This Sunday's oriental dinner at home

Recently, Janie and I were tipped off to a dim sum place call Jun Bo in the nearby suburb of Bloomington, MN.  I don't remember where I read it but Rogers Nelson (aka: "Prince") has said the Twin Cities doesn't have any real Chinese food.   Okay, it might not be on a steep hill overlooking the Pacific, but Jun Bo is good enough for me.  I'd say for all practical purposes, Chinese cuisine has arrived here. 

This doesn't mean there aren't other places either.  There's another in Little Canada (don't you love the name of that town?) that also does dim sum pretty well - Mark Jungmann says they're better.  Me Lo Lai?  I forget the name.

 Anyway, we've been trying a lot of little treats at dim sum.  I also discovered a big oriental market about 3 miles away (Shuang Hur at 654 University Avenue).  So, today I went over there and did a little snooping around.

Tonight we had Har Go (shrimp dumplings), which came frozen and just had to be steamed.  These were okay, but I was hoping the dumpling contents would have been a mixture, and as it was the wrapper covered a shrimp.  It was okay, but not adventurous enough for our tastes.

I also saw a bunch of greens I recognized as pea plants.  These I stir-fried in a little peanut oil and garlic (with a little toasted sesame oil - not too much).  When it was really hot, I poured in a little too much tamari.   (It needed some steam to uniformly cook the greens.)  It wasn't a disaster, but it over powered the pea flavor a bit. 

Pea greens have fairly woody stems, so you have a choice.  You can peel the leaves off the stems and have a little handful of greens; you can cook as is and have some serious roughage in your vegetable.  We settled for the latter, and we lived.  I think you would also.

 The dessert was a grilled taro rice cake.  These are sticky (glutinous) rice wrapped in banana leaf, and other ingredients are coconut milk, palm sugar, salt and taro.  I love sticky rice and hope to learn how to cook it myself soon.  For now, getting it from the freezer case will work for me.  It was delicious.

We had a bottle of South African Chenin Blanc (Ken Forrester Stellenbosch).  While not as cheap as Mad Dog, it's not a spendy wine, and it worked for this particular meal.

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There was another thing I picked up that I'd like to mention.  I've bought this twice now.  It's appetizingly called, "Headless Ching Chang Ancovy with Sesame".  It's a sesame candy snack that has dried anchovies as its base.  The anchovies are not salty, by the way.  The preservation is in the drying, which eliminates the need for salt.  I find these delicious, and I can feel that way because I decide not to think about it too much.  They cut the heads off the anchovies and they dry them.  They are not "cleaned".  This is no big deal (if you choose not to think about it).  I highly recommend this snack if you can find it.

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Anyway, that was our dinner.  I thought it worth passing on.