Thai Food from Lamai's Kitchen

I've spoken before about Lamai, but I haven't written a real review. (Well, I waxed poetic about Lamai's Pad Thai a long time ago.) One of the reasons is that I keep forgetting to get great pictures. Sorry about that. I'm too busy eating.

Thai Food From Lamai's Kitchen is not the sort of place you go for the great atmosphere and the perfect service. But it's the sort of place that elicits passion in her customers. At her old place up in north Lansing, she often didn't have any employees, so the customers would wait on each other. One day, we even were given menus and water by the heath inspector! Everybody, I mean everybody, was eager to pitch in and keep Lamai in business.


It's just that Lamai is a great cook. And since the customers were always waiting eagerly to serve themselves, she opened her Michigan Avenue restaurant as a buffet.

Don't expect stereotypical Thai food here. It's authentic, but it's also one hundred percent Lamai. She's like a Thai grandmother, determined to feed you well, no matter what the ingredients. (And at times, if she's not too busy in the kitchen, she will come out and nag you about being too thin, or not trying the best stuff on the buffet.)



The first part of the buffet contains a selection of Thai salads, including her specialty Thai Fresh Eggrolls (pictured here). These are a little like the Vietnamese "spring roll", which is not fried, but wrapped in rice paper. Lamai's version, though, is filled with a lovely, light Thai salad, and are amazingly good with her special Fresh Eggroll Sauce. (Almost like a sour lemon syrup. It's yummy.)

She has a number of great salads, my favorite of which is made with browned Chinese Sausage and Cucumber. And then there is the ground turkey seasoned heavily with lime and herbs. Oh my. Or the Green Apple and Carmelized Onions with Cashews.

She usually has a rich and sour soup of some kind, either a spicy and sour Tom Yam, or a rich and spicy Tom Kha Gai. On Fridays, she has a seafood buffet, and seafood Tom Yam is really really really tasty. Watch out for the large chunks of lemon grass in any of her soups. Lemon grass tastes great, but it's woody.

On the buffet proper, she usually has a couple of kinds of noodles, including her famous Pad Thai. Some stir-fries (I recommend the Ginger Chicken - which is the dish with mushrooms, green peppers and peapods), and miscellaneous dishes that occur to her. She has taken to making her own version of the stuffed eggplant in garlic sauce that you see at dim sum places. Hers is heartier and except on friday, usually stuffed with pork rather than shrimp.

At the end of the buffet she usually has a couple of choices of rich and spicy Thai curries -- usually a red chicken curry with bamboo shoots, a Penang Beef which is stewed in sweet coconut milk and some third dish often with green beans.

She also has her own unique version of Crab Rangoon -- not a sweet and goey as you find other places. And without crab. She uses carrot and green onion, and it tastes even better than crab so don't complain.

On Thursdays, she replaces some of the dishes with Vegetarian versions, and on Fridays, she has a Seafood buffet that has the most amazing little rounds of fried shrimp that you will ever taste. (Have them with the fresh eggroll sauce - heavenly!)

Thai Food From Lamai's Kitchen is on Michigan Avenue at Fairview (right next to the Gone Wired Cafe). Yeah, it is sometimes hard to park around there. Suck it up. The weather is getting warmer. You can park on the neighborhood streets and walk a little. And she's now OPEN SUNDAYS. (Note, she closes between 3pm and 5pm every day.)

Thai Food From Lamai's Kitchen, 2033 E. Michigan Ave. (517) 267-3888.

Hong Kong Sichuan -- Even More Heavenly Dishes

Before I continue my tour of the menu at Hong Kong Sichuan Food, a note about the Lazi Chicken that we haven't tried yet. Fuschia Dunlop mentions this dish in her blog. I definitely want to try this soon.

Aside from the wontons I mentioned last time, you might start your meal with a noodle salad.

Z01Sichuan Noodle Salad
Spicy, tasty. The sharp and earthy flavors of many Sichuan dishes, red and black pepper, toasted garlic. The Spicy Chicken Salad (Z04) has similar flavors as the Sichuan Noodle salad, but with sliced chicken and more green onions.

Z07 Shredded Vegetables Salad
Tofu and veggies with cellophane noodles in a salty tangy sauce. I think overall I like this one a little better, but it depends on what else I'm ordering. If I plan on ordering a lot of spicy dishses, I go for this one. If I am ordering less spicy entrees, the Sichuan or Spicy Chicken is a good starter.

M26 Ziran Lamb (Muslim Lamb with Cumin)
There is a lot of middle-eastern influence in Muslim areas of China - kabobs, flat breads, lamb dishes. Sichuan does not have a large Muslim population, but neighboring Hunan does at least a little, and this is a common dish. It's lamb, stirfried with green peppers and onions and seasoned with a lot of cumin. Cumin is the spice that gives chili powder and taco seasoning that unique flavor. It's common in the middle east and India, and is quite strong in this dish.

M37 Crispy Eggplant with Hot and Sweet Sauce
This one is addictive. Thin sticks of eggplant are battered in a thick but fluffy batter and deep fried, then served with the "hot and sweet sauce". The batter is not at all dense, and this dish is just plain luxurious.

The "hot and sweet sauce" isn't actually hot at all. It's got garlic and maybe ginger in it. It's similar to another famous Sichuan sauce that you may already be familiar with under the name "garlic sauce." Odds are, if you order a broccholi in garlic sauce, the sauce will be yuxiang or "fish fragrant" sauce. (Which means it goes good with fish, the way steak sauce goes good with steak. It is not made of fish, nor does it have the fragrance of fish.) It's aromatic and a little sweet and sour, and very friendly to western tastes. The other eggplant dish comes with this sauce too, and there is a Yuxaing pork on the menu.

M04 Double-cooked Side Pork
If you've ever had Double-cooked Pork before, it probably was quite different than this. This is the authentic way to make the dish, and it is very very rich, and many Americans will find it too fatty.

It's made with side pork -- one of the cuts of pork from which you make bacon. This rich, melt-in-your-mouth cut is usually simmered to render out some of the fat, and then sliced and stir-fried. Hence the name "double-cooked".

M06 Steamed Side Pork in Soy Sauce (Button Pork)
This dish is also made with side pork, and it's a nice showy kind of dish you can nibble from. The Chinese characters for this dish are "button pork" and that probably refers to the way it is presented. A bowl is lined with slices of side pork, and then filled with salty preserved Sichuan vegetables. It's seasoned with soy sauce at some point, and then steamed. The bowl is then inverted and the dish is served like a "button" on a plate.

Button Pork a little salty and fatty for western tastes, especially as a main dish, but it's a great side dish, and surprisingly good for leftovers. It's so flavorful, you can just chop a little bit up and put it over rice to make a very tasty lunch.

I have not tried the Korean Noodle Soup, nor the main dish version of the Hot and Sour Soup -- but friends have and both are highly recommended. Both are spicy. The Korean soup is a seafood soup and friend noted that the squid was so perfectly cooked, it wasn't rubbery. That's noteworthy.

Hong Kong Sichuan Restaurant, 315 S. Homer St. (south of Frandor, near Kalamazoo St -- behind Bake n Cakes), Lansing Mi. (517) 332-5333.

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Read previous reviews of heavenly dishes at Hong Kong Sichuan:

Heavenly Sichuan Food
Hong Kong Sichuan, More Heavenly Dishes

Hong Kong Sichuan -- More Heavenly Dishes

We've been eating at Hong Kong Sichuan Restaurant regularly since they reopened as an authentic Sichuan place in November. At first they had their real food on separate menus from their Americanized dishes. At one point they even had three menus, one entirely in Chinese. I went to the trouble of translating the whole darn thing, and found that Calvin Trillin's assumption is correct: the best dishes were on the Chinese menu.

But the owners noticed that non-Chinese people were interested in the good food, so they now have a unified menu in English and Chinese. (They didn't translate a few dishes that westerners are highly unlikely to like, like certain dishes with blood cubes and tripe.) They also have a lunch buffet again, but I don't know if it's the same dishes they had before or not. I expect it is probably their more westernized dishes, but their buffet was always good before and I have no reason to think they aren't now.

I already told you about the MaPo Tofu and Green Bean with Pork.


N01 Pork Wonton with Spicy Sauce
These luscious wontons in a spicy Sichuan flavored soup is my favoriate takeout dish. These are, ironically, not as hot as "sichuan wontons" are in other restaurants around town. However, other places seem to just drown them in hot oil and maybe a little garlic. Here they are in a soup of many nice seasonings, like the Mapo Tofu I mentioned in the previous review. (It's about as hot as an average hot and sour soup in town, not the hottest.)


M09 Dry Stir-fried Beef
Spicy, salty with toasted garlic. The chunks of celery really go well with the flavors here.


M18 Jumbo Shrimp wth Sichuan Sauce (aka Tasty Shrimp, or "Strange Flavor" Shrimp)
"Sichuan Sauce" here is a very special sauce that translates something like "strange flavor", but what it means is more like "intriguing flavor". The point of this sauce is to balance all flavors lightly and perfectly -- sweet, sour, salt, hot and rich aroma.

IMPORTANT NOTE: authentically prepared shrimp dishes include shells and heads... and all the flavor in a dish like this tends to be on the shell. Therefore, if you don't want to eat the shell, ask that it be prepared without shells. This is true of the other jumbo shrimp dishes on the Authentic Chinese Dishes menu.

M20 Gongbo Chicken with Peanuts
I don't have a picture of this, which is too bad. This is the classic Sichuan Dish on which Kung Pow Chicken is based. Diced chicken and celery, with aromatic seasonings, stirfried with chunks of dried hot peppers and peanuts. Like other dishes here, this is more subtle and aromatic than the Kung Pow you'll find in your average midwestern Chinese restaurant. Since the spice resides mostly in the hunks of red pepper, you can modify the heat or not by eating them or leaving them. (And they add a great flavor.)

(On another note: another famous Sichuan dish is Lazi Chicken -- or spicy little chicken. Chunks of chicken, with bones in, seasoned and deep-fried and served with piles of dried peppers on top. The peppers are there for aroma and add some spicy oils to the chicken, but again, you don't have to eat them. We have NOT tried this dish here. The only caution for westerners, aside from the potential heat, is the tiny bits of bone in each piece. You probably can't get this dish without bones, but you could always ask.)

More dishes next week....

Hong Kong Sichuan Restaurant, 315 S. Homer St. (south of Frandor, near Kalamazoo St -- behind Bake n Cakes), Lansing Mi. (517) 332-5333.

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Read more about those heavenly dishes at Hong Kong Sichuan at:

Heavenly Sichuan Food (previous post)
Hong Kong Sichuan, Even More Heavenly Dishes (next post)

Heavenly Sichuan Food

I had to come out of hibernation to tell you about something really magnificent that may be only temporary. The restaurant on Homer that used to be known as Hong Kong is yet again under new management. They're running the place for a little while as a "trial" to see whether there is an audience in Lansing for very authentic Szechuan food.

How authentic? Well, the first indication is that they don't have any signs in English. The sign outside is in Chinese, and translates basically as: "Sichuan Food." (The three red peppers are actually in the shape of the character for Sichuan, which is "three rivers".)If you don't look Chinese, they'll give you a menu of typical Americanized dishes. If you want the good stuff, you'll have to ask for the Sichuan food menu. Those are mostly in Chinese, but they have at least one copy of that menu with English too. The problem is that the English isn't very descriptive. ("Boiled Pork." Hmmm.) The waiter was eager to help us find what we would like, but it took a little persuading for us to get him to tell us what HE would like. He recommended the Ma Po Tofu.

Oh my god. It was the best Ma Po Tofu I've ever had in my life.

No really, this was so good...well, one of the reasons I haven't been posting here is because I have been under extreme stress at the day job. One bite of this and all my troubles went away. This Ma Po Tofu was Xanax-good. It was "listening to Orson Welles speak" good.

The tofu was silky soft, stewed with chopped pork seasoned with toasted garlic, ginger and at least three different peppers. (Dried red pepper, pepper oil and Sichuan peppercorns, which are related to black pepper, but tastier.) Yes, it was hot, but no hotter than most hot and sour soups in town. (Less numbing than some, actually.)

We chose, as a less spicy balancing dish, the Pork With Green Beans. This was marked as spicy, but the waiter says it wasn't, and he was right. There was a sprinkling of toasted dry pepper along with the toasted garlic. The beans were fresh and perfectly done. Once again, the chopped pork acted as a seasoning, rather than a main ingredient. The salting, the seasoning, everything was just exactly right so you could taste and smell each element.

The waiter also pointed out a platter of deep-fried chicken pieces, sprinkled with peppers. We'll undoubtedly try that on another visit. I can't wait to try the Twice-Cooked Pork, which is a favorite of mine. There are also less familiar dishes that we'd like to try. The Fish With Preserved Vegetables soup is a famous Sichuan dish, which he also recommended. Preserved veggies usually give a slight sour taste to the broth, milder than hot and sour soup. There were also cellophane noodles in the bowl, it looked like.

If you are eager to try it, but aren't sure you know enough about Sichuan food to order properly, you might look up a book by Fuchsia Dunlop called "Land of Plenty: A Treasury of Authentic Sichuan Cooking", which is much more than a cook book. More of culinary cultural history with recipes and stories and techniques.

There is a Chinese saying: "China is the place for food, but Sichuan is the place for flavor." True words of wisdom, if this place is any indication.

Hong Kong Sichuan Food is at 315 S Homer St, Lansing. (South of Michigan and north of Kalamazoo, near Frandor, behind Oadies and Bake 'n Cakes.)
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Read more reviews of Hong Kong Sichuan Food at:

Hong Kong Sichuan, More Heavenly Dishes
Hong Kong Sichuan, Even More Heavenly Dishes

Weekend Dim Sum

Go out and get some Dim Sum this weekend.

Although I still lean more toward Little Panda as my favorite dim sum place, Golden Wok has many bragging points... not the least of which is that on the weekend, when they have the carts, they can go wild with new varieties.

A couple of things we had recently:


Water Chestnut Cake looks kinda odd and foreign to Western eyes, but it's not really that exotic. I suspect most would like it. It's a very thick gelatin, lightly sweet and faintly vanilla, with crunchy chestnuts inside. It's also been pan fried, which might seem odd, but it's GOOD that way. The cart lady said it was very refreshing for summer, and she was right. (Those cart ladies usually are.)


Custard Filled Fried Dumplings. These lovely delights are a lot like our favorite sesame balls. The wrapper is made of sweet sticky rice flour -- so it's very chewy, crisp on the outside from being deepfried. Inside it has a nice light custard, not too rich or too sweet. It's thick so that it doesn't all goosh out when you bite into the chewy wrapper. I don't know if the black sesame seeds on top are always a sign of a custard filling, but you can always ask.


Barbeque Pork Pastry. These are just a different shape than the ones I mentioned in the Dim Sum Primer. (They often play with different shapes at Golden Wok.) I like this shape best, because the ratio of meat to pastry is good in every bite.

Mango Chicken. Sorry no picture -- I didn't have my camera with me the day they had these. They brought it out JUST as we were completely stuffed and getting ready to leave, but they looked too good to pass up. It was made of strips of chicken and mango, wrapped and breaded in coconut, then deep fried. They were creamy, and rich, but not too sweet. I want to try them again when I'm not too stuffed.

Here is Maude Cat doing an impression of what we looked like after coming home from Dim Sum that day:



The down side of eating dim sum from the traditional "roving cart" method, is that it encourages a Competitive Eating mentality. You don't want to miss anything, and it all looks so good.... you end up buying and eating more than you intended. This can be okay if you are going straight home afterward with leftovers, but if you are, say, going to a movie, you must exercise a lot of self-discipline. That or leave time to run home and put the leftovers in the fridge before curtain time.

(BTW: Sesame balls or the custard-filled dumplings mentioned above are primo snacks to smuggle into a movie. Just remember that they are deep fried so they'll get some grease on your fingers -- though no more than popcorn will -- and they're a little sticky. My recommendation is to bring a ziploc bag for the smuggling part, and make sure you have a napkin. Oh and, uh... Mango Chicken ISN'T a good snack to sneak into a theater.)

Golden Wok is in East Lansing, at 2755 E Grand River Ave. (517) 333-8322. (At the corner of Northwind Drive, across from Oriental Mart, and near the E.L. Food co-op.)

(Little Panda is on the west side of Lansing, at 5439 W Saginaw Hwy, across from Lansing Mall in the Target shopping area. (517) 323-2450.)

Bangkok House, good and spicy

If you don't count Lamai (who is a cuisine unto herself anyway) Bangkok House is the main, authentic Thai restaurant in town. The others tend to have a different, lighter, flavor of Thai. Bangkok House is hot, intense and salty.

Their location at Saginaw and North Cedar makes them especially popular for take out. They are close to down town Lansing, and on the way to or from pretty much anywhere. I love to grab an aromatic, garlicky Pad Woon Sen for lunch, usually with an order of spring rolls.



Pad Woon Sen is one of my standards to test out any Thai place. If it's boring, I'm suspicious. (Banyan Tree was an exception to this rule, but alas, they are gone.) It's a cross between a stir-fried noodle dish and a salad. Cooked up fast and hot, but with hunks of tomato and cucumber. The noodles are the clear, glassy bean threads, which are light and jiggly. This dish is usually served with rice on the side (as a Thai salad might be), and the flavor at Bangkok House is intense enough to require that rice. The Pad Thai is also good here (though I like the sweet and sour flavors of Lamai's better). Just remember that they don't really understand the concept of "mild" here -- it's closer to "medium". They do get "not hot at all" though.

Take out isn't all they've got, though, and this is a fine place for a full meal, which is what we had recently:



For appetizer, this is a great place for Satay. For those who don't know, Satay is a Malaysian dish that is commonly served in Thai restaurants in the U.S. It's meat -- usually pork, chicken or beef -- marinated and grilled on a stick. Here they serve it with a little table top grill, where you finish off the cooking yourself. (The meat is cooked, but you need a nice sear for it to taste right.)

It's served with two sauces, a rich peanut sauce made with coconut milk, and a refreshing cucumber sauce, made with a dressing of vinegar, lime and sugar. These sauces go together! You can pour them both over your meat, or eat some of one and then the other -- just make sure you taste them close together, because each really opens up the flavor of the other.



For soup we have the ever present Tom Ka Gai, or coconut chicken soup. It's good here, and we usually ask for some rice to be served with it, because the flavors of the coconut, lemongrass, ginger and lime are so intense.



Finally the Pla Jian. This used to be served as a whole fish, but since Americans don't really like to deal with bones they now serve it as a large fillet, which has been scored, seasoned and deep-fried. It is then smothered in a sauce of ginger, mushrooms, shrimp and veggies, and topped with herbs. This dish is not very spicy -- the main heat comes from the ginger -- but it is very flavorful. It's also a big dish, and with the appetizers and soup, it's enough for two people of reasonable appetite, but if you want something else, you could go for a Yum salad: grilled beef on cucumber and herbs, with a sweet lime dressing -- no pun intended when I say it's yummy. For the adventurous, they have a lot of interesting seafood dishes, and frogs legs too. And for the less adventurous, they have a good selection of the usual curries and noodle dishes.

Bangkok House is located on Saginaw (just across North Cedar from the main Quality Dairy) at 420 E Saginaw St, Lansing, MI 48906. 517-487-6900.

Their menu is listed at Restaurant Database.

RECIPE: Chinese BBQ Pork

Barbecue pork (or Cha Siu -- which means "fork roast") is a basic ingredient for a lot of Chinese cooking. In a big city, you would be able to buy this lovely red-roasted pork, already cooked, by the pound. You know that taste in fried rice and lo mein and soups, and so many other dishes that you can't quite accomplish at home? It's probably from char siu.

This weekend I finally got the taste right on homemade roast pork. And now I have a freezer full for making char sui bao, or fried rice or soups or twice cooked pork....

The key here is the cut of pork. It can't be a lean cut. I used a Boston Butt Roast, cut into strips. "Country Style" spare ribs, or pork shoulder steaks are also good. The country style ribs are about the right shape and size to get the best surface area to meatiness ratio. (This is also important.)

The second key is the preparation method. You need to marinate the pork in the sauce for a couple hours. (I did about two.) Then when you roast it, you have to be sure that as much surface of the pork is exposed to the hot air as possible. I can tell you from experience that if the meat sits in its accumulated juices, it just isn't the same. In China, they hang the meat in the oven on hooks. Many cookbooks recommend putting them in a pan that has a roasting rack.

I didn't have a roasting rack, or hooks, but I had a pork roast and I wanted Char Sui! So I used a little tender loving care. I separated the pieces of meat so that they were not touching. (In this case, I put them in three small pyrex dishes -- but they probably could have been put in one really big on.)

Since the marinade has sugar and soy in it, the pan drippings are likely to burn. If you have a roasting rack this is easy to deal wiht by simply filling the pan below with water or broth. I simply made sure I watched the oven -- which was at a hot 425 degrees -- and every time I could smell that "pre-burning" smell, I poured in a very small amount of sherry into the pan -- about 1/8 of an inch. I started basting it with a souped up version of the marinade after the first fifteen minutes, and after another five or ten, I flipped the meat over, so the bottom side could get some love.

It probably took 45-60 minutes of roasting, and I turned the oven down later in the process. You could stretch the second half out a long time in a slow oven.

The Marinade (enough for approximately two pounds of meat):

• 1/4 c sherry (broth or water will do)
• 1/4 c. soy sauce
• 1 1/2 tbl. honey (or brown sugar)
• 2 tbl. hoisin sauce
• 1 tbl oyster sauce

Put the meat in a ziploc bag or a container where it fits closely, and pour over it about half the marinade. Reserve the rest of the marinade for the basting sauce. (Do NOT use the marinade that has touched the meat! Throw it away! It is full of bacteria and such, and the basting sauce will not be thoroughly cooked enough to be safe.)

Basting sauce:

• The remaining marinade
• 1 tbl oyster sauce
• 2-3 tbl brown sugar
• garlic, ginger or whatever other spices sound good to you.

The sugar and garlic are prone to burn, so you don't want so much of it in the marinade, but it is fine for basting later on in the process.

This marinade, btw, would also be good for chicken thighs and wings. You need something with enough fat if you are going to cook it as dry as the instructions here. But a lean meat would be okay if you cook it slower, and with more basting (and maybe more crowded in the pan to keep the moisture in).

Banyan Tree Thai Cuisine

(We're sorry to note that Banyan Tree closed a while ago.)

I've been to Banyan Tree several times now, and I was sorry to see that the menu keeps getting smaller and smaller. However, I think they've settled on a nice, minimalist menu that suits a neighborhood restaurant. You won't find anything unusual or exotic on the menu, but what's there is reliable, well-prepared Thai food.


For appetizer they have good spring rolls, although the sauce is a little marmeladey. (The sweet chili sauce is better.) Then there are the Rangoons (pictured above) which are very nice, especially if you like a high filling-to-wrapper ratio. I myself prefer more crunch because the filling is so rich, but these were awfully good. They are, as at Lamai's, meatless. The filling is cream cheese, carrot and green onion, and yet even my carrot-hating friend really finds this Thai version the yummiest of rangoons.


Tom Kha Gai is a soup I find irresistable everywhere I go, and it is great here. It's a very sharply flavored soup of chicken, ginger and coconut -- with a lot of citrus from lime juice, lime leaves and lemon grass. Lamai recommends having it at her restaurant with a scoop of rice, and she is right. The soup is so rich and strongly flavored that even though it is a medium spicy, my tongue sometimes starts to get that numb novocaine tingle. The rice ameliorates that without taking anything away from the wonderful excessive experience of flavor. (So I advise asking for a side of rice in any Thai restaurant when you order this.)


The entrees are limited and pretty standard for a Thai restaurant, but every thing we've had has been good. We went for the Banyan Tree Fried Rice, which, though plain, turned out to be exceptional -- fried rice with chicken and shrimp, seasoned strongly with yellow curry. It's got a good kick at medium.


In the past we were really happy with the Green Curry, which is no longer on the menu. We are told that if they are not busy and have all the ingredients on hand, the cook will make some special dishes by request. My only wish is that they had a little more in the way of vegetables, and maybe offered a Yum or salad. The Pad Woon Sen (pictured above with spring rolls) comes close, but is still pretty plain. (I bet you could ask for a lime wedge, though. That's exactly what it needs....)

They are now open for lunch from 11-2 Tuesday through Friday, which I am glad of, because their simple menu is ideal for a quick carry out. Their dinner hours are 4-8 on Tuesday through Thursday, and until 9 on Friday and Saturday.

Banyan Tree Thai Cuisine, 1001 East Mount Hope Avenue, Lansing. (At the corner of Mt. Hope and Pennsylvania -- in the same building as Korner Kitchen.) 517- 482-0939.

Dim Sum Primer, Pt 4

Okay, I'm finally finishing up the Dim Sum Primer, with the larger plated items and desserts. You can skip back to the beginning of this series by checking out the Where to find Dim Sum in Lansing post.


Sticky Rice Wrapped in Lotus Leaves. You could call these Chinese Tamales. Dried lotus leaves wrapped around a bundle of filling and sticky rice, and steamed. The rice is sweet and sticky, and the leaves have a faint tea aroma. The fillings vary. Most of the time, they have some meat -- maybe the drumstick part of a chicken wing and some chinese sausage, maybe some mushroom. Those are usually cone shaped and about the size of a baseball or bigger. The ones you see pictured are a dessert version -- filled with red beans and red banana. You can get the meat version at either Little Panda or Golden Wok. The dessert version is available most days at Oriental Mart -- the Asian grocery on Grand River across from Golden Wok. (They have a lot of dim sum items in the case and freshly made -- including some amazing, and yet greasy springrolls.)

NOTE: The sticky rice in lotus leaves is sometimes called "Sweet Rice with Chicken and Pork" or something like that. It makes it easy to mix up with the "Sweet Rice Dumpling" whch is fried. If you are unclear what you are ordering, ask how it's cooked -- is it deep-fried or wrapped in a lotus leaf?


Greens and oyster sauce. These are a great accompaniment to dim sum, especially if you want to up your vegetable matter. I don't think they have it at Little Panda (though I have never asked), but Golden Wok has it on request (and sometimes on the cart). The greens, which may be a broccholi raab rather than the little bok chois pictured here, come with a little dipping bowl of salty oyster sauce. I've never seen either place in town offer similar platters of meats, but most larger dim sum houses will also have platters of sliced bbq pork or duck as well.


Silver Noodles. There are several kinds of platters of noodles available for dim sum. These silver noodles are hand rolled, fresh rice noodles. They have a nice chewy texture like other rice noodles, but unfortunately look a little like worms. However they taste really good. At Little Panda they serve these stir-fried with some vegetables. Another favorite noodle dish which is available both at dim sum and on the regular menu is Singapore Noodles (or "Fried Vermicelli Singapore Style"). This is a stirfried thin rice noodle, seasoned with curry and served with shrimp and chinese sausage and peapods and other veggies.


Congee, Juk or Joke. Congee is a dim sum tradition -- a brunch food. It's a thick rice soup or gruel, made with chicken broth and often served with a "cruller", or a stick of fried bread to dip in it. It may be plain or with various meats, seafoods, or even a thousand year old egg. The picture here is of my own homemade congee -- which I make with whole grain rice, and corn and greens. What you get in a restaurant will be whiter and creamier. You can get this at Peking Express and other more authentic type Chinese restaurants too. Lamai often serves it with a little toasted garlic, grated ginger and cilantro sprinkled on top.

Sesame Balls. (I don't have a picture of these, but I'll add one when I get one.) These are our favorite dessert at Dim Sum. They are a ball of sticky rice flour dough, filled with either sweet red bean paste or sweet yellow lotus bean paste, coated in sesame seeds and deep fried. (You can often get these at Oriental Mart as well.) We call them Chinese Jelly Donuts. The wrapper is chewy and sticky, and the filling only lightly sweetened.


Mango Pudding. It's not really pudding. It's jello, made with a little milk. Not as sweet as American jello, and pretty refreshing, though we usually skip it because there are other things to fill up on. It comes in a bowl with a maraschino cherry on top. You often have a choice of Almond pudding as well. Sometimes they call this tofu or bean curd rather than pudding -- but that's because jello resembles bean curd to many Asians. (You can buy packs of this at Oriental Mart labelled "Do Fu Delight.")


And then there's Red Bean Pudding, which is also milk jello. At Golden Wok, you get this in big squares. Again, not as sweet, and the red beans add a grittiness to it.


Red Bean Pastry. This is a cool show peice that you don't see often, but may be able to ask for. It's flakey pastry dough, spread with sweet red bean paste, and rolled up, slashed, and baked. Really pretty, and I think it's one of the best ways to eat red bean paste. This you only get at Golden Wok (and that is true of all dishes which require pastry). They also have the little custard tarts -- which are exactly what they look like.

There are many other dishes you may come across. A lot of other dumplings that are similar to those I've already described. I haven't taken pictures of the chicken feet, or the tripe. If you want them, they are available at all dim sum houses. Chicken feet are gelatinous and many people like to suck on the bones. The tripe sometimes comes "red-cooked" or simmered in sweetened soy sauce and spices, and I just might try that sometime.

(NOTE: if you are a more sophisticated dim sum eater, you might notice that there are some dumplings listed on the Golden Wok menu called "Pork Dumplings". The Chinese characters for these list them as xiao long bao -- "little dragon buns" otherwise known as "soup dumplings." They are NOT xiao long bao. They are just pork dumplings. They're good, but they don't spit hot soup at you when you bite into them.)

Happy eating!

Where to find Dim Sum in Lansing
Dim Sum Primer, Part 1
Dim Sum Primer, Part 2
Dim Sum Primer, Part 3
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Recommended Reading from Amazon.com:

The best book on dim sum, imho is Dim Sum: The Art of Chinese Tea Lunch. The recipes are good and they also demystify just what a lot of those dishes ARE for those who just want to eat. (This one is also available at the East Lansing Library, but it's pretty popular and often checked out.

Midori Korean BBQ Part 2 - Korean Food

(EDITORS NOTE: Midori is under new management. They don't prepare the sushi from the old menu well, but we don't know how they prepare the Korean food. We suspect their own new menu items are probably what's best. However, watch out for any roll with cream cheese in it -- it's whipped and sweet and overwhelms the flavor of anything its in. Ugh!)

The following refers to the food under the old managemet:

As I mentioned, Midori has great Korean food too. (Actually a mix of Korean and Japanese.)

My favorite is the Stone Bowl Bibimbap. You can get this elsewhere. (They make a good version at Korea House, for instance.) But I like it best here.

Bibimbap is a rice dish, originally it was for leftovers of a banquet. The kitchen help would get a bowl of rice, with a variety of foods on top, including an egg. But then in one town (and I don't recall which) restaurants started serving it in polished stone bowls that were oiled and heated to blazing hot in an oven. The rice would crisp up, the ingredients sizzle together, and the egg would cook.

And a maginificent dish was born.

Generally Stone Bowl Bibimbap is served in a blazing hot bowl, with a large scoop of rice, and a little bulgogi (thin sliced, grilled beef -- sweet and garlicky), and various vegetables -- shredded carrot, greens, beansprouts, mushrooms -- and an egg. Some places cook the egg first, but that's unnecessary. Midori cracks a raw egg on top. When you get your sizzling hot bowl, you stir it a little (or a lot, but I prefer not to mix everything up too much) and let the sizzling bowl cook it.

Bibimbap is served with a flavorful Korean hot sauce, and I recommend squirting some around the edge to caramelize just before stirring up the ingredients. I also usually pour in a little soy sauce along the edge. This will give you a couple of different flavors. It will also be too hot to eat, so let it cook and cool for a little bit. The top will cool off enough to eat while the bottom gets crunchy and tasty. Give it another stir every often to get the crunchy bits up from the bottom. (You'll have to let it cool again when you stir it, but it tastes SO good.)

One fun thing about Korean food is the array of side dishes. The fancier the meal, the more you get, usually. For lunch they just gave us three -- the spicy pickled cabbage Kimchee, the refreshing yellow sweet pickled radish, and the tasty fishcakes, cooked in a little sesame oil and garlic. You might also get a sweet and vinegar cucumber or seaweed salad, spicy radish chunks or even a creamy mix of cooked matchstick potato or turnip.

Depending on what you order, you might also get the standard salad, which you get in a lot of sushi places. (But it's really really good here. The dressing is particularly flavorful, and seems to be made partly with Korean dried shrimp.)

Another good, and filling, lunch are the noodle soups. Here pictured is the Tempura Soba -- a soup of buckwheat noodles with fried shrimp stuck in it. This, like the other soups on the regular menu, is a very Japanese flavor. They have a little card on the table, though, that lists some of their spicy Korean seafood soups.

They've got good Chap Chae (also called Jap Chai), clear noodles made of yam starch which are stir-fried lo mein style with a lot of garlic and soy and some veggies. And of course, being a Korean BBQ, a choice of things like Bulgogi -- the sweet garlicky sliced beef I mentioned above -- or Kalbi, the short ribs version. There's spicy pork or chicken. These are all cooked in the kitchen, but served on a sizzling platter with a bowl of rice and various side dishes.

Midori is on the west side of town, in a little shopping mall on Edgewood Boulvard (across from Meijers). Maybe a little hard to get over there for people on the east side, but I'll just remind you that the Goodrich Quality Theaters movie house out behind Lansing Mall is CHEAP, but is also clean and with new seating and equipment. We find Midori and a movie (or Little Panda and a movie) makes for a great combination.

I hope to get to some of the other Korean restaurants soon. In the meantime, enjoy Midori if you can.

Midori Sushi and Korean BBQ, 436 Elmwood Rd, Lansing. (527) 323-7991.

Midori Korean BBQ Part 1 - Sushi

(EDITORS NOTE: Midori is under new management. They don't prepare the sushi from the old menu well, but we don't know how they prepare the Korean food. We suspect their own new menu items are probably what's best. However, watch out for any roll with cream cheese in it -- it's whipped and sweet and overwhelms the flavor of anything its in. Ugh!)

The following refers to the food under the old managemet:

I'm not exactly a purist when it comes to sushi. I adore the big bright flavorful "fusion cooking" rolls, especially when they come with a Korean flair. I'm not so hot on the slab of raw fish on a ball of rice. Not that I have anything against raw fish, and I can appreciate simple elegance. But most Japanese sushi is just too pure for me.

As a result I cannot say how Midori stacks up among the top classic sushi places. (I suspect they're pretty good, as the sushi is always prepared with great care.) But I can say that my favorite place for sushi is Midori Sushi and Korean BBQ. Their flavors are vibrant and textures varied. (I also love their Korean food, but I'm leaving that for another review.)


Here are a few of my favorite rolls:

The Spicy Shrimp Tempura (pictured in the center) is the richest and most irresistible roll they have, imho. Inside is shrimp rolled in the milder darker Korean hot sauce. (Koreans have a wide variety of hot sauces, with a lot of different flavors -- some fruity, some straight spicy, some blazingly hot.) There's also cucumber and cream cheese, all wrapped in rice and nori. Then the whole roll is lightly battered and quickly deep fried. It's then cut into slices and a dot of a different hot sauce is on each slice. The flavors all melt together with the cream cheese, but there is the very crunchy outside, and the fresh crisp of the cucumber inside. You can eat each piece with two bites, but I recommend trying to get it in one. The gestalt of all the flavors and textures is heaven.

Another fancy large roll is the Caterpillar -- a spicy tuna roll which is draped with avocado slices on the outside. (Pictured at the top.) Depending on the chef and the presentation possibilities of your overall order, they may present this in a snake along your platter, with markings and scallion anntennae so that it looks like a big caterpillar.

The other big roll we like here is the Futomaki (pictured on the Right), which I understand just means "Big roll". At a lot of places, this is served as a selection of fishes, but here it is filled with crab, cucumber, avocado, kampyo, egg, and the crisp, sweet radish pickle that they serve as a side dish for many of their Korean dishes. This roll is lightly sweet flavored, and a good respite for some of the heavier rolls.

We usually order a big roll per person, and then fill in the rest with smaller rolls, like an asparagus, or avocado roll. Maybe a plain spicy crab or tuna. In the picture, I believe that's a Spicy Crab along the left, and Asparagus roll between the Caterpillar and the Spicy Shrimp Tempura, and a Cucumber and Avocado roll at the bottom of the picture above.

Below is what the tray looked like moments after serving. (It was completely empty soon after that.)


I hope to have some pictures and do a review of the Korean food at Midori soon, especially the Hot Stone Bowl Bibimbap, and maybe the noodle soup with shrimp tempura in it. In the meantime, just remember you can get good Korean food there. (And for great mom and pop Korean food in East Lansing, you can't beat Korean House in the Trowbridge shopping center. )

Midori Sushi and Korean BBQ, 436 Elmwood Rd, Lansing. (527) 323-7991.

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Recommended Links:
Much as I love Korean food, you'd think I'd have more blog links. But alas, right now I only have one. My Korean Kitchen. Although Zen Kimchi really looks promising.

Suria Malaysian Restaurant

(Editor's Note: Suria is closed. There is no place in town that I know of to get Malaysian food anymore. Sigh.)

I've mentioned Suria before, but I didn't have time for a full review, and they have changed their menu a bit in the new location. (The biggest change is that they no longer seem to have the big bowls necessary to serve the soup-style dishes, although they will try serving it on a large plate if you request a favorite dish from their former restaurant.)

Malaysian food has a lot in common with Indian, Chinese and Thai, and yet it's entirely it's own cuisine. A lot of curries and noodles, and can be very very spicey. They also serve Chinese food for the more timid, but I can't tell you how good it is because I always get the Malaysian food. Another great thing for the uninitiated: they have pictures of the dishes on the menu, which helps you remember what you had last time.


The most amazing thing is the appetizer Roti Canai (ROE-tee CHEN-eye) a stretchy, flakey flat bread which seems to me to be a cross between Naan and Croissants. I've been trying to make Roti at home, and though I think I've done pretty well on the Indian version, the ultra-thin layers of the Malaysian version are inhumanly impossible. (Well, okay, maybe superhumanly possible, kinda like my grandmother's pie dough.) This is melt-in-your mouth stuff. It comes with a little bowl of hot curry sauce to dip, that's just perfect with the buttery bread. (Note, you get one piece of bread with an order -- be sure to ask for a piece for everyone in the group, because you'll all want your own.)


My favorite dish is Panang Fried Kuey Teow. (Shown above.) Kuey Teow (pronounced KWAY Ti-ow) is a freshly made rice noodle -- chewy and creamy, and often large. It's stirfried (like fried rice or lo mein) with shrimp and chinese sausage, onions beansprouts, soy sauce and spices. It's really good, but it is intense and greasy. If you're not sure, you could ask for it not so spicey. This is one dish that has so much flavor, leaving out the spice would not hurt it. (The Beef Hor Fun is similar, and not hot -- but it also doesn't have the mellow flavor of the Chinese sausage.)


Another interesting noodle dish, that's unfamiliar but good for western tastes, is the Mee Rojak, which is a plate of egg noodles with shredded cucumber and bean sprouts. Over the top is the meat of your choice (shown here with shrimp), some fried tofu pockets, and a sweet sauce that reminds me a little of bbq sauce, garnished with ground peanuts. This one used to come mild, but the last time we had it, it was hot (and listed as hot on the menu). Again, they're happy to make something mild.

The other common sort of dish is a curry or meat on the side of a little formed ball of flavored rice (usually coconut or ginger rice). I love their chicken curry, but it is cut up, Asian style, with the bones in, and can be slow eating for westerners. The Nasi Lemak is something like a national dish of Malaysia: chicken curry, a mound of coconut rice, cucumbers, a boiled egg, and a little pile of fried spicy anchovies. If you're not quite up to the anchovies, the Chicken Curry is just fine. The BBQ Pork is very good when they have it, though a little sweeter than the Chinese BBQ Pork it resembles.

They also have a selection of dim sum on the appetizer menu. I've never got around to trying it, because I'm always too hungry for the Roti Canai. I've also never tried the Malaysian drinks and desserts.

Suria Malaysian Restaurant. 5025 S. Cedar St., Lansing. (517)887-8168.
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Recommended Links:
Lily's Wei Sek Hong is a blog written by a Malaysian American. A lot of the recipes are American or of other ethnicities, but she has a lot of Malaysian recipes in her long list on the right side of the page.

Recommended Reading:
My favorite Malaysian cookbook so far is The Food of Malaysia: Authentic Recipes From the Crossroads of Asia (Periplus World Cookbooks) , but it's out of print. The other major book I use is the Wei Chaun cooking school book Singaporean, Malaysian & Indonesian Cuisine.

Peking Duck Feast at Peking Express

Peking Duck was originally just a little treat at an Imperial feast, a lovely little burrito of duck, hoisin sauce and spring onion. This little treat took days to prepare.

Three days before the banquet, the duck would be quickly blanched in boiling honey water, then set to dry, then blanched again, and set to dry again. And again. This would go on for days until the skin was tight with honey, and had rendered out much of the fat. Then the duck would be roasted. The point of all this was to get the perfect crispy skin. The skin is the only part of the duck that is actually supposed to be used in Peking Duck. The rest of the duck should be prepared in another dish.

Peking Express knows how to serve the duck right -- as two dishes. But back to the duck....


So the luscious, crispy caramelized skin would then be cut up and served with a steamer full of lovely Mandarin Pancakes (aka Lotus Pancakes or Peking Doilies). These are very thin but tender and glutinous flat breads -- thinner than a tortilla, and when done right, more moist and tender. They should be made with boiling water dough (similar to pot sticker dough) and when made by hand, you put some sesame oil between two layers so you can roll them out extremely thin, two at a time.

You also get a bowl of hoisin sauce -- a salty sweet sauce with a number of spices it in -- and a pile of scallion brushes. Use the scallion (or green onion) to brush some hoisin on the pancake, throw in the onion and the skin, and wrap it up. Delectable!


Peking Express doesn't do the extra thin pancakes, but unlike any other place in town, they do use the right kind of dough. (Other places basically use a very very thin tortilla.) And they give you the actual scallion brushes, when most places give you just a few slivers of green onion and a pile of shredded cucumber.

It's a great dish for a celebration or banquet. We had such a banquet this weekend. The duck and doilies came first, as they should be. They're a great appetizer, but if you have less than four people, you could very well fill up on just this. (Heck, once the duck is gone, it's tempting to ask for more pancakes and just keep gobbling them with the sauce and onions.)

As for the rest of the banquet, the duck is enough to feed two or three people, so be careful how much more your order. Peking Express in particular tends to give you a lot of food for each dish, and we ended up ordering too much. (If you're sharing dishes, as you should at a Chinese banquet, figure the duck to be three dishes, unless you have some really hearty eaters, or you want leftovers.)


After the skin, came the rest of the duck, prepared in a stir-fry with slivers of vegetables and a bright flavor of five spice. (Five spice tends to be a mixture of anise, cinnamon, licorice, hot pepper, and any of a number of other spices -- fennel, cloves, ginger. There may well be more than five spices in there. It's just that five is a lucky number, so that's what it's called.)


The dish the owners always recommend for a banquet at Peking Express is the Giant Oyster Mushroom with Assorted Seafood. Oyster Mushrooms are a nice mild, chewy shroom, and the sauce is a mild garlic gravy. The seafood is shrimp, scallops, and yes...squid. The thing about squid is, if you cook it more than a minute, or less than an hour, it's tough. It doesn't taste bad, but it can be like chewing rubber bands. I'm happy to say that last night, the squid was NOT overcooked. It was a little chewier than the mushroom, but not bad.


The delight of the night was the Eggplant in Hot Pot. This is a gorgeous dish: purple eggplants and colorful sweet peppers baked in a hot clay pot in a sweet soy and wine sauce. I'm really beginning to get over my dislike of eggplant. There are just too many places in town that make good stuff out of it. The liquid in the hot pot keeps its temperature up, so be sure you don't burn yourself on this one.


Lastly we had a dish we've gotten before and we always forget it's not what we expect. Turbot Fish with Baby Bok Choi in Black Bean Sauce has dried salted turbot in it -- the fish is more of a seasoning than a major ingredient. It's tasty, but it's salty. If you want just some nice green veggies with the other dishes, you might try their Pea Greens in Minced Garlic Sauce. Those are really tasty in a light gravy. Chinese Mushrooms with Chinese Green is also a good vegetable dish, but heavy on the Mushrooms (nice plump whole black mushrooms.)

I love Peking Express. (They're one of the few places in town to serve good tea, which is ironic, because dim sum houses are supposed to be about good tea, but alas, ours just don't get it.) It is by far the best place to get Peking Duck. However, in fairness, I should say that Chinese Gourmet Village in Hannah Plaza puts on a nice feast too. I don't have a review for them yet, but here's a link to their site and menu.

All of the dishes mentioned above, by the way, came from the chef's special menu, which is an insert in the regular menu. If your insert gets left out, don't settle for the General Tsao's Chicken and Beef Chow Mein. Get the good stuff.

Peking Express, 611 East Grand River Ave, East Lansing. 351-0533.

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Recommended Reading:

I have a really good book on Peking Style cooking from Wei Chuan cooking school. Chinese Cuisine: Beijing Style The only problem is that Amazon lists this book as being in Chinese. Most Wei Chuan books are in both Chinese and English, and I have a copy of this that has everything in both languages, so this is probably in both, but be prepared if you order it.

On the other hand Chinese Cuisine: Shanghai Styles is another great Wei Chuan book with similar flavors and styles, and Amazon even says it's in English.