We eat, cook, and shoot in Beijing.
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The rabbit year was supposed to usher in calm and fuzzy good feelings, but so far it hasn’t. It feels more than a bit silly to blog about food right now, especially as so many in Japan struggle to get potable water for a ramen-in-a-cup and worry about the future of their food supply. Still, one has much hope for a people and nation and the business know-how that have inspired a company that has penetrated the Chinese snack market with ….. chickenettes. And baconettes.
Are those angry emoticons on shrimp-paste-bellies? Yes, yes they are.
Today there’s a Chinese edition of Food & Wine, now owned by Great Wall Wine, but where would you get your food porn in Reform Era China? Recently I scavenged a handful of food magazines, all from the early eighties, from the booksellers at Panjiayuan, the “antiques” market located on the southeast third ring road. They are completely delightful.… READ MORE | 7 Comments
Tags: bad food porn, LIFE, magazines
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
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 | 6 Comments
Tags: beijing, cakes, cookies, Daoxiangcun, EAT, LIFE, snacks, xiaochi
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
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
Tags: lunch, noodles, restaurant, tsinghua university
Maison Boulud a Pekin is a happy place in Beijing. Located in the former Legation Quarter at Qianmen, the renovated interior is gorgeous, chock full of delectably tatty antique rugs, hand painted canvas murals, and enviable moderne bulb-shaped white ceramic lamps. At lunch on weekdays there is a very good deal at RMB 188 for a three course prix fixe meal. On the weekends there’s brunch, with a huge selection (perhaps overly broad for perfect quality control) to pick from. If I remember correctly, two courses run RMB 168 and three courses, RMB 238. The service is almost perfect (with the exception of one dirty martini made in a shaker that had been used for a lychee… READ MORE | 1 Comment
Tags: beijing, EAT, maison boulud, restaurant
If you haven’t been to the Dongjiao Market, and you are a kitchenware junkie, then you must go now: for the sheer quantity and variety of items available, as well as the lower than low prices. There’s a hotel/restaurant equipment supply shop with two floors of supplies, packed to the brim with ceramic, glass, tin, steel. Lining the walls are uniforms, mostly related to the hospitality industry, which suggest endless Halloween outfit possibilities. There is also a seemingly endless row of vendors devoted to things as useful as toilet paper, ceramic bowls, rope, meat grinders, and stools, should you want to open your own food cart and need to provide seating for your customers.
Many people have that longing for a piece of… READ MORE | 1 Comment
Tags: beijing, cooking gear, dongjiao, market, PREP, shopping
In Xi’an there’s a local specialty that I have thought about constantly since I left: it’s a small cake made from a dried persimmon (shizibing 柿子饼), stuffed with nuts, and then shallow fried, so that the flesh was chewy and sticky. It was a orange-gold color, and the filling that we preferred was the “five benevolences” (wuren 五仁), which is typically composed of almonds, walnuts, sesame seeds, peanuts and sunflower seeds. The stand that we returned to time and time again also added a heady rose (and I think possibly osmanthus). Beyond my love of eating things that are golden, which feels like consuming sunshine, this filling was particularly exotic, not unlike imbibing perfume, and provided a… READ MORE | 1 Comment
Tags: COOK, dumplings, glutinous rice, new year, tangyuan
It’s a northern custom to make and eat dumplings on the first day of the New Year (chuyi 初一), and we were determined to do it right, with several kinds of fillings. We went out to Sanyuanli Market (三元里市场) to source goods for dumpling-making in celebration of Chinese New Year. It was packed to the brim with fresh goods, and hopping with people picking up their hot pot meat and auspicious fishes, but all the vendors were calm and patient.… READ MORE | 4 Comments