Red and Hot Restaurant

First week of the year is always a bit depressing, you had the nice relaxing Christmas and new year break but now its 4 months of wintery hell until the next Bank Holiday.

The cold dark days are enough to drive any insane but just try having to deal with a company yearend accounting as well!  Everyone in my department (Finance) had been working really hard over the last few weeks and the hours have been really long to get the yearend numbers finalised.  At times like these there is really on one thing that you can turn to…KARAOKE baby!

Before hitting the karaoke bar we had to have some food first.  We headed to one of the newish favourites in town, the Red and Hot Szechuan restaurant on Charing Cross road.  Since opening a couple of years ago the restaurant has become a big attraction among the Chinese community in the UK.  It’s speciality – hotpot!

What is a Chinese hotpot?  Well… basically it’s a big pot of boiling soup which presented in the middle of the table along with a selection of meat, seafood and vegetables.  The diners dip the food that they want to eat in the boiling soup and take it out once it’s cooked.  There’re various sauces you can put your food in to serve.

Chinese hotpot - clear and spicy soup

As most of my colleagues haven’t done hotpot before, I suggested we order hotpot and some signature Szechuan dishes.  The hotpot at Red and Hot came as a buffet and it consists of beef, lamb, ham, white fish slices, squids, mushrooms, Chinese vegetables, tofu, seaweed and potatoes.  For £20 per head and you could eat as much as you like, I thought it was a pretty good deal.  Oh and at Red and Hot, you could choose your base soup, be it clear (which is the traditional Beijing style) or spicy (Szechuan style) or you could order both.  We ordered both so they came in a bowl with a division in the middle to separate the two soup base.

Food for hotpot

We also ordered Dry Fried Chicken on the Bone in Red & Green Chilli, Gong Bao King Prawn with Peanuts, Sliced Fish with pickled vegetables soup.

Spicy chicken

Fish and pickled veg soup

Kong Po Prawns

By the end of the meal, we were all stuffed.  The highlights for me were the chicken and prawn dishes.  The hotpot was good for UK standard as I don’t think you could get a better valued place.  However, being a traditionist I wouldn’t be rushing back as my mum makes a better Beijing hotpot at home and the Szechuan soup was too hot for my liking.

Having added more junk to all our trunks – the only thing to do was to blast out some bootylicious tunes!

…. “Ken Leeeeeeeeeee…. jibul jibi dow choooo,   KEN LEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE…. “

Just be thankful this is not a video blog!

Food diary in China

After a 10 hour fly I was absolutely exhausted, but thanks to the most efficient airport in the world I was out of the arrival gate in 30 minutes after landing.  Apart from the family and the food, I loved travelling to China because the airport experience had never been painful.  I’ve never for once had to wait for my luggage on arrival unlike some of the airports we have in London!

Anyway, I was flying to Beijing for my niece (my cousin’s daughter)’s wedding.  My cousin picked me up from the airport and driven me straight to a spicy BBQ fish place.  I’ve never had anything like it before.  I chose my own fish from a tank and then the chef split the fish in half so it was flatten.  It was then put on the BBQ to smoke.  After the fish was almost cooked, it was put into a big pot of spicy sauce to stew to perfection!  With a bowl of steamed rice, it was the best after plane meal I’ve ever had!

My fish before being cooked

My fish after being cooked - Best after plane meal ever!

Dinner before the wedding day

Wedding lunch - too much food

The day after the wedding we went to my favourite street food shop that sells shredded lamb in sesame buns, so like a burger.  It was cheap lunch time treat, at £0.30 each I could eat 3 or 4 easily.

Chefs making the lamb buns

Lamb bun for £0.30 anyone?

I like!

In the same shop, there were sweet treats as well.  My favourite were ‘Sweet ears’, which is deep fried ear shaped dough soaked in syrup.

After lunch sweets

Some of my other favourites include boiled lamb heads, feet and lamb spine stew – yum yum!

Lamb heads and feet

An introduction to Tang Yuan!

Northern Chinese Tang Yuan!

The dinner on 6^th March will be in celebration of the Lantern Festival – aka the Tang Yuan Festival, the second most important festival in China after the Chinese New Year!  The Chinese New Year Festival, or Spring Festival, lasts 15 days. The Chinese New Year is the first day of the year and the Lantern Festival is the 15^th.  There are many stories as to how the festival came about, but all I know is that on this day Chinese families get together – to celebrate wholeness by red lanterns and eat tang yuan (little sweet rice flour balls)!

You have to love tang yuan! And there are many ways of making it. In the North of China we make tang yuan with sweet stuffing and cook them in plain or slightly sweet water.  The tang yuan is about the size of a golf ball. In the South of China they make plain tang yuan and cook them in sugar syrup.  The size of that tang yuan is about the size of a chickpea. As biased as I am I clearly prefer the *Northern* way of making tang yuan.  My favourite flavours are black sesame and sweet red beans. Even the boyfriend is slowly being brain washed into liking the Northern version of tang yuan!

And I can’t wait to make Northern Chinese tang yuan for all my guests on the 6th March!!

Love,

Mama Lan