Review: Fong Chong Restaurant (Portland OR)

Today I was in downtown Portland near the Chinatown area for a work meeting with our ad agency. Not wanting to be stuck in worse-than-Los Angeles traffic for the ride home, I walked about in sweltering heat (like an average summer day in LA) for a few blocks in each direction from where my car was parked and picked a random a restaurant to eat at. I don't know much about Hongkong styled cuisine, but I've eaten my fair share of dim sum. The sign outside read: Hong Kong dim sum. Who could resist? Besides, a nice Indian-ish-looking couple came out of the restaurant and spontaneously pitched the restaurant to me. I guess the locals really like the place. This particular local said that he lived in HK for a few years and this place serves up authentic-tasting HK cuisine, but (he adds) that some of the beef has an off-flavor to it. Maybe 6pm was too early for dinner, especially when it was still about 100 degrees F outside. The restaurant was sparsely populated, and by that, I mean to say I was the only patron at the time. The menu reads "Fong Chong Tea House", but given the very limited varieties of tea on the menu, I think they dropped that aspect of the business. Besides, this entire metro area is about 95% caucasian. The food: If the restaurant really does serve dim sum all day, I didn't really see any while I was there. A cart that had some leftover desserts from the lunch hour sat quietly by itself near the front counter. I could see egg tarts and sesame balls on small rounded plates; but given how hot it was today. Eating deep fried or baked egg desserts that have been sitting out all afternoon.. not such a good idea. My order's portion size was good and perhaps too much for one person to eat in one sitting. I had the beef in garlic sauce. It came with a scoop of what tried to pass itself off as fried rice, BBQ pork that should have been reconstituted in a broth, a crab puff (might have been the chef's invention), and a slathering of overly sweet and spicy brown sauce with mixed vegetables. Overall, the dish was way too sweet, though probably just right for the American palate.

In my food..

• Meat - the beef was very tender and tasty, as it should be; the BBQ pork should not have been added to the dish at all and it was dry, hard, flavorless and chewy
• Sauce - typical brown sauce with soy sauce, chili sauce, corn starch, garlic, sugar
• Vegetables - green bell peppers, celery, bamboo, carrots, white onion, snow pea, white mushroom, mu erh (wood ear fungus), and zucchini (which, unfortunately was very bitter)
• Rice - had bits of egg in it, tasted entirely wrong, and someone probably stir fried it up with soy sauce several hours ago. It had the taste of salted egg coated rice. Bleh. Nobody eats salted egg in anything except in rice porridge.
• Crab puff - It's a wonton wrapper stuffed with "crab" meat and deep fried. It's an appetizer, but not terribly appetizing.
• Egg roll - who knows what's in it. I didn't touch it.

The tea: Ordinary black tea, and not a particularly quality one either. Generic. Maybe a Lipton black tea or something. I didn't get a choice about the tea, but I also wasn't charged for it either unlike other Chinese restaurants in the Portland area. Service: Only one host for the evening, which might have been fine if there had only been a few customers, but by 6:30pm several more sets of people wandered in and it took a while for me to even get my bill. The host speaks at least three languages that I could tell...Cantonese (to the kitchen staff), Mandarin to the family of six sitting to my right, and somewhat decent English to the rest of us. Surroundings: Decent. It looks like this place would have no problem accommodating the needs of a large banquet, as it could seat about 300 people in its main galley area. There might be private rooms at the back, but I wasn't feeling too adventurous at the time. Among the evening's patrons were asians, besides myself. That's at least a sign of decent food that another Chinese person would eat. That's also not saying much because there aren't a lot of restaurants to choose from, not in Old Town. Overall: I'd say, for dim sum, it might be passable to the locals who live on the west side / downtown Portland. From looking at the menu and eating here for dinner, I still cannot fathom what it really means to have Hong Kong sytled food. For eating lunch or dinner from the specials menu, I'd say skip it and go eat elsewhere. The place: Fong Chong Restaurant 301 NW 4th Ave, Portland OR 97209 (503) 228-6868

Asian Lettuce Wraps

I am passing off this dish as a "main" dish for my company's potluck lunch. It seems that a lot of would-be appetizers in Asian cuisine can be eaten en mass and then counted as a main entree. The sheer lack of a key ingredients (fermented black beans) made me buy pre-made hoisin sauce instead of making it from scratch for this recipe. This one came out tasting better than expected. This is one of those needs some assembly meals if your guests were to be serving themselves. 

There are two primary components to it: the lettuce leaf and the filling. You fold the leaf up like a pocket and eat it with the filling inside. 1 head of fresh butter lettuce leaves (or a few Romaine hearts, if butter lettuce not available) Carefully separate the leaves from the stem, wash, and pat dry. Stack leaves on a plate and set aside. 

Filling ingredients 

1 lb lean ground beef a few stalks of green onion, white part only, chopped 
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil one 8oz can of sliced water chestnuts, minced 
1/2 cup dried shitake mushrooms, reconstituted, minced 
a few stalks of green onion, green part only, minced 
2 tsp sesame oil 2 cloves fresh garlic, minced 
2 tsp fresh ginger, minced 
1 tbsp rice wine vinegar 
1 tbsp soy sauce 
1/3 c. hoisin sauce (optional) 
1+ tsp chili pepper sauce or 1+ tsp Tabasco sauce (depends on how much heat you want in this dish) 

Directions 

 1. In a large skillet over medium-high heat (if using olive oil, high heat if using other cooking oil), brown the ground beef and stir often so that it doesn't burn or stick to the bottom of the pan. Remove beef to a bowl and set aside. Leave the juices in the pan, this will help keep the next set of ingredients from burning. 

 2. Add the chopped white part of the green onion and stir frequently. Add garlic, ginger, soy sauce, vinegar, hoisin sauce, and hot sauce (optional) together. Stir/mix in water chestnuts, shitake mushrooms, sesame oil, and chopped green part of the green onion stalks. 

 3. Return ground beef to the skillet and mix until well combined. Remove from heat and set aside. 

 4. Assembly: Take one lettuce leaf and place it on a plate. Fill it with a few tbsp of ground beef filling. Wrap like a pocket and eat. 

 Oh, a kitchen note on the spacing between ingredient sets. You could save yourself some time and combine each set of ingredients into its own bowl. Then add the bowls of already combined ingredients to the skillet as they are fried together. I'm thinking that this would be a good filling for a Chinese meat pie or potsticker.

Not your average Chinese Almond Cookie

This recipe ended up being one of two items that I decided to bring to my company's potluck lunch. I'm dubbing these not your average cookie since there's a key ingredient missing from the authentic taste of these cookies, the almond extract. Having moved to this area about a half year ago, my kitchen boxes are still in quite a sorry state of disarray and while I know I have at least four bottles of almond extract, none of them chose to materialize today. So, I swapped out the almond extract with another extract in my pantry, lemon extract. I suppose then the name would surely change to Lemon Almond Cookies, but who has really heard of those things?

Both Fred Meyers (owned by Kroger) and Trader Joe's didn't have any blanched almonds in stock, so I decided to pick up a few whole raw almonds and blanch them myself. Despite just about every online and cookbook resource that says this is easy to do, it really isn't. In fact, peeling the damn almonds was more time consuming than baking the entire batch of cookies. Ugh. The dedication to cooking I have for a mere garnishment... anyhow.

To blanch almonds, simply put your almonds into a heatproof bowl. Barely cover them with boiling water. Let the almonds sit for about a minute, drain, and rinse with cold water. Have fun peeling the almonds.

The almond cookie recipe is almost a standard sugar cookie ratio, except it has almond meal in the flour mix. It is traditionally made with lard, which is hard to get, make, or find fresh these days.

Ingredients
3 c. unbleached white flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 c. almond meal (or finely ground fresh almonds)

1 c. unbleached cane sugar
1 large egg
1 1/2 sticks butter, softened
3 tbsp water
1 tsp almond extract (if you wanted to make real almond cookies)

about 1/4 c. raw whole almonds, blanched (skins removed)

1 egg, beaten (optional egg wash for top of cookie)
1/2 tsp almond extract

1. Sift together flour, baking soda, salt, almond meal, and set aside.
2. Cream butter and sugar together, blend in the egg, water, and almond extract.
3. Combine 1&2 together to form a dough.
4. Form dough into 1-inch balls, and flatten slightly with your fingers onto the cookie sheet. The cookies spread out a bit, so, space them at least an 1-2 inches apart.
5. Press a whole blanched almond into the center of each cookie.
6. (optional) Brush each cookie lightly with an eggwash.
7. Bake at 350 degrees F for about 20 minutes, or until the tops and edges of the cookies are light golden brown.

I used an egg wash (1 egg whisked together with 1/2 tsp almond extract) on this batch, but it's not necessary. It's for aesthetics only.

Imagine if you could if you had everything listed in this recipe except for the almond extract. While I could have used vanilla extract, that'd just be boring and I wouldn't learn anything from the experience. So, in went lemon extract. There you have it, not your average Chinese Almond Cookie. There are almonds in the recipe, but that's not what comes to mind for the name. It's the aroma and pleasing scent of almond extract that everyone remembers; not the almonds themselves.

Pix:

A light mustard vinaigrette

I've been using this combination on my salads. I thought I'd write it down before the brain cell that stores this bit of info decides to go on vacation. It doesn't taste as acidic as some off-the-shelf vinaigrettes, probably because the mustard mellows out the flavor. Servings: 1 or 2 salads Ingredients: 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil 1 tbsp white wine mustard 1 tbsp rice wine vinegar freshly ground black pepper Whisk together in with a fork in a small dish. Pour onto a salad and toss. The serving size is debatable. I use it on one salad, but the salad size I prepare can feed two people.

Freshwater fishing gear

I suppose at some point I need to buy some fishing gear, seeing how I live near the Columbia River and a lot of lakes. I bought a freshwater fishing license (only $22/yr) because when you do, the state tosses in a complimentary annual vehicle use permit (an $11 value). I got it because I needed to buy a vehicle use permit to visit the state-run water access parks. Would love to catch some trout since it costs quite a bit at the supermarket, they are plentiful here, and could probably be fished from shore.

Also, my shellfish and seaweed license permits me to harvest crawfish, among other things. I have yet to actually get out to the coast (it's 2.5 hours away!) but there are lakes nearby with freshwater non-burrowing crawfish.

Mmm.. fresh fish..

Only interested in the following: brown trout, rainbow trout, bluegill, yellow perch, and maybe largemouth bass.

I suppose I'll also have to figure out what gear to get and what locations to visit for clam digging, crab/crawfish/shrimp harvesting. You'd think that the Pacific NW conjures up images of cleaner landscape, but it isn't so. Oregon is much worse in this regard, where none of its rivers and lakes even meet state regulations for clean water. I can't, for example, harvest catfish in the Washington lakes because of agriculture pesticide run-offs. Ewww...

So, gear suggestions? Bait? Line weight? Pole size?

I've fished before, but with other people's gear. If I am to survive in a post-apocalyptic world, I think I need to know how to fish, assuming of course that there are still fish to fish.