Stomachs Eleven: A Shanghainese Banquet

The best kind of meal? One cooked by Mum and Dad.

Make that a meal cooked by any Mum and Dad because tonight Stomachs Eleven have descended on the home of L&M. M's parents, who are in town for the week, find themselves with a whole hoard of eager extra mouths to feed. We'd been promised a Shanghainese feast and we could barely get there fast enough.



It's hard to fathom the number of dishes already laid out on the table when we arrive. There will be sixteen of us tonight and the cooking commenced yesterday, we are told. Most of the dishes have already been done - the dumplings are all the remain and we pitch in obligingly when summonsed.

We are a happy huddle of friends gathered around the bowl of pork mince glistening with fat chunks of prawn. There's good-natured jostling as we try to reach for the dumpling wrappers and plenty of friendly teasing as we critique each other's folding methods. "There's no way you can put that much filling in there!" and "That dumpling is so fat it's gonna burst for sure!"

It doesn't take long for eight people to make 120 dumplings and soon we're shooed out of the kitchen and straight to the dining table for our waiting feast.


Drunken edamame (糟毛豆 Zao Mao Dou)

Sure we've all had edamame boiled soy bean pods at Japanese restaurants, but this is the first time I've tried the drunken version. The soy beans are boiled and then marinated in a spiced Chinese cooking wine. It's amazingly good, the edamame soaking up the wine flavoured with fennel seeds and cassia bark. This flavoured rice wine can be bought in a bottle straight from an Asian grocery store, just as M's parents did. It's an elegant idea for the next dinner party methinks.

And before I proceed, the Chinese characters and phonetics come courtesy of Pig Flyin'. He is also a font of knowledge when it comes to the preparation and background to each dish. Thanks Pig Flyin'!


As you wish (如意菜 Ru Yi Cai)

Sauteed soy bean sprouts don't seem that interesting until you find out the story behind them. Soy bean sprouts are said to look like a ruyi or ceremonial scepter, a symbol of good luck and good fortune. This dish is hence given the grander name "as you wish". Whilst Cantonese tend to eat more mung bean sprouts, Shanghainese have a particular affection for the firmer sprout of the mung bean.


Drunken chicken (醉雞 Zuiji)

Drunken chicken is heady with alcohol, the white poached chicken marinated overnight in Shaoxing Chinese rice wine until the flesh is plump and juicy.


Shanghai soy duck

We'd enjoyed Shanghai soy duck cooked by L via telephone instructions once before, but this time we're enjoying this dish cooked by consummate professionals. The duck has a sweet glaze, a deep brown shade generated by its slow simmer in soy sauce, star anise, shallots and ginger.


Duck in saltwater (鹽水鴨, Yan Shui Ya)

The poultry-fest continues with more duck. Duck in salt water has been poached in a white master stock of star anise, cloves, ginger and salt. Pig Flyin says this is a typical dish of Nanjing, and that many of the master stocks used in famed Nanjing restaurants are reputed to be decades, if not centuries, old.


Four ingredient gluten sponge (四喜烤麩 Si Xi Kao Fu)

Four ingredient gluten sponge is probably my favourite dish of the night. Gluten sponge is a vegetarian gluten dough that has been fermented until it is filled with air bubbles, then steamed to maintain its sponge-like texture. I love its bouncy soft chewiness and the way the gluten absorbs the sauce. This is a typical Shanghainese ingredient and can be purchased fresh or dried from large Asian grocery stores.

The four ingredients in this are daylily buds, black fungus, peanuts and bamboo shoots. It's a delightful combination of textures and flavours: chewy, crunchy, creamy, sweet. The daylilies are literally lily flowers, small unopened flower buds that are called golden needle vegetables ( 金針菜 Jin Zhen Cai) in Chinese because of their delicate strand-like appearance.


Smoked fish (熏魚 Xun Yu)

Smoked fish is the most complex dish of the evening to prepare. It is not smoked in the Western definition of the term. The dish is usually made with grass carp or pomfret, neither of which are easily available as live seafood in Australia. Instead a snapper was cleverly substituted, the fish marinated in Chinese cooking wine, soy sauce and ginger and then deep fried until crisp and almost dry.

The fried fish is transferred, still hot, to a sweet soy mixture containing star anise, ginger, shallots and Shaoxing cooking wine. "The act of dunking it hot into the flavored sauced is what they called 'smoking' in Shanghainese cooking," says Pig Flyin.

Personally I'm not so keen on this dish, finding it a little dry and salty, but it's easily the crowd favourite. Perhaps it's a dish you need to grow up with to fully appreciate.


Pork belly with bean curd sheets and black fungus
(百頁燜豬肉 Bai Ye Men Zhu Rou)

Braised pork belly is always a welcoming comfort food. The soft and tender pork belly is braised with crinkly bean curd sheets and crunchy curls of black fungus. This is a dish you could quite happily eat on its own with rice.


Gravlax with dill

Pig Flyin has contributed two dishes for the evening. Home-made gravlax with dill doesn't exactly fit the Shanghai theme, but we don't care, we scoff down the shimmering slices of cured salmon with deep appreciation.


Pigs ears

Pigs ears are his other homemade offering, the cartilage providing a delicious crunch against the jellied stock.


Oil-brewed prawns (油 爆 蝦 you bao xia)

The prawns cooked in their shell are more complex than they first appear. The prawns are cooked confit, gently stir-fried in a cup of oil until lightly coloured. Sugar, Chinese cooking wine and soy sauce are then added, creating a caramelised sheen. Pig Flyin says that cooking prawns with the shell on is a typically Shanghai style, although this dish is usually done with freshwater river prawns.


Stir-fried radish

The radish has come from Pig Flyin's garden, a Chinese variety known for its green circumference and a speckled red-and-white interior. Whilst occasionally I've thrown slices of radish into a stir-fry, enjoying it as a dish on its own is a revelation. The radish has a faint crunch with a mild peppery heat that makes it a gentle palate cleanser.


Pressed tofu with soy beans (豆乾毛豆 Dou Gan Mao Dou)

A stir-fried medley of pressed tofu, soy beans, capsicum and mushrooms is another personal favourite of the evening. I love the textural variation of this dish, especially the contrast between the firmness of the pressed tofu and the slippery soy beans.


Pork and prawn dumplings

We finish with seemingless endless plates of pork and prawn dumplings. The dumplings wrappers are like silk ribbons, enclosed around a pork filling chunky with prawn that is juicy, sweet and succulent.


Glutinous dumplings in fermented rice soup

After so much food, dessert is a simple affair. We finish with glutinous rice dumplings (store-bought) served in a fermented rice soup. It's not overly sweet but after a huge dinner like tonight's, we're happy with this traditional conclusion to our meal.

Heartfelt thanks to M's parents who cooked such a feast, and tended to us all as though we were their very own!


Dinner

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Stomachs Eleven: Christmas 2010 (Pig Flyin)
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Stomachs Eleven: Mole poblano and pulled pork tacos (Me)
Stomachs Eleven: Pizza and friends (Miss Rice)
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Stomachs Eleven: Shanghainese banquet (M&L)
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Stomachs Eleven: Stuffed deboned pig's head + nose-to-tail eating (Pig Flyin)
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Stomachs Eleven: No ordinary steak dinner (Pig Flyin)
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