Apologies for lack of posting...
Feb. 26th, 2012 06:11 pm[Image: A small glass bowl containing fish balls, chunks of daikon radish, and large pieces of translucent pig skin, all bathed in a reddish-brown broth with small "eyes" of fat floating on the surface.]
Hello! I'm so sorry I haven't posted here for a while. I've been very busy with paid work recently, and that (along with other things) is leaving me a bit wiped out. Right now, I can't say when I will be able to get back to regular posting again. But I do have some good things in the pipeline, including a couple of guest posts that I'm pretty excited about!
For now, though, here's a photo of a super-old-school dim sum dish I ate a few months back with eatlovenoodles and
ewan. This is 魚蛋豬皮蘿蔔 (yú dàn zhū pí luó bo), or fishballs with pig skin and daikon, served in a thin, rich, savoury, slightly spicy broth. We had this at Tai Tung at the Wing Yip Centre in Croydon (you can read more about the restaurant on Sung's blog).
魚蛋 (yú dàn) are fish balls, literally "fish eggs"; according to Sung, they're called this in Cantonese because of their shape, roughly like an egg. 豬 (zhū) is pig, and 皮 (pí) is skin. Note that as I mentioned in my very first "character" post, 豬/zhū doesn't appear on menus as much as one might expect given the ubiquity of pork in most Chinese cuisines, since when 肉 (ròu/meat) is used without further specification, it's taken to mean pork. However, in this case we do get the 豬: 豬皮. Finally, 蘿蔔 (luó bo) is daikon (aka mooli, white radish, Chinese radish, etc).
Speaking of dim sum, I'm in Oxford (the UK one) for a week from 2nd-9th March and am planning a dim sum lunch there on Sunday 4th as well as a Sichuan dinner on Tuesday 6th. If you're in the area and interested in coming along to either or both, do let me know.