When you really think about it, one of the best accompaniments to a hot cup of milk tea at four o'clock in the afternoon is a barbecue pork pastry puff. Just right, and not too much. Barbecue pork (charsiu) is a splendid and versatile product that combines harmoniously with noodles, vegetables, fried rice, soup, or flaky pastry. If there isn't a decent siu mei dim (燒味店), a Chinese bakery (餅家), and a wonton noodle soup (雲吞麵家) place near you -- the first to make the charsiu, the second to incorporate it into a flaky puff and serve it with HK milk tea, and the third to offer it as a tasty serving alongside your bowl of wonton noodle soup -- you may be living in interior California, Oklahoma, or deepest Mississippi.
Somewhere far from civilization in any case.
Better move. The ICUs at your nearest hospital are overflowing with deathly ill anti-vaxxers, and that planned peripheral angioplasty might have to be postponed till next year.
Yesterday I was planning to have some wonton noodle soup in Chinatown, but because one of my favourite bakeries was actually open on new years day, I decided to postpone the combo of noodles and dumplings (doubly propitious for the start of a year) till a later date.
And it was around tea time anyway.
Most delightful teatime ever. No one at the tables, those customers that did wander in were happy to find a pastry shop open, and many of them had come to the neighborhood because for that one day of the year they wished to hear their own language and say the customary greetings -- new year is an emotionally loaded time -- and every word was cheerful.
I enjoyed tea time immensely.
The pipe filled with aged Virginia flake afterwards was icing on the cake.
Waverly Place was quiet, peacefull, serene. With red scraps.
Evidence of firecrackers earlier in the day.
Cops. Happy children.
Twilight.
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