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
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