Shanghai Girls and Shanghai Dumplings

Another great absorbing book!  Lisa See's Shanghai Girls is about two sisters, May and Pearl, who start the book as glamorous middle class models in 1930's Shanghai, and end up as poor immigrants, married off by their father to men they have never meant in order to settle his debts.  We go through their harrowing escape from China, which has just been invaded by the Japanese with them, and live through their disappointments of a Chinese immigrant's life in Los Angeles in the 40s and 50s.    The book has a large scope - from China during war time to Angel Island in San Francisco and then Chinatown in Los Angelles - but it feels intimate, because we get to know these sisters so well, and in particular Pearl, the older sister who serves as narrator.  I knew as soon as I started reading the book that I wanted to try to make a favorite Shanghai dish of mine - Xiao Long Bao aka soup dumplings aka Shanghai Dumplings.  These are not just normal dumplings, they are feat of cooking magic - inside the dumpling wrapper is hot soup!  How is that done? See after the jump...

Read more »

One Day and Strawberry Cheesecake Ice Cream Sandwiches

David Nicholls One Day is about to be released as a movie starring Anne Hathaway.  I saw the trailer, and I must say, I did not buy her British accent at all!  So when I saw the book in the store, I figured, I better read this quick before the movie ruins it.  I am glad I did - maybe the movie will be great, but the book was a wonderful, fun, romantic read.  The book follows two Brits - Dexter and Emma, and explores their lives and relationship by checking in with them on the same day - July 15, every year.  As you can imagine, there are great ups and downs, and the characters are sometimes charming and sometimes awful and are sometimes wonderful to each other and sometimes horrible to each other.  The book breezed by but ended with a bit more drama and emotion than I was prepared for.  That's all I say.  I should have made something British but I got in my head I should make something heart shaped since this was a book about love.  These strawberry cheesecake ice cream sandwiches (made with homemade graham crackers) fit the bill of being both heart shaped and season appropriate.  Enjoy!

Read more »

The Big Short and Fragile Almond Rochers

Sorry for the long absence, sometimes life gets in the way of blogging.  I have a lot of books to catch up on!  First up is Michael Lewis' The Big Short.    Most of what  I know about Wall Street  I learned from Michael Lewis.  I loved his first book Liar's Poker about the macho world of bond trading.  I was excited when he released a book about the latest financial crisis.  Lewis has an amazing ability to explain complicated financial instruments and systems, and in The Big Short, he also makes an examination of the sub-prime mortgage crisis read like a suspense novel.   Lewis tells the story of the financial crisis by focusing on a handful of people in the industry who saw the sub-prime mortgage debacle coming - and this foresight made them millions.  Lewis tells us enough about each of these characters so that we feel like we know them and care about what they have to say.   I learned a lot by reading the book, I think I now understand sub-prime mortgages, credit default swaps,  CDOs, and shorting stocks.   And before the book I blamed Wall Street for the crisis, after the book that feeling is stronger, and I am genuinely shocked at the crooked and stupid game they played and angry that bonuses are back up on Wall Street yet our economy is still limping along trying to recover.  After the jump, the light and airy meringue cookies I made that were inspired by the fragile and hollow sub-prime mortgage CDOs that caused this whole mess.

Read more »