I took advantage of Good Friday to go out with my camera to take pictures in the neighbourhood west of Concordia University. A new Chinatown has been thriving there for at least fifteen years. It was my personal experience as a consumer of Chinese food that usually led me to this area. It goes back to 1993 when Soupe et Nouilles’ (Ste-Cath & St-Marc) concept of a soup and noodles fast-food restaurant with its kitchen in front was still novel to many Montrealers.

What used to be confined to North Americanized versions of Cantonese and Szechuanese (Sichuanese) regional genres is now evolving along the growing student and immigrant population from Mainland China. We now see an influx of new quick food restaurants that you commonly find in China, like brochette (chuan – 串) and homemade noodles, dumplings houses.

The pork sandwich, two loaves of flat crunchy bread with a mix of braised fatty pork and coriander (see picture), can notably be found at a cafeteria-like resto on St-Mathieu north of the Metro exit. Homemade noodles and dumplings (topic of a photo-article to be published) can also be found in the neighbourhood as a dumplings house opened on a residential stretch of St-Marc close to the Canadian Centre for Architecture.

General Tao Chicken and Orange Beef, ubiquitous in any Chinese restaurant ten years ago, are nowhere to be found in these of Chinatown West’s newest components.

Chinese restaurants, but also hair salons, “Asian-style” clothing stores now live side by side with Middle Eastern épiceries, takeouts and shisha joints. Whereas Chinatown is evolving in a very dramatic way with the building of a shiny new shopping and business centre, I find that Montreal’s other Chinatown has perhaps changed in a more gradual and low profile manner. And I’m sure it will continue to surprise me, at least food-wise.

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Montreal’s new Chinatown in a larger map

This article also appeared on Spacing Montreal.

Following my experience in a dessert place in Markham (dessert houses in Montreal are rare to inexistent), I became obsessed with the idea of making one day my own ginger milk curd, or “keung zap zong nai” in Cantonese (薑汁撞奶). If the number of YouTube videos of people is a clue, then ginger curd is something that is definitely fun and intriguing to make.

Why that? Perhaps because it defies everyday conceptions. The principle of ginger curd is to take ginger juice, a mixture full of enzymes, and mix it to some warm sweetened milk. It’s supposed to react and make the milk curd, just like for tofu or cheese.

In 2006, a bunch of Hong Kong high school students’ science fair project won a prize and their presentation (PDF) became a hit on Google searches.

Ginger milk curd is a speciality of Guangdong, said to actually be from the locale of Panyu, nearby the provincial capital city of Guangdong and maybe where one of my grandmothers came from. It’s a staple dessert in Cantonese style (so, Hong Kong style) dessert houses all over the world. It is not known whether Montreal has a place that serves ginger milk curd, as not even the place I went to in Toronto made their own properly (they cheated by adding eggs, and it had the consistency of flan).

The recipe is rather simple, but just like any chemical experience, can be a little fussy. Here is the Flickr set of my two attempts at making ginger milk curd, the second time being successful:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/smurfmatic/sets/72157613733786306/

You can certainly find many recipes in English on the Internet. I notably used this forum page and this page, as well as watching some of those videos. I ignore why my first attempt was a failure (it was ginger-flavoured milk in the end). On the next day, I went to the shop to get fresh ginger (the one I had was sitting in the fridge in a plastic bag for over three weeks and its flesh was getting brownish…). I removed the skin with much precaution in order to keep as much flesh as I could. Then I chopped it and extracted the juice. I heated some milk, and took it off the stove as soon as some steam was coming out.

I added two spoonfuls of sugar. Then I cooled down the milk a little, before pouring it in the ginger juice.

I left it there for twenty minutes on the counter and the mixture had coagulated! Then, I remembered that the taste of something extremely smooth (“waat” in Cantonese) is still somewhat unusual for a Western-trained palate such as mine.

I think it was pretty well done anyhow as it was very smooth, the milk protein having separated from its serum and with the consistency of egg whites (it was way softer than jello, say). Apparently, some people say that it improves your skin! But how can a glass of milk, sugar and some ginger juice do that?

One of the reasons to visit Toronto almost two months was food – food in restaurants, food in cafe eateries, food at takeout vans, and also food in Chinese supermarkets. This is when I discovered Oriental Food Mart, with a few branches around the GTA, including one in Markham, where lives Toronto’s most important concentration of ethnic Chinese and another in Missisauga’s Chinese town.

One of the advantages of any other Canadian city, including Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary is the presence of a T&T Supermarket, commonly known as 大統華 (Tai Tung Hua), a joint venture between one of Taiwan’s ten biggest conglomerates (they also sell dairy products, and even own hotels!) and Californian supermarket chain Tawa. T&T is one of the best known names in the Canadian Asian grocery business and definitely rivals mainstream big names in terms of quality (Kim Phat and Hawaï in Greater Montreal are trying hard to match this level of quality but still aren”t there).

T&T also has the reputation of being well-packaged and fresh, but also charging a premium for the augmented quality (qualitatively verified by yours truly). This is where Oriental Food Mart (華盛 – Hua Sheng, which translates to something like Chinese blooming) comes in, with a reputation for more competitive prices with just a slightly less appealing presentation, although not remarkably less by so much.

I went on Sunday after lunch, presumably the most busy time of the week, as the suburbanites stock up for the rest of the week. My Torontonian hosts had just taken me to a dim sum place in the same new-looking mall. I did my groceries there, even if the prices were comparable – more frequently than not, it was more expensive – than in Montreal.

Modern Chinese supermarkets (I’ve seen these in Hong Kong) tend to have these vegetable counters, imitating the look and feel of a traditional outdoor fresh produce market. They are an easy way of telling customers that the veggies as fresh from the field (or the box they came in) as possible,

Quite naturally, you find a counter for prepared foods, a bakery and a counter of what I call Chinese cold cuts, but which is better named as siu lap or siu mei (barbecued meat). Just like anything coming from a supermarket which can be bought in a specialized shop, one may be right to be suspicious and purchase it elsewhere (which I did). Because of greater turnover and the hopeful corollary of a fresher roast, siu mei is one of those things that’s worth buying on a last day in Toronto.

In the bargains, I got a stick-free wok (“made in Korea”) for 30$, a metal plate for a few dollars, and a six-pack of Vita juice for only $2.99!! [The market price in Mtl is invariably $3.99, sometimes $6.50 for two six-packs.]

Oriental Food Mart is where my hosts shop most of the time. If you are planning a food trip to Toronto and have already seen and been to T&T, then the Oriental Food Mart is definitely worth going to as well. I filled any space left in my single sports bag and several cloth bags.

1661 Denison Street, Markham, ON. (Corner of Kennedy, 1km north of Pacific Mall)

In the world of Taiwanese street food, not all are made equal. In fact, one of my favourite kinds remains popcorn chicken, a variety of deep fried chicken with the subtle addition of Chinese five spices. I had it in Montreal (in Jason Lu‘s restaurant, Lu Mama), and had it too when I was in the town of Kenting and Taipei).

Like anything, it’s more rewarding when you do it yourself. Making popcorn was surprisingly simple. You cut up some chicken (four thighs) and mix an egg, dark soy sauce, honey and cooking wine. Mix into another bowl of mostly flour and five spices. Add salt for taste. Then go ahead and deep-fry in a wok or whatever. It’s best at low heat, so not to roast the coating. In fact, my recipe is vastly inspired by this one that I found on the Internet.

I’m not (historically) the biggest fan of this kind of Chinese desert which we generally denominate as tong sui, literally “sweet water”, designating any kind of sweet dessert soup or custard. I don’t think the previous picture, that of a B仔涼粉, or a dish of grass jelly served with fresh fruits, actually represents “tong sui” per se, but it was served in tong sui place in Markham where I had it.

In Montreal, my friends and I would try to find a similar kind of place, but in vain. There was one restaurant Sai Gwan, literally West Gate, appropriately near Chinatown’s De La Gauchetière western gate, which had a glass-windowed fridge keeping various kinds of typical tong sui, like ginger custard (薑汁撞奶/燉奶), sweet potato soup (番薯糖水) or – a personal favourite – black sesame soup (芝麻糊). Another one was the short-lived Congee Restaurant (豐衣粥食) in Brossard, which besides serving more variety of congee I’ve ever seen in the Province of Quebec, also had a large selection of tong sui.

I say that I am not the hugest fan of tong sui, because for most of my life, I’ve associated it with the stuff that they give you at the end of your meal in any Chinese restaurant in Chinatown. I could not assess the quality of the stuff, but as it was given for free, and very strangely either red-bean or a tapioca-pearl-based, not the most “expensive” kinds of tong sui, the idea that tong sui was something cheap was reinforced until I recently attempted to rediscover Chinese food (such as realizing that bok choy could be cooked in better ways than your parents were used to).

Relatives and friends have always been more excited (or just inclined) to bring me, or have me tag along for tong sui excursions and detours. It’s not an idea that comes naturally – mais c’est une idée qui fait son bonhomme de chemin.

The previous pic was that of a ginger milk curd that my once-a-Montrealer Torontonian friend had. Also known by its short name of “daan nai”, the milk curd is produced by the reaction of ginger juice with milk – some cheat by using eggs in their recipe.

Edit (2008-11-27): One group in the Hong Kong Student Science Project Competition even did a project on ginger milk curd in 2006 (see PDF presentation).

The one made by Yee Shun Milk Co is one of the best known in Hong Kong. The eatery/cafe has two branches in Causeway Bay that I know of and more on the Kowloon side (see map).

Tong sui is a particularity of Cantonese cuisine, thus one with sentimental value to me. I would really like it if Montreal could just evolve beyond bubble tea and adopt more serious types of food by upgrading its current concept of a cha chaan teng for instance, just like Xiao Fei Yang (Little Sheep) helped push the idea/market for hot pot in this city. However, I live on a different planet, where just a clean place serving Chinese desserts where you can hangout with a laptop simply defy the reality of our demographics (even with the influx of Mainlanders, some of whom might find Hong Kong-style food natural to have in their Chinese food landscape).

At this point, I’ve given up on waiting for others to feed me – I’m more interested in how our Chinese/Asian supermarkets have evolved and are becoming better places for buying the ingredients to make all this food I don’t have access to (I just got a new wok with chopsticks for frying). Speaking of which, Markham’s Oriental Food Market (華盛) will be the next food topic on CLC.

Whereas here in Montreal, street food was banned since the last generation, it’s not unusual to see food vendors populate sidewalks in Toronto. Although generally you find hot dog stands – I was told that the city by-law regarding street food only allowed one kind: sausage + fries – we have bumped into these trucks selling Chinese food parked on St. George, a street that crosses the University of Toronto campus.

Specifically, it would seem that they are in business during the day, but not during weekend, to my dismay, as I wanted to treat myself to some Chinese food made in a van in less than a minute (I settled for pizza on Spadina).

According to a friend of mine who went to U of T, the former, Wokking On Wheels, is a true institution that has fed more than one student running between library and exam room.

小肥羊 (Xiao Fei Yang), the Mongolian hot pot restaurant in Montreal, is in fact a chain in China. Known as “Little Sheep” in English, it is a well-known brand in China, one that is marketed as an upscale hot pot place. In contrast with Montreal, xiao fei yang is not an all-you-can-eat in China.

The first picture (here above) is that of the Mong Kok branch of Xiao Fei Yang in Hong Kong, located on premium land.

The first one that I encountered was one of Beijing’s Xiao Fei Yang, on Guijie. The guy at the bottom right of the picture is the parking valet!

The next was one in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong. I almost ate there a few times, after running out of ideas for restaurants to eat at. Given that it was roughly 30 degrees Celsius each time, I promptly shook the envy off.

The most surprising place to find a Xiao Fei Yang was in Kaiping (开平), a five-minute walk eastward from the city’s main bus terminal. Kaiping, also known as “Hoiping” in Cantonese, is a town of 700,000 souls, roughly 4 hours from Hong Kong by coach bus and/or speedboat ferry. The city might have UNESCO sites in its vicinity, but does every mid-sized city in China have its Xiao Fei Yang?

On Thursday for lunch, one of my uncles took me to one of those famous places that only locals know, a curry noodles place in Central called 九記牛腩 (literally “nine & co. beef brisket”). Everything is written in Chinese, including its sign! (At our table, sat Asian-looking English-speakers) The menu is one of those minimalistic ones: three kinds of noodles (yii mein, ho faan, mai faan), two kinds of soup base (curry or broth).

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When we traveled to the village of Zili, near the small town of Kaiping (famous for its diaolou, and a UNESCO World Heritage site), one of the “tourist attractions” was home-style countryside food, such as free-range chicken. The meat is either considered strong or rubberish. I like to think that our Canadian chicken tastes like paste.

This chicken was steam-cooked, with Chinese mushrooms, some orange peel and soy sauce.

That they still have bird shit all over them. This picture was taken last week, when I bought groceries from the nearby mom and pop shop and cooked for myself, but I also just came back this afternoon from one of Beijing’s cleaner fresh food markets, the Sanyuanli, in Chaoyang, in eastern/central Beijing. It will be covered more in depth once I get to process my pictures.

In the whole tourist experience, what interests me the most is to be able to answer the question: “what do they do over there in everyday situations?”.

On the second evening that I was in town, my friends Fiona and Scott, American and British expatriates living in Beijing, took me to Tesco, a large British-based international grocery and general merchandising retail chain, with branches in China.

Going to Tesco may not be your “average citizen” experience yet (it seems like small mom&pop grocery stores are still very popular), but it is another interesting view of how it is similar back home, yet with Chinese (or populous country) peculiarities.

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In fact it is. Based on what my expat friends said, and the Korean music that was being played inside, cafe/bakery chain “Tous Les Jours” is in fact a Korean-owned business. The bakery section resembles the self-service places that you find in Hong Kong, and to a certain extent, Chinatowns around the world. The branch that I went to was outside the Wudaokou subway stop on the 13 (the stop you use to get to Tsinghua and Peking U), where there is also a relatively large population of Korean students.

It is basically a cafe like would find in Asia. They serve you sandwich which bread is sub-par for the tastes of a Montrealer (it’s like sliced bread, but slightly sweet), but which fillings are familiar (ham and cheese) yet exotic (something else that tasted kind of sweet). It’s a little pricey for the average Beijinger, but totally affordable for the visiting Canadian (32 RMB for a lunch).

The interesting anecdote with Tous Les Jours, was that protesters against France’s stance on China and the Olympics, who protested in front of the many French businesses in China like supermarket Carrefour, were also seen in front of the Wudaokou branch of TLJ, as testified by one Beijing expat blogger, and another satirical blogger (who had a picture – which indeed shows the plaza facing Wudaokou station, where Tous Les Jours is, with full of people on the street + security guards).

Vieilles tactiques de vente, nouveaux moyens technologiques. Il y a deux semaines, un dimanche en fin d’après-midi, je me promenais dans le Quartier Chinois de Montréal pour faire mes courses comme à l’habitude. Alors sur De la Gauchetière, rendu à Clark, une voix forte et animée (et amplifiée), venant d’environ une trentaine de mètres en bas cette dernière, me réveilla de ma paisible marche. Franchement! D’où est-ce que ça pouvait bien venir?

Ça venait du haut-parleur de l’épicerie Wing Cheong Hong, et les annonces étaient celles des bas prix du jour que lançait tel un encanteur le président de l’entreprise, M. Bobby Chen, alors au contrôle du micro à cette heure-là. À ce que je sache, aucune autre épicerie chinoise au Quartier Chinois ne compte sur ce stratagème.

J’entre dans le commerce, et après avoir ramassé mon paquet de bok choy pour la semaine, je pique une jasette avec M. Chen. Il me dit que le fait de hurler les spéciaux du jour à la porte du commerce est une pratique courante au Japon. « Ils n’ont pas le droit d’utiliser de micros là-bas, alors pour vendre le stock qu’il viennent de recevoir en spécial, ils embauchent des gars avec des porte-voix, puis des belles filles en bikini! », me dit-il.

Il va sans dire que les marchés d’alimentation, depuis l’aube de l’Humanité, ont usé de ce procédé pour vendre leurs salades. Je n’ai pas demandé à M. Chen s’il avait effectivement le droit d’en faire de même avec les moyens de nos jours. En tout cas, si la musique forte est acceptable, alors pourquoi pas une circulaire parlante?

M. Chen, aux commandes.

An English version of this article was published on Spacing Montreal.

One of the recurrent social activity involving food in my circle of friends, has been dumplings-making. In certain families, preparing dumplings (or also wonton) is something that you do every year during the Chinese New Year period. There is no such tradition in my family, although the chain-production of wontons by my father is something that seems to return every year or so.

Sometime last week, I had my friends over, and we prepared three different bowls of mix for Chinese-style dumplings, or 餃子 (jiaozi) in Chinese. One first friend, an international student from Sichuan, made a “traditional” mix, which did not contain anything but ground pork, seasoning, sesame oil and corn starch. My other friend, a Chinese Canadian originally from Hong Kong, who has a kick for cilantro, made a mix with ground pork, mashed nappa cabbage, green onions, seasoning, sesame oil, and a lot of coriander. My recipe, as seen on the picture (actually taken during a practice run, a few days earlier), consisted of the same thing as the previous friend’s, but without the cilantro, and instead with Chinese mushrooms (commonly known as shitake in the West), dried scallops.

I am not a fan of wontons, perhaps because we always had them, rather than dumplings. The difference is that dumplings have a thicker skin, and you can thus fry them in a pan. After wrapping our dumplings in varying shapes (which is the real fun part), we cooked them in two different ways:

• The first method was to throw them into a pot of scalding hot water, boil them for a while, and then interrupt the cooking by adding cold water. This is considered the “standard” method.
• The second method, maybe more tasty, but not as good for your health and a little high-maintenance. It requires you to directly put your dumplings over a pan with oil, fry them for ~5 minutes until the dumplings become crispy and brown, and then go through the non-intuitive step of adding water or broth to cover about 1/4 to 1/3 of the dumplings height. This is to cook the dumplings entirely. After boiling off the liquid, you would fry the dumplings some more for an extra crisp.

Ironically, we used wonton wrappers (Shanghai kinds) instead of dumpling ones. Because wonton wrappers are thinner, they are also more fragile and prone to breaking, after absorbing extra moisture from the meat filling.