Monday, December 08, 2003
Eating Our way Through China - The Chopstick Challenge
See pictures of many of the dishes described in this posting.
Huairou is a city of restaurants. Formal establishments exist three to a block all over the city, and often side by side in the downtown area. “Pick-up” food is available on every corner, behind every store front, wheeled by on bicycles, barbecued on coal at the curb, cooked on portable hotplates attached to bicycles or small braziers with woks in the middle of the pedestrian mall. We’ve noticed lately that poached chicken embryos are very popular as a street food.
The raw materials are for sale at every turn. There are the established fruit and vegetable sellers (separate places), the pork butcher, the roast duck store, the tofu man, the noodle and steamed bun sellers, the truck load of apples for sale by a nearby farmer, the small fish gutted and scaled while you wait - and gone by lunch time! For a short time there was a man making popcorn using a small round covered pot over a brazier. Another lunch hour there was a woman selling roasted sweet potatoes. We never know what will appear around our corner. By the school at lunchtime there are several people selling candied fruit on skewers -- red haw apples, about 10 to a stick, are the choice of most students, but we’ve also seen candied bananas and orange slices. The skewers are stuck in a styrofoam cylinder which is attached to the back carrier of the seller’s bike.
Presently, as winter sets in, cabbages are the big item. Truckloads arrive daily and are bought out in a few hours by apartment dwellers who store them in every conceivable nook and cranny -- under balconies, on the corrugated roofs of storage sheds, up against retaining walls, in front gardens, between low hedges -- they’re everywhere! And covered with just as wide a variety of materials -- plastic of course, burlap, quilts, cardboard, old towels and blankets, all kept in place with rocks and bits of brick collected from who knows where! The thinking is that the cabbages are much cheaper now than they’ll be in January, although they will still be available then. But cabbages are a staple green for winter, and the more stored, the better. Leeks are similarly bought and stored, but in lesser quantities.
We are amazed at the number of main course dishes which include large amounts of sugar. With Judy’s diabetic condition, she is always on the lookout for foods which may affect her glucose level. Never did we suspect that we would be served so many high sugar dishes. Anything dressed in a sugar syrup is very popular --cooked sweet potato chunks, taro root, bananas, apples. These dishes arrive at the table piping hot, with the sugar coating the food with a thick, clear glaze. When a piece is picked up with chopsticks, it comes away with filaments of the glaze clinging to the food. The custom is to quickly dip the food into cold water to harden the glaze before popping it into your mouth. Another favorite is a potato tower, made from finely julienne white potatoes, which are deep fried, mixed with sugar, some chilies and cilantro for colour, and then piled high on a plate while hot. Sometimes the tower can be as much as 20 inches high. Very impressive and surprisingly good tasting. A new dish the other night was individual kernels of sweet corn, dipped in batter and deep fried, then rolled and sprinkled with white sugar. The kernels remain separate - lots of fun picking these up with chopsticks. We find the small porcelain spoons a great help with foods such as these!
A variety of nuts always form part of a meal. Usually it’s peanuts, which can be marinated in soya sauce and vinegar, with the skins removed; or quickly fried in a wok and sprinkled with salt; or as part of a salad with shredded cabbage and a rice wine vinegar dressing. Almonds are also popular, served in the same ways. Chestnuts are a major product in the Huairou area, and at this time of year arrive roasted, with the skins cracked from the heat. They are very sweet and meaty, served alone or as an ingredient with a chicken or pork dish. We had some lovely big hazelnuts at Keyan’s last night -- they were an appetizer, along with pistachios. We nibbled on these and drank green tea (lu cha) while she did the chao (stir fry) dishes, which are always done at the last minute, when we eat at someone’s home.
A small surprise for us when we first arrived is the number of cold dishes which are served as appetizers at the beginning of a meal, whether in a restaurant or in someone’s home. Usually these are quite simple, but beautifully presented. Sliced spicy sausage, lotus root, plates of small fresh vegetables in season, such as cucumbers, leaf lettuce, spring onions and celery. Small tomatoes are also very popular but appear as part of a fruit plate later in the meal. Salads of lettuce, garlic, sesame oil and wine vinegar are delicious, as are other combinations using tofu, carrots and shredded cabbage. Tofu in flat sheets is julienned and forms a main ingredient, along with hot onions, in another popular salad. Other vegetables, such as green bean sprouts are blanched, refreshed and served with a garlic and vinegar dressing.
And what can we say about main course dishes. The variety is endless! The Chinese love bones, and with our Chinese hosts we’ve eaten our way through deep fried duck bones, fish bones and chicken bones. We’ve sucked pork rib bones, lamb bones and several unidentified but good tasting bone pieces. The hot pot, Mongolian or otherwise, is a favorite dinner. Everyone has a pot filled with broth and spices, kept boiling over a type of alcohol burner. Platters of very thinly sliced meats -- lamb is the main one, but fish, chicken, beef and pork are also available -- beautifully arranged, crowd the centre of the table. We select the meat we want and pop it into the boiling broth to cook. Then we fish it out, dip it into a spicy peanut/sesame mixture, and enjoy it. By the end of the meal, the pot of broth is very flavourful, so we use our porcelain spoons to slurp the soup we’ve made. Last week we had a new chicken dish - a whole chicken which had been boiled, then plunged into hot oil to crisp it, placed on a platter of chopped coriander and smashed with a cleaver to cut up all the bones and attached meat into bite sized pieces. The chicken head remains whole, looking rather mournfully out at us. Keyan says they leave the head so that we’ll know we’re eating chicken. A mouthful of hot crispy chicken covered in chopped coriander is very delicious indeed.
Entire restaurants are devoted to dumplings, others to noodles, and of course, since this is Beijing, the famous Peking duck. We have a dumpling restaurant just around the corner from our apartment, the Tuan Tuan Yuan Yuan Dumpling (Jiaozi) City. Along with many other dishes (including the potato tower, see above), we’ve had dumplings of many delicious fillings here: pork, lamb, beef, seafood, as well as vegetables like carrots, green peppers and cabbage. As one would expect, there are special combinations of dumplings which can be ordered. We’re gradually working our way through their repertoire. And also getting better at picking them up with chopsticks. At first, we stuck our chopsticks into them and lifted the whole thing unceremoniously on to our plates. Now we can delicately snag them side ways, and only seldom drop them into some other dish enroute to our plates. Rice wine vinegar, garlic/chili paste, soy sauce or minced garlic are the dips of choice with dumplings. And then there are noodles! Again, any width and length you can imagine, and also made from wheat as well as rice. These are served in a tasty broth, or with an assortment of vegetables and meat, as well as either hot or cold. The most unusual we’ve been served is a wide clear rice noodle in a salty sauce, served cold. We agree that all noodles are almost impossible to get from bowl to mouth with chopsticks. And the sauce invariably ends up on our shirtfronts. We provide excellent entertainment for our Chinese friends when we eat noodles!
Peking Duck is the first thing our Chinese hosts ask us if we’ve tried. And if we hesitate in answering, it’s ordered immediately. We’ve had this dish many times. Both the preparation of the duck and the way of eating it are very different from most other Chinese foods. This dish was apparently from the courts of the Ming dynasty, so it has a history of about 600 years. The ducks are especially grown in the Beijing area for this dish. After the duck is killed and cleaned, compressed air is injected between the skin and the flesh to make the skin shiny and glossy. Then the skin is coated with a syrup which gives the duck a rich red colour and makes the skin crisp when roasted. Boiling water is poured into the cavity just before roasting, and the cavity is sealed. This means that the duck is cooked by roasting on the outside and by steaming on the inside. Special wood fires are used for the cooking. The complete duck arrives at the table from the chef, who often will carve it for you there. It is sliced into about 120 thin pieces, each having both skin and meat. We assemble the delicacy by placing the slices on thin pancakes about the size of a saucer, topping the meat with spring onions or celery, which has been dipped in a thick salty bean sauce. Then we roll up the pancake and eat it in two bites. North Americans would see it as the Chinese equivalent of a small taco. It’s one of the few foods where it’s acceptable to eat with the fingers. All the other duck parts are also available for the meal - wings, foot webs, heart, liver-- but we’ve never gone that far! We have had soup made from the duck and deep fried duck bones, however, as part of the same meal. Just last night we were invited by one of Keyan’s uncles, to the most famous Peking Duck restaurant chain, Quanjude, which has a branch here in Huairou. There were 14 of us around a large table, and we had many new duck dishes -- duck hearts which are dark brown and cut to look like small fans, duck livers which were deep fried in a batter, and sweet and sour duck meat, which was deliciously tender and succulent. Ken had his camera with him, and was able to capture the chef slicing the duck into thin pieces, and a very skillful chef he was. By the way, the duck’s head, split in half, came with the plate of sliced meat, but no one ate it -- although it is a prized delicacy. At the end of the meal, Keyan’s Dad collected the remains of the duck - meat, deep fried bones, liver and heart – to take home to the mao (cat)! When we are out with the family for a meal, it’s quite customary for Keyan to request that the remains of certain dishes be boxed up to take home.
As you can imagine, we could go on forever about Chinese food. We have yet to mention the variety of vegetable dishes and tofu specialties, nor have we touched on the stupendous birthday cakes on sale in the large department stores, never mind the counters of pastries available there as well. We haven’t discussed things to drink or the availability of Western food. However, we’ve made ourselves very hungry describing this food to you, and must go now to indulge in some luscious Chinese food. We expect a great crowd to arrive at their nearest Chinese food restaurant upon reading this posting!!!
See pictures of many of the dishes described in this posting.
Huairou is a city of restaurants. Formal establishments exist three to a block all over the city, and often side by side in the downtown area. “Pick-up” food is available on every corner, behind every store front, wheeled by on bicycles, barbecued on coal at the curb, cooked on portable hotplates attached to bicycles or small braziers with woks in the middle of the pedestrian mall. We’ve noticed lately that poached chicken embryos are very popular as a street food.
The raw materials are for sale at every turn. There are the established fruit and vegetable sellers (separate places), the pork butcher, the roast duck store, the tofu man, the noodle and steamed bun sellers, the truck load of apples for sale by a nearby farmer, the small fish gutted and scaled while you wait - and gone by lunch time! For a short time there was a man making popcorn using a small round covered pot over a brazier. Another lunch hour there was a woman selling roasted sweet potatoes. We never know what will appear around our corner. By the school at lunchtime there are several people selling candied fruit on skewers -- red haw apples, about 10 to a stick, are the choice of most students, but we’ve also seen candied bananas and orange slices. The skewers are stuck in a styrofoam cylinder which is attached to the back carrier of the seller’s bike.
Presently, as winter sets in, cabbages are the big item. Truckloads arrive daily and are bought out in a few hours by apartment dwellers who store them in every conceivable nook and cranny -- under balconies, on the corrugated roofs of storage sheds, up against retaining walls, in front gardens, between low hedges -- they’re everywhere! And covered with just as wide a variety of materials -- plastic of course, burlap, quilts, cardboard, old towels and blankets, all kept in place with rocks and bits of brick collected from who knows where! The thinking is that the cabbages are much cheaper now than they’ll be in January, although they will still be available then. But cabbages are a staple green for winter, and the more stored, the better. Leeks are similarly bought and stored, but in lesser quantities.
We are amazed at the number of main course dishes which include large amounts of sugar. With Judy’s diabetic condition, she is always on the lookout for foods which may affect her glucose level. Never did we suspect that we would be served so many high sugar dishes. Anything dressed in a sugar syrup is very popular --cooked sweet potato chunks, taro root, bananas, apples. These dishes arrive at the table piping hot, with the sugar coating the food with a thick, clear glaze. When a piece is picked up with chopsticks, it comes away with filaments of the glaze clinging to the food. The custom is to quickly dip the food into cold water to harden the glaze before popping it into your mouth. Another favorite is a potato tower, made from finely julienne white potatoes, which are deep fried, mixed with sugar, some chilies and cilantro for colour, and then piled high on a plate while hot. Sometimes the tower can be as much as 20 inches high. Very impressive and surprisingly good tasting. A new dish the other night was individual kernels of sweet corn, dipped in batter and deep fried, then rolled and sprinkled with white sugar. The kernels remain separate - lots of fun picking these up with chopsticks. We find the small porcelain spoons a great help with foods such as these!
A variety of nuts always form part of a meal. Usually it’s peanuts, which can be marinated in soya sauce and vinegar, with the skins removed; or quickly fried in a wok and sprinkled with salt; or as part of a salad with shredded cabbage and a rice wine vinegar dressing. Almonds are also popular, served in the same ways. Chestnuts are a major product in the Huairou area, and at this time of year arrive roasted, with the skins cracked from the heat. They are very sweet and meaty, served alone or as an ingredient with a chicken or pork dish. We had some lovely big hazelnuts at Keyan’s last night -- they were an appetizer, along with pistachios. We nibbled on these and drank green tea (lu cha) while she did the chao (stir fry) dishes, which are always done at the last minute, when we eat at someone’s home.
A small surprise for us when we first arrived is the number of cold dishes which are served as appetizers at the beginning of a meal, whether in a restaurant or in someone’s home. Usually these are quite simple, but beautifully presented. Sliced spicy sausage, lotus root, plates of small fresh vegetables in season, such as cucumbers, leaf lettuce, spring onions and celery. Small tomatoes are also very popular but appear as part of a fruit plate later in the meal. Salads of lettuce, garlic, sesame oil and wine vinegar are delicious, as are other combinations using tofu, carrots and shredded cabbage. Tofu in flat sheets is julienned and forms a main ingredient, along with hot onions, in another popular salad. Other vegetables, such as green bean sprouts are blanched, refreshed and served with a garlic and vinegar dressing.
And what can we say about main course dishes. The variety is endless! The Chinese love bones, and with our Chinese hosts we’ve eaten our way through deep fried duck bones, fish bones and chicken bones. We’ve sucked pork rib bones, lamb bones and several unidentified but good tasting bone pieces. The hot pot, Mongolian or otherwise, is a favorite dinner. Everyone has a pot filled with broth and spices, kept boiling over a type of alcohol burner. Platters of very thinly sliced meats -- lamb is the main one, but fish, chicken, beef and pork are also available -- beautifully arranged, crowd the centre of the table. We select the meat we want and pop it into the boiling broth to cook. Then we fish it out, dip it into a spicy peanut/sesame mixture, and enjoy it. By the end of the meal, the pot of broth is very flavourful, so we use our porcelain spoons to slurp the soup we’ve made. Last week we had a new chicken dish - a whole chicken which had been boiled, then plunged into hot oil to crisp it, placed on a platter of chopped coriander and smashed with a cleaver to cut up all the bones and attached meat into bite sized pieces. The chicken head remains whole, looking rather mournfully out at us. Keyan says they leave the head so that we’ll know we’re eating chicken. A mouthful of hot crispy chicken covered in chopped coriander is very delicious indeed.
Entire restaurants are devoted to dumplings, others to noodles, and of course, since this is Beijing, the famous Peking duck. We have a dumpling restaurant just around the corner from our apartment, the Tuan Tuan Yuan Yuan Dumpling (Jiaozi) City. Along with many other dishes (including the potato tower, see above), we’ve had dumplings of many delicious fillings here: pork, lamb, beef, seafood, as well as vegetables like carrots, green peppers and cabbage. As one would expect, there are special combinations of dumplings which can be ordered. We’re gradually working our way through their repertoire. And also getting better at picking them up with chopsticks. At first, we stuck our chopsticks into them and lifted the whole thing unceremoniously on to our plates. Now we can delicately snag them side ways, and only seldom drop them into some other dish enroute to our plates. Rice wine vinegar, garlic/chili paste, soy sauce or minced garlic are the dips of choice with dumplings. And then there are noodles! Again, any width and length you can imagine, and also made from wheat as well as rice. These are served in a tasty broth, or with an assortment of vegetables and meat, as well as either hot or cold. The most unusual we’ve been served is a wide clear rice noodle in a salty sauce, served cold. We agree that all noodles are almost impossible to get from bowl to mouth with chopsticks. And the sauce invariably ends up on our shirtfronts. We provide excellent entertainment for our Chinese friends when we eat noodles!
Peking Duck is the first thing our Chinese hosts ask us if we’ve tried. And if we hesitate in answering, it’s ordered immediately. We’ve had this dish many times. Both the preparation of the duck and the way of eating it are very different from most other Chinese foods. This dish was apparently from the courts of the Ming dynasty, so it has a history of about 600 years. The ducks are especially grown in the Beijing area for this dish. After the duck is killed and cleaned, compressed air is injected between the skin and the flesh to make the skin shiny and glossy. Then the skin is coated with a syrup which gives the duck a rich red colour and makes the skin crisp when roasted. Boiling water is poured into the cavity just before roasting, and the cavity is sealed. This means that the duck is cooked by roasting on the outside and by steaming on the inside. Special wood fires are used for the cooking. The complete duck arrives at the table from the chef, who often will carve it for you there. It is sliced into about 120 thin pieces, each having both skin and meat. We assemble the delicacy by placing the slices on thin pancakes about the size of a saucer, topping the meat with spring onions or celery, which has been dipped in a thick salty bean sauce. Then we roll up the pancake and eat it in two bites. North Americans would see it as the Chinese equivalent of a small taco. It’s one of the few foods where it’s acceptable to eat with the fingers. All the other duck parts are also available for the meal - wings, foot webs, heart, liver-- but we’ve never gone that far! We have had soup made from the duck and deep fried duck bones, however, as part of the same meal. Just last night we were invited by one of Keyan’s uncles, to the most famous Peking Duck restaurant chain, Quanjude, which has a branch here in Huairou. There were 14 of us around a large table, and we had many new duck dishes -- duck hearts which are dark brown and cut to look like small fans, duck livers which were deep fried in a batter, and sweet and sour duck meat, which was deliciously tender and succulent. Ken had his camera with him, and was able to capture the chef slicing the duck into thin pieces, and a very skillful chef he was. By the way, the duck’s head, split in half, came with the plate of sliced meat, but no one ate it -- although it is a prized delicacy. At the end of the meal, Keyan’s Dad collected the remains of the duck - meat, deep fried bones, liver and heart – to take home to the mao (cat)! When we are out with the family for a meal, it’s quite customary for Keyan to request that the remains of certain dishes be boxed up to take home.
As you can imagine, we could go on forever about Chinese food. We have yet to mention the variety of vegetable dishes and tofu specialties, nor have we touched on the stupendous birthday cakes on sale in the large department stores, never mind the counters of pastries available there as well. We haven’t discussed things to drink or the availability of Western food. However, we’ve made ourselves very hungry describing this food to you, and must go now to indulge in some luscious Chinese food. We expect a great crowd to arrive at their nearest Chinese food restaurant upon reading this posting!!!
All text and photography © copyright Harkaway, 2003 - 2004
