Text 11484, 120 rader
Skriven 2014-03-28 12:25:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: cumin beef 390
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There's this place that I like in Rockville called
Sichuan Jin River, which is sort of along the lines
of Joe's Noodle House (very famous, very bad), only
the food is good and not overwhelmingly salty. My
brother and I were casting about for a place to eat,
and he was hoping for Five Guys, and I was hoping
for Popeye's, only he'd been there two days before,
so we compromised on Seven Seas, a midscale Chinese
place on Rockville Pike, where I hadn't been in a
while, but Jonathan wanted an address, and so I went
to the computer and Googled "Chinese Rockville" to
be quick, and Jin River popped up to remind me. Went
back down to see if it was okay with him, which it
was, provided it didn't smell like Clorox the way it
did last time (he's right about that).

A dumpy room, which I should have written about years
ago and am remiss if I didn't, as it's pretty much the
only Chinese in town that will serve me authentically
hot and authentically greasy food. Last time the
standout dish, best version I've had anywhere, was
twice-cooked pork with crispy bread, which was way
too hot and  way too greasy for your average bear but
perfect for me; also not violently salty. It's made
with pork belly chunks and handfuls of hot pepper;
deep-fried pieces of pita-like bread mixed in to soak
up the hot grease - delicious, but none of my local
acquaintances will eat of it, and I can't do a whole
$13 dish of it myself if I intend to try anything else.

Aside: the second-best version I've had is in Medford,
Mass., where instead of fresh belly they use bacon from
Costco or someplace, slicing it into postage stamps and
blanching it before serving it in a similar presentation;
the bread I seem to recall is served on the side rather
than mixed in.

My brother wanted steamed and then fried dumplings
(guo teh) and asked me if I would have any (an order
is 6 2-oz dumplings), and I replied, amiably enough,
that I'd help him out with a couple, whereupon he
said that we should order two orders. And then he
reconsidered and decided that he would order only one,
and his lenten penance would be to give up the second
order! We back and forthed on this for a few minutes,
and then he decided we would get xiao lung tang bao,
the Shanghai specialty, which come in a set of 8, and
he could have 5, and I would get 3, fine with me, only
these are 1-oz dumplings, but he hasn't figured that
out, being only 41 years old. These are kind of neat
to eat, as they squirt juice (actually, melted aspic)
when you bite into them, and so you eat them out of a
spoon, biting delicately into the skin and sipping
enough of the hot broth so you won't destroy your
esophagus when you eat the dumpling, then bolting the
apparatus down while hot but not scalding. The waitress
said that they would take 20 minutes to prepare, and
we should get something else first.

Jonathan ordered chicken with broccoli, substituting
pork for chicken (not on the menu) for this purpose.
It came right away, a pretty standard version, though
rather glooped up with a small amount of very thick
cornstarch sauce. He made the observation that the
flavor of the pork (very mild) had apparently migrated
to the broccoli (which tasted rather like pork). I
didn't have the heart to reveal that it was MSG that
performed that miraculous trick. Anyhow, he gobbled
down half the dish in a trice, while I had a sooonful
or two. One piece I had was this blob of meat held
together with a band of gristle, as the genius in the
kitchen had failed to cut all the way through (dull
knife no doubt), so what came out was a fan of four
or so thin slices of pork held together as described.
It was delicious. In a few minutes the dumplings came
out, without spoons, a bad sign. I checked, and, yup,
the wrappers, thin enough, had been breached, and there
was scant if any juice in the dumplings, mostly defeating
the purpose of the dish. They tasted fine for ordinary
dumplings, but they were supposed to be xiao lung TANG
bao, little steamed BROTH dumplings. I guess I should
have been warned by the waitress calling them xiao lung
bao, without the tang.

While I was on my second dumpling of three, my cumin
beef came out. I'd ordered it extra extra spicy and was
expecting a dark brown mass of meat fragrant with cumin,
Szechwan peppercorns, and lots of hot pepper (and of
course lots of oil). What I got: a bunch of light colored
(cornstarch coated) fried meat flecked with dried chile
flakes and mixed with sliced fresh green Chinese hots,
a few dried red Chinese hots, some yellow bell pepper
chunks, lotsa lots of onion slivers, and a few scallion
lengths. I'd say it rated about 2 or 3 out of 10 peppers,
and essentially it was deconstructed chili con carne. Oh,
the cumin was old and had lost some of its punch, so that
instead of that nice smelly sweaty aroma there was an
almost bean flour scent. Still an okay dish, though the
way it came even my brother thought it on the mild side.
After taking quite a bit less than half the dish he
rather politely offered me some more of his, but I said,
no thanks, I'll stick with mine. Oh, yeah, the beef was
very tender. In real life it's not so tender. What these
guys did was marinate it in baking soda, which is okay
if they rinse the meat with vinegar afterward so you
can't taste the cheat. They didn't.

Two cups of rice came with; we ate all the food, except
that I left half my rice, partially because I don't
need the carbs and partially to remind them that I'd
ordered extra extra hot.

He had a Coke; I stuck with tea.

The prices are probably 25% more than your average
Chinese greasarama, but you get probably 25% more food.
Not a bad deal.
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