卡肥記: 寧波....好好吃!

A local friend finally took me to try some authentic Ningbo local food today. Tried a number of things including an, apparently, very famous local ingredient known as 小黃魚 (literal translation: little yellow fish). It was in soup and the soup tasted very delicious. The only bad thing was that the 小黃魚 had little tiny bones in it that kept getting stuck in my teeth. On top of that we had other dishes like eel slices (pictured below) which, as gross as it sounds, had a very good texture and was great with plain rice. Not pictured are the funny-looking clams (cooked with onion and ginger), 糖醋排骨 (really good tasting sweet and sour pork), and this really stinky dish called 臭冬瓜 (there were also 豆干 in it too). Trust me, it seriously stank so badly that I could not eat it.

Afterwards, we went to, as my friend explained it, the 旺角 of 寧波, 鼓樓. Basically, the "shopping district" is a few alley ways behind a gate. It was a funny looking gatebecause, as you can see in the photo, it is a Chinese-styled building (taken straight out of a 古裝劇) but on top is a Western-style clocktower. Inside the architecture is still very Chinese-y. Unfortunately, it was really cold and wet today, hence most of the merchants were closed.

Lastly, 去寧波, 怎麽可以不吃湯圓呢? Surprisingly, it took quite a bit of work before we found "real" 湯圓. My friend tells me that lots of restaurants tend to buy frozen ones and just simply reheat them for their customers. In the end, we found a 大排擋 place with real handmade 湯圓. There were 3 types to choose from (my friend made sure I tried all three). Two were 酒釀小丸子 (one with eggs and the other with black bean) and one 豬油湯圓 with 黑芝麻 filling and 桂花 on top which made the whole thing very very fragrant (unfortunately, I did not realize there was 豬油 inside until I finished the 3rd one). 這些湯圓跟超級市場買的當然有很大的分別. The filling is very smooth (I think it's the 豬油 that makes it that smooth) and the rice flour around it is very sticky and soft. Even though I'm not a big 湯圓 fan, I still ate more than what I would usually eat. The 湯圓 was very big but, according to my friend, they used to be even bigger and a bowl could only hold 3 湯圓 at one time because they were that big!