SHANGHAI SOUP

A recent dinner: Shanghai soup with meatballs. The meatballs were a smaller variation on 'lions heads' (迷你獅子頭 'mai nei si ji tau') with Shanghai wheat noodles (上海麵 'seung hoi min') and shredded fresh mustard cabbage (芥菜 'gai choi'). Touch of ginger, touch of red oil.
And a touch of porkfat.

Lion's head meatballs are the basic pork meatball with a little spicing, and chopped water chestnut (馬蹄 'maa tai') for crunch, braised and then wetly steam-finished. On a bed of something cabbage-like, four to a pot. They're considered a Shanghai thing, even though the cook who made them for you was probably Cantonese. They had to be 'mini' (迷你) of course, because there was only one diner (me). Usually lion's heads are big 'uns.
The mane is represented by cabbage or lettuce.


The soup came into play because I like noodles for slurping, and I needed a starch. Broth, dash of soy, pinch of sugar. Dump everything into a bowl, drizzle in a little Chekiang vinegar and add some sambal, then plonk myself down in the teevee-computer room to read and eat.


Heaven between chopsticks.


上海肉丸湯麵
Canto pronunciation: 'seung hoi yiuk yuen tong min'.


It's not particularly that I want to eat alone, but I like my own cooking, and my tastes have grown up since my youth. I do not wish to have meatloaf, or steak and potatoes. Or the Wasp versions of spaghetti and chops.

So, by long habit, I cook for myself. It's by no means an apathetic lack of choice thing. It's more like a life-style. San Francisco enthusiasm.




For your information, I am not from Shanghai, nor even Cantonese. Dutch-American ancestry. We went to Holland when I was two years old, I came back when I was college age. Dutch speaking, conversant in Cantonese, German, Indonesian. Foul-tongued when alone, multiple ways.





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