For lunch yesterday, I didn’t have my usual sashimi salad at home. OK, if you’re wondering what my sashimi salad is, it’s really just slices of raw salmon served together with diced tomatoes, sliced avocado and chopped onions with some lemon juice sprinkled on top. Of course there’s the kikkoman sashimi sauce to dip the salmon into before it goes into the mouth. So yes, I get my sashimi fix almost every other week. I love this salmon salad ‘cos it’s not too heavy on the stomach and it’s just right for Sunday brunch. But yah, I’m a bit of a sashimi freak too. I just love it. Japanese food sits very well on my palate.
Anyway, I was invited to an ex-student’s place for lunch yesterday. This was one of my students from my three-month teaching stint at this language school in Peninsula Plaza in the first half of the year. This student of mine, who recently returned from his holidays back home in Shanghai, had very kindly brought back some goodies for me and invited me to his place for lunch so that I could collect the goodies at the same time. He said his girlfriend would cook Shanghainese food for me.
And cooked she did. Very well in fact. I figured that her culinary skills must be one of the ways she is holding on to his heart. Haha. She’s definitely a good candidate for the phrase ‘The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.’
I’m the total opposite–the way to MY heart is through my stomach. :p
My student passed me some vacuumed-packed food which are favourite local snacks in Shanghai. One packet was ducks’ gizzards and the other was ducks’ wings. I’ve tried the former but not the latter. The former is pretty tasty but a bit too salty for me. My student tells me that the Shanghainese people tend to like things on the salty side. It would taste better with rice in my opinion. As for the wings, I’ll try it another time.
So the dishes were braised beef and beef tendons, fried pork ribs which you had to dip into this mixture of soy sauce and vinegar, strips of potato cooked with some chilli and vinegar, stir-fried beans with garlic and a potato salad. The last one was the only non-Shanghainese dish. And oh, we had XiaoLongBao too. The XiaoLongBao was from a frozen pack which they had brought back from Shanghai. The dishes were all very yummy.
Together with two other flatmates of his and his girlfriend, we all sat down for a hearty lunch. Gave me a little opportunity to speak some Chinese too since every one of them was from Shanghai. It was really nice of my student to invite me and I’m glad I’m still in touch with a few of them.