While on our usual Saturday walk last weekend, we decided to grab a quick bite to eat at a new takeaway called Mi Bao. I'd absentmindedly snapped a photo of the advertisement for "bao" outside of the door earlier in the week, and though restaurants have a habit of staying on our list for weeks (if not months) before we get around to visiting them, something about Mi Bao's promise of "Asian street food" made it seem like a more worthwhile place to revisit...
It could be because I'm American that I have a special place on my culinary palate for Chinese buffets. I remember going to one when my husband and I first started dating because we were young and didn't have much money; our local Chinese buffet located in one of America's never-ending strip malls was one of our few choices for a filling meal on a dime. Maybe it's that nostalgia or maybe it's the novelty of finding one in Stuttgart that influenced us to check out New Shanghai Restaurant today for lunch...
Despite my love of dining out, I often cook at home. Not only do I enjoy cooking, sometimes it's the only way to get some authentic dishes from home (like American pork lo mien, Mexican fajitas and tacos, New Orleans gumbo, and Texas chili) and some dishes that you can never find in a restaurant (like my mom's spaghetti). Lately I've been making an effort to try more Japanese dishes like the ones we ate on our trip to Japan. I've found a great Japanese-American blogger from the San Francisco bay area who writes on Just One Cookbook. So far, I've made tsukemen, soba noodles, and ochasuke, and I recently tried katsu curry (see some pictures at the end of this post).
These recipes often require ingredients that can't be found in my neighborhood grocery store. The Edeka where I shop does have a small Asian aisle, but most products are from the standard Bamboo Garden brand (although Edeka recently started stocking panko breadcrumbs and miso paste -- I was impressed!). When I need more exotic ingredients, like real ramen noodles, soba noodles, chili bean paste, dried bonito flakes, mentsuyu (a soup base), and narutomaki (a kind of fish paste), then I head to the Asian market...
I've been to Berlin a few times now both for school trips and for pleasure. It remains one of my favorite cities that I've thus far visited, and I'd love to live there some day. The atmosphere is one of contrast between old and new, past and present, clean and rough. There's always something going on.
Its unique history post-WWII has allowed Berlin to reinvent itself in ways uncommon to other cites that are overwhelmed by their image. It has become a hotspot for the young, for artists, for immigrants, for foodies, for politicians, and for techies alike.
I remember when we first moved to Germany, we had to completely reorient ourselves to food. Not because of the cuisine so much, but because of the availability. I had to get used to our new German grocery store and reading the labels in German, and there were some recipes that I couldn't make as often because the ingredients weren't as easy to come by.
We also had to find new fast food. Whereas in Virginia we relied on Chinese food, pizza, and fried chicken, we now had kebap shops and bakery sandwiches for takeaway. About the second or third month of living here, we craved our old staples, and that's when we started our quest for good Chinese food.
