Post 50.3: Goodbye Thousand Oaks, Part 3 - Authentic Chinese (LA: Agoura Hills)

The Thousand Oaks area has plenty of cookie-cutter restaurant chains that serve cookie-cutter American food.  It's tough to find a good mom and pop shop that serves anything remotely close to the cuisine from the home country.  The first time I was introduced to a local Chinese restaurant, I sat down to find a placemat with the twelve signs of the Chinese zodiac and a shining, metal fork.  Now... I'm not against Western silverware, but the lack of chopsticks in plain sight in an authentic Chinese restaurant is a bit unnerving.  And disappointing.  The second time a co-worker suggested Chinese food, I walked up to a restaurant with two abnormally large horses guarding the entrance... not my definition of Chinese food.

Thankfully, another co-worker discovered Hot Wok, a small mom and pop restaurant run by an immigrant trio from the northeastern region of China.  Rather than serving overly soy sauced Americanized Chinese chock full of water chestnuts, Hot Wok (滾鍋) rolls out truly down home items like hand-made dumplings (手工水餃), scallion pancakes (蔥油餅), and spicy broiled (poached) fish filet (水煮魚片).  Here are some of the dishes from Hot Wok that have saved me from the panda and the horse in T.O.




Black bean noodles
listed on the menu as cha jiang mien (炸醬麵)

With plenty of cucumbers and bean sprouts, this noodle dish is a little bit Chinese... but with a simple black bean sauce, this noodle dish mixes in the characteristic of Korean jjajangmyeon.  My ideal version would include a good portion of ground pork, but the black bean sauce is enough to make me feel right at home.

Leek & pork dumplings
listed on the menu under (韮菜豬肉水餃)

Hand-made dumplings around the Conejo Valley? Unbelievable.  Not only do they come close to the real deal, they are the real deal.  Flavorful pork is blended with fragrant green leeks and filled into freshly made dumpling dough.  These eight little heavenly clouds with just a touch of soy sauce truly spark a bit of inner happiness.

Pan fried pork calzone
listed on the menu as imperial pan fried meat pastry (京都肉餅)

I've never actually had this item ever before, but ironically, this pork pancake hits close to home.  The imperial pan fried meat pastry, as Hot Wok calls it, is like a calzone in that it's stuffed with different ingredients and enclosed with a bread-like carbohydrate.  Like a lasagna, though, there are multiple layers; ground pork and thin pastry are placed over each other one layer at a time within the outer casing.  Soft, crispy, soft, crispy... savory, salty, savory, salty... the textures and flavors confuse my brain.  And I'm also confused about what to call this item... pastry? Calzone? Pancake? There's one thing my brain knows for sure though... this thing is delicious.

Beef wrap
listed on the menu as beef roll pastry (牛肉捲餅)

While the imperial meat pastry is something I've never had before, the beef wrap is something I've enjoyed throughout my adult life.  Wrapped within a Chinese tortilla are slices of braised beef and an explosion of cilantro.  It's relatively small compared to the beef wraps at other restaurants, but you know what that means? I can eat the whole thing by myself.

Cumin lamb
listed on the menu as lamb with tze lan herb (孜然羊肉)

The mix of cumin and chili peppers with fatty curls of lamb creates a truly tasty flavor.  The spiciness is more fragrant than biting.  It's an addicting taste.  You'll understand when you place the savory lamb over a bed of steamed white rice.  The rice soaks up the spicy oils from the lamb, taking away just enough grease so that you can continue shoveling bite after bite into your mouth.

Stir fried loofah/luffa

listed on the menu as sauteed si qua (清炒絲瓜)

Luffa isn't your typical green vegetable.  It's not leafy like bok choy, and it's not as common as gai lan (Chinese broccoli).  I'm surprised this unique vegetable is even served outside of the San Gabriel Valley.  Not only does this vegetable turn into the exfoliating, body cleaning sponge once it's dried, it's also special in that it tastes more like a soft cucumber rather than the squash that it is.  Stir-fried lightly with just a hint of garlic, luffa will help you get your daily fiber intake in a tasty way.

Thousand layer pork
listed on the wall in Simplified Chinese only (笋千層肉)

The illusion of a thousand layers is created by slicing the fatty pork belly paper-thin and cutting the edges into the shape of ocean waves.  The thousand layers of pork belly sit atop a mound of young bamboo shoots, which are tender yet crisp to the bite.  Dig down deeper under the bamboo shoots, and surprise! You will find a bed of green spinach, which balances out the unhealthy fat of the pork.  The pool of brown gravy is another illusion itself.  Upon seeing the sauce, I thought that the dish was going to be overly salty, but a hidden sweet and savory flavor took over... if only the thousand layer pork was truly a thousand layers.

Sure, the first few items on the Hot Wok menu are orange chicken and kung pao shrimp, but hidden on the final pages of the menu are what save it from being tossed into the same category as Panda Express and P.F. Chang's.  Items that are also worth trying are a Korean style spicy seafood noodle soup (jjambbong) listed on the menu as three delicacies chow ma mien (三鮮炒碼麵) and Taiwanese beef noodle soup (紅燒牛肉麵).  I'm definitely going to miss this comforting lunch spot.  'Til next time, T.O., let's all get S.O.F.A.T.

ML - 20110416

Post 28: First Time with Afghan (SF: Russian Hill/Nob Hill)

I slapped myself out of my low tide of culinary inspiration.  My inspiration is back.  Or... perhaps I'm just craving Afghan food, and I'm craving it enough to post about it.

My first experience with Afghan food was a couple of months ago when my manager (born in Afghanistan, raised in USA) brought some of her mom's homemade fare to the office for the team.  Although our team consists of just five people, there was enough food to feed the entire corner of our office.  (Uh... it's a pretty big corner.)

I had no clue what I was eating, but I know good food when I see it.  And logic tells me that if an Afghan mother (or any mother for that matter) is confident enough and proud enough to prepare party-sized trays of her own home-cooked deliciosities, then gosh darnit, that stuff has got to be good.

A look at what Marya brought in:


Homemade qabalee.  Qabalee is a combination of pallow rice, raisins, carrots, and meat buried within.  Pallow rice is rice that has been baked after having been tossed in syrup made with carmelized sugar.  Zeera, or cumin seeds, helps perk up the rice.  There's nothing that can come between me and the Japanese, short-grain sticky rice that I've grown up with, but I welcome long-grain rice from other cultures whole-heartedly.  Pallow rice, I welcome you into my life with arms wide open.


Shola.  Contained within the puffy rice is lamb and finely minced vegetables such as onions and celery.  At first glance this dish looks a bit like oatmeal, and the color doesn't do the flavor the least bit of justice.  If you judge this book by its cover, you're definitely gonna miss out.  It's sweet, but it's got spices.  It's soft, but it's not mushy.  It looks bland, but oh lord, it's full of flavor.  I just can't get over how the oil and juices from the meat seep from below... almost like hot lava bubbling up from a volcano, ready-to-burst... and how every other bite of the engorged sticky rice has a surprise of lamb.  Oh sweet heavens, this stuff is good.


Beef qorma.  These chunks of beef have been stewed with onions, garlic, ground coriander, crushed tomatoes, and cauliflower.  It complements the qabalee and the shola really well.  With the qabalee, the gravy (the qorma part of it) helps give the rice an extra hand in spice, but I discovered that this beef deliciousness really shines on a bed of the shola.  Because the shola is so thick, the gravy has nowhere to escape; the shola can enclose the meat and its gravy within its congealed grains.  Your mouth gets nothin' but flavor.  Perrrrfect.

Many thanks to Mrs. Hameed for introducing a new cuisine to all of us in the office.  Marya, you've got one mean-cookin' mama!