Sea Urchin – Dalian

Mangosteen may be the best fruit on earth, but Sea Urchin is undoubtedly the best fruit of the sea. Uni reigns supreme with a thorny crown of thick black spikes and roe upon orange roe of melt-in-your-mouth bliss.

Here in China, sea urchin is served live. Skilled scissors snip off the spines and saw off the top. Soy sauce, wasabi, and a spoon are your weapons of choice as you contend with your sharply-equipped foe. You aim for the orange with your eye on the prize, and as you scoop it into your ready mouth, you’ll taste a decadent delicacy which has no equal.

Abalone – Dalian

There are numerous ways to serve Abalone, and there is no way to decide which I prefer. Those pictured are simply seared to perfection with unassuming soy sauce and a touch of garlic. Abalone is the Renaissance mollusk, pleasing to all audiences, master of all culinary craft. Abalone is tender and juicy for those who don’t like to chew but maintains some firmness to bargain with those who gag at slime. Abalone can soak in some flavor but never enough to overpower its own, no matter how potent the sauce. Its pearly ovoid symmetry and beautiful green-lustre shell appease aesthetics, and the neutral flavor fails to faze even the biggest seafood skeptics. Those who can’t stand the stench of sea smell none, and the meaty feel of the flesh humors the chest-thumping hunter-gatherer. Although it is classified as a mollusk, abalone stands alone.  Its contribution to the art of cuisine places it in a class of its own.

Shellfish and Fish from Shells – Dalian

I know fish from shells is a bit of a letdown, but squilla is a hard act to follow. But fear not, I’ve saved the best for last as usual, so for today, I will post my homage to hump day, this often-overlooked middle-of-the-week-marking milestone with a range of rarely respected refreshments.

Let’s kick off this witless wonder of a post with Fuzzy Clams. I have no idea what they’re called. The Chinese name literally translates to “fuzzy clams”, and since the sparse bits of black on their shells feels almost pettable, it’s not so hard to connect the dots. These little fuzzies have fat little bodes that make a small bursting mouthful. They’re a bit more satisfying that their miniscule counterparts .

I won’t say much about Razor Clams except that they carry almost as much giant-clam-esque sweetness as these fuzzy clams. Undoubtedly tasty, undeniably delicious with a little garlic.

I love the taste of a good seared scallop, but a scallop straight out of the shell is so much better. The shell is as beautiful as the scallop is tender, and it seems only fitting that the famous Birth of Venus depicts the goddess of love and beauty as rising from what bears an uncanny resemblance to a scallop shell.  

Rounding up a radically boring bunch, we have Conch. It took me almost as long to pronounce it as it did for me to appreciate it. When sliced thing, conch becomes less rubbery and far easier on the jaw and is best when stir-fried with heat, oil, garlic, and tender shoots of green onion. The meat folds and spirals, and though it’s widely accepted around the world, no one cooks it quite like the Chinese. My final words regarding conch: a nice conch is hard to come by, but when you venture to a Dalian market, you’re bound to find one you’ll want to take home.

Shrimp? – Dalian

I have no idea what this one is called. After all that effort to find squilla, I’m just not doing that again. If you can read this blog and you find yourself in Dalian, you can probably only point to it anyway so you’re better off printing my picture…

This one is a little mix of lobster and shrimp but looks a little bit like crawfish. Its texture is a softer, sweeter meat. The thin, flexible shell is soft enough to feel like a skin and easily yields under the peeling of deft fingers. It carries the savory seafood flavor, a sharp mix of lobster tempered with the sweetness of shrimp.

I may not know what it’s called, but a rose by another name would smell as sweet, and this shrimp by any name had better taste like this. 

Squilla Mantis – Dalian

After 12 breathtaking days in Thailand, I’m finally back to my roots, here in my father’s hometown of Dalian. My roots in Dalian grow deep into the sea, and you can almost hear the roar of the ocean from any corner. You can almost taste the salty air as you savor the breeze that breaks the stifling heat of summer.

When in Dalian, close your eyes and feel the sea air, take in the smells, and hear the bustling of this up-and-coming coastal city. Just make sure to keep your eyes wide open when you taste the wonders of this salty sea.

Three google searches and ten Wikipedia pages later, I finally put a name to it. Some foods truly require more work than others. Are you willing to suffer for yours? Squilla is a shrimp for which you set aside an entire afternoon. Squilla shields itself from your prying hands with armadillo-like greaves that force you to break them away, one by one, down the length of its supple body. Be careful that it doesn’t bite you first – those armored plates are tipped (just the tip) with razor-sharp spikes, making them the pricks of the animal kingdom. Consider yourself warned.

After a few bites you’ll quickly find that squilla is worth the work it commands. I know it’s hard to reconcile with the idea of eating something that bites back, but seriously, open up and man up.

Peking Duck - Beijing

To the history nerds, to the battle-cravers, to the proclaimers of monarchies and empires long lost, it pains me to disappoint you. Beijing’s crowning glory is neither the Summer Palace, nor the Forbidden City, no the sites of the ever-controversial Olympic Games (Ashlee Simpson, you got off comparatively easy for lip-synching...). Beijing’s crowning glory is undoubtedly Peking Duck.One duck is ordered to be eaten in various ways, so raise your own torch and write your own history of how you like your duck.

Peking duck starts with a crack instead of a quack. The skin directly over the center of the breast is an expertly shaved starter, a skin so crispy it crunches under the cleaver and melts at the sight of your saliva.

The rest of the duck is skillfully sliced, and you roll it into a thin pancake with hoisin sauce and scallion, with optional cucumber. You can also use a specialty bun of Beijing in lieu of the pancake. Inside the roll, the skin still crunches, and the grease drips down your chin as you devour pancake after pancake, forgetting that there’s more to come.

Different places have different variations of what you can do with the stock that remains. The most common choice is a bone-sucking soup, full of soft cabbage and slippery vermicelli. Some places opt for stir-fried bean sprouts, another opulent option whose quality varies from chef to chef. I always opt for the dry-fry, a simple sprinkling of salt and a high heat frying that saddles you with the arduous task of gnawing the remaining slivers of flesh off the dry bones. yet it’s the meat closest to the bone that holds the most flavor so open wide...

May Kaidee Cooking School – Bangkok

Taught by May herself, this May Kaidee’s Cooking School offers a variety of captivating courses including Thai cooking, raw food, and fruit carving. Our cooking class covered ten recipes, ten courses that you must eat, one by one, each a little more elaborate than the other, each a little richer than the last. May taught our group in her newer kitchen, hidden behind the exquisite masterpiece home of Rama V. The prepared ingredients are laid out and the woks heat in an even circle as they gleam under fluorescent bulbs. In our small class of four, with such idiot-proof designations, it is impossible to fail. May’s enthusiasm never wanes as she guides us through each recipe, subtly turning down the heat and sprinkling water into too-dry woks and insisting you did it yourself. She sits with us while we eat and tastes our dishes, especially the Issan, which she endorses as her fave.

During our class, May was flitting feverishly between teaching and posing for a foreign photo shoot. I think it was for a Cali magazine, but don’t quote me on that. Despite her engagements, we never wanted for attention and barely noticed her absence. Between the idiot-proof kitchen and the simple recipes, May is the slimmer version of Ratatouille’s Auguste, and her cooking school will assure even the weariest egg-boiling failures that anyone can cook. May is slim and beautiful from eating the very recipes we prepared, and her energy fills every room. Despite achieving international acclaim, May seems to genuinely enjoy turning her bumbling foreign hopefuls into adequate Thai chefs. How well I’ve mastered the art of her craft is hard to say, but keep in touch with me, and you’ll know if I’m suddenly looking for non-charred housing.

Our first dish was the Tom Yum Soup. Light broth with a sharp sour-tang, this deceptively clear soup is a stellar starter loaded with carrots and healthy tofu. The baby corn lacks the offensive aftertaste of canned brine, a freshness I have yet to find in the US.

The Tom Kha is made in the same breath as the Tom Yum. It is richer and creamier with the addition of more coconut milk and less water yet its flavor remains ahead of its caloric value. Tom Kha would warm you from the inside out on a cold winter’s day but it made us lose all our water weight in Rama V’s fan-conditioned dining room.

The Issan was a surprising favorite of mine and May’s. The way to eat this dish rekindles my love for sticky rice and sets me salivating every time I think about it. Just use your CLEAN fingers (this is one dinner to which you don’t invite the guy who doesn’t wash his hands after he uses the restroom…) to roll some rice into a ball and dip into some soy/chili-based sauce. Then you dip into your dish, using your fingers to grasp a few morsels of whatever mushroom or tofu or soy protein falls near them. The sticky rice sops up the sauce like a sponge, and after a few bites, eating with your fingers may become a new pastime. Again, make sure your hands are clean. E. coli is NOT a spice.

The Stir-Fried Vegetables is the very essence of standard Eastern stirfry, the backbone of Asian cuisine. Learn to make this dish, and you’ll have an endless arsenal of simple meals for the rest of your life. The combinations of ingredients and sauces are endless, and creativity knows no bounds.

The Pad Thai was our crowning glory. I don’t know how anyone stays thin when one of their staple foods, available on any street corner, consists of sweet noodles with peanut and a hint of lime. The noodles in Thailand have a chewy-but-not-sticky texture, which I’m told stems from being soaked and not boiled. The wok-kissed noodles remain firm, and they give you a feeling of real substance without sticking to your teeth.

When I saw Peanut Sauce on the list of dishes, I thought it was a cop-out, a take-a-break filler involving a spoon and a blender. But this recipe is more than meets the eye. May’s peanut sauce starts with a base of fresh tomato, yet you’d never know it by the time the sauce is done. Ours was judged a masterpiece as the oil was starting to separate. This peanut sauce drowns the Pad Thai in a delightful muddy stream and makes a spirited dipper for fresh spring rolls.

Our Massaman Curry also received May’s generous praise, with its exceptional thick heaviness and deep yellow color. This curry douses May’s crisp brown rice with its almost gritty depth, fluid as the dessert sand. The best part is that May’s recipe books contains an addendum for the sweeter Penang Curry. Just switch a spice and pour a little extra coconut and you’re as golden as your curry.

The Green Curry is a deep sea of treasures full of tasty veggies and healthy spice. The baby corn crunches in its youth, and the pumpkin is a flavorful, clashing orange weight, grounding the jewel-green curry.

The Fresh Spring Rolls are really just veggies rolled in a chewy, impossibly thin wrapper, topped with an artful smattering of peanut sauce. That wrapper is the unsung hero here, marking the line between simple and simply extraordinary. The spring rolls are readily available at produce markets, made in a flash before your prying eyes by a lady with a fistful of dough and flat, fiery-hot griddle. They also make a popular afterschool snack around brittle shreds of colorful cane sugar, my new favorite street food.

Though I feel that only a narcissist would review her own cooking in her own food blog, I wouldn’t mind a little positive reinforcement for advancing beyond boiling pasta so pretend to be impressed. If you’re not impressed, lie. Duh.

All pathologic need for false flattery aside, May deserves her own spread, especially one that covers many of the dishes central to Thai cuisine. May also embodies the spirit of Thailand in the kindness I’ve encountered throughout my trip. She and the people of Thailand are some of the sweetest people I’ve ever met. Their small acts of kindness have warmed me more than their hundred-degree weather and have choked me up even more than the stifling 100% humidity. Their subtle kindness is manifest in making us wait for fresher waffles at a street stand, keeping our teacups full despite our meager order of one split bowl of soup, and carrying my bag across the railroad tracks at the sight of my struggle. Megabus threw our bags into a puddle in the pouring rain, but the shuttle driver to the Lomprayah ferry placed a tarp on the dusty ground before unloading his cargo hold. The people I’ve met in Thailand have paid attention to the little things. Their kindness has a rare genuine quality, and May is no exception. So if you’re a vegetarian or vegan, someone who loathes meat, a hippie trying to save the world with your diet, or just need a little love during your first adventure in front of a stove AND you’re looking for a cooking school in Bangkok or Chiang Mai enroll with May Kaidee. You’ll get your earthy experience and you may even leave with your eyebrows unsigned.