Accidental Hedonist

Years ago, long before my husband and I moved to New York – before he even was my husband, in fact – we took a trip from where we lived in Massachusetts to New York for my birthday. He had already lived in New York for eight years before moving away and meeting me, so he was very much at home in the city.

As for me, up to that point, I’d lived pretty much all my life within a 20-minute drive from the very hospital in which I was born. I wasn’t a hayseed, but I felt more than a little like the storied country mouse, especially compared to my city mouse of a fiancé.

So, on our first night there, when he said, “oh, we should go to La Caridad and get some Cuban-Chinese food,” I didn’t want to appear as backwater as I felt, so I just smiled and nodded like, yeah, totally, Cuban-Chinese… who doesn’t like that?

In 1847, Spanish settlers brought the first Chinese laborers to Cuba and put them work in the sugarcane fields to replace slave labor. After completing an eight-year contract, the Chinese laborers were free to settle permanently in Cuba, and many did. By 1940, Havana’s Chinatown was the largest barrio chinoin all of Latin America, with 30,000 residents and over 40 blocks of Chinese-owned restaurants and other businesses.

After the Communist revolution in 1959, Chinese and Cubans alike fled Cuba. Many emigrated to the United States — Miami and New York, mostly — and, less so, to the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and other nearby Latin American countries.

Those who ended up in New York settled mostly in the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Cuban-Chinese restaurants quickly sprang up and flourished there, but as the neighborhood gentrified and new generations looked outside the restaurant business for careers, the restaurants dwindled until only a handful remained, including La Caridad, where I found myself trying to look blasé, like this fusion of cultures was old hat to me.

In truth, I had no idea what to expect. Chinese food I understood, but at that point in my life, the closest I’d come to Cuban food was, well, eating Dominican food. Once. Not that I would have said as much, lest any of the New Yorkers at the surrounding tables overhear (because, I don’t know, then they’d come over and mock me for being less cool than they were or something. Insecurities know no logic).

Although it seemed almost bizarre when I walked in, as soon as I was handed a menu, the combination of Cuban and Chinese made a lot more sense when I could see the staple foods common to both: rice, black beans, egg dishes, roast pork, et cetera. Even though it was some six years ago, I still remember I ordered the string beans (as I was vegetarian at the time), some fried rice (which just tickled me to find it was made with yellow rice), and, the only Dominican food I remembered eating before, fried plantains.

(Man. Just look at those. Sweet. Salty. Fried. That’s my brain’s pleasure center trifecta, served up on a plate.)

We stuffed ourselves, paid the bill, and got a cup of their (incredibly good) cafe con leche to drink on the walk back to our hotel, and although I didn’t dash out into the street and shout, “Yes! I have found my true home!” or anything, something in me shifted. There was something about this meal that had just thrilled me. It was foreign without being intimidating, it tasted fantastic (and was cheap besides), it had a history behind it that I found fascinating… and over the next couple of months, I started to think, if this is what living in New York is like, maybe… I could actually move to New York and live here.

As much as I’d like to end this post with a cheery And that’s just what we did! The end! in truth, it took a lot longer than that , including, at one point, actually moving to Brooklyn, then moving to Florida within a year, until we finally moved back this past summer, more than five years after this trip.

But over those five years, my husband and I (and later, our kid) came to the city whenever we could, and we’d trek up to La Caridad, always order some plantains, and think, oh yeah, I’d almost forgotten, this is why we still want to move to New York.

As always, to read more about my life in New York, visit my blog at gezellig-girl.com.

All photos:  Plate of the Day

This is my personal shame. Until this past weekend, I’ve never had dim sum.

I know, I know. Someone should take away my foodie credentials.

For those of you who don’t live on the coasts, or don’t live in a city with a Chinatown, Dim Sum is essentially a buffet in reverse. Instead of you going up to the steam tables and picking what you would like to eat, the steam tables are brought to you. This is indeed a good thing.

Dim sum, translated into Cantonese, means “dot heart” or “order heart”, implying that one should “order to one’s heart’s content” is usually a light meal, eaten sometime from morning-to-early afternoon with family or friends. It’s history is as follows (from Wikipedia):

Travelers on the Silk Road needed a place to take a nap, so teahouses began growing up along the roadside. Rural farmers, exhausted after working hard in the fields, would also go to teahouses for a relaxing afternoon of tea. At first, it was considered inappropriate to combine tea with food, because people believed that this would lead to excessive weight gain. However, people later discovered that tea can aid in digestion. Therefore, teahouse owners began adding more variety of snacks, so the tradition of dim sum evolved.

In Hong Kong, and most cities in Guangdong province, many Chinese restaurants start serving very early in the morning at around 6:00. It is a tradition for the elderly to gather to eat dim sum after morning exercises, often enjoying the morning newspapers. For many southerners of China, yum cha is treated as a weekend family day. Consistent with this tradition, dim sum restaurants typically only serve dim sum to the afternoon; other Cantonese cuisine would be served in the evening. Nowadays, various dim sum are also sold in takeaways as many students and office workers’ day-to-day breakfast.

To repeat, Dim Sum is not one specific dish, but a style of serving/ordering food. Tradition calls for tea to be served, as well as dumplings and many a steamed dish. Typical dishes include shrimp har gow, stuffed eggplant, hum baus of varying ingredients and, of course, tea. The rule of thumb is that you can eat as much as you like before you finish your initial cup of tea.

Tara and I went to China Gate in the International District here in Seattle. While the food was good, it didn’t bowl me over as much as whole dim sum “experience” did. I did like the Sesame Rice Dumpling (called ‘matuan’), with its crunchy exterior and sweetened bean paste inside. I am quite looking forward to trying dim sum at the many, many locations here in Seattle.

Ingredients:

• One pound of chicken parts, boned, skinned, with fat membranes removed, and cut into one-inch cubes
• One egg
• One quarter teaspoon of ground sea salt
• One quarter teaspoon of freshly ground white pepper or one teaspoon of red pepper flakes
• Three tablespoons cornstarch
• Two and one half tablespoons of dark soy sauce or tamari sauce
• One teaspoon of minced garlic
• Two teaspoons of minced ginger root
• Two tablespoons of hoisin sauce
• Three tablespoons of unrefined (turbanado) sugar
• Three teaspoons of distilled vinegar
• One and one half teaspoons of Shao-Hsing wine or very dry sherry
• Three and one half cups of peanut or sesame oil
• Six to twelve (depending on desired spiciness) hot, red chili peppers, capped and halved lengthwise
• One half cup of finely sliced green onions

Preperations:

Combine the soy sauce, garlic, ginger, hoisin, sugar, vinegar, and wine/ sherry in a small bowl, cover it, and set it aside. Mix the egg, salt, white pepper, and two tablespoons of the cornstarch in a medium to large bowl. Add the chicken cubes and mix them until the chicken pieces are coated. Then allow the chicken to marinate for at half an hour or so.

Heat the peanut or sesame oil in a wok or large, oiled frying pan to three hundred fifty degrees fahrenheit over high heat. Remove the chicken cubes from their bowl one by one, dust them lightly in the remaining one tablespoon of cornstarch, and place them in the oil. Deep-fry the cubes for one and one half to two minutes each until the chicken is brown and fairly crisp, then turn the heat off. Carefully place the cubes on a strainer to drain over a bowl (if you wish to reuse the oil for frying other things) or folded paper towels.

Once all the chicken has been cooked, turn off the heat. Pour off all but one and one half tablespoons of the oil from the wok or frying pan. Then turn the heat back up to high and wait for a bit of white smoke. When the smoke appears, add the chilies and stir them for fifteen seconds or so. Then add the green onions and stir the scallions and chilies for thirty more seconds. Then add the chicken and cook it all, stirring constantly, for approximately one minute.

Quickly uncover the sauce mixture in the small bowl and stir it a few times. Add it too the wok or frying pan and cook the chicken for one and one half minutes more, until the chicken is thoroughly coated. Then turn off the heat, transfer the chicken to a bed of rice and steamed broccoli, and serve it hot.