Dim Sum Beijing Style

Apologies for the two week silence. I have been inundated with guests, and playing host requires a lot of time and effort and eating out. So now I have lots of material and hopefully, a little time on my hands to regale you all with it!

All my guests get taken to a Cantonese restaurant near Ditan Park called Jin Ding Xuan. It's in a fantastic old Chinese style building that is garishly lit up at night, with loud Chinese pop music piped outside presumably to please the waiting customers. There is always a queue. They do dim sum (or yum cha) and they also have an a la carte menu. We pondered both and excitedly ordered a large selection of dim sum and some soft shell crab.

The food is excellent, on a par with the best dim sum places I've been to in Sydney and Singapore. The sichuan dumplings are something I have not come across before. Pork dumplings in a wonderful spicy sichuan sauce – which goes with absolutely everything! We also had sichuan noodles, which again are very spicy and have a great texture with the crunch of peanuts.

By the time the soft shell crab arrived we were quite full. But we decided we had ordered it, we would have to find the space to eat it! The crab, deep fried in a light batter, was juicy on the inside with a nice crisp texture to the batter. It was served with a sweet chilli sauce – but also worked well with the sichuan sauce from the dumplings!

Those of you who are aware of my teapot obsession can admire the final photograph – the restaurants teapots. I want one. Such a lovely shape and colour. I think we had about 6 refills of hot water!! Conveniently, the bathrooms there are quite clean so you can drink tea to your hearts content!!