"99 Ranch Market" destination to remember

Love this place!!!!!

San Diego (Clairmont Mesa) has the best one out of Arizona, San Diego, and Orange County.  China Town in San Francisco has such a variety of small markets and restaurants that I haven't even looked for one there.

Love the eat in/take out too! Ducks still hang by the neck cooked and dripping like in "Christmas Story". If you see the ducks hanging, you are at one of the two way inexpensive, way delicious, huge portion, places there that we love. Don't forget the BBQ steamed pork buns there either.

No more coiled snake in the freezer section like so many years ago but all the living and dead seafood and other things you can imagine. On our last trip to 99, it had been remodelled so it wasn't as much like being in Beijing in the late 80's. The remodel makes it a little less nostalgic but the smells and tastes are still what makes it unique and a favorite desitination.

Sorry for my preference of Chinese food over other Asian cuisine but if whatever you eat is something that comes from the sea or land and the cook isn't sure if it's an animal or plant, or doesn't know how to translate what it is, always choose the Chinese version.   Thai comes in second place. The others Asian cuisines are hit and miss for me with some highs but enough extreme misses that have caught me off guard in such bad ways that I always prefer Chinese. Ok, raw pig snout in the north of China caught me off guard once, but other than that, althoug some Chinese food has been a surprise, rarely has that surprise been a dissapointment.

Ok, enough of the plug for Ranch 99 Market and Chinese food. Just a note for my kids to remember.

Chinese Salad Dressing Recipe

This is another recipe from a post it taped and sealed to a Tupperware shaker that has been through the dishwasher for years and can't be scanned.  It is old enough that it has soy sauce listed so it was before our soy free years.  The soy sauce can be replaced with half the amount in molasses and the rest of the amount a careful mix of rice vinegar and water.  Sorry, no measurements for soy free so you need to experiment to get it right if you don't want the soy.

Chinese Salad Dressing

5 Tablespoons white sugar
16 Tablespoons soy sauce (or a soy free mixture as mentioned in the introduction above)
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
3/4 teaspoon ginger
3 Tablespoons white vinegar
4 Tablespoons water

Blend and let sit for a while in the fridge first to let the flavors blend.  You can add sesame seeds but it won't keep as long in the fridge so if you like them with it, then add when using.

Chinese Chicken Vegetable Lo Mein Recipe

Ok, so here's one of the chicken scratch notes for one of the soy free chicken stuff with noodles things we would make.  It was from one of the nights Emily liked it so I had written down about what I had done.  Sorry its as messy as it is but its been a good source of how to approximate something Chinese we would make frequently.  Cook and substitute at your own risk.

Soy-Free Chinese Steamed BBQ Pork Buns Recipe

In the Soy-Free Chinese Chicken post, I mentioned our love for the San Diego Ranch 99 Grocery Store. 

Besides the back entrance walk up restaurant, there is another restaurant inside past the registers that has great food that is similar in serving size and value.  They have actually had Steamed Buns that they say are Soy-Free and my child hasn't reacted to, but soy is everywhere in this store so beware.  These buns are really good and like what we ate when living in China. 

So... a while back, we decided to try our own Pork Steamed Buns from scratch at home and after looking through cookbooks and websites and trial and error, came up with this recipe that works pretty well for us.

As an added note there is a third restaurant at the front entrance that is way too expensive and not usually too crowded so I haven't wanted to try it.

Soy-Free Chinese Chicken Recipe

We lived in Beijing, China years ago and love Chinese food.  But... how can we eat Soy-Free Chinese Chicken? 

A lot of experimenting and imagination and putting things together to make it work the best we could.  This is the basic template of a recipe I use and tweak it depending on what we have on hand.

The kid's and my favorite Chinese food is found at Ranch 99 in San Diego.  There is an awesome walk-in counter with hanging cooked ducks, heads and all, that is at the back entrance to the store.  There is always a line of Chinese people waiting when its near a meal time.  Do the walk up counter and it's cheaper than sitting down and being served.  I don't know the current price but for less than $5.00 you get a HUGE meal in a Styrofoam clamshell with noodles or rice and 1 to 3 choices of Chinese dishes.  I think it used to be $3.00 or so and the meal comes with soup and is plenty for one hungry guy or a couple normal eaters.