Fun

[chickenfeet]

So lemur_catta took me out last night. We went to Traditional Chinese Buns for a quick pre-concert meal. It's a neat little spot specialising in Northern Chinese dim sum, soups and noodles. It's not the world's most elegant joint (basement, chipped crockery, plastic tablecloths, no drinks licence) but the food is good and cheap. We had two kinds of steamed bun (their buns are the best I've had in Toronto), mutton dumplings, jellied bean curd and a kelp salad with tea for the princely sum of C$18 including tax and tip. They have all kinds of weird and wonderful things on the menu from braised hogs' ears (delicious) through "high quality mutton soup with bread" and a myriad steamed bun and dumpling options to various seafood specialities.

The concert was an Arabic singer with two collaborators who specialised in Balkan music, a musician who played assorted flutes and, on one occasion, saxophone and a tabla player. They played two sets of a mix of Arabic, Turkish and Balkan music ranging from Sufi devotional songs from Arab Andalucia to work songs from the Greek islands. Joanna Das had choreographed one piece and performed to that. This is not music that I'm very familiar with but I thoroughly enjoyed it despite the studio being as uncomfortable, hot and crowded as ever.

In kitten news, the big black and white boy (I think I'll name him Monster) was happy to feed himself when I offered him a bowl of Development Formula mixed with KMR this morning. The two tabbies weren't so interested though so I fed them a couple of syringes of KMR each.

Comments

[unblinkered.livejournal.com]

Mmmmmmmh....dim sum! My (Chinese) ex flatmate used to make wonderful dim sum, but I haven't had any since she went back to Malaysia.

*insert standard "You can't get good ethnic food in Ireland" rant here*

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

*insert standard "You can't get good ethnic food in Ireland" rant here*

When I was working in Ireland twenty five years ago, ethnic in the above sentence would have been superfluous. The only really good meal I had was in a tiny B&B/resto in Kenmare, Co. Kerry.

[unblinkered.livejournal.com]

Heh, in parts of Ireland that still holds true...although things have improved a lot! What I miss is the not overly expensive, down to earth food you get in France, Spain, etc... Most good restaurants are ridiculously expensive. And, with very few exceptions, the only ethnic food you'll get is the bog-standard westernised Chinese/Thai/Indian restaurants.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Substitute "Mexican" for "Thai/Indian" in the above and that would be true for vast swathes of North America.

Music!

[albionwood.livejournal.com]

Do you remember the artist's name? Do they have any recordings?

Arab and Balkan are two of my faves; putting them together could be awesome. Three Mustaphas Three comes close to that, with North African influenced Balkan sounds like Shouffi Rhirou.

Re: Music!

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

The Arabic singer was Maryam Tollar who has a website:

http://www.mernie.ca/mainb.html

I'll see if I can figure out who the other two singers were

Re: Music!

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

The other two singers were Jayne Brown and Sophia Grigoriades

[sollersuk.livejournal.com]

Chinese buns. When I worked near Chinatown in London (Soho) I tried the sugar glazed buns with barbecued pork in the middle. It took me a little while to decide whether they were delicious or revolting, but then my system decided for me (yws, gross, but what are gutters for?)

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

There are many types of Chinese buns. The Northern ones are steamed (as indeed are many of the Cantonese ones). I suspect you are talking about baked ones. That said, I never met a stuffed bun I didn't like whether the filling was mutton curry or sweetened lotus paste.