March 8th 2020

Today it took me four hours to get home from London. I took a tube, and then a train, and then a bus because a train was cancelled, and then my final train was cancelled so I had to get my mate to drive me the last hour home. All of this happened because we decided to get an afternoon train rather than a morning train. Had we got a morning train, we probably would have avoided all that drama.

Though, had we have got a morning train, I wouldn’t have been able to try the shengjianbaos in spitalfields market.

They are pan-fried soup dumplings with a pork and leek stuffing. And they were very good, with the slight downside of the filling being warmer than the surface of the sun. The roof of my mouth is burnt from the soup. And yes, the soup is inside the dumpling. It’s a weird concept, but it works.

It was a good weekend for dumplings, to be fair. I had a great gyoza bento box at Shoreditch Boxpark yesterday too.

I have a slight dumpling obsession at the moment. I want to learn how to make them myself, but that seems like far too much work. I think I could just about figure out how to make gyoza, but shengjianbaos are beyond me. I can’t even figure out how to pronounce shengjianbaos, let alone cook them.

Until tomorrow, shen-jan-bows?

Jacn