in china you cook your squid and eat it too

A couple Tuesdays ago I went on another home cooking experience, this time at Du Laoshi's home with his wife Wang Laoshi. They really upped the stakes on this round of cooking. And, amazingly, they trusted me enough to cut most of the prep and to fry and saute some of the other dishes. For this dinner we made 5 dishes and had some ravishing conversations before, during and after the meal. These were those epic dishes...

• Xia pi chao xi hu lou (asian squash and shrimp rice dish)
• a few slices of cong
• a handful of shrimp rice (in my opinion, use salt and leave these salty shrimp dudes out)
• one xi hu lou thinly sliced (a lot like squash)
• Jiang you (soy sauce)
  
• salt
• sunflower oil

-put a liberal amount of sunflower in pan and heat. Add a few slices of cong. Fry the thinly sliced xi hu lou until tender, add in a handful of shrimp rice and a pinch of salt. serve.

• Jidan geng (egg and carrot jello)
• 2 eggs
• 2 cups of water
• small diced carrots
• sesame oil

-beat the eggs in with the water, add in the carrots, put the bowl over water, cover, boiol for 10-15 minutes until it has a jelly/jello like texture.

• Dofu gan (dry sliced tofu, with pork and celery)
• one slab of dry, hard, tofu
• ground pork
• a few slices of cong
• oil
• Chinese cousin of celery
• jiang you
• salt

-slice the tofu into thin crayon sized pieces, slice the celery at a bias into 1 cm pieces, heat oil, add cong slices, add in the ground pork, add in the celery, add in the tofu slices, add some jiang you and salt, saute together. Serve with a grand smile. I really enjoyed this dish, even with the pork. It was delicious and it was nice to have firm tofu after so many months of squishy tofu.

• You mai cai (sauteed spinach/lettuce)
• sunflower oil
• you mai cai, a bunch of bushels of it
• salt
• jiang you

-A very simple dish, just saute this leafy deep green lettuce with soy sauce and salt. serve. a little bit bitter, but a solid taste overall. Hard to eat on its own, but good with a mixture of the other dishes.

• You yu (squid)
• you yu (squid)
  
• yang cong (red onion)
• hu luo bo (carrots)
• yang (ginger)
• liao jiu (cooking alcohol)
• you (oil)
  
• salt
  

-Cut the carrots, red onion and squid into slices a little bigger than a matchstick. Boil the squid for a minute and then remove from water. Add oil to pan and begin by precooking the carrots. Then add in the ginger, red onion, and finally the precooked squid. stir fry and add in salt and liao jiu (cooking oil) to remove the squidy scent. Remove from heat and force feed your guests.

• Red bean and rice
• 1 cup of rice
• 1.5 cup of water
• 1/2 a cup of red bean

-Put it in the rice cooker and cook away, after the rice is cooked add the red bean. Eating your rice with red bean is more tasty and nutritious according to Du Laoshi. The cafeterias at Beida supposedly used to serve rice like this but now the price of red bean is too high to serve in the cafeterias. They would have to charge a high price for rice with beans and no one would buy it... supposedly.

During dinner Chen Tao and I asked Du and Wang Laoshi questions about eating in China. Du Laoshi told us that after the key meeting in 1978 about the open policy, within 2 years there was a major change in the way they were able to eat. Before the open policy they could only eat foods that were in season at the time. (no tomatoes in the winter) It was too expensive to grow vegetables in green houses during their improper seasons. Now, with everyone's income growing, they can afford to eat foods out of season. Before the open policy the supply of meat, eggs, oil, and rice were given to each person in an average of 250 grams per month. Now you can buy and eat as much as you can afford. These two teachers have lived in the area for 11 years and have seen the burst of restaurants lining the streets. The restaurants also started with high prices, but now that more people have enough money to eat at restaurants they have become more reasonable.

Du Laoshi and Wang Laoshi then told us about the way they choose to cook in their household. They're foods are not classic dishes, but mixtures of ingredients that they like. They use a tasting method to make sure the food is good, not family recipes or making what is popular. Supposedly with the coming of the open policy Du Laoshi has become rather picky with his food. They don't seem to have favorite foods here, which is strange because in American I feel like I focus a lot on my favorite foods.

From this point on we discussed some stark differences in the foods of China vs. that of America. One of the main dissociation in our foods is the use of Tofu. Tofu is becoming very popular in the US but will never be used the same way it is in China. As of now I feel like tofu is reserved for vegetarians, and dishes with tofu are usually vegetarian. This concept is non-existent in China. Tofu is not seen as a supplement to meat, but something to add to meat. This makes it increasingly difficult to avoid meat in China. Another very interesting difference is the style of eating. In china, you have a bunch of dishes and everyone shares. In America, a lot of times the food is individual, like hamburgers, sandwiches, steaks, slices of pizza, etc. In china the dishes consist of many ingredients that supplement each other. In America, dishes can be single food items, like mashed potatoes, steamed vegetables, bread, etc. These are all used to supplement a main dish. In china, there is no main dish, all dishes are important to the whole of the meal.

More to come later!
-Abi

I'm never eating pork again.

Yet another few weeks ago the program took us on a weekend rural homestay. We posted up in Cibei Yu Cun, a rural village an hour and half away from Beijing. Every pair of students (in my case triplet) were placed in a household. Our household consisted of our Ai yi (literally translated to Aunt, but used mostly in situations where the elder is not your relative, but a close friend) Shu Shu ('uncle'), their grownup son and his girlfriend who returned home for the weekend from their home in Beijing, BeiBei the fattest cat... ever, NaNa our fun loving watch dog, and Dobia the son's new golden retriever puppy. My friends Yasi, Lingli and I shared a room, and a kang. Don't knock the kang till you try it. A kang is basically a large (the size of multiple beds) stone and tiled box. The hollow inside of the kang connects, in our case, to the kitchen fireplace so the kang stone is constantly heated by the wood burned to cook meals. Thin blankets and 'mattresses' are laid out on the kang during the night to sleep, but during the day the kang is used as a central location for hanging out. We ate meals on the kang, sat on the kang to play mazhong, and constantly had to keep the dirty outdoor pets off the kang.

During the rural homestay we ate a lot of food. Ok, well I would have eaten a lot of food if I could have stomached it all. The first meal we had was very good. There were quite a few dishes and about 85% of those dishes had pork in them. We watched our Ai Yi cook the first couple meals and her method was basically to waste nothing and to continuously add as much oil and pork as possible. There were these mini egg roll things which I loved. Unfortunately, once you tell the rural host families that you love something, they continuously force feed you this food. I can't really handle all of the bones and the fat that they leave in dishes in China, but have no fear, in our house if you didn't like something you would spit it out onto the table and feed it to NaNa, the vacuum. A lot of the dishes we ate in the rural village were very similar to dishes found throughout Beijing. Just way more pork, and no escaping it. We drank a lot of green tea in our household, which was REALLY good.

Cibei Yu Cun is known mostly for it's agricultural benefits. Commonly grown in this area are chestnuts, walnuts, persimmons, and this kind of Chinese dates. I was forcefully fed chestnuts every night we were there. Atleast they were super sweet and fun to open.

Over the weekend Yasi and our other friend Sean did a research project on food, so I had the privilege of watching them and helping to make some of the foods. Our Ai yi showed (them/us) how to make jiaozi (dumplings) and baozi(filled dough balls). The jiaozi was very good, and since Sean is a vegetarian, I got a break from eating pork. The baozi was the best I have had thus far in China. One kind of Baozi that I had never had before was this sweet kind. It looked liked clumps of sugar with molasses or just some kind of brown sugar, and when the baozi was steamed, the brown sugar melted inside the baozi. DELICIOUS. It got a little messy, especially with chopsticks, but completely worth the mess.

After the rural homestay I believe I have gained an appreciation for the work that goes into a Chinese meal, especially one consisting of Baozi and Jiaozi. I have also become kind of a vegetarian. I really have no desire to eat pork again after eating multiple dishes of recooked pork at every meal (including breakfast) for 4 days straight. I now plan on building a Kang in my future home as well. knock on kang!

-Abigail Rebecca

Jiu xiang bu pa xiang zi shen

"If the wine is fragrant then it doesn't matter how deep you must go into the alley to find the restaurant"

YUEBIN RESTAURANT:
A few weeks ago Chen Tao and I took the trusty subway system to Cuihua Hutong in Dongcheng district pangbian Tian'an Men square. Amongst the winding streets of this unassuming hutong one can find the frangrent scents leaking out of Yuebin restaurant. Though its apparence isn't particularly breathtaking this restaurant bares quite the historic significance in Beijing and all over China.

Yuebin Restaurant (悦宾) was conceived by Guo Peiji and his wife Liu Guixian and was the first privately run restaurant to open in China after the end of the cultural revolution in 1978. The owners initially had to jump through hoops to get the liscensing rights to run a privately owned restaurant. From the start of the restaurant on September 30, 1980 they have yet to significantly change the menu at all. The dishes are delicious and remain quite resasonably priced until this day. The restaurant dining hall itself has also had minimal renovations since the opening. It started off the first day with a line down the street and to this day sustains a bustling crowd at all times.

According to Liu Guixian, the reasoning beyond opening the restaurant was not to stir up controvesy, just to make enough money to support their family of 7. At the beginning many publicly attacked the restaurant saying there was no place for a privately owned restauant in a socialist state. With time, government officials and foreign diplomats began visiting the restauarant, supporting the validity of its exsistence and spreading the word about its delectable foods. The support of these officials gave the owners the boost necessary to continue the proper functioning of their business. It has been said that after the opening of Yuebin in 1980, 10,000 more restaurants were opened in China in the early 1980's.
Liu Guixian continues to visit the restaunt every few days, but has turned over the secrets and the prestige to a staff of 14. The current chef was trained by Liu Guixian to continue making the food up to par. While we were there we had a conversation with Liu Guixian's daughter. in the past couple of years her daughter had retired from the job she has held since the 1980's in a hotel restauant. Now, in her retirement she spends her time at the restaurant sorting bills and continusouly calculating with an abacas and observing the dining area.


Upon arrival we basically had no time to observe the menu before the waitress had decided the dishes we were going to be eating. It has been a real cultural experience ordering food at restaurants in China. Typically in the United States when you are seated and given a menu the wait staff will give you a bit of time to choose your meal. In China they use a completely opposite system. The wait staff hoovers over you from the second you sit down until you can come up with a set of dishes to make up a meal. Sometimes, they even add in their ideas on the meal. Rarely will they tell us the specialties of the restaurant or their favorite dish, they usually just tell us that we have ordered too much or too little. It is also different from home because they rarely ask if you want something to drink here, or if they do ask I have never understood their questions.

So Chen Tao took the advice of the waitress and ordered us the following famous dishes from this historic restaurant...

• Suanni Zhouzi - elbow pork in garlic and vinegar

-I'm not really a fan of fatty meat and being able to actually see the bone of the pigs elbow... But the meet itself was really flavorful and tender. A lot of vinegar, but all in all a really tasty dish that Chen Tao put in a lot of effort to devour. I think pork is his favorite food. I think that a lot of Chinese pick the broad category of pork as their favorite food.

• Qingchao Xiaren - stir fried shrimp and cucumber
• Guota Doufu He - wok tofu boxes

- These little deep fried tofu boxes were ofcourse filled with meet. probably pork. Actually, pretty tasty, and I never really ate tofu before china. Correction, other than the Grove House tofu, I never enjoyed tofu before I cam to China.

• Wu Si Ton - egg rolls served with pancakes, leeks and hoisin sauce

-heavanly taste. I loves my egg rolls. Especially with hoisin sauce and cong. It reminds me of the food my daddy makes at home. This method of eating (with pancake, hoisin, cong and cucumber) I later found is how the Beijingers eat their famous Peking Duck dish.

• Ruanzha Huiguo Niurou - twice fried beef

HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS RESTAURANT if you are in the greater Beijing area. You will not be disappointed. It is quite the cultural adventure as well. Just follow your nose. or your stomach.

Xi'an, it's all about the terracotta

Sorry it has been awhile, but we have been really busy in China and blogposting time is sparse. Quite a few weekends ago we went on a trip to a city just south of Beijing, Xi'an. This city is most well known for housing the Terracotta Warriors. Truly a wonder of the world, this recently excavated site houses over 6,000 life size clay warriors guarding the tomb of the emperor Qin Shihuang.

After doing some site seeing in Xi'an, we did not have a hard time finding nourishment in the large variety of local cuisine ranging from sweet to sour, savory, meat filled, to drinks of different flavors and consistencies. One of the first things I had to try here was the cotton candy. These larger than life swabs of white stringy goodness were prepared from actual sugar cane. To add to the eating experience, when you pulled off a string, a significant amount of stray sparkles lined your clothing. While enjoying my cotton candy, we passed a storefront bakery that was attracting quite the crowd. My friends and I indulged in the scrumptious almond cookies and these little pumpkin flavored balls with sweet bean paste in the middle. The best desert at the bakery was the delicate peanut brittle.

When we went to the Forest of the Stone Steles, we tried a small cup of regional noodles from a street vendor. At first the pungent pickled taste was shocking, but after time the thin strings of noodles mixed with the spicy pickled sauce became quite addictive. Next to the noodle vendor was a woman making jian bing. This is the Chinese version of an egg crepe.

The perfect mixture of crepe, egg, pickled spices, and onion only improves with the somewhat inconspicuous addition of a flattened, ultra thin, deep-fried noodle. When this delicacy comes off the griddle it is undeniably my favorite snack in China. The jian bing that my friends and I shared in Xi’an was the best version of this dish I had ever had. The noodle stayed crispy until the very end, and the flavors were phenomenal.

Back on the snack street we managed to muster up a few more meat filled dishes. In relation to western food, these were equivalent to quesadillas and hamburgers. What the Chinese quesadilla lacked in cheese it made up for with leeks, beef, and spices. Deep fried to the point of perfection, though I would generally be disgusted by oil dripping down my hand, I finished the snack within a few meters walking distance. The Chinese hamburger was not one of my favorite street foods, but it was an interesting mixture of rice, beans, spicy spread, mutton and beef inside a steamed dough bun.


To wash the street food down, there were intermittent stops of drink stands. The common drinks consisted mainly of highly concentrated sugars and teas. The most interesting of the drinks were the dark plum juice, the local teas, and most unique, the juice of the sugar cane. I didn’t get to try any of the sugar cane juice, but the plum juice was very flavorful. Another great drink here was the milk bubble tea shop that was next door to our hotel.


The most favored local cuisine of Xi'an seemed to be this mutton soup that the customer helped prepare by ripping bread dough and adding it to the soup. Since mutton is not one of my favorite meats the soup didn't really tickle my fancy, but I recommend trying it for the experience. All in all, XI'an was great and the food made the experience that much better.