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