I am obviously obsessed with pork. I never got why they called it “the other white meat” because people who prefer chicken seriously need to have their heads examined. In China, the pig is taken pretty seriously. Beef is niu rou (牛肉), or cow meat, chicken ji rou (鸡肉) or chicken meat, but pork? Usually just rou (肉) – as the default Meat (with a capital M) of choice. As I’ve previously documented (blog post here), the Shanghainese know how to fry up a fine piece of pig, but to me, nothing brings out the flavor and porky potential like Cantonese roast pork (烧肉 shao rou, or siu yuk in Cantonese).… READ MORE | 8 Comments
Recipes, techniques, and home cooking in Beijing
Tags: COOK, pork, roast pork
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
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
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
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
Tags: batter, beijing, COOK, crisp, egg crepe, jianbing, recipe, sauce
In Chen Kaige’s Forever Enthralled, the biopic on the dan performer Mei Lanfang, Mei’s children are welcomed after they escape from wartime Beijing with a ribbon-wrapped cake. His patron greets them with, “There may not be jianbing guozi in Shanghai, but there are cakes!” What an awful trade-off. But you know it’s bad when you start collecting references to jianbing.
This is just to say that one tries to avoid the difficult matter at hand, or the batter of the jianbing.… READ MORE | 7 Comments
Tags: batter, corn flour, crepe, jianbing, mung bean flour
When devouring a jianbing, the biggest question usually is – just what is that crispy thing in the middle? In Tianjin guozi (果子) is used – usually translated as a Chinese doughnut (youtiao 油条) – but the youtiao recipes were very intimidating. Plus you need a large vat of oil to properly fry the doughnut, leaving youtiao up to the professionals, methinks.
Lucky for us, we quizzed our favorite jianbing vendor at the east gate of Tsinghua University and discovered jianbing crisps are much easier. She proudly displays a little handwritten sign on the side of her cart: “Self-fried fritter (zizha baocui 自 炸薄脆).” How does one create a fritter? Her answer: she goes to a wonton wrapper vendor, who cuts extra-large wonton skins for her. She heats up super-hot oil then lightly drops the wrapper on the oil (“就烫一下”), whereupon it bursts into this lovely, airy confection.… READ MORE | 11 Comments
Tags: beijing, COOK, egg crepe, jianbing, recipe, street food, wonton
How many jianbing photos does a blog need, really?
We think it’s important that the unabated love affair with jianbing on Beijing Haochi continues with these photos from a vendor located off the corner of Jiaodaokou Dajie and Gulou Dajie. She makes her jianbing with exceptional loving care. There’s no slopping here, no hurry, no pressure because of customers lined up during rush hour, just the smooth and practiced caress of jianbing batter over the crepe pan; broad swathes of evenly painted sauces; the use of one.and.a.half crispy fried wonton skins, ending up in one of the best jianbing we have eaten in Beijing.… READ MORE | 14 Comments
Tags: beijing, chili, COOK, hoisin, recipe, sauces, street food
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
Tags: COOK, dumplings, glutinous rice, new year, tangyuan
For me, congee (or jook or zhou 粥 or xifan 稀饭) is the ultimate comfort food. It’s what my parents fed me when I was ill, what I crave on a cold day, and what soothes me after one too many greasy Beijing meals. It’s healthy, nourishing, and works wonders for a hangover. Also, it makes a cup of rice go a long way, which is nice for these frugal student days. It has a long history among Chinese foods. Ancient foodies argued over the types of rice, water, and fire made combined to make the perfect congee, and many (including my family) consider it irreplaceable for its medicinal properties - because it’s both easily digestable… READ MORE | 9 Comments