Beijing Snacks (xiaochi 小吃): Jiumen Snack Street Adventures

July 9, 2010 in Uncategorized by jen | 2 comments

“Enjoy yourself in Beijing traditional snacks” reads the wall-sized sign next to the modest doorway hiding the courtyard of Jiumen xiaochi (九门小吃). In a little hutong off of the quieter end of Houhai is this treasure trove for those seeking old-school Beijing street snacks. Wangfujing is the famous, bustling, and sickeningly touristy “street food” alley, selling row upon row of deep-fried scorpions on a stick, and other assorted weird looking goodies that neither locals, nor tourists, really want to eat. However, I suppose it makes for a good photo opp.

The Jiumen hutong complex is made up of the street food vendors that were relocated from their old location near Qianmen near Tiananmen, and the recessed  entryway… READ MORE | 2 Comments

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Fat is Flavor: Recipe for Stir-fried Yunnan Ham, Pine Mushrooms, and Something Green (云腿松耳炒青菜)

June 21, 2010 in COOK by christine | 3 comments

This post was written to mourn the last chunk of Yunnan ham (yuntui 云腿) that I brought back from, well, Yunnan, in southwestern China.  I love food souvenirs, and a friend had specifically requested Yunnan ham.  During a week-long trip, I wandered through no less than six markets in Dali (where the traveling Bai minority peoples’ market that skips from town to town around Erhu Lake is known as ganji 赶集) and Lijiang.  In the Disneyland circus that was Lijiang, the only thing that made staying in the old town worthwhile was the large market at the southern tip, where I perused copper pots and tea.  There, I bought a disconcerting amount of Yunnan dried… READ MORE | 3 Comments

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Travels in Shanghai: Triple-fried Goodness – Porkchop with Niangao (排骨年糕)

June 10, 2010 in EAT, LIFE by jen | 7 comments

Shanghai. It’s a place most Beijingers love to hate. The antithesis of Beijing, with its European flavor, narrow sycamore-dotted lanes, and a population inexplicably always in a mad rush. This last trip however, I’ve decided to give in to its charms and give up the mockery to embrace Shanghai – well, at least for a long weekend. It was a gluttonous weekend, where I thoroughly indulged in French dinners (crusty baguettes! real butter! fresh-preshed olive oil!) and burritos (thus far the best I’ve had in China), but it was the first meal of this eating marathon that I count as the food discovery of this journey. Triple-fried porkchop with fried glutinous rice cake (排骨年糕).… READ MORE | 7 Comments

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A Love for Sweet & Sour: Recipe for Vinegar Peanuts

May 27, 2010 in COOK by jen | 6 comments

What is it about the combination of sweet and sour that is so remarkably appealing? I’ll admit that there is no flavor combination that I love quite as much as that tangy sweetness. I’m one of those people that asks for extra Chicken McNugget sweet and sour sauce to swab my fries in. Hell, I even did that after McDonald’s started charging for it (no charge in China though – hurray!). While Chinese food is not exactly swimming in sweet and sour dishes the way Panda Express wants you to believe (i.e. all sweet and sour pork, lemon chicken/beef, orange beef/chicken, General Tso’s chicken, etc., etc.), it’s still to be found. For instance,  Kung Pao chicken (gongbaojiding 宫爆鸡丁) is a delicious mix of sweet and sour with the addition of a little hot and spicy.… READ MORE | 6 Comments

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Beijing Pastry Culture: Daoxiangcun 稻香村

May 24, 2010 in EAT, LIFE by christine | 5 comments

I really miss afternoon snacks.  There used to be something really acceptable about eating a cookie and having a juice in the middle of the afternoon, and really humane about acknowledging that hunger strikes every three hours.  Or two hours.  In any case, in the last few weeks I have taken to stopping by Daoxiangcun on my way back from school to buy a little afternoon snack.  This is consumed with tea, instead of juice, but same concept.  What’s different is the idea of sweet, or perhaps that sweetness doesn’t just come from pure sugarcane but also other types of carbs: red beans, mung beans, jujube date pastes, pumpkin (okay, that crosses over neatly), lotus seed… READ MORE | 5 Comments

Rice Cooker, Local Market, Magic!: Recipe for a Peking Duck L’Orange

May 19, 2010 in COOK by christine | 6 comments

This is a recipe for every person who has ever longed to make laowai food in their own kitchen without the aid of a proper oven.  I have an immense amount of affection for my roommate: her impeccable taste in home decoration, her love of science distilled for the common man, and most importantly, an admirable, indomitable, true DIY spirit.  This has manifested itself in many ways, not the least of which is her great willingness to try all kinds of electrical appliances native to the Chinese kitchen.   Struck with an insatiable desire to make dishes that would be most optimally finished in an oven, we have two approaches here: 1) throw money at the problem… READ MORE | 6 Comments

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DaGui (大贵) Hot Dishes: Because…they are delicious too

May 14, 2010 in EAT by jen | 1 comment

After my Ode To Vinegar post detailing the sour cold dishes at DaGui (大贵), I shall now move onto some hot, vinegar-free but still delicious dishes. Guizhou cuisine is not at all popular outside of China – in fact I’ve never seen these dishes outside of China, but Guizhou borders Sichuan, and the cuisine often combines Sichuanese spiciness with the sourness enjoyed by the many minority groups living in this province. There are many tasty dishes, but instead of talking about the more well-known Guizhou specialties, such as sour fish soup (酸汤鱼) or the insanely delicious but less unique, such as stir-fried-deep-fried eggplant (香菜茄子), I’ll chat up the dishes I find most pleasing and surprising in flavors.… READ MORE | 1 Comment

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A Break From Grease, an Ode to Liangcai: Shanxi Knife-Cut Noodles (Mianxiang bafang 面香八方)

May 12, 2010 in EAT by christine | 6 comments

Occasionally we get tired of the Tsinghua cafeteria and escape to a Shanxi 山西 noodle restaurant outside of the east gate of Tsinghua for a quick lunch.  Mianxiang Bafang is bustling at lunch, and the menu spans a wide variety of Shanxi specialties, knife-cut noodles, liangcai, stir-fried dishes, and skewers.  Although Shanxi cuisine is known for its million variations on noodles, especially those delightfully irregular and wonderfully chewy knife-cut noodles (daoxiao mian 刀削面), for a healthy lunch we like to order several cold vegetable dishes (liangcai 凉菜).

Packed with micro-vitamins ostensibly found in green-type foods, the liangcai are usually relatively light, making it the perfect break from a pork-grease heavy Beijing diet.  (A sidenote.  One morning we… READ MORE | 6 Comments

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DaGui (大贵) Cold Dishes: Because vinegar is delicious

April 24, 2010 in EAT by jen | 8 comments

Hello, magical peanuts. In my pre-Beijing existence, I was never really fond of the peanut. If I felt a nut craving, the stores were stocked with an infinite variation of other nuts – smoked almonds, candied cashews, and the oh-so-buttery chocolate-covered macadamias. However, despite its American heritage, the Chinese love peanuts, and most restaurants have some variation as appetizers, and now, I’m a convert. They are just so damn good. (So good, in fact, that we’ve decided to recreate a bunch of peanut recipes for our next project. But I digress.)

The vinegar peanuts at Dagui (大贵) sparked my new-found adoration for the humble peanut, and I’ve become a devotee of this small Guizhou restaurant tucked inside the hutongs of old Beijing. There are easily a dozen great dishes here, but this post is dedicated to cold, vinegary appetizers (凉菜), which epitomize the winning combination of spicy-sourness that is the key note of Guizhou cuisine.… READ MORE | 8 Comments

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Recipe for an Egg Crepe (jianbing 煎饼), part 4 of 4

April 9, 2010 in COOK by the ladies | 12 comments

Our love and near-obsession with the jianbing is well documented (for a total of six posts on this one simple street food). We’ve made the pilgrimage to Tianjin, birthplace of the jianbing, we’ve pestered numerous jianbing vendors around Beijing for tips, and of course, we’ve discussed amongst ourselves the ins and outs of how to make the magic happen in our tiny, crepe griddle-less kitchens.

We even contemplated the brilliant (we thought) idea of renting our Tsinghua jianbing vendor’s cart for the day to get some practice, learn a few tricks of the trade, and hopefully bag a few kuai in profits. However, seeing as she thinks we are one and the same person, we thought it might try her sanity to show up together with our odd little proposal – and one should never mess with the sanity of the woman who provides one’s daily breakfast.… READ MORE | 12 Comments

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