GOLDEN POND
On 8 September 2007, D and I visited Golden Pond for the fourth time for dim sum lunch.
This is the deep-fried of the day (we don't order more than one deep-fried dish at a time): Stuffed Bean Curd Cakes (£2.60).
If you say bean curd, it usually means tofu (or taufou, taufu) - white square cake made of soy beans - , but this bean curd was bean curd sheets. When you boil cows' milk (or any animal milk) you get the curding of protain. The same thing happens also with soy milk, and it is the bean curd sheet.
So it is from the same substance as tofu, but shape is different and has completely different texture and particular flavour that the far-east Asians love.
The menu describes it only "stuffed", and it turned out to be stuffed with king(-ish) prawns. In the small dish is soy sauce with vingar to which dip the rolls in.
As I like the bean curd sheets, I loved it, but D said they were too oily. The rolls of bean curds sheets do look more oily when deep-fried than normal spring roll sheet, but I suspect in realty they are not much different in oil quantity, as the former do not soak up oil much. Just a guess.
This is Glutinous Rice in Lotus Leaf, D's favourite (£3.90).
The rice ball contains various cooked meat.
It was delicious, but I found it too substantial; it makes me too filled to eat other nice dim sums. I prefer congée as rice dish.
This is Chew Chow Pork Dumplings (£2.60) that we tried for the first time. These dumplings looked a bit larger than usual ones.
This opaque dumpling dough is often used for seafood dumplings, and this was the first time I ate it with meat filling.
This is what the filling.
Chow Shew pork is cut into small bits, and mixed with Chinese chives (nira chives), dried shrimps, and one large peanut par dumpling. The filling was quite wet.
It tasted quite nice, even though the chive was a bit over-powering. It is a great alternative to usual dumpling choices.
This is King Prawn Cheung Fun (£3.30) requested by D as usual (he is sooo predictable).
One Cheung Fun contains three smallish king prawns.
As I have written about it before, I don't want to repeat. It was delicious as always.
This is Shark Fin Dumpling in Soup (£3.60) that we tried for the first time.
It arrived much later than the rest of the dishes, so much that we thought they forgot about it. In the soup is one huge dumpling, deep-fried first and cooked in soup then.
As in the case of shark fin steamed dumplings that we ate here before it did not contain anything looked like shark fin. I don't really mind, as I am not a big fan of shark fin and the price is too reasonable to pay for this delicacy, but I still wonder why they call it shark fin dumpling. Mystery.
In the huge dumpling was very fine pork mince. And, I am not sure how they did it, this mince contained so much bubbles that the filling was almost foamy. It was an interesting dish. In the small dish is a mixture of Chinece black vinegar and soy sauce. I don't know which was the correct way to use it, but I put it some in the soup, rather than dip the dumpling in it, as this was quite soft and fragile. Being a soup lover, I enjoyed it.
The pot of tea was provided for free again, and the bill was £16. We paid £18. I am sure we will return sooner or later.
POST SCRIPTUM (7 December 2007)
After the above visit, I visited Golden Pond twice during October and November, but as I have gotten a bit tired of writing so much about the same restaurant (lol), I did not make entries. I just wanted to add, however, this dish I had in November, which was particularly memorable.
I chose this noodle dish from their regular menu. We have never ordered anything except their dim sum menu, and it was a new experience. There are 14 choices in the noodle section.
It is mee fun (thin noodles made of rice flour) stir-fried with shredded roast duck, pickled green, and other shredded fresh vegetables. I could not which seasonings were used, but they might have included oyster sauce.
The fat from the duck skin made this dish extra oily, but it was not unpleasant (just that I wanted to eat it with steamed rice). It had also a particular smorkiness, resulting probably from the roasted skin. If you like the fattyness of duck, I would definitely recommend this dish. If it is too much for you, just take the remains out with you.
