Tag: Chinese

Restaurant Review: Wei Wei – A Taste of Taiwan

Wei Wei Review | Serious Crust by Annie FasslerWei Wei Review | Serious Crust by Annie Fassler

Since moving here from Seattle nearly ten years ago (wow that makes me feel old), there are a few things I really miss: the presence of all kinds of seafood on menus, oyster happy hours, and serious Chinese food. Don’t get me wrong, I love that Portland now has 1,327 ramen restaurants and that it seems like every week a new izakaya place has opened, but the comfort food of my youth was usually Chinese food. And I don’t mean greasy beef & broccoli or orange chicken – though there were phases when I loved the stuff. I mean hand shaven noodles, bamboo shoots, and those damn scallion pancakes.

When I heard that there were two new Chinese restaurants opening in sleepy little Sellwood, they immediately went on my “to try” list. And isn’t it nice when your restaurant list lines up with the restaurant lists of the ones you love? That’s exactly what happened when the stars aligned and we had my dad, stepmom, and Jonah’s mom all in town for lunch. So we scooted down to Sellwood to get our hands (or chopsticks, really) on some of the noodles at Wei Wei – A Taste of Taiwan.

The place is relatively small, with only 5 or so tables, and the menu is scrawled out on a large chalkboard wall when you enter. Have a seat and get yourself some starters. We enjoyed the scallion pancake (I told you, it’s a comfort food and one I simply cannot resist) and a special cucumber salad, which was perfect given the 80° day. Then it was time for the noodles – I recommend the beef noodle soup if it’s soup eating weather, or the house spicy noodles, which are dry (served without broth). Neither are that spicy, so I recommend reinforcing with some of the house made chili oil. Let’s talk about the noodles. Both of these dishes came with homemade wheat noodles, often cooked up by the owner’s parents in the kitchen. They are fat, perfectly soft, with the right amount of heft and bite to them. What they are is damn good. The beef soup was super savory, with broth as dark as the large pieces of braised beef it’s packed with. The beef comes apart with the pull of your chopsticks and is accompanied by pickled mustard greens, and spinach. The dry noodles are anything but, coated with a glossy sauce of minced pork, water chestnut, and shiitake mushrooms. Both dishes could have easily served 2 if not 3 people, so come hungry or with a friend.

Shanghai Stir-Fried Rice Cakes

Shanghai Stir-Fried Rice Cakes // Serious Crust by Annie Fassler
Shanghai Stir-Fried Rice Cakes // Serious Crust by Annie Fassler
Shanghai Stir-Fried Rice Cakes // Serious Crust by Annie Fassler

There’s this dumpling house near my mom’s old apartment in Bellevue called Din Tai Fung. It’s a chain, but it’s ok because the dumplings are awesome. We always entrusted our ordering to my little sister, who is the guru of Asian cuisine, and she always ordered the best dishes. If you go, I highly recommend the juicy pork dumplings that are filled with pork and a hot broth, the shrimp and pork shao mai, and some variation of the Shanghai rice cake. These rice cakes are small, oval cakes that I assume are made out of ground rice. They’re delicate and chewy at the same time, and they take on the flavor of whatever sauce they’re cooked in.

Recently I went to Fubonn Supermarket, an Asian market in southeast Portland. I love roaming the aisles of international markets, being astounded by some of the things you can find, and excited when you happen upon an ingredient that you love but have never been able to find before.

You can imagine my delight when I happened upon a bag of dried rice cakes, and they were roughly $2 for a pound. So… that’s a thing. I immediately grabbed a bag, and it sat on our shelf for a few days while I tried to figure out what to do with them. (Then they sat on the shelf a couple days longer when I forgot to start soaking them the night before we wanted to make them, so we had to whip up something else for dinner instead.)

I believe you can also get frozen and fresh rice cakes, but with my dried ones, I soaked them overnight before I made them. But they were easy to use, and delicious, and I recommend getting your hands on some as soon as you can to start experimenting! I stir fried mine with some bok choy and shiitakes, and it was delicious.

Shanghai Stir-Fried Rice Cakes

Ingredients

3 Tbl canola oil
5 cloves garlic, chopped
1 inch piece of ginger, peeled and chopped
8 oz rice cakes, soaked overnight if dried, thawed if frozen
2 heads baby bok choy, rinsed
8 oz fresh shiitake mushrooms, sliced into 1/3-inch strips
1/4 cup soy sauce
1-3 tsp Sriracha
1-3 tsp brown sugar

Ingredients

More optional additions: bean sprouts, napa cabbage, other mushrooms, fish sauce, pork, beef, shrimp.

In a large wok or nonstick pan, heat oil over medium heat. Add ginger and garlic, and sauté until fragrant and starting to brown, about one minute. Add the rice cakes, bok choy, and mushrooms and cook until the bok choy is wilted. If your rice cakes aren’t quite soft enough (remember though, you want them to be a little chewy), add about 1/4 cup water to the pan and cover for a few minutes to steam a bit. Once the mushrooms are cooked through and the bok choy is wilted, add the soy sauce, sriracha, and brown sugar to taste. Start with less sriracha and brown sugar, and taste a lot! I found that I wanted a larger amount of brown sugar because of the saltiness of the soy sauce, and Jonah wanted more Sriracha (obviously). Cook, stirring, until all the rice cakes and vegetables are thoroughly coated and the liquid of the soy sauce has cooked off. Enjoy with teriyaki salmon or Korean short ribs (like we did).