill

Directions

First locate your burger. If you can’t find it, it’s probably underneath the beer cans on your coffee table. If not there, check the bin (it’s easy to throw single burgers away when cleaning up after a McDo binge).

Now prepare your burger for cooking. Be careful to remove all paper packaging BEFORE cooking, as this can seriously affect the taste of the burger (and it can also turn your kitchen into the set of Backdraft).

Now preheat your grill by plugging it in and shutting the lid. Foreman experts will know that there is no temperature setting on this, the red model, and so just wait until the little orange light turns off (DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP).

This step is optional, but I always like to test the temperature of the grill by placing the tip of my tongue on the grill lid and holding it there for around 6-9 seconds. If you can smell the feint odor of burning hair or skin, the grill is ready to go!

Now place your prepared burger on your heated Foreman grill. It should be as central as possible (to take advantage of the vertical grill-lines) and attempt to position the cheese corners so that they point to around 5:20 (am or pm).

Using the handle of the grill, compact the burger from a top to bottom (12 to 6, North to South, Up to Down, There to Here) manner. Make the grill earn its corn, but don’t squash it down too hard, or you will end up with a McSmoothie.

After roughly 4 minutes and 17 seconds, remove the burger from the grill (remembering to lift the lid first!). Repeat from Step 5 if required. Serve on a fresh piece of kitchen roll and don’t forget – throw out that skanky pickled gherkin before taking a bite!

Quick lunch @ 78

Just like our beloved Ajisen Ramen, 78 is a cheap and fast noodle restaurant near Jing’an Temple (静安寺), on the same road as Burger King and The Coffee Bean. They serve quite a good range of stuff (soups, noodles, hotpots, meat skewery things) and all the main stuff was between 20 and 30 rmb.

Ever since going on a modified version of the Atkins’ Diet (modified with unhealthy stuff), I have developed an occasional longing for fried eggs (I used to eat perhaps six per day while ‘training’ (lol)). The sight of this little beggar almost made me fall off my slightly uncomfortable stool:

It is a hot pot, and I actually burned my thumb on the bowl to prove how hot it was. Bit stupid really. I’m not quite sure where the egg-white went, but there’s something about that yolk that made me want to take it behind the middle school lockers and get it pregnant (TM Tracy Jordan, 30 Rock).

My partner in crime had a soup thing:

With a pork chop chaser:

I really appreciate this idea of being able to order fried meat as a supplement to almost anything, as it does seem to plug the gaps that the soupwater doesn’t fill.

To share we had a slightly uninspiring kebab collection, including tomatoes wrapped in bacon (what sort of devil made up that crooked recipe) and a sausage on a stick. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a sausage fan (HEY – NO) but it seemed out of place in the company of the super chicken pieces to its right. Whatever, I still ate it :P

Dorae-mad

So after a chance encounter one day back in 2003, I fell in love with a blue, robotic cat called Doraemon. He became very special to our family (Jamie, Daisy and myself) and we cared for him dearly.

A trip to Hong Kong and Thailand only served to reinforce my love for the little cat with the big pocket, as he is truly a superstar in Asia. I even bought a pair of jeans with his fat face on so I could carry him around with me (or behind me) wherever I went. China too is feeling the nip from the claws of Dorae-mania…but recently I’ve realised that I may have gone too far…

It started innocently enough. A trip to the supermarket, a slight sniffle…before I knew it we had three boxes of Doraemon tissues on our living room table. So soft…so nice…a bit weird…

On the next shop visit, I needed some snacks – and look who provided them! Delicious gummy sweets in three super flavours! It was starting to become a lifestyle choice, and I didn’t care!

Then the addiction began. Boxes and boxes of little cakes. So soft and delicious, with faux-creme and faux-jam inside…perfect any time of the day or night. They became my staple diet…

I started calling them by name (before I ate them). I liked to give them a little backstory too. Barry (the cake) WANTS to make me happy! He wants to be eaten! I just kept eating them…I lay in bed and downed five…ten…fifteen at a time. Then it hit me…I couldn’t move.

I tried to wiggle my toes but nothing worked…I lay for hours, whimpering in the sea of empty wrappers and crumbs. I had to get out of this Doraemon daze. I rolled myself onto the floor (the impact cushioned by the mountain of Doraemon tissues) and crawled towards the bathroom. I realised it had been days since I’d washed, brushed my teeth or….been to the toilet.

I made it…but as I reached for the toilet roll I realised that I could never, ever escape:

I’d gone Dorae-mad.

Tickets please!

We went for an awesome dinner the other night at Element Fresh, near Jingan Temple. As we were finishing our main course, we started talking about the big differences between China and the UK, and one big advantage which kept coming up was delivery. The customer is king in China, and the lengths that people are willing to go to please you are really astounding.

Take tickets as an example. Nas is coming to Shanghai in a couple of weeks, and tickets just went on sale. You can ‘buy’ tickets online…well actually you sort of ‘order’ them and then a guy will COME TO YOUR HOUSE with the tickets and you pay him in cash. Not the most sophisticated system, but it works (I suppose).

What I used to use in London (on the few times I got tickets) was Viagogo. I was wondering if they had any events in Shanghai so I had a look:

That got me thinking about this summer and the Olympics (and the fact that I haven’t got my tickets to come back here yet after July…crap crap crap!). Anyway so I keep searching around the Concert Tickets, and found Bruce Springsteen Tickets – THE BOSS is on tour again…although in the list of places he’s going (Dublin, Manchester, London, Cardiff, Barcelona, Paris…) he ain’t stopping in Shanghai. I wonder how good a £205 ticket to the Emirates Stadium is….although it’s probably cheaper than going to watch Arsenal…

Anyway….so which system is better? I like the ease of submitting a webform and getting the guy to come to my house, but on Viagogo you can hold auctions for tickets (I wonder if those football ones have any bargains?! Congo v North Korea plx!) and it feels a lot more…safe?

One item I won’t be bidding on is Radiohead Tickets…a bit emo for me, although they do have the best venue – Lancashire County Cricket Club! I can just see Michael Atherton in the front row…

Lunch @ Ya Wang (Duck King)

It’s been a while since I had a good duck (or any duck for that matter), so where better to go to than the DUCK KING!? Nowhere, that’s where. After only having slept for 6 hours (updating the DJOD.co.uk archives IF YOU HAVE TO KNOW) I wasn’t feeling particularly swell (oh gawd USA influence has begun), but by the time I’d walked to Plaza 66 (near Jingan Temple) my belly was begining to rumble. In a good way.

The place has some real authentic decoration (I heard it’s Beijing style, just how I like it). It was pretty empty (which sounds like the norm for lunchtimes) but it can get pretty packed later on (I am told). I was pretty glad of the calm (not to mention the usual stares from gobsmacked midgets Chinese) as I stretched out and opened the menu…

Ok, I admit it. I didn’t have the balls to order the scorpions. Next time (maybe).

Having assessed the fact that we were actually in the presence of a duck king, we figured that we should go ALL OUT…so our first dish was duck. I would like to be more specific but I’ve forgotten precisely what part of the bird it came from, but I’m almost sure it is inside (we had asked for the bill and feet to be left firmly in the kitchen). It felt like noodles (in my mouth, duh) and tasted a bit like chicken…a good combo!

The only non-ducky dish was asparagus with chili, since it really does taste good and it’s exceptionally good for you (as the Michigan Asparagus Advisory Board will tell you).

Next up – Pan fried duck livers! I wasn’t expecting there to be so many (or for them to be so big), which kinda made me think we’d misordered. They tasted pretty good, if a little bland…but everything probably tastes bland when it’s on a bed of prawn crackers and cucumber! CUCUMBER FOR THE LOVE OF GOD GTFO MY TABLE!

The main event: Peking Beijing duck. So…the first difference from the ducks at Special Zone 1997 was that it was huge. The second difference, it was hot (like warm hot not spicy hot) and the third difference…nobody ripped the hell out of it in front of us at the table! NO RIPPING!? Half of the fun of the dish is watching someone tear it to shreds like a five year old with a box of Kleenex (hey, I said five year old you sicko). After I’d got over this initial disappointment, I gave it a try and (as expected) it was damnnnnn fine.

After spending time assembling my duck pancake (aka Fajita-Dentona) I started gobbling them a bit too fast and needed to take a break…the pancakes here are a lot more flour-y and thinner than I’ve had previously, but that just made me enjoy the tender meat even more. DUCKING TASTY WTF!

Just after my third pancake, bowls started popping up on the table with what looked to be dirty washing up water. I was informed that the rest of the duck (we’d already hoovered two plates) had been made into soup! Someone really needs to teach the Chinese about course-order. I don’t think they went to finishing school. Anyway, I was stuffed so didn’t venture into the boney-murky-underworld-water that confronted me…

We asked for the few scraps that we didn’t eat to be packaged for takeaway, and I’m glad we did! Check out the snazzy bag they gave us! I know where I’m coming around Christmas time…no more wrapping headaches for me!

Overall, whole (king) duck, three dishes, four cokes and a (complimentary) plate of oranges came to around 230RMB (about £18) (and could easily have served three but I told the other guy to go duck himself). Ducklicious! I’ve gone too far…

Bi Feng Tang, Shanghai

Bi Feng Tang is a popular chain in Shanghai, serving solid quality and good value Cantonese food. The décor is meant to resemble a fishing village, but since I’ve never been to a fishing village in China or anywhere else, I can’t really comment on its authenticity. We were sitting under big umbrellas outside on the street, surrounded by bamboo huts. Five minutes after we arrived it began raining, so it had more to do with the British seaside than the Chinese coast…anyway…

We had a really great set of guides to help us order, however they thought it would be much more useful for our Chinese education (AND FUNNY HAHAHAAHGAAHAA) to only tell us the names of the food in Cantonese and Mandarin. Thanks guys! That being said, we could guess most of the things (Is it pink? It’s pork. Is it brown? It’s beef. Does it taste like crap? It’s a cherry tomato).

We (ok they) ordered about nine dishes in total…with varying results. Check out this British favourite:

If the word ‘bland’ could be made into a single dish, it would be this – like a mince pie without the mince.

Hmmm…dumplings in soup with a piece of soggy lettuce covering it. I don’t know who came up with this little combo, but it tasted really good (although WTF difficult to grab with my non-epic chopstick skills).

Duck…always an MVP on the chinese table…tasted amazing but the little bits of bone in some parts always scare me a bit. I think Jme pointed out how cheap chicken breast is in Taiwan compared to the thigh/leg/other parts with bones in. Maybe they like to play with their food before eating (a big no-no in my eyes).

Soo…the #2 prize on the table went to this little number. Really tasty pork meat, no bones and HOT! An (almost) winning combo. Also note the bread rolls (12 o’clock in this pic)…billed as an amazing delicacy they tasted like…bread. With sugar on. Meh. Also at 11 o’clock you can see this big plate of cold fishy things. I think we ordered that as part of the maritime theme…because nobody seemed to want to put it in their mouth.

As Ric Flair said, “To be the man, you’ve gotta beat the man” and nothing at the table was taking beef’s crown. Served steaming hot in a delicious tangy sauce…even the presence of a few bone bits couldn’t take away from this super food. I’m drooling just writing this.

Total price including beers, rice and some other dumpling things, around 80rmb (£6) per person. I’m going to get really fat here.