Breakfast from Crumz and a Chinese for lunch

Yesterday morning I decided to treat Bobs with a nice breakfast; I took Bibs and off we went to Crumz, to get fresh bread and croissants. Crumz is located in Abdoun, not far from Abdoun mall or fitness first. The bread is nice and soft and the croissants not bad at all! There is also a large in-door sitting area to enjoy breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea or dinner. 

Entrance & out door terrace at Crumz

They even have special Halloween cup cakes, donuts and other cookies.

I then stopped at Starbucks for a coffee. This Starbucks drive through is just so handy, with Bibs in the car!

After a little swim - in-door now - as all the out-door pools are closed till next summer, we decided to try another Chinese restaurant, and we went to Chop Sticks in Swefeih, not far from Cozmo. Actually they serve Indian and Chinese food. Amazingly we haven't really given up finding somewhere to get our Chinese fix, but of course we were disappointed once more.

We had some dumplings, as usual made with chicken, they have a vegetable version as well. Then crispy chicken, which was indeed crispy, but hard as well, not that exciting. The best was probably the fried noodles, you can taste it was not a Chinese who had made them, but they were okay. The bill was 20JD. I guess it is the best we have tasted in Amman, but I doubt we will go back. Maybe the Indian food is better...

A week to go and we will have top Chinese food in Mauritius! So excited!
As usual, I have put the places on my map, the link is at the bottom of the page.

Restaurant China

In our search for decent asian food at reasonable prices - I mean you can go to the Four Seasons Hotel and enjoy a Malaysian Nasik Lemak made by a Malaysian chef (not that I have been but Bobs has) and spend 40JD or drive to Six Senses in Ma'In and order some Thai food made by a Thai chef, but a little over an hour and another 40JD per head is not what you'll do on a everyday friday lunch either. So again, in our search for decent asian food at reasonable prices and on the recommendation of a couple of persons and this (old) article from the New York Times we finally made it to China Restaurant, also known as Abu Khalil. Located in a small street parallel with Rainbow Street (see my map).

Well in our opinion not worth going: either we were unlucky or the chef/owner wasn't there or the owner has been too long in Jordan and has forgotten what Chinese food is supposed to look and taste like. The restaurant has been around for ages, according to the above mentioned article it opened in 1975. I don't think the decor has changed since, but that's okay, at least it looked Chinese.Surprisingly enough the restaurant was nearly full. So what did we have: won ton soup - the broth was okay (even had a little Chinese taste to it) and the won ton's were not. The texture of the filling was really weird and it didn't really taste of anything - but then pork won ton's are so much better than chicken anyways. Then we had some fried noodles which were sailing in fat, beef and ginger/spring onions: the beef was more boiled than sauteed and finaly sweet and sour chicken that I can't really remember. It wasn't that expensive, i think we paid less than 25JD, but far too expensive considering the quality of the food.

So I guess they won't see us again, unless I hear that it has dramatically changed! I think I can say that our search becomes desperate...

Another friday afternoon in Amman

Today the weather was a bit dull - a bit cold, some rain, some wind... All in all not fab. So after a very lazy morning with decided to try out a chinese restaurant and we headed to the New Shanghai Restaurant located somewhere in between Abdoun and Sweifiyeh. "New", because apparently there is an "Old" one as well, located in Jabal Amman.

This is the building; the restaurant in located on the first floor.

The entrance to the restaurant...

So to the review... it was ok. Just ok. We had wantan soup - which was actually nice. The broth had a good taste, the wantan were small but tasty. The other good thing was the fried noodles. The rest under average. The service was Jordanian - not very effective, certainly not Chinese! We paid 24JD, so not fantastically cheap either.

Fried noodles - ok not the most appetizing, but actually ok

There is another Chinese restaurant that we really want to try, located behind the first circle, just didn't fancy trying to find something without success!

As we came home I decided to open a Twitter account. I have been thinking about it for some time. So if you are on Twitter, please come and join me: http://twitter.com/BabsinAmman - ok I admit I don't have clue what all these Twitts and stuff are about but I thought I would give it a try.

But you see, it's not just "another friday afternoon". Certainly not. There are some very proud parents in Amman tonight. Today, Bibs decided that she wanted to start to crawl - she did her first very unsteady moves on the floor today, towards Daddy (of course!). Well shhhhhhh don't tell him - she did a small trial a bit earlier. But a tiny trial, so I'll say that yes, the first crawl was indeed for Daddy...

Ahhh Daddy's girl!

Bobs' WonTon recipe

One thing that we are missing here in Amman is proper chinese food! We are really missing our Dim Sum and other dishes at our favorite restaurant, Royal China in London. But we do make some stuff ourselves. Bobs has ordered some pork through the hotel, so today we are having WonTon for dinner, yummi! Of course we could make it with chicken but it is not as nice as with pork. Thought I would share our recipe, it's really easy and once the stuffing is prepared (and the folding mastered!!) it only takes minutes to cook so you can prepare them in advance or even freeze them (before they are cooked, should you have made too many). So here we go:

Stuffing:
250g of minced pork - we use loin
6 big shrimps more or less finely minced as you prefer. We like to have a small piece of shrimp here or there - (optional - don't need to add if you want a cheaper version)
2-3cm of ginger, finely chopped
1 clove of garlic, finely chopped
3 spring onions, finely sliced
1/2-3/4 of a beaten egg
1 tablespoon of Tapioca flower (or Cornstarch)
2 tablespoon of oyster sauce
1 tablespoon of soja sauce
pepper
a little bit of salt

1 beaten egg for folding

To serve:
Spring onion, finely sliced
Coriander leaves
Soja, chilli sauce & sesame oil - we eat it with french mustard as well (not typical chinese, though!)

you can also add chestnuts, to give a crunchy twist, coriander leaves if you want a bit of green in there.

a pack of WonTon pastry (you can buy it from any chinese store, they are fresh - or even better Japaneese ones: the finer the better) or if you fancy, you can make it yourself. I am sure you can find a recipe online!

You mix everything together in a big bowl and voila! I suggest you boil a tiny ball to taste it - to make sure you got the seasonning right!

I should have taken some pictures of how Bobs is folding his WonTons, but you can either go on YouTube to see how it is done or do like me: one square of pastry, a bit of farce on one half, some egg on all the sides and then I fold in order to make a triangle. What ever form you make just make sure you press firmly down around the meat so all air is out - so the meat can't get out when you boil them.

Put the WonTons in boiling water for about 10 minutes. Put in a dish and add the spring onions & coriander. Soja sauce (and sesame if wanted), then chilli sauce and mustard on the side! Promise it is yummi!!!

You can also eat in a soup... that recipe is for another day!