Asian Food Week: Meal Two

Today, we had our sitter come. Ray and I headed out to run errands and have a quick lunch. We needed to pop into Japa to pick up some dashi and gyoza wrappers. We also wanted to try a new restaurant, Haveli. Mmmmm, Indian food! We didn't have the appetite nor the time for a big blow-out meal so we ordered appetizers and soup. Ray had shammi kebab and I ordered chicken pakora. We both had dal aur palak shorba. Of course, we munched on the obligatory naan as well. But the best thing about my lunch was the thandai, which I'd never had before. Next time, I'll order it heated. Good gravy, it was delicious! I'm glad we had a little bit of walking to do in order to reach Japa because we were quite full from that small meal. We asked the waiter to wrap up half of each of our appetizers because we couldn't even finish them! Sadly, both of us had forgotten that Japa is closed on Tuesdays. Still, we're glad we had to go there and back to the station in order to walk off some of the meal. For Day Two of my cooking obsession, I made Chengdu noodles in sesame sauce (sing dou ma laat min). I tried finding a link for this recipe but can't find anything that is exactly like what I made. Basically, it's just sesame sauce over cooked noodles with beansprouts and sliced spring onion. The sesame sauce is comprised of sesame paste, sesame oil, chili oil, sugar, dark soy sauce and black Chinese vinegar. I had to leave out the vinegar because I just couldn't find any in Prague. To accompany this, I prepared soy chicken wings (si yau gai yik). Simple, really. Boil water with the wings, chopped spring onion and sliced ginger. Add in light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, one star anise and some sugar. Let this simmer for thirty minutes. Voila! Sophia went nuts over the chicken! I promised to make them again next week. She also wanted to keep two of the bones. Kids! (By the way, I have No Idea why the chicken wing in the top of the photo looks like it isn't cooked all the way through. It was! I swear!)