Family Gathering @ Fortune House Seafood Restaurant in Metrotown

Fortune House Seafood Restaurant
4700 Kingsway, #2199A

Burnaby, BC V3J1A1

Tel: (604) 438-8686

Fax: (604) 438-5138

Burnaby, BC, V5H 4M1

http://www.fortunehouserestaurant.com/

so, if you saw my previous post, i went back to vancouver last week, and the very next day i woke up to a giant dim sum feast, and some 5 hours later, we were driving to Fortune House for some post-Chinese New Year dinner with my family.  It seems that Fortune House gets a lot of flack from people, but it wasnt too bad, we picked our own selection, outside from the set menus, and it really wasnt that bad!  We even got to see a sample show of traditional Chinese Mask Changers, and the 25 year old master changed his face like 9 times. very cool. no pictures tho. only food.

So we started with soup, whenever i see these ceramic chinese soup things i, this is what i see in my head, now you see it too! 

Started with this egg dish, really interesting, its like a steamed egg with a whole bunch of other eggs in it, like thousand year old, and duck egg, with scallops and dried scallops on top. I was never a fan of thousand year old egg when i was a kid but i totally dig it now... i still dont like duck egg, but at this rate, i'll probably love it in another 20 years.

My dad loves this, some sort of fatty 5 layer pork with brocolli.  Apparently a great cut of pork where its like meat-fat layers times 5... hence... 5 layer pork... it makes sense now...

mmm honey garlic spare ribs, cant go wrong with that!

lemon chicken, lemon on the side

birds nest, with some really tender beef chunks

pea tips, a fav in my family

mmm this was great, some sort of breaded giant massive prawns in a sweet and sour sauce, as you can see the waiter is bringing it in, his hand is on the right, i just had to get the shot in.... i have no patience at all...

Steamed fish, i love steamed fish, so simple and so flavourful.  I dont think my parents were a fan of this, but what do i know, whens the last time i got to eat some...

and voila, we cleaned the plates.  Of course what kind of chinese meal is it without a bean dessert at the end. but no picture of that though, they`re everywhere, a dim a dozen, its like taking picture of rice or something. 

The Magnificent Dim Sum Feast @ Western Lake Chinese Seafood Restaurant in Vancouver

Western Lake Chinese Seafood Restaurant

4989 Victoria Drive
Vancouver, BC
(604) 321-6862

Last week, I came back home to Vancouver for a family visit, and my cousin Lincoln said he'd take me and my family out for dim sum and i immediately said... WEST LAKE!!!! With their massive HA GAWS (do you see them in the middle, like massive bosoms overflowing out of a too tight bamboo holder, salivating right now...) Everything is so oversized, yet with incredible quality.  You'll see with scale shots, like the HAGOW in the bowl, like too how HUGE it is!  soooo good...it's a smaller place, and it's always packed, i mean, for the value and quality and bloated dim sum items, duh, winning.

So I want to point out, that there were 5 of us, me, my mom, dad, 93 year old grandpa, and my cousin Link who invited us all out in the first place, and we ordered 20 dishes. TWENTY DISHES.

-2 steam prawn dumplings (HAGOW)

-1 sui mai dumpings (SUI MAI)

-1 steam shanghai pork bun (SHAOLONG BAO)

-1 steam spareribs with black been sauce

-1 steam scallop with prawn

-1 steam prawn sui mai

-1 steam tofu roll

-1 meat rissoles chiu (??? HUH???)

-1 steam fish maws with shrimp

-2 steam rice flour roll with beef

-1 Pan fried chive dumpling

-1 deep fried prawn shrimp roll

-1 panfried eggplant with shrimp

-1 bbq pork baked pastrie

-pork skin radish soup

-1 chicken feet soup

-2 egg tarts

I'm just gonna post up the pics, you can play the match game with the items from above, have fun!

my dad likes the tower. 

Jessica's Famous Seafood Chowder

hehe this is totally in my arsenal of jessica's go to dishes cause it's sooooo easy, and soooo tasty, and soooo satisfying and a crowd pleasure for sure.  the only pain is chopping up all those dang veggies, but otherwise, its a completely painless process.

it all started one day when I was in the gym catching up with my food network (cause i only get basic cable now :( ) and  it wasThrowdown with Bobby Flay: Salmon Chowder challenge with these guys at Seattle's Pike Place, and i was like, this is so easy! Im gonna make it.  Bobby used crab stock and crab meat, and the pike place guys used a shrimp/prawn based stock, but i chose to use lobster, cause I wanted to eat lobster meat.  This is actually my second go at making this, so this time this was a 3 lb lobster (my first one was 3.5).

So step 1: Cook and eat a delicious lobster and save the shells, brains, goo, everything. 

While i was cooking the lobster, i was simultaneously cooking a shit load of bacon for the chowder. Funny useless fact, we ate the lobster with a lemon bacon butter.... how awesome is that! haha.  

Threw the lobster shells in with water, 1 lemon cut in half, onion, 2 cloves of garlic, 2 bay leaves, fresh thyme, celery, corn husks, couple peppercorns, salt, and.... i think that's it. Cooked it for an hour and a half.

And here it is, an hour and a half after, check out all its guts against the pot... mmmmm. lobster flavoured water.

At the same time i was making the stock, i was chopping up all the veggies... its a tiresome activity, and no a slap chop would not help. I used 1 large carrot, 1 large onion, 4 stalks of celery, 3 yukon gold, and 3 baking potatoes (they used yukon gold on the show, and i know why, it retains its shape and bite), kernal from 4 corn cobs, I "sweated" it in my roux (butter + flour, is that what you're even suppose to do? who cares). and then my bacon!

Strained the sock and added it to my pile of veggies and let it boil for a while... then i added half and half cream and all my seafood which were: Salmon Chunks, Seabass chunks, and scallops. What i should have done, was fried the scallops in the bacon fat... next time.

And there you go, seafood chowder for your family and your neighbours. which i did feed as well. haha.

Ta da! I ate this for like...6 straight meals.... if it wasnt THAT GOOD, it would be down the toilet. .. yeah i ended up giving it away to my neighbour... hahaha. but still... its THAT GOOD.

Make shift meal: Salmon Potato Cakes

So last night, I was hungry and had barely nothing in the fridge...sure i had a bunch of frozen stuff, but i was really craving FRESH, and really not feeling like leaving the house (it was snowing?) so i pulled together what I had to make my makeshift Salmon Cakes.

ingredients i used:

-2 cans of canned salmon (i'll probably try with fresh and other types of fish)

-2 potates (whatever i had leftover from my salmon chowder)

-1 onion

-fresh thyme (leftover from my salmon chowder)

-6 quail eggs (i had NO EGGS, my roommate had quail eggs, haha i would probably use more quail eggs to bind it, maybe 8? 10? whats the equivalent in normal eggs?)

-Bread crumbs - i used panko bread crumbs i had bought when i wanted to fry japanese style shrimp... love these impulse buys that i do nothing with

-salt, pepper, montreal salmon steak seasoning, paprika

damn quail eggs equate to nothing!!!!

I scooped out lil ... im trying to figure out what kinda sports balls they were the size of... baseball? no... not softball... bacci ball? no.. Pool Ball. yeah, size of a pool ball.  cubbed the potatoes, boiled and mashed and threw everything in. breaded it with more panko

Fried it up on low-medium heat in some butter... yeah you can see it was kinda falling apart, maybe cause i only used 6 quail eggs, or maybe i shoulda let it sit, cause the leftover ones i had today were perfectly held together.  As you can see, the salmon  cans (super tasty and juicy) were courtesy of jenice from her awesome fish store in Burnaby, FISH.

With no tarter sauce, I tried to make my own with some lemon yogurt, relish packets i stole from the movie theatre, and dill in a tube.  The flavours were all there, plus its fresh and the least fattening tarter sauce ever!  I ran out of relish this morning, so i chopped up dill pickles and threw it in with the yogurt, worked just as well, more tart. 

Here's the mid nom nom noming dish... hehe. 

 And here is my attempt at a plating pic. haha. 

In conclusion.  A super quick and cheap eat at home, will in the future attempt to add other stuff in the cakes (like leeks! never used leeks before, but saw it on TV), as this is my FIRST TIME ever making a potato cake of any variety, i am indeed a fan as they are cheap, delicious, and i get to pretend im fancy. 

Last Meal in Vancouver - Ningtu on Kingsway

Ningtu

2130 Kingsway St.
Vancouver, BC V5N2T5

I went back home last week, and i know these posts are going to be out of order but i am sooo bad with updating, i just like to eat eat eat. So Grandpa wanted to take all of us out before i went back to Toronto, and i love Shang-hai food, especially the dim sum parts, so it was a no brainer, also, my brain was mush as i was kinda comatose after a 7 day eating spree, and just went with Ning Tu on Kingsway.

The last time I was in Vancouver, we went here for dinner and the staff recommended this, house soup? special soup? I really should be paying attention if i'm planning to document this, but im sure they'll tell you same.  It was super savoury and hearty.  If was snowing giant flakes outside, and something like this really just cradles you from the inside and comforts you.  It's a whole smorgasbord of I have no idea of stuff in there, like these lil pork dumplings wrapped in fried egg, and some sort of egg tofu? and greens, and glass noodles, and i have no idea, but its delicious.

Love Love Love Vancouver Dunguness crabbys, we picked out a 3 pounder for this deliciously oily crab and gluttonious noodle... wait. im a gluttoonious noodle... what do you call those starchy round things? Leen Goh? Leen Goh and Crab, its sooooo good and i know some people have a phobia of eating crab in public cause it's a messy feast, but i have no such phobia, i will rip that thing apart with my hands, that meat is so bountiful and sweet.  Plus the crab brains... mmmmmm...

A staple in my family, and one of my dad's favs (as you will notice, everything is my dad's favorite), beef rolls. What am i saying, i love them too, i think like beef briskey, with green onion and a hoisin sauce, wrapped with green onion pancake. The pancake was thin and perfectly crispy. super yummy.

 We generally stick to ordering the same things, so i was surprised when my dad was asking the waitress for her opinion and we came up with this shrimp, egg, and broccoli dish.  I've never had this before so i wouldnt even know where to start, but luckily my cousin was with us and he was familiar, so he mixed the whole thing with the egg.  It was so good and the shrimp was so perfectly cooked, had that shirmp "crunch" when you bite into it. 

Again something i have no idea what the proper name is, except, deep fried with sauce, I think ppl usually pour the sauce straight in to hear that satisfying SSSSZZZZZZZZZ of the rice, but we like to keep our rice dry and sog-free. Sauce consisted of ham, peas, bamboo shoots? and some other stuff.

One of my dad's fav's deep fried bread with sweet condensed milk

And according to my dad, everyone's favourite was this pork and cabbage dish, again i have no idea what i was, i just eat it, but we stuffed the deep fried bread with it, so good.

Pea tips. what else you want?

So all in all, it was a good satisfying meal.  I've been here a few times before, for lunch and other dinners, its a good decent and decently priced restaurant.  It's a bit homey in appearance, but really, you're not there to eat the chairs. Enjoy!