Shalom Chaverim!
So today Ben and I decided to take a long overdue break from local Chinese cuisine and venture to the Northeast part of Beijing. There, one can find many foreign embassies along with international dining options. In the early afternoon we made our way to the Israeli embassy and it's kosher deli pang bian. With the intent to purchase hundreds of dollars of blessed deli meats, imagine our shock when the kitchen was out of pastrami. Ben eventually settled for the Matzo Ball Soup and foot long Kosher Beef Hot Dog, while I stuck with the Chicken Shnitzel. Free of charge, the Chinese waiter brought us warm mini challah rolls with honey mustard sauce. That's when we lost it. When Ben's hot dog arrived I think I caught a glimpse of him rubbing it against his cheek as tears of joy poured from his eyes. The shnitzel was fantastic as well as was everything we ate at this Kosher Deli. Seeing other Jews reminded me of my youth when they told us wherever you go, there's always someone Jewish. I guess they were right. While we savored every last bite, we had an interesting discussion about what food means to different cultures and groups of people.
Weird things happen to your taste buds and your food oriented decisions when you are in a foreign place. It is almost as if your food brain splits in half. One half of your food brain is so excited about trying different foods in your new environment. There is new flavors, new ingredients, new concerns about food, new places to try, new street foods to experiment with, there's commercial foods, there's street markets, supermarkets, there is family style meals, and there are individual breakfasty snacks. Though not always good choices are made in a different environment, it is impossible not to expand your palate while abroad. The other part of your food oriented brain seeks the familiar. I mean anything familiar. You clearly crave the foods that you liked the most in your own culture, but also start to crave ANYTHING that reminds you of home.
Since we have been in China, we have all witnessed this split brain phenomenon. Some people came abroad with the intent to never break social norms and eat at American chains that are never more than a block away from you. Others planned on eating fried chicken at KFC for at least one meal everyday. Embarrassingly, we commonly find ourselves making the short walk to the 24 hour McDonalds that is just outside the closest gate to our dormitory. While we sit and devour our 16.50 yuan value meals, it is impossible to leave McDonalds without someone mentioning that they haven't been to McDonald's in YEARS back in the US. But somehow it is such a treat when we go to Micky D's here. So does this happen when foreigners come to the United States? Do the Chinese go to Panda Express and think, "I would never eat this crap back home, but while I'm here in the US, it's better than those organic vegetarian restaurants that line the streets."
McDonald's is obviously not representative of the majority of food we eat in the US because clearly most of us haven't been there in years. And now that I am in China I can guarantee that Panda Express and greasy take out joints are not very representative of common Chinese foods. (ok, the grease is a good representation, but it tastes better here). So why is it that we have such poor representations of our foods in foreign places? and why is it that we so easily sink to the level of eating these terrible foods when abroad?
my guess is that it is just so hard to be so uncomfortable in a culture that is not your own that we reach out for anything that can make us feel at home when we are miles away.
As for the Jews and their love of food, I think the Jews as a very small religion could take on the extremely large population of Chinese that think that food is most important to them. As I sit on my bed and eat this extremely greasy and frankly delicious representation of a bagel from the kosher deli, I feel the need smack myself in the face. If I don't enjoy real Chinese food while I am in China, I will return to the US and someday view Panda Express as a decent representation of food from China because I was too busy eating bagels at the kosher deli in Beijing instead of Jianbing (Chinese Egg Crepe with spices and onions (i leave out the cilantro))and Baozi (Steamed dough balls filled with vegetables, meat, rice, and/or soup) on the streets in the mornings with the masses to see the difference.
and that is all for now.
b'ahava-
avigal
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Saturday, March 21, 2009
it's nice to use a knife once in awhile
Cello everyone!
Tuesday evening Chen Tao and I went out the South East gate of Beida to embark upon our next epic adventure. The setting was the apartment of a faculty member of Beida. Her name is Zhu Laoshi, but one of her colleagues, Du Laoshi, was the one who did all of the cooking. We started the evening at 16:00 with a few cups of red tea. New to the red tea experience, I was pleasantly surprised by the earthy flavor and lovely scents of this tea commonly drunk in Zhu Laoshi’s home province. It is meant to be enjoyed in small cups and quickly before it cools down.
With a couple of tea cups under our belts, we began preparing the fresh ingredients for the 6 dishes to come. Du Laoshi informed me that most of the food was purchased in local street markets because the food is fresher there than in the large super markets popular in Beijing. The dishes were chosen based on the foods currently in season and based heavily on what Du Laoshi felt like buying at the time.

These are the 6 dishes we created.
1. Tai Yong Rou (Sun Pork)
Ingredients:
2 eggs
small bag of ground pork
dian fen
xiang fen
salt, I presume
Vague Instructions:
Using chopsticks, skillfully mix the ground pork in a circle and add in dian fen, xiang fen, salt, and one egg. After mixing the egg and spices completely in with the meat, flatten the meat mixture onto a plate. Crack an egg onto the center of the dish. Place the plate over boiling water and cover the plate. Let simmer for about 10 minutes, or until the pork is an apprapote color and the egg is cooked. Serve with a smile!
2. Kou Gua (bitter cucumber/celery)
Ingredients:
2 deseeded kou gua
oil
dian fen
Vague Instructions:
Take the seeds out of the vegetable. Cut on a bias in thin slices. Sautee in peanut oil or vegetable oil with a few shavings of dian fen. Serve with a bitter smile!
3. Egg and tomato soup dish
Tomato in Chinese is called xi hong shi meaning western red food. They used to be imported, but now these western red fruits are grown in China
Ingredients:
3 eggs
2 tomatoes
slices of cong (onionlike spicy herb, in some places they eat it straight, here it is used to add flavor to dishes)
3 heaping tsp of sugar
1 tsp of salt
Vague Instructions:
Boil tomatoes so that you can remove skin easily. Supposedly the skin can get stuck in your throat. Then slice the tomatoes into sizable chunks with no matching shapes. Meanwhile, beat 3 eggs with chopsticks until they are thoroughly mixed together. Add a liberal amount of oil to the pan and heat. When the oil is hot, add eggs and scramble. Take eggs off heat. Add more oil to the pan along with the tomatoes and a few thin slices of cong. Add in the 3 heaping tsp of sugar and 1 heaping tsp of salt. Allow the tomatoes to cook until it creates a sort of soup. Add scrambled eggs to the soupy tomato mixture, heat for a bit and remove from heat. Serve and enjoy!
TIP: when beating eggs with chop sticks, you must move in quick circular motions with your wrist. Keeping the fingers slightly separated will allow for a quicker beating process.
4. Cabbage and mushroom dish (really tasty)
Ingredients:
Handful of large musrooms
Full bag of Chinese cabbage
Cornstarch
Salt
Soy sauce
Vague Instructions:
Boil water. Cut Chinese cabbage leaves in half. Slice musrooms into strips. Add the cabbage leaves to the boiling water for between 15 to 60 seconds depending on how you are feeling that day. (this is really what Du Laoshi said). Position steamed cabbage leaves on a plate all facing the same direction. Sautee mushrooms in oil, add in soy sauce, a large pinch of salt, and a cornstarch-water slurry mixture to thicken the sauce. Add the mushrooms to the top of the cabbage on the plate and enjoy!
-the mushrooms in this dish were amazing, and I don’t even like mushrooms normally.
5. leek/green onion and shrimp rice mixture dish
Ingredients:
A bushel of what was either leek or some sort of scallion/green onion
A bag of dried shrimp rice. Yikes.
Soy sauce
Salt
Oil
Vague Instructions:
Peal off the rotten parts of the bushel of leeks/scallions/green onions. Cut into inch long pieces. Sautee said ingredient in oil while adding salt, soy sauce and a bag of dried shrimp rice. (The shrimp rice is extremely salty due to the sea water contained in it, so less salt is needed in this dish than in others.) Serve at your own will.
-there is something with little shrimps that look like silk worms with eyes that really scares me. It smells a bit like the food you feed fishes. The Chinese seem to enjoy it and it is a very common dish due to the ease in the creation process.
6. Basi Shanyao (hot candied yam!!!)
Ingredients:
2 aged yams from the autumn harvest
oil
sugar
Vague Instructions:
Peel the yams. Cut into non-matching geometric shapes about the size of a silver dollar. Put a lot of oil in the bottom of a pan and turn heat to high. Add the pieces of yams. Fry until edges are browned, continusouly moving the bottom to top and top to bottom. Do not mix too much because yam pieces will begin to break up. When sufficiently browned, remove from heat. Dry out pan. Add 5 or more tsp of sugar to un-oiled pan. Melt the sugar until it is carmelized but very liquidy. Carefully add yams to hot sugar. Cover yams with carmelized sugar. EAT IMMEDIATELY but be careful because it can be extremely hot.
-This is the best dish I have had in China. Hands down. Make it at home if you can figure out my vague recipe.
-This can supposedly be done with bananas, apples or biqi (something I have never heard of but it is circular, black, grows in water, and has a deep brown horn in the center.) In order to use these other ingredients, they must be powdered first, like the chicken at KFC.
As we sat and enjoyed our large meal I was able to ask Zhu Laoshi some questions about food and culture in China. She talked a lot about the vast consumerist boom that started around 1998 and 1999 including mostly food and clothing availability. She presented us with some candy and spices from her home town, which were interesting and enjoyable.
The most eye opening part of this experience was the observation of the techniques used to make these common dishes. The techniques are remarkably similar to those used in the United States. The use of frying, slurrying with corn starch and water, the addition of spices and salt, as well as the mixtures between bitter, sweet, salt and spicy in all the dishes were the same. The main difference is that somehow everything still tastes different here. The produce is what is different, and the culture behind eating the food. Since the cooking experience happened on St. Patrick’s Day, I informed them of the traditions we carry out in the US and they seemed excited about drinking some pi jiu in celebration for the special learning-to-cook-experience and maybe even for this international holiday.
More eating to come!
abigail
Tuesday evening Chen Tao and I went out the South East gate of Beida to embark upon our next epic adventure. The setting was the apartment of a faculty member of Beida. Her name is Zhu Laoshi, but one of her colleagues, Du Laoshi, was the one who did all of the cooking. We started the evening at 16:00 with a few cups of red tea. New to the red tea experience, I was pleasantly surprised by the earthy flavor and lovely scents of this tea commonly drunk in Zhu Laoshi’s home province. It is meant to be enjoyed in small cups and quickly before it cools down.
With a couple of tea cups under our belts, we began preparing the fresh ingredients for the 6 dishes to come. Du Laoshi informed me that most of the food was purchased in local street markets because the food is fresher there than in the large super markets popular in Beijing. The dishes were chosen based on the foods currently in season and based heavily on what Du Laoshi felt like buying at the time.
These are the 6 dishes we created.
1. Tai Yong Rou (Sun Pork)
2 eggs
small bag of ground pork
dian fen
xiang fen
salt, I presume
Vague Instructions:
Using chopsticks, skillfully mix the ground pork in a circle and add in dian fen, xiang fen, salt, and one egg. After mixing the egg and spices completely in with the meat, flatten the meat mixture onto a plate. Crack an egg onto the center of the dish. Place the plate over boiling water and cover the plate. Let simmer for about 10 minutes, or until the pork is an apprapote color and the egg is cooked. Serve with a smile!
2. Kou Gua (bitter cucumber/celery)
Ingredients:
2 deseeded kou gua
oil
dian fen
Vague Instructions:
Take the seeds out of the vegetable. Cut on a bias in thin slices. Sautee in peanut oil or vegetable oil with a few shavings of dian fen. Serve with a bitter smile!
3. Egg and tomato soup dish
Tomato in Chinese is called xi hong shi meaning western red food. They used to be imported, but now these western red fruits are grown in China
Ingredients:
3 eggs
2 tomatoes
slices of cong (onionlike spicy herb, in some places they eat it straight, here it is used to add flavor to dishes)
3 heaping tsp of sugar
1 tsp of salt
Vague Instructions:
Boil tomatoes so that you can remove skin easily. Supposedly the skin can get stuck in your throat. Then slice the tomatoes into sizable chunks with no matching shapes. Meanwhile, beat 3 eggs with chopsticks until they are thoroughly mixed together. Add a liberal amount of oil to the pan and heat. When the oil is hot, add eggs and scramble. Take eggs off heat. Add more oil to the pan along with the tomatoes and a few thin slices of cong. Add in the 3 heaping tsp of sugar and 1 heaping tsp of salt. Allow the tomatoes to cook until it creates a sort of soup. Add scrambled eggs to the soupy tomato mixture, heat for a bit and remove from heat. Serve and enjoy!
TIP: when beating eggs with chop sticks, you must move in quick circular motions with your wrist. Keeping the fingers slightly separated will allow for a quicker beating process.
4. Cabbage and mushroom dish (really tasty)
Ingredients:
Handful of large musrooms
Full bag of Chinese cabbage
Cornstarch
Salt
Soy sauce
Vague Instructions:
Boil water. Cut Chinese cabbage leaves in half. Slice musrooms into strips. Add the cabbage leaves to the boiling water for between 15 to 60 seconds depending on how you are feeling that day. (this is really what Du Laoshi said). Position steamed cabbage leaves on a plate all facing the same direction. Sautee mushrooms in oil, add in soy sauce, a large pinch of salt, and a cornstarch-water slurry mixture to thicken the sauce. Add the mushrooms to the top of the cabbage on the plate and enjoy!
-the mushrooms in this dish were amazing, and I don’t even like mushrooms normally.
5. leek/green onion and shrimp rice mixture dish
Ingredients:
A bushel of what was either leek or some sort of scallion/green onion
A bag of dried shrimp rice. Yikes.
Soy sauce
Salt
Oil
Vague Instructions:
Peal off the rotten parts of the bushel of leeks/scallions/green onions. Cut into inch long pieces. Sautee said ingredient in oil while adding salt, soy sauce and a bag of dried shrimp rice. (The shrimp rice is extremely salty due to the sea water contained in it, so less salt is needed in this dish than in others.) Serve at your own will.
-there is something with little shrimps that look like silk worms with eyes that really scares me. It smells a bit like the food you feed fishes. The Chinese seem to enjoy it and it is a very common dish due to the ease in the creation process.
6. Basi Shanyao (hot candied yam!!!)
2 aged yams from the autumn harvest
oil
sugar
Vague Instructions:
Peel the yams. Cut into non-matching geometric shapes about the size of a silver dollar. Put a lot of oil in the bottom of a pan and turn heat to high. Add the pieces of yams. Fry until edges are browned, continusouly moving the bottom to top and top to bottom. Do not mix too much because yam pieces will begin to break up. When sufficiently browned, remove from heat. Dry out pan. Add 5 or more tsp of sugar to un-oiled pan. Melt the sugar until it is carmelized but very liquidy. Carefully add yams to hot sugar. Cover yams with carmelized sugar. EAT IMMEDIATELY but be careful because it can be extremely hot.
-This is the best dish I have had in China. Hands down. Make it at home if you can figure out my vague recipe.
-This can supposedly be done with bananas, apples or biqi (something I have never heard of but it is circular, black, grows in water, and has a deep brown horn in the center.) In order to use these other ingredients, they must be powdered first, like the chicken at KFC.
As we sat and enjoyed our large meal I was able to ask Zhu Laoshi some questions about food and culture in China. She talked a lot about the vast consumerist boom that started around 1998 and 1999 including mostly food and clothing availability. She presented us with some candy and spices from her home town, which were interesting and enjoyable.
The most eye opening part of this experience was the observation of the techniques used to make these common dishes. The techniques are remarkably similar to those used in the United States. The use of frying, slurrying with corn starch and water, the addition of spices and salt, as well as the mixtures between bitter, sweet, salt and spicy in all the dishes were the same. The main difference is that somehow everything still tastes different here. The produce is what is different, and the culture behind eating the food. Since the cooking experience happened on St. Patrick’s Day, I informed them of the traditions we carry out in the US and they seemed excited about drinking some pi jiu in celebration for the special learning-to-cook-experience and maybe even for this international holiday.
More eating to come!
abigail
Monday, March 16, 2009
restaurant outting numero uno
nimen hao!
Last Thursday during the late evening Chen Tao and I went out the south gate at Beida to seek out our first interviewee in a little restaurant across the street.
After some hesitation, one of the owners of the restaurant allowed us to ask 3 questions under the agreement that if she was not interested after 3 questions we would end the interview. Luckily, the apple computer I used to take notes during the interview was intriguing enough to keep the questions a'coming. Here's some of the basic things I learned about this little restaurant just off campus. Now that I know about how long an interview will take I intend on changing questions accordingly to get to the depths of the food industry in China.
The restaurant was opened in 2007 by this couple who owned a couple of other successful restaurants in the past. From experience, they knew that the location just outside of Beida's gates was prime with a clientele consisting mainly of young adults between 20 and 35. The restaurant serves hot pot style with some supplemental dishes. The most popular dish is called ma la shong gua meaning something like spicy and scented hot pot. The recipes are all family recipes but they said that they did not feel comfortable advertising this because the lack of credibility being such a young restaurant. They seemed to have few fears for the future and actually discussed the possibility of expanding their restaurant in other areas of China.
During the interview I was surprised at how interested in me and my studies in China the restaurant owners were. They really wanted to know what I thought about China. I was really not expecting these sorts of questions, so I will be prepared for next time. Unfortunately, since the restaurant was so young they could not shed very much light on the comparison from present time to the past 30 years, but future restaurant interviews look more promising in this aspect of the project. Since Chen Tao and I went to interview them so late in the evening we were unable to sample their hot pot dishes, but since I am about 98% sure they put up a picture of me in their restaurant on the wall, I think I'll be returning to try some tasty hot pot. I'll tell you how it turns out.
-many boiling pots of meat, fish balls, tofu, vermicelli noodles, potatoes, Chinese broccoli, and spices that will burn your mouth for hours to come!-
lìn lìn
Last Thursday during the late evening Chen Tao and I went out the south gate at Beida to seek out our first interviewee in a little restaurant across the street.
The restaurant was opened in 2007 by this couple who owned a couple of other successful restaurants in the past. From experience, they knew that the location just outside of Beida's gates was prime with a clientele consisting mainly of young adults between 20 and 35. The restaurant serves hot pot style with some supplemental dishes. The most popular dish is called ma la shong gua meaning something like spicy and scented hot pot. The recipes are all family recipes but they said that they did not feel comfortable advertising this because the lack of credibility being such a young restaurant. They seemed to have few fears for the future and actually discussed the possibility of expanding their restaurant in other areas of China.
-many boiling pots of meat, fish balls, tofu, vermicelli noodles, potatoes, Chinese broccoli, and spices that will burn your mouth for hours to come!-
lìn lìn
Thursday, March 12, 2009
chopsticks = china
"That Chinese cuisine is the greatest in the world is highly debatable and is essentially irrelevant. But few can take exception to the statement that few other cultures are as food oriented as the Chinese" - Chang Kwang-chih 1977.
To jump start this DISP I would like to throw something out there. This evening, sitting in an extremely crowded shitang (cafeteria) with my friend Ben, we found ourselves discussing the ever-present difficulties posed to us foreigners with the eating utensils provided for us. Both Ben and I are new to the art of chopstick dining, and I think we have picked it up relatively quickly seeing as we have no other choice. I began to realize the strengthy comparison between the use of chopsticks and our experience in China.
Dai Haur Jian!
dèng lín lín
To jump start this DISP I would like to throw something out there. This evening, sitting in an extremely crowded shitang (cafeteria) with my friend Ben, we found ourselves discussing the ever-present difficulties posed to us foreigners with the eating utensils provided for us. Both Ben and I are new to the art of chopstick dining, and I think we have picked it up relatively quickly seeing as we have no other choice. I began to realize the strengthy comparison between the use of chopsticks and our experience in China.
- It is a bit awkward at first, but you get used to it with time.
- Food constantly slips from in between the sticks back into the soupy dish from which it came. This is a perfect representation of learning Chinese. After learning a vocabulary word or grammatical rule, it generally slips from your mind over and over again until finally it can be remembered, recalled, and processed in the brain.
- With chopsticks we can't seem to eat everything we want to. It is very difficult to cut big pieces of food with a smooth stick. With the academic restrictions of the study program we are unable to go on long journeys throughout China or explore as freely as we would sometimes like, but this is most likely part of the culture of China.
- After awhile your hand starts to hurt and get tired. After just a short month in China, I am already pretty mentally, emotionally and physically exhausted. Still the prospects of adventures to come keep us going everyday.
- I find myself poking people around me with my chopsticks, or hitting them in the face with my elbow in the attempt to get a small piece of rice or peanut from the bottom of the dish. We are CLEARLY foreigners in China. Westerners stick out like a sore thumb in almost every situation. We don't know the language, we don't know the directions to walk in, we are loud, we have different color hair and appearanaces, maybe we even smell funny. I constantly feel like I am impeding the Chinese in their own home. And believe you me, the stares are out of control here. Sometimes it feels like we are from a different planet and we just landed in Beijing and no one has seen an alien before so they stare like there is no tomorrow.
- After awhile, you get use to it. Enough said.
Dai Haur Jian!
dèng lín lín
Welcome to the jungle!
Nimen hao! Hello world wide interweb!
Within the next few months to come I will be using this online blogposting website to compose and structure a directed independent study project (DISP) in China. The broad topic for my project is food, particularly Chinese food (I think it would be a bit more difficult to study western food in Beijing because providers are far and few). Through the use of historical review, personal recollections, the process of learning to purchase and cook traditional family style meals, interviews of the old and the young as well as of restaurateurs I hope to gain a better understanding for how the production, purchasing and consuming of food has shaped the culture in Beijing/China. Since the early 1980's the picture of food culture in China has changed drastically with a boom of options and restaurants around every corner. By understanding how food shapes the culture I believe I will gain a deeper appreciation for China and how it functions.
Using this online blogposting website I am confident I can retell some fascinating stories and provide readers (friends, teachers, family members, randos, and Internet stalkers) with some knowledge of real Chinese food and Chinese culture. Feel free to leave comments, stories, personal opinions, constructive critiques, crippling critiques, or anything of the liking to help me figure out how food can shape a culture. Relations to the way things are in your home culture are always interesting as well.
I promise this will be entertaining, so if you follow it until perhaps some good conclusions will be made and you can actually learn something. I sure hope to.
A bit of a disclaimer, my Chinese language skills are minimal at this point, but getting better, so I apologize in advance for butchering names, names of dishes, names of restaurants, recipes, directions, and most importantly my use of the English language (I blame my American status for the majority of this...).
Anywho, I hope you enjoy. zaijian for now!
-dèng lín lín (abigail rebecca darin)
Within the next few months to come I will be using this online blogposting website to compose and structure a directed independent study project (DISP) in China. The broad topic for my project is food, particularly Chinese food (I think it would be a bit more difficult to study western food in Beijing because providers are far and few). Through the use of historical review, personal recollections, the process of learning to purchase and cook traditional family style meals, interviews of the old and the young as well as of restaurateurs I hope to gain a better understanding for how the production, purchasing and consuming of food has shaped the culture in Beijing/China. Since the early 1980's the picture of food culture in China has changed drastically with a boom of options and restaurants around every corner. By understanding how food shapes the culture I believe I will gain a deeper appreciation for China and how it functions.
Using this online blogposting website I am confident I can retell some fascinating stories and provide readers (friends, teachers, family members, randos, and Internet stalkers) with some knowledge of real Chinese food and Chinese culture. Feel free to leave comments, stories, personal opinions, constructive critiques, crippling critiques, or anything of the liking to help me figure out how food can shape a culture. Relations to the way things are in your home culture are always interesting as well.
I promise this will be entertaining, so if you follow it until perhaps some good conclusions will be made and you can actually learn something. I sure hope to.
A bit of a disclaimer, my Chinese language skills are minimal at this point, but getting better, so I apologize in advance for butchering names, names of dishes, names of restaurants, recipes, directions, and most importantly my use of the English language (I blame my American status for the majority of this...).
Anywho, I hope you enjoy. zaijian for now!
-dèng lín lín (abigail rebecca darin)
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