皮薄 汁多 馅大 肉鲜, Peace Piece, Wrangling PDF's, Equator Journal & a Bento Bonus.
Xiao Long Bao science meets piano that makes you soar and childhood man-crushes.
The Shanghai Dumpling Index
I’ve recently been making a conscious effort to be less judgemental. Part of a work-in-progress as I edge towards being a better human.
I draw the line at Xiao long bao.
If you don’t like soup dumplings, you are a deviant and a pervert and are not to be trusted….. my personal operating system does not have enough RAM to compute such a flagrant disregard for what I see as the base of our hierarchy of needs.
One of my favourite things is my copy of The Shanghai Dumpling Index.
In the service of all mankind, Christopher St. Cavish, armed with precise digital calipers, a scale that measures to the hundreth of a gram and scissors, visited 52 Xiao Long Bao restaurants in Shanghai, to record his findings.
“Four measurements were collected: the weight of the intact dumpling (g); the weight of the soup (g); the weight of the filling (g); and the thickness of the skin (mm). This data was then calculated with the formula [(Filling + Soup / Thickness of Skin) x100] to assign a score representing the quality of structural engineering, the major challenge in the construction of a xiao long bao that meets the colloquial standards.
An analysis of the results combined with directly observed sensory research found xiao long bao with a score of 12.00 or above to demonstrate successful engineering. From a sensory perspective, these samples showed only minor variations, and were classified as Class A. Xiao long bao below this threshold but above a score of 6.75 showed satisfactory engineering and were judged Class B. A full explanation of the methodology, a quantitative analysis of the effect of time post-steaming on a dumpling, a list of all restaurants sampled (including directional information for all 18 Class A and Class B restaurants) and more is included in the full index, available for sale below.”
I’ve been lucky enough to visit Shanghai around a dozen times until COVID-19 reared its ugly head and a PDF copy of The Shanghai Dumpling Index, which I purchased on its release in 2015, always traveled with me.
Of the 18 establishments that made the final cut, I managed to visit 10 x Class A joints & 2 x Class B places during my many visits to Shanghai.
More often than not, upon arrival, the first evening’s port of call would be Din Tai Fung in Xin Tian Di, more often than not with my friend Andrew and locals Ian & Felix. It was essentially a calibration exercise.
You’re probably familiar with the famous Taiwanese chain (it ranks #7 in the Shanghai Dumpling Index) as they are scattered around the globe and serve up some tasty, albeit expensive xiao long bao.
According to the index, the top honors went to Zun Ke Lai on Tianyaoqiao Lu over next to the Shanghai Indoor Stadium…. unassuming and squished in between a hypermarket and a Tibetan restaurant, the soup dumplings here were indeed very good. The wrappers, at 0.72mm thick, were the thinnest and most silken, almost threatening to explode as you winched them out of their basket with chopsticks towards your spoon, mindful of the possible effects of boiling hot dumpling soup on the delicate skin of a wàiguórén.
My personal favourite was Jia Jia Tang Bao on Huanghe Lu, a lowly 11th in the rankings but still a solid Class A joint. I must have visited that place ten times during my trips to Shanghai.
It’s central. A stone’s throw from People’s Square tucked away behind the famous Peace Hotel and located directly across the road from the original Yang’s Fried Dumplings (Sheng Jian Bao), meaning that any lunch in the area was usually a double dumpling affair.
While the skins at Jia Jia Tang Bao were not as silken as other Class A establishments, the ratio of filling to soup was more to my liking, it was a quarter of the price of Din Tai Fung and a basket of pork bao, a basket of pork & crab bao and a beer would still give you a handful of change from $10.
I miss going to Shanghai. I’d made some wonderful friends there that I still keep in touch with via WeChat and I’d just become comfortable wandering around and could make myself understood in restaurants with my very rudimentary knowledge of “Bar & Noodle Joint” Mandarin.
I’ll be back……
Peace Piece
There are certain pieces of music that just make you want to nestle down in a comfortable chair, close your eyes and let them wash over you like a surging tide.
I’ve a lot of those…. Being of the shoegaze generation, Vapour Trail by Ride does it to me everytime, but this came up on a playlist the other day and I had to go in the other room, grab the vinyl, put it on the big speakers and settle down and close my eyes.
Bill Evans was the ‘quiet man"‘ of the Miles Davis Sextet along with Davis, John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Paul Chambers and Philly Joe Jones. A purveyor of moody, nuanced piano playing who shot to fame with the release of Miles Davis’s “Kind of Blue” and his own “Everybody Digs Bill Evans” recorded with bassist Sam Jones and drummer Philly Joe Jones.
He was a tortured dude, wracked by hepatitis and other health issues, he was a chronic heroin addict for much of the 50s, finally kicking the habit and replacing it with cocaine, working through an 8-ball a day until his death in 1980.
Peace Piece, built on a gentle Cmaj7 to G9sus4 two-chord progression, always slays me, but there is a great Spotify playlist below that provides a great introduction to the works of Bill Evans…….Dig.
Wrangling PDFs
BRIDGET RILEY - Untitled (La Lune en Rodage – Carlo Belloli), 1965
Ok… a tech tip.
I’ve nothing against Adobe but it’s a bit clunky for working with PDFs, so behold a free and groovy alternative!
PDF 24 Tools
Sign, encrypt, decrypt, split, merge, edit, compress, covert… yada yada…. There’s a bunch of cool stuff.
It’s a good’un
Equator Journal
I’m really not sure how I ambled upon this website on my web wanderings but I love its striking simplicity and wonderful photos cruising in the visual anthropology lane.
I guess it reminds me of one of my teenage heroes Peter Beard, a swashbuckling model-shagging, coke-snorting adventurer whose intricate notebooks, a cacophony of handwriting, drawings , photos and other assorted ephemera, sent me off into a dreamstate of far flung places and dubious life choices when I was an impressionable lad.
Anyways….I might speak about him further down the track.
Equator Journal
A Bento Bonus!!
I’ve spent far too much time watching ‘Justin Hawkins Rides Again’ this week…. if you’re a fan of Podcasts such as Song Exploder or Broken Record, you might just like these song breakdowns from Darkness front man, Justin… he’s a funny bugger.
That’s it for this week amigos… I wish you the finest week imaginable…. if you’re enjoying The Sunday Bento, please feel free to share it around, throw down some comments and suggestions and I’ll see you next week.
Send it.