The mac and cheese I’ve talked about before, but the steak sandwiches are new.

My co-worker Suzette, who hosted the barbecue, had just recently come back from a month in South America and had brought back lots of powders (not that kind) and spices. So using a combination of the paprika mix that Suzette brought back and some local herbs (not that kind), I made South American steak sandwiches. Starting with a baguette, we grilled the steak which I had rubbed with chili powder and sea salt, and then made a sandwich with goat cheese and roasted corn and pepper salsa topped with chimichurri.

What is chimichurri you ask? Its a parsley and garlic based sauce from Argentina – I made mine with a cup of parsley, 6 cloves of garlic, a couple of tablespoons of white wine vinegar, a quarter cup of olive oil, a spice mix of paprika, dried coriander, a couple leaves of fresh oregano, sea salt and the juice and zest of 1 lemon – all of which was dumped into a food processor and ground into a paste. The roasted corn and pepper salsa was made (strangely enough) of over roasted corn, onion, lime juice, salt and fire roasted red bell pepper.

Hope you have a good barbecue season!

It wasn’t as far out as the Smart Shanghai article makes it out to be, but it is really really dusty and dark. Bring gloves and a flashlight. Also, don’t wear anything nice.

The place? Well, its a warehouse filled with loads and loads of . . . junk. But some of it could be really cool, salvageable junk – especially if you like things like older wooden tables, wooden trunks, curios and random remnants of Shanghai’s recent past.

If my apartment wasn’t already furnished, and if I didn’t already have too many things – there was a veritable treasure trove of apartment or house decoration to be had. Especially since the friendly staff working there will help you paint and restore your purchases to an acceptable level.

Photos after the jump

What is this? I don’t even . . .

Chairs

That’s a knife.

No, this isn’t a complaint about living in Shanghai or China, but rather – CONCERT! Yes, New York indie-pop-shoegaze band The Pains of Being Pure of Heart came through Shanghai as a preview of this year’s Jue! Festival and played in Shanghai at Mao Livehouse

The opening band was one of my favorite Shanghai bands – Boys Climbing Ropes, whom I’ve written about many times on here. They played a lot of new tunes which hopefully means a new album sometime soon. I didn’t recognize any of their songs except for “Socially Awkward” – so completely new material – at least to me.

Xiao Punk and Jordan

Then it was time for Pains of Being Pure of Heart. Reading a lot of the online chatter, a lot of people were mentioning “My Bloody Valentine” or shoegaze/noise-pop. But me, I hear a lot of Velocity Girl in their music.

Set-list

It reads:
This Love is Fucking Right
Belong
Higher Than the Stars
The Tenure Itch
//////////////////////////
Heart in Your Heartbreak
Say No to Love
Falling Over
//////////////////////////
Come Saturday
Young Adult Fiction
A Teenager in Love
//////////////////////////
Heaven’s Gonna Happen Now
The Pains of Being Pure At Heart
================================
Contender
My Terrible Friend
Everything With You
Strange

Not really too much to say about the show – Pains were really great to see live. And up close. and for relatively cheap (120 RMB for pre-sale tickets – that’s like $18). One funny note was that Chinese American Peggy Wang, the keyboardist, got on the mic to greet the crowd in Chinese. She said “I’m happy to come to Shanghai. This is my first time. My Mandarin is really bad, I’ve been in the US too long” – her accent wasn’t great, but it was perfectly understandable.

Pains Rocking Shanghai

Great crowd

Next up will be Death Cab for Cutie, also here for the Jue Festival, on Friday!

But I have a personal connection to the newly crowned King of New York – when he was in Shanghai last summer, visiting his ancestral home of Pinghu, I was lucky enough to be the NBA staffer assigned to look after him and his family that weekend.

It’s difficult to really gauge someone’s personality whom you’ve only met through limited exposure – and NBA players doubly so. But based on my limited exposure to him, he’s got a really good head on his shoulders, works really hard and regardless if he continues to put up dominating NBA numbers or normalize into a regular NBA player, he’s got the right mentality for it.

The other thing I thought was interesting is just how normal a kid he really was. Instead of it feeling like a work/player babysitting assignment, it felt like my mom called me up and asked me to take some friends of hers out in Shanghai. One quick anecdote, when we were walking along the Pudong side of the Pujiang River, Jeremy and his little brother Joseph bought some lasers being sold by the tourist vendors. And in the car on the way back to their hotel, they were shining the lasers all around and at buildings and other cars and their mom went “Jeremy! Joesph! Stop shining lasers!”

Here’s some photos from a photo shoot Jeremy did with Inside Stuff magazine – obviously the Harvard and basketball story resonated very deeply with the Chinese media.

I hope the Linsanity continues!

More to come from my Japan trip.

The first thing I will mention is that the service at Morton’s is excellent.

Kyle and his lobster bisque

Andrew and his New York Strip

Sides sides side sides

That’s hash browns, asparagus, mashed potatoes and creamed spinach

Dessert tray offering. We ended up with an Apple pie, the cheesecake and the chocolate thing on the lower left.

So, Morton’s is very expensive. At least 50% more than what you’d pay in the US or Hong Kong or Taipei. But as a once a year or twice a year extravagance, they do it very well. The atmosphere is very comfortable, old school Chicago steakhouse. Piped in jazz standards, Sinatra, Billie Holiday. Excellent aged steak (I think Australian – only Roosevelt’s in Shanghai serves American . .. and that place is more expensive). The steak was perfectly cooked – in fact they confirm with you when you order rare or medium rare – pink with warm center. And the service; when I called to reserve, they asked if it was a special occasion (hence the printed menus), plus they gave Kyle a free dessert and took birthday photos and had the staff sign them.

Again, not cheap at all. But it was really a great dinner.

PHONE:6075 8888
ADDRESS:IFC Pudong,
4/F, 8 Shiji Da Dao,
near Lujiazui Huan Lu

From there, we proceeded across the river to the Waldorf Astoria to have drinks at the famous Long Bar. Big Bird was back in town too! Martinis, cigars, steaks.

Andrew at the Long Bar

Kyle and Jercy

Welcome back Big Bird!

The next evening we went out to the Yongjia Lu location of Kota’s Kitchen to celebrate Colin’s birthday.

Then we ended up at the bowling alley, where Colin found his old boss

Reservations were made at Xinguang Jiu Jia.

It was pretty awesome. Every part of the crab. De-shelled. Served with asparagus, crab meat, various reproductive organs.

Jo:

Xinguang Jiu Jia
512 Tianjin Lu,
near Guangxi Bei Lu
Cost: Pretty expensive. Minimum charge is 400 RMB/person. If you like the crab though, you’re good.

Tomato sauce recipe:

Take a good 8-10 good sized tomatoes. Blanch quickly in boiling salted water to make the skins easy to peel off. Squeeze the tomatoes to get rid of a good amount of juice and seeds, then place into hot pot already seasoned with olive oil. Break up the tomatoes with a potato masher.

In another pot, 1 cup of olive oil, some crushed red pepper, and about 10 cloves of garlic, and a lot of fresh basil – heat up over very low heat. You’re making infused olive oil here.

After about 30 minutes of the tomatoes reducing, strain the olive oil infusion into the sauce, keep stirring and keep on simmer. If the tomato sauce becomes dry, strain some of the juice from the earlier squeezing into the pot.

Cook off about 3 ounces of pasta per person in heavily salted water. In a heavy bottomed saute pan, first grill sausages, then after slicing the sausage, add the tomato mixture in, then the dripping wet pasta. Include a couple of tablespoons of the starchy pasta water. Mix. Combine. Serve with fresh basil and fresh Parmesan.