Wuyutai Neifu Cai

We tried some tea based cuisine yesterday. It was fancier than our normal restaurants, which we could tell by the fact that the portions were small. Maybe not a bad thing, seeing how much we have been eating recently.

duck and something delicious with tea on top, but we forgot what it was

this "homemade pork chops with special sauce" looked really beautiful before our waitress ruined it for us

tofu with crab meat and green tea

mango and tea roll. Maybe the best dessert we've had so far.


They even had live entertainment. We would recommend this restaurant for giving face (no, we are not being crass. Look it up already!).

Saturday ritual

We pissed away another Saturday at Cafe Konstanz.

We started off with a Semmel with Leberkäse, two sausages, Weißwurst, pretzel and lots of bread. And of course two beers. Who knew that we really missed Germany all those years in the U.S.?




A few hours later, we were ready for the second course:

Grandma's German cheese cake

and a raspberry cream cake


We don't like Cafe Konstanz's coffee, so we had Glühwein instead.

Chinese word of the day: 圣诞红酒 (shèngdànhóngjiǔ) = Glühwein

Guangdong food with Amanda

The restaurant was called Guang Dong Xiao Chi Cha Can Ting, which literally means "Guangdong small eat tea canteen". We did not drink tea, and our eat was far from small!


Lamb with cumin seeds

sweet potatoes with what tasted like fried onions but was garlic according to the menu

noodles

tofu and marinated egg (yum), every vegetarian's wet dream!

chicken gizzards to make us smart (prolly too late now, should have eaten chicken hearts when we were young)

oooh, durian cakes, so yucky and yet so good

We actually had one more dish (we're such pigs), but we don't want to overwhelm you guys.

Hutspot

Another episode of emulating the Ellen:

Hutspot! Look how wonderfully well the colors of our food go with our polka dotted plate! (This is one of those moments that people can rejoice in being colorblind.)

Also note the garnish: a wonderfully plump and juicy sausage. The taste was a bit different than what we hoped for, however.

Amanda's choice: Xiang Zhong Qing

Tuesday we had dinner with Amanda. This time she chose a Hunan restaurant.

A Hunan specialty is fragrant chicken:

This is a second specialty of the restaurant:

Further we had "Silver fish in XO sauce", a fish which paradoxically turns out to be white:

These shrimp rolls with 湖南腊肉"（hú nán là ròu, smoked pork) and cumin were incredible:

And I bet none of you can come up with a better dessert after such a wonderful meal than crispy green balls:

Back to our regular scheduled programming

After some (misguided?) activism, back to business. Working through some backlog: This weekend we ate at one of our favorite Chinese restaurants, near Tuanjiehu.

A nice and spicy fish:

This is how it came to our table:

Greens:

The best eggplant in Beijing (non vegetarian):

The obligatory duck:

More food:

Sick

I am sick and am therefore allowed to surf the net and do nothing useful. Of course, it is not my style not to do anything useful (ahem), and I was very happy therefore when I came across this worthy and useful cause that I can bring to the attention of WTAW's readers.



Go to http://www.needatzijnkruidnoten.com/ to read more.

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Hong Mao Jiaozi 鸿毛饺子

On Thursday, we went to eat dumplings with Amanda. Dumplings are normally eaten at the Spring Festival (Chinese new year), as are these marinated garlic cloves (they are called 22-day-garlic because they marinate for 22 days).

We have the sneaking suspicion that we are not the only ones who are eating Spring Festival foods too early this year -- this weekend all our taxi drivers really stank of garlic!

OK, OK, we're a bit behind...

This was last Wednesday's dinner.

I don't know what the green stuff with roots was, and it did not taste like something you were meant to eat...

Peanuts, however, are always good.


When we entered the restaurant, we saw two of these tofu dishes coming out of the kitchen, so we knew it must be good. And oh yes, it was!!!!

Finally, after the delicious fish we had with Amanda on Monday, we are now ordering fish everywhere. The one we had with Amanda is still our favorite.

o/t Vote now for Anke's sister!

Anke's sister Ellen and her boyfriend Christiaan are the CEOs of a Conference Slash Art Center Slash Illegal Party Center. Their center, Hilvaria Studio's has been nominated for the Brabantse Cultuurprijs 2008.

Now, they still have to win it. Apparently, the idea is that they can now shamelessly ask everyone they know to vote for them. It does not matter if you do not know the other candidates. In fact, it does not matter if you do not know Hilvaria Studio's.

Just check Ellen's blog and you'll see that she is a much better cook than we are, and hence worthy of your vote.

So go to this site right now, and cast your vote for Hilvaria Studio's. Absurd as it may be, your vote may decide whether they win 20,000 euros or not! Just believe us, they are much better than the other candidates (even if we do not have a clue who they are...)

To vote, you need to fill in your first name (voornaam), last name (achternaam) and your email address (twice, once at "emailadres", and once at "controle emailadres"). You'll receive an email with a link that you need to click in order to have your vote entered.

We cooked AGAIN!

Because we still had some double cream left from the chicken Normandy, and because our supermarket has an enormous selection of mushrooms, we made some meat with a mushroom cream sauce.


Unfortunately, it was not a huge success. We blame the lack of sherry and fresh thyme, and maybe some of the mushrooms were not so well suited for this...
Note the new pink polkadotted plates though!


We also tried some Chinese wine again. We had great fun selecting wine in the supermarket. We almost bought the following, which promises "Constantly drinking this wine is good to your health". Click on the photo for an enlargement if you don't believe us.

Another dinner with Amanda

夫妻肺片	fū qī fèi piàn	husband and wife lung slices
芝麻菠菜	zhī mɑ bō cài	sesame spinach
香香鱿鱼须	xiāng xiāng yóu yú xū	delicious delicious squid beard
豆面糍粑	dòu miàn cí bā	glutinous rice with bean flour
仔姜蛙	zǎi jiāng wā	young frogs with ginger
水煮鱼	shuǐzhǔ yú	poached fish
酱油炒饭	jiàng yóu chǎo fàn	stir fried rice with soy sauce

We had crazy amounts of food yesterday with Amanda. The restaurant was famous for its fish, which is boiled first, and then put into hot oil with lots of chillies. The fish was prefect, and the other dishes were really delicious as well.

Coming soon: the names of these dishes (in Chinese!)