Monthly Archives: December 2006

Shanghai Gourmet in Richmond going downhill

We ate at Shanghai Gourmet at Pacific East Mall (3288 Pierce) in Richmond today and found that the place had gone downhill.  How sad!  No more chicken with chestnuts — it was taken off the menu.  The braised meatballs (often called “Lion’s Head”) had limited richness of sauce, which was markedly lighter than in the past and floury.  The pork with bean curd sheets — which should be pork belly and bean curd knots braised in a clay pot with the usual suspects, like wine, rock sugar and soy sauce — was a memory of its former self.  First off, half the pork belly was replaced with another cut of pork, which sent my mother into a tailspin.  Second, the sauce was weak.  Stuff was missing or the dish was not given enough time to braise – maybe both.  All I know is that it should have been obscenely savory but fell flat.  Matt ordered pan-fried bean curd with shrimp roe, which was very good, but none of us were able to detect much roe flavor.  When we talked with our server about the state of the food, he claimed there had been no change in ownership nor chef.  Then what the hell happened?  This calls for some investigation.

Christmas leftovers

Smoked pork chop in aspic german-style

We are eating Christmas leftovers now, and I am happily working through my Sulzkotelet stash.  Oh, beloved Sulzkotelets!  I ate them as a child and would be happy with nothing but pork and aspic products during the holiday season.  A Sulzkotelet is a smoked pork loin chop (Kassler Rippchen) in mildly sour aspic with a slice of egg, carrot and pickle.  All are set attractively in a little pork chop shaped mold.  They taste great with a nice sourdough or hearty rye bread or with boiled potatoes.  When the hot potatoes come into contact with the cold aspic you get some highly desirable melting action.  Karl Ehmer in Flushing, Queens, used to sell these when I was growing up.  Though the Flushing store is long gone, Karl Ehmer still has a number of retail stores in New York and also sells via mail order, though I am invariably told that they only produce this item “off and on” and have not been able to get them sent to me in California.  If you live near a Karl Ehmer retail store and like aspic products, I advise you to investigate their availability.  I generally order them from Stiglmeier’s, even  though they are skinnier and boneless, since Stiglmeier’s has other things I order anyway.  I am not sure if Schaller & Weber, another major producer of German sausages and cold cuts, carries Sulzkotelets these days. When I lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in the early 1990’s, I used to get them at their retail store off 86th street (1654 2nd Ave).

Christmas minus one parent

Prime rib

This is my first Christmas without my father.  Although we hadn’t spent Christmas together in years, we always exchanged gifts and a barrage of cell phone calls during the holidays.  He always sent Amazon.com gift certificates, and this is the first year we won’t be seeing any in our email in-boxes.  The real loss was felt last night, though, since we celebrate in the German tradition, where Christmas Eve is the big deal.  In any event, our small Matthew and Jon at Christmas dinner in 2006 family unit produced a delightful prime rib dinner today.  We had toyed with sirloin of beef, and even went back and forth in the meat section of Costco with large pieces of beast until we finally said, “the hell with it, you only live once, we could be dead next year,” and carted the immense sirloin back to its section in favor of the boneless prime rib.  That is not to say there wasn’t a “bone-in” versus “boneless” conversation beforehand.  We roasted it at low heat to an internal temperature of ~130 degrees F., which is RARE, the only way to eat prime rib, really.  Since I wanted the full flavor of the meat to shine through, I rubbed only salt and pepper into the meat before cooking.  Happy Christmas!

Christmas eve and topfsuelze galore

Berry the akitachow on christmas eve of 2006

Sorry for the delay in posting, but I have been away for quite a while spending time with my father, who passed away last month. I am backlogged in my posting and will take care of that in the next couple of weeks. We did manage to have another one of our traditional German Christmas Eve feasts this evening, and I have the photos to prove it. I can’t help but feature Topfsuelze here, though, as befits its place in my Christmas Eve meat product hierarchy. Honestly, if I had to choose one thing to eat at this meal it would be Topfsuelze, which is more or less head cheese, but not the kind that would come to mind to an Amerikaner. This is not at all fatty and has a very bright, clean flavor. There are various versions of this pork-in-sour-aspic delight, but the best contains many little chunks of tongue. It is produced in loaf form with a thick layer of aspic on top into which sliced eggs, pickles and carrots are molded. I order

German head cheese

a boatload of it and then hide it in the back of the fridge where no one else in my household would ever look — near actual ingredients for cooking. I urge you to try this, even if the idea turns you off. It is so damned good! Allow me to mention a few of the other goodies on the table: Teewurst, a cured, ground pork spread with a bit of a twang that comes either finely or coarsely ground; Blutwurst with tongue, which is mainly, well, blood with chunks of tongue (sorry, but nothing goes to waste when it comes to sausage-making in the old country); several types of Cervelat, which is salami; Leberkäse, spiced pork paste baked in a loaf pan, sliced and eaten warm, and, last but never, ever, least, Leberwurst, both smooth and chunky. If we were in Germany, we would have had herring salad on the table, too, but it is difficult to find salted herring in the U.S. from which to prepare it. Next year I’ll go into more detail about the various Würste, as I hope to have more time.

German food served on christmas eve of 2006