Chinese New Year's Dinner at the Ding's

I was honored to be a guest at the Ding household to celebrate Chinese New Year and Sifu Ding made twenty, yes twenty, individual courses. There weren't even that many people there. Preparations for the meal must have taken a few days.

This is almost the entire spread minus the soup, the whole fish and some other side dishes.

The table from another angle. They brought in a larger round top for the table that ingeniously folded and had rope handles for easy carrying. This they laid over the regular rectangular dining table and covered it with cloth and doily and slapped a lazy Susan on top. On to the dishes:

The shrimp stir fried with onions and garlic. This picture was actually taken after the dinner (hence the plate not looking so full) so I had to rearrange some of the food. The shrimp was superb BTW.

This was the lamb stewed with bamboo shoots and a mix of aromatics. Again, possibly one of the best lamb dishes I have ever had. Very little gaminess and everything in the pot accentuated the delicate lamb flavor nicely. Again, I unfortunately could only get a snap of this dish after dinner so a thin skin had already formed over the broth.

Stir fry of carrots, aromatics and fish flakes. Very good, better than all but the best restaurant implementation. Unfortunately, the whole fish, which was even better, I was not able to take a picture of directly.

Chicken stir fried with chestnuts, mushrooms and aromatics. This was also a great dish, but I was not able to get a pre-dinner picture. Excuse the sloppiness.

A type of mustard green stir fried with these delicate ribbons of egg crepe. The broth tied together the acidity of the greens with the egg.

Pork spare ribs braised in a soy based sauce. The green strands are chives. Delicious and I found the bone a pleasant surprise, they were soft enough to bite down on to get access to the stewed marrow. So hearty and good and one of the favorite parts from eating my own mom's ribs.

Beef spare ribs. I've said in the past that Korean places make the best beef spare ribs. I must now change this to sifu Ding makes the best beef spare ribs. Taste is different but simply spectacular, as instead of grilled it is braised with caramelized onion.

Plate of Chinese charcuterie, or smoked, dried and cured meat and fish. Meant to be an appetizer, but I kind of overlooked this plate as everything was market bought (makes an interesting picture, though). Sifu took the sweet Chinese sausage, however, and made some of the best fried rice with it the next morning.

If you are not already tired of the superlatives in this post, you soon will be. What might look like some as an unappetizing mash here is actually some of the best pork and mashed tarot root I've ever had. This is genius as the savoriness from the pork complements perfectly the mashed tarot. Simply amazing.

The famous Lion's head meatball dish. As far as comfort food I could be happy eating this one forever. The meatballs are tender with a delicate flavor mixture of the pork and a very light infusion of aromatics. But then, you get to the Napa cabbage on the bottom stewed in the meatball's juices. No words, except, no words.

The equally famous Ti-Pong, or pork fatback or pork shoulder braised (lightly seared and slow cooked in a pot) in soy sauce. I've had it at Joe's Shanghai. I've had it in Taipei. This is hands down the best.

The Ti-Pong dish sliced. Some would say that it's not really Ti-Pong. For one, it is fatback and not the shoulder (or maybe it is, I'm terrible at distinguishing cuts) and the meat is not "falling off the bone". I will tell you that a lot of Ti-Pong, the little shards of meat that come off are overwhelmed by the sauce. Here the meat is perfectly cooked and is perfectly paired with the skin, all the fat rendered out, and with this heavenly mix of onion caramelized in pork fat below.

Sifu Ding's famous ground pork in seaweed wrapped in egg crepe. While delicious, I was still reeling from the Ti Pong to adequately give it a fair taste, meaning the flavor is so subtle that it was obliterated by the memory of the pork. Should have had it first.

King soup. This soup was the perfect cap to a perfect dinner. Who knew the broth from chicken and from clam mixed so well together? I took this after everyone had a helping so the broth looks low. So the story of this dish goes: Once a stork was foraging in the shallows when the stork felt something clamp onto his beak. It was a clam. The clam said to the stork "To keep you from eating me I will hold on to your beak for three days until you starve to death." Then the stork says to the clam out of the side of his beak "then I will hold my beak out of the water for three days until you dry out and die." Both creatures, resolved to die, held on tight, until the King (a human) came around and grabbed them both and threw them in a pot to make this soup.

For breakfast the next day, sifu made what she called Golden Yellow eggs, or eggs stewed in some savory broth and spiced with some kind of oil I could not fathom, but they made the yolks translucent. She also made salted porridge and fried sticky rice which were both the rarest and best form I've tasted. Wow.

You know, at one point in my life I derided the sentiment that home cooks made the best meals while I noshed at three Michelin star tables. It is meals like this and cooks like sifu Ding that continue to amaze and humble my palate and remind me that some of the best dishes I've tasted were from the kitchens of these amazing home cooks.