Goaded to excellence at Number One Taste

My disappointment at not being in town for Chinese New Year has been vitiated by the prospect of being able to introduce my nephews to another exotic foreign festival--and its associated sweets! I talked to my sister earlier tonight and she's on board with my plan to make sweet dumplings with them. Now if I can only find a recipe! My originally thought was to make jiaozi, but now I'm wondering if yuanxiao might not be a little more foolproof. After all, who can't roll a ball?

Since I probably won't have much time to shop next Saturday, monshu and I made a foray into South Chinatown today to stock up on non-perishables. The bad taste of the time I wasted trying to find a good instructional book for Chef Jeff at World News was washed away within a few minutes of entring Aji Ichiban. Good God, how I love that store!

And if there's anything I love more than going wild in the city's best Asian candy store, it's taking someone new there. After shopping, we met a couple monshu knows through work for dinner at Spring World. They serve 龍抄手! Why didn't I know this? (Because I'm stupid: It's a Sichuanese dish, they're a Yunnanese/Sichuanese restaurant. Duh!) They've been my favourite dumplings since I first discovered them in Utah five years ago and they were the highlight of the meal tonight. And unlike Joy Yee, they don't give you a metric bumload, so you can enjoy them and go on to share one dish a piece.

In any case, we easily talked them into popping into Aji Ichiban for a bit. monshu's fellow director fearlessly sampled candied fruits of mysterious provenance while her partner filled little bags with milk candies. I couldn't resist heading to the counter, where three of the store's employees were gathered, with more sweets.

I'm not sure what tipped off these women, but one of them asked me, "You know some Chinese?" "A little," I replied, guardedly. Then another held out a flier and asked, "Can you read this?" I'm happy to say that I rose to the challenge. At first, I was only mindlessly reading characters aloud, and stumbling on every fifth one or so. Gradually, though, I began to realise this was an advertisement for the challenger in the upcoming aldermanic election, so I read through to the end of the first paragraph and (with just a few hints from the clerks) translated it.

I surprised even myself, so it's no wonder the ladies were nothing short of astonished. I humbly thanked them, we wished each other "Happy New Year", and I turned around to see what the others had made of my performance--

--and found that they were all standing around outside talking amongst themselves, having left who knows how many minutes ago. Beyatches!