Lunch at a Chinese restaurant near work.

I didn’t get pictures of our first dinner, which was at Jumbo Seafood Restaurant and included such memorable dishes as the jumbo chili crab, deep-fried beancurd, steamed fish, liang ban jellyfish, prawns with cabbage, and seafood fried rice.

Dinner at Otto, an upscale Italian restaurant, the next night.

Dinner at an Italian pizza joint.

Dinner at Stella, a fine-dining establishment on the 62 floor of a building downtown. One floor up is the world’s highest al-fresco bar, with stunning views of downtown Singapore.

I’ve never enjoyed foie gras, but these were quite good, and the pastry was unbelievably light.

These were the best maki rolls I have ever had. The combination of flavours and textures was almost overwhelming.

The scallops unfortunately tasted a bit funny to me, probably because they’re not fresh enough. The prawns in the risotto was overcooked, while the risotto itself (the rice grains) were undercooked. The cream base was quite good though.

The desserts were to die for. The creme brulee was just perfect, with bits of macadamia on top. My favourite was the hazelnut mousse, although the toffee cake and pistachio tart were both surprisingly good – both were a little bit different than the norm. I was impressed by the creative use of ingredients.

The interior is modern and well-lit. The tables are quite close together but the semi-circle dividers give an illusion of spaciousness.

The menu was varied with bright, bold pictures of mouthwatering dishes. We started with a “dessert” as an appetizer, gui hua tang ou (steamed lotus root stuffed with sweet sticky rice).

This steamed dessert was soft and sticky with sugary juices, and the sweet glutinous rice complemented the slightly crispier lotus root. I have always wondered what dessert in Chinese culture really is, but now I know why I had such a hard time figuring it out. For most families, there is no distinction between courses, everything is set on the table pretty much at once. Sure, you have bigger dishes and smaller dishes, hot dishes and cold dishes, but the distinction is not as clear as in Western tradition. For example, here is a dessert that looks deceptively like an appetizer. Who would have thought of lotus root being a dessert? It comes down to a fundamental difference in technology: Chinese chefs don’t bake. Baking is very much a Western technology, and Canton baked desserts have been influenced that way. Traditional Chinese desserts are made much in the same way that all dishes are made, on the stove.

Next up was ban li shao ji (chicken with chestnuts stew).

This was every good as bit as it looks. Braised chicken with chestnuts is a common family dish in the Shanghai area. It’s an exceedingly simple recipe – just soy bean paste and salt – but the chestnuts add something very subtle and unique to the sauce.

The highlight of the evening, however, was the Shanghai special hot pot.

In this pot contained an elaborate combination of: dan jiao (pork in egg wrapper dumplings), pork in tofu wrapper, Lion’s Head meatballs, fen si (vermicelli), fish balls, dried ham (salted and air-dried as opposed to smoked) and various Chinese vegetables. It was glorious.

Another unique dish was belly pork in a fermented beancurd sauce. Fermented beancurd (or dou fu ru) is not as strange as it might sound. It is not pungent at all, instead it is very flavourful.

Belly pork is pork that has a lot of fat, and it is usually cut in big chunks with the skin still on it. Although this is probably not a dieter’s dream, the skin, fat, and meat goes really well together, especially in a dish like this that would need to be cooked for a long time until a lot of fat has melted into the sauce.

On the side, we also had a bowl of bok choy fried rice.

For dessert, we had lan gua bing (fried pumpkin pancakes).

They are made with glutinous flour and covered in sesame seeds, fried until golden brown. These were melt-in-your-mouth good, the best I’ve ever had.

Service could have been more attentive but no worse than a typical Chinese restaurant of this size. The prices are very reasonable (although a little higher than some of the other restaurants in Scarborough). There are a lot of unique, home-grown Shanghai dishes on the menu that I have not seen elsewhere. I would definitely come back, and next time, I’m bringing more people so I can try more dishes.

Rating:

A group of friends and I joined the frenzy one rainy Sunday noon. Given my preference for northern Chinese food, I hadn’t been to a Cantonese-style dim sum place in a long time. I let my friends do most of the ordering since they had been here before, I just sat back and prepared to eat.

Crispy shrimp cigars were spring rolls shaped like straws, with a single shrimp in each. They were so cute! The spring rolls were crispy and golden. Perfection.

Pan-fried pork and shrimp dumplings were a little burnt, but the wrapper held strong. The filling was average, mostly pork and chives with some little dried shrimps.

Pan-friend bean curd rolls had a vegetarian filling in a bean curd wrapper. The bean curd tasted surprisingly fresh.

Dessert in the form of steamed egg custard rolls arrived too early in the meal, but were light, fluffy, and not too sweet.

Steamed shrimp dumplings in a translucent wrapper sprinkled with roe, stuffed with plump pieces of shrimp. So tender, so delicious.

Steamed shrimp and roe shao mai, in a surprisingly tough egg wrapper. Not as tender as the steamed shrimp dumplings.

Jellyfish and mango salad was cold and refreshing. The biggest surprise? The jellyfish did not taste like canned jellyfish.

Steamed pork rice noodle roll. It was soft and delicious, especially with the light house sauce. If I knew how to make rice noodle rolls, I’d make them every day.

Another dessert that arrived in the middle of the meal, tapioca jelly cups, each with a different ingredient in the centre. One had red bean, one had egg custard (?), and one had a cream-coloured filling that I didn’t get to taste.

Coconut tapioca dessert, with chunks of real coconut, honeydew, canteloupe, and of course, tapioca jelly. Anything with coconut tastes good to me, and honeydew is only my favourite melon, so of course, I loved this.

Another bean curd roll, this time with a savoury ground pork filling that included wood ear (mu er).

This was also a steamed pork dumpling, but the wrapper is made of tapioca as opposed to flour. The filling did not hold together very well though.

The last to come was also the one we were dreading the most: curry octopus. One of my friends had ordered this on a whim/dare. It was a bad decision. The octopus was hard to chew and the curry was more messy than it was flavourful.

Desserts came at the same time as entrees, service was mediocre, but what do you expect from such a large banquet hall? At least the bathrooms were clean. The prices are reasonable, and (I am told) the quality of food is consistent, which is the biggest draw for its loyal customers.

Rating:

On Saturday, my friend and I visited early in the evening to beat the dinner rush. Our waitress was a Cantonese-speaker but like everyone else who worked there, she was obligated to know a little Mandarin³. The clientele here is slightly more varied than some restaurants in Markham and Scarborough; while most speak Mandarin, some speak Cantonese or another dialect, and there is the occasional non-Chinese-speaking person or two (although usually accompanying a Chinese party). Like many Asian restaurants in the area, Chilli Secrets has done away with the simple, plain (and often dirty) family-restaurant feel of typical Chinese restaurants (actually spending money on interior decoration seems to be a trend in Chinese restaurants these days, especially in The Other Chinatown), and has also put their staff through some sort of customer service training.

My friend and I ordered a leng pan (appetizer) of spicy pork belly slices, an entree of spicy fried beef, and a fried rice dish of chicken and pineapple.
The spicy pork belly slices is one of my favourite dishes. It’s actually quite a large dish considering that it is an appetizer. The pork belly slices are sliced very thinly and drenched in spicy oil. The slices themselves are not marinated, so it doesn’t feel too overwhelming.


The spicy beef dish was completely different from what I expected. When the menu said “fried,” I assumed stir-fried, not deep-fried! And the beef was wrapped in batter! How very unexpected. It had a distinct aftertaste of Sichuan peppercorns, but was not initially spicy. This is probably one of the less successful dishes I’ve ordered. I think I’ll stick to pi jiu ya guo (beer duck pot) next time.


Finally, we had a chicken and pineapple fried rice that was surprisingly thoughtful and delicious. Usually, I expect fried rice to be one of the least interesting dishes – there’s oil, there’s MSG, there’s frozen peas and carrots, and there’s rice. What is there to say? But this, this fried rice came in a pineapple. It had pineapple and raisins and carrots, and it didn’t taste like MSG. I especially loved the raisins.

Other dishes I’ve had here that are also winners include jellyfish salad, and fried hot and sour potatoes. Unfortunately, this place does not do the well-known Sichuan dishes (the dishes that made the cuisine famous) as well as some other places I’ve been, such as gong bao ji ding (gong bao chicken with Chinese red lantern chilis) and fu qi fei pian (two fish filet in spicy sauce). For that, I still recommend Hot Spicy Spicy at Finch and Leslie.

Rating:

1. The Other Chinatown refers to the large Chinese population living in the northern GTA suburbs, such as Richmond Hill and Markham.
2. Yes, they spelled chili wrong in their name. No, I don’t think it was intentional.
3. Don’t worry, the chefs are mainland!

Pai gu may have been my favourite dish at home as a child, but xiao long bao were hands down my favourite thing to order when we were eating out. I grew up in Nanjing, which is not far from Shanghai and certainly influenced by Shanghai cuisine. We always went out to eat steamed buns (filled and unfilled) and steamed dumplings because they were cheap and extremely time-consuming to make at home (there were no such things as frozen buns and dumplings in those days so we’d have to make it from scratch). Not to mention, I spent a summer in Shanghai with my grandparents and I made sure to eat enough xiao long bao to last me until the next time I returned to China.
There is an art to eating xiao long bao, one that I don’t care to exercise unless I’m in China. What is this art and why don’t I exercise it? The proper way to eat xiao long bao is to gently lift it out of the long zi (bamboo basket), dip it in vinegar (optional – but if you are a native of the JiangSu province, you will not skip the vinegar), and eat it in one bite so that no soup leaks out. The xiao long bao wrapper is very thin and delicate, and it sticks to surfaces, so it’s easy to break if you set it down. And letting the soup leak out is a blasphemy for all Chinese, so be sure the xiao long bao goes straight from the basket to your mouth if you are eating with “real Chinese.”
The reason I tend not to follow this technique when I eat is because the soup is so hot that I’ll often burn my mouth if I eat the xiao long bao in one bite. However, I am not going to let the soup leak out either, so I’ll put the xiao long bao down in a small bowl or on a soup soon, and then I bite a small hole in the wrapper and suck out the soup before I eat the xiao long bao. Still tastes delicious!

But I digress. My friend and I arrived at 11pm and Ding Tai Fung was already quite busy. When we were seated, we realized with horror that the entire menu was Chinese. My friend could not read any Chinese, and I can only read some. Luckily, my knowledge of Chinese was enough for us to navigate through most of the dim sum items.
Either we were lucky or everything at Ding Tai Fung tastes delicious because everything that came to our table tasted amazing. I’ve never tasted such simple yet perfect Chinese dim sum before, especially because many Chinese restaurants don’t think dim sum is important¹. It’s like how lunch entrees are often not as good as dinner entrees except that dim sum is a completely different menu (and world) of its own.

Ding Tai Fung obviously did not subscribe to this philosophy, and quite rightly, its dim sum is what made it famous.

The first item was a leng cai (literally, cold dish, i.e. appetizer) of spicy beef tripe. It was cold and spicy and a little bit sweet – simply delicious.

The second item was the basket of xiao long bao. The authenticity of xiao long bao is easily determinable. If the wrapper is thick, it is not authentic. If there is no soup or very little soup, it is not authentic. Shanghai xiao long bao is also always a pork filling with pork soup, so any other ingredients in the filling would make it not authentic. This was authentic in every way. As I bit into the thin wrap, hot, savoury soup spilled out and burned my tongue, but I ate it all in one bite. My mouth came alive with the sensation of rich pork juices, and my mind sent me back to my summer in Shanghai, where I spent many hot afternoons on the air-conditioned second floor of a tea house, eating basket after basket of xiao long bao.

The third item to arrive was the vegetable spring rolls. They were crisp and golden, and quite perfect. I’ve never had spring rolls in a restaurant before in China, so I don’t know if these were authentic, but they tasted pretty good. The filling was vegetarian, I think bok choy or Chinese cabbage.

The fourth item was by far the most delicious. It was a beef roll wrapped in aluminum foil that I’ve seen other people order many times, but I’ve never seen it in China or had it myself. It may be a Cantonese dim sum item. Either way, it was delicious. It was a pan-fried crispy roll, with sliced beef and scallions wrapped inside with Hoi Sin sauce.

On subsequent trips to Ding Tai Fung, I have tried their vegetable jiao zi, which are filled with Chinese greens and shredded Chinese vermicelli and steamed in a paper-thin translucent dumpling wrap. Dan dan noodles are not their forte, nor are luo bo si su bing (pan-fried shredded turnip pancake), although it is slightly less soggy than what I’ve had at other places. Mini (bite-size) xiao long bao are not nearly as good as the standard xiao long bao, and pork and glutinous rice shao mai leave something to be desired. Crispy spring onion pancakes are a good standby, as are stir-fried rice cakes (Shanghai nian gao).

For dessert, their sugar egg puff tastes like nothing with confectioner’s sugar sprinkled on top. I don’t have a picture, but here is what a sugar egg puff looks like. The most interesting dessert they offer is the steamed red bean rice cake. It is not too sweet or decadent, but fragrant and beautiful.

The servers speak Mandarin, Cantonese, and English, and the food arrives quite quickly considering everything is made fresh. Service can be slower on weekends, but while you wait, you can watch the cute dumpling makers behind the glass pleat dumplings with practiced confidence. The washrooms are a little cramped but fairly clean. Prices were standard for dim sum, between $5 to $9 dollars a dish.

Rating:
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1. They won’t have the head chef prepare those items, and some places will even buy pre-made or frozen dim sum and just heat it up

My friend and I took a long time to decide what to order, since everything on the menu was quite new and different to us. Kung Po Soy Chicken or Thai (Soy) Steak? Enoki Mushroom Balls or Curry Fried Rice?
We ended up settling on ordering one dim sum and one entree each. She ordered the BBQ pork-stuffed bun, a classic dim sum item, except the pork was of course a soy substitute, and I ordered a sticky rice wrap (zong zi). I used to love sticky rice wraps when I was a kid, especially the ones filled with aged sausage and marinated pork (called “savoury” sticky rice wraps, as opposed to the “sweet” variety where the filling is usually red bean paste), but I can’t often find authentic sticky rice wraps here in Canada. Most of the time, they are the Vietnamese or Cantonese variety, both of which have different fillings that I tend not to like as much. I could spend a whole day talking about zong zi, but suffice to say, they are not easy to prepare, take a long time to cook, and thus, good zong zi in Canada are an endangered species.
I was a little skeptical of the dim sum menu to begin with, which only included three items and seemed out of place in this Asian zen restaurant filled with non-Asian customers. To me, dim sum conjured an image of a banquet hall filled with the ever-increasing volume of Asians fighting over the bill in Cantonese as waitresses whizzed by with trolleys of steamed goodies stacked five-feet high. Not to mention dim sum without real meat? Blasphemy!

Out of place though it was, the dim sum was surprisingly authentic, which made me curious as to who the chefs were. My friend’s BBQ-pork bun came out fantastic, with a perfectly soft and fragrant bun (the bun is actually where the skill-level of the chef is deduced) that I never in a million years thought I’d find in London. The filling was sweet and saucy, and although not real pork, tasted incredibly similar.


My zong zi was also incredibly authentic. It had a savoury mushroom filling, but the real treat was the sticky rice, which was cooked to perfection. Because zong zi is cooked very slowly, a lot of things can go wrong in the cooking process, and the most difficult aspect is determining when it is done. I really wish they could introduce a sweet variation as well, with the red bean paste, because then I’d be back here every day! But if they were to make that from scratch, it would be much more time-consuming than making the savoury version.

For the entree, I ordered a curry vegetable dish and my friend ordered a fried rice (what kind exactly I forget). Both our dishes had a surprising taste, the kind of surprise that makes your eyes go wide with delight as your taste buds start to react to the first spoonful. For her, it was the sweet pineapple, for me it was the curry sauce.

I didn’t expect my dish to come out looking like it did. I thought it would be a curry vegetable stir-fry or something, but it came out looking more like a stew, in a heavy pot with a thick sauce. The sauce was an absolute delight, and I have no idea what kind of curry they used. It wasn’t quite like any curry sauce I’ve ever had, and I’ve had many¹. There was no hint of your typical Thai ingredients in the curry (coconut, lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, bay leaves, lime juice), so it was strictly its own brand of Chinese curry. It tasted closely like Japanese curry but less thick, more spicy, and more orange-coloured rather than brown. The mushrooms made it especially savoury, and I loved the subtle spicy taste that developed over time as I consumed more of the dish. One of the ingredients that also surprised me was okra, something I’ve never had before but found quite interesting. Now that I’ve looked it up, I guess it was used as a thickening agent in the stew. The other ingredients were potato, soy chunks, soy meatballs, and carrots, which all complimented each other well. Maybe it’s because there was no real meat, maybe it was because the potatoes were cut in small chunks, but either way, the meal did not feel heavy at all.

Our server was attentive and accommodating, and the atmosphere was quiet and very serene, perfect for conversation. The dessert menu was disappointingly short, so we decided to go elsewhere for dessert, but the tea menu was was quite varied and extensive.
The whole experience was a pleasant surprise, and I made it a point to meet the chef(s) after our meal. It turned out they were Cantonese, although the chef that came out to greet us spoke Mandarin, so I thanked him in my native tongue and he grinned from ear to ear.

Will I be back? Most definitely!

Rating:

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1. Madras curry; green, red, and yellow Thai curries; Japanese curry.

Rating:

Downtown Location
418 Dundas St. W.
Toronto, ON
(416) 977-3909

The Commerce Gate branch in Thornhill is a much better dining experience than the downtown location in every way. Although situated a little out of the way for some, the trip is definitely worth it for those willing to drive north of the city. After two trips to the restaurant on very different nights, I have discovered that the cooking here is infinitely better than what I remember of the downtown location. From the sizzling beef on hot plate to the tantalizing tofu and vegetable stir-fry, I can’t remember the last time I had such a satisfying Chinese meal in Canada. The luxurious flavours of northern Chinese cooking oozes out of every dish, and I am reminded of my trip to Beijing with every bite. The Northern Dim Sum are a delicious surprise, particularly the perfectly steamed dumplings with juicy pork and soup that requires some expertise to eat without leaking the soup everywhere. The Cantonese Chow Mein is also particularly savoury on a bed of golden, crisp fried noodles. The ambiance and the clean washrooms also make this a great location to bring your date, friends, and family! Just be wary: on most evenings, there is a small line-up, so get there early or make a reservation. For larger gatherings, there are bigger rooms in the back, but I prefer the small tables next to the floor to ceiling glass walls in the front room. I must say, dividing the restaurant up into a beautiful front room with bigger rooms in the back was an excellent architectural choice. I, for one, am definitely going back for another taste! Perhaps this time I will go for dim sum, which I heard is excellent.

Rating:

Commerce Gate Location
505 Hwy 7 E. #77-79
Thornhill, ON
(905)763-8211

Anyway, I bought some chicken giblets¹ the other day and I’ve been really looking forward to cooking them. If you’ve never had giblets and are a little grossed out by them – don’t worry! They don’t taste strange, they’re just extremely chewy. So if you like tendons, you’re sure to like giblets (gizzards are my favourite)!

Now this recipe is an original so don’t go thinking I’m just copying and pasting some disgusting chicken innards recipe on here. When I read up on gizzards, I realized that they have to be cooked for a long time. You know what else is simmered for a long time? Tea eggs! One of my favourite street-vendor-foods (and extremely easy to make), tea eggs are simmered in a pot with soy sauce, star anise (or five spice powder), and green tea. Hence, that is how I decided to infuse flavour into my gizzards! I call this dish “Dragon Gills” (because all Chinese dishes have crazy names).

Ingredients:
0.2kg giblets – separate hearts and livers from gizzards
1/2 an onion, sliced into squares
2 slices of fresh ginger
3 tsp salt
2 tsp ground pepper or 1 thsp peppercorns
1 tsp green tea leaves
3 bay leaves
2 tbsp olive oil
4 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp dark soy sauce
0.5 tbsp Guilin chili sauce²
2 tsp sugar
1 tbsp Chinese cooking wine or sherry (or Grand Marnier in my case, since I had neither)

Instructions:

1. Bring a pot of water to boil and add gizzards. DO NOT add hearts or livers. Scoop/rinse off the foam, refill pot with water, and bring to boil again.
2. Add ginger, salt, peppers/peppercorns, tea leaves and bay leaves. Turn heat down to medium and cook for 30min.
3. Add 2 tbsp soy sauce, turn heat down to medium, and cook for another 20-30min.
4. Heat a wok/pan and add olive oil.
5. Pour pot contents into wok. Remove bay leaves (and tea leaves if possible). Add 1 tsp salt and 2 tbsp soy sauce and cook for 2min.
6. Add chicken hearts and onions. Sautee for a while, and add Guilin chili sauce.
7. Finally, add chicken livers, dark soy sauce, Chinese cooking wine, and sugar. Mix constantly.
8. Chicken liver does not need to be cooked long. Remove from heat and serve hot with white rice.

1. Technically, giblets are gizzard, heart, and liver, but there was no liver in mine.
2. I recommend Lee Kum Kee’s Guilin chili sauce. This is a very versatile chili sauce that can be used with many Chinese dishes containing meats. It is not very spicy, does not overwhelm your taste buds, and enhances flavour without affecting other ingredients.

Until I started writing this recipe, I did not know what these were. I’ve used them before, oh, plenty of times. They’re great for stir-fries, easy to work with, and an easy, tasteless way to add some veggies to your dish.

Turns out, they’re not veggies. They’re fruits! Melons, in fact. I’d always had a sneaking suspicion they were related to melons (the green and the crisp and the seed gave it away), but I never really bothered to confirm it.

Chayote are apparently native to Costa Rica and a popular ingredient in Mexico, although I was introduced to them in a Chinese supermarket. Known as 佛手瓜 (Fu Shou Gua) to me, I’ve used them in stir-fries alongside the likes of chicken, soybeans, and firm marinated tofu. Since they’re related to cucumber, you can imagine that they soften easily, so you shouldn’t cook them too long if you want to retain their crisp character. They don’t have much flavour to them (less so than cucumber), and they’re fairly good at retaining water.

Anyway. Long story short. I’ve been meaning to make something with the rest of my beef chunks, which I had already slow-cooked with some salt, star anise, and dried chilli peppers. I also needed to make some “street food” for Blog Party #33, which I’ve been undecided about the entire week.
Suddenly, inspiration hit.
You know in some Chinese buns, they’ll have pulled pork or beef that’s heavily marinated? Well…

I decided to pull apart the beef chunks into “strings”, and stir-fry it with chayote and onion. The result was a great mish-mash of savoury pulled beef and soft chayote. The best part was that both components were moist (beef looses its moisture quite easily) and packed with flavour.
The street-food element is that it would be a great stuffing for a pita. In fact, it could easily be turned into a main with the addition of any number of carbs: steamed Chinese buns, white rice, or even something made from potato (polenta or mashed).
I’m trying to cut down my carb-intake though (I’ve grown up eating rice with every meal so believe me, this is a lot harder than it sounds), so I had to think of something else.
I also had to make this into an appetizer in order to qualify for the Blog Party. So…

Ta da!
I had been chewing on a stick of cucumber while I was debating (yes, I chew on sticks of cucumber), and realized that the cucumber tasted pretty good with the beef-chayote dish. So the end result was a cucumber-based appetizer with some beef, chayote, and onion. I topped it off with a small piece of red pepper to give it some colour.

The verdict: the makeover of the “street-food” beef and chayote stuffing into an elegant little appetizer is all sorts of genius. Cucumber and chayote naturally marry well since they’re members of the same family (which I did not know at the time! Hence, genius), but they also contrast each other since the chayote is soft and full of flavour, while the cucumber is on the outside, adding a fresh crisp to every bite. The beef is moist and well-marinated in typical Asian fashion, with an aroma of sesame decadence and a subtle spicy undertone. This is probably the healthiest street-food-turned-appetizer ever!

The name of this dish is another brand of genius in itself (thank you, thank you very much). Since cucumber and chayote are in the same family, they are “The Green Sisters.” The love feud is between them and the beef, whose passion is ignited by the spicy undertones and the red pepper topping, much like the tip of a flame.

We recommend that this appetizer be consumed with Amazake¹, a low-alcohol Japanese drink made from fermented rice.

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Ingredients:
0.3 lb stewing beef
2 tsp salt
1 star anise
3 dried red chili peppers
1 chayote, cut into strands or thin slices
1/4 white or red onion, cut into strands or thin slices
1 cup beansprouts (optional)
0.5 cup soy sauce
1 tbsp sugar
2 thin slices of ginger
2 tsp sesame oil
1-2 tsp 老干妈 (Lao Gan Ma) chili sauce²

To make the beef:

1. Boil a pot of water. Add the beef stew cubes.
2. Wait until the water boils again, then dump the water out and rinse the beef. Add water until it is 1in above the beef and return to stove.
3. When the water is almost boiling again, add 2 tsp salt, star anise, and dried chili peppers. Wait for the water to boil, then turn the heat down to a medium-low setting.
4. Cook for at least 30min or until beef is no longer hard.
5. Remove from stove. Take out beef cubes and keep the liquid (will be used as stock later). Pull apart beef cubes with your hands. (If you’re good with a knife, you can also cut them, but make sure to cut them into tiny strands).

For the stir-fry:

1. Heat the wok. Skim some oil from the top of the beef stock and add to wok. Add 1 cup of beef stock.
2. Add beef, onions, ginger, half the soy sauce, and half the sugar.
3. After mixing, add the chayote, the rest of the soy sauce, and the rest of the sugar. (Optional: You can add another tsp of salt here if needed. For an appetizer, I wouldn’t add the salt, but if you’re eating this as a main with plain rice or steamed buns, go ahead and the salt.)
4. Lower the heat to medium and cook until chayote is soft. Make sure it doesn’t dry out when you’re cooking (add water or more beef stock if needed). The mixture should always be just immersed in liquid.
5. Just before you’re done, turn the heat back up to high, add the sesame oil, and stir frequently. This will make the water evaporated faster and thicken the liquid.

If you’re serving this as a main, serve hot on a bed of white rice or alongside some plain steamed buns. It can also be lunch tomorrow if you heat it up and stuff it into a pita. If you’re serving it as an appetizer, put some on top of slices of cucumber and garnish with a small slice of red pepper.

1. From Wikipedia: “Amazake can be used as a dessert, snack, natural sweetening agent, baby food, salad dressing or smoothie. The traditional drink (prepared by combining amazake and water, heated to a simmer, and often topped with a pinch of finely grated ginger) was popular with street vendors, and it is still served at inns and teahouses. Many Shinto shrines provide or sell this in the New Year. In the 20th century, an instant version became available.
   Amazake is believed to be very nutritious, with no additives, preservatives, added sugars or salts. Outside of Japan, it is often sold in health food shops.”
2.