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| Aug 31 2010 |
New Chinese Food Scandals
‘Six arrested in melamine-tainted milk scandal’ After what happened in 2008, and the public outrage that followed, this latest discovery is out-fucking-rageous. Murderous greed, pure and simple. On a much lighter note is the news that Chinese wine is being sold as Australian. The counterfeiting of well-known foreign and local brands has been popular in China for a couple of decades at least. What is interesting in this case is that the knock-offs are being sold exclusively to Chinese customers. Unhappy Aussie winemakers say, apart from anything else, the substitute is poor quality. I hope at least it is not poisonous.
There is a brand of Taiwan red wine that I was served at a banquet a year ago that seemed nothing more than cheap, noxious Chinese spirits (bai jiu) topped up with some grape juice. Needless to say it was foul, but it never crossed my mind to question whether it was actually safe to drink. Now I can't help thinking that if the factory that produced that concoction was so sloppy and devious in equal abundance, why should I expect it to be concerned about my safety?
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| Aug 24 2010 |
Finally the world is safe again (from my bad poetry)
Thanks to this reader who explicitly advised, "Don't quit your day job." See You asked for it.
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| Aug 17 2010 |
Not a single reaction to my Ode to Peanuts post? Bloody Hell.
A couple of weeks ago here I wrote my first ever poem. Well, perhaps not my first, as I am sure at some time during my schooling I was, along with the rest of my class, compelled to produce a 'poem,' but as that one is not recalled by myself and certainly not by my teacher, I am calling Ode to Peanuts my poetic debut. It took me all of 20 minutes. That is not to imply it wasn't heartfelt: I really do love peanuts. The weird thing is I expected somebody, SOMEBODY, to at least provide a snidely, "Don't give up your day job." But what did I get? Nothing. Zilch. The danger is this: without some active discouragement, I may be driven in (misplaced?) self-confidence to put pen to parchment again. I mean, I can tell you that I have been lately enjoying assorted animal guts … so unless you want: "Thine internal organs shone like … " stop me, someone please stop me!
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| Aug 11 2010 |
Another Potential Food Scare in China
"China investigates claims tainted milk powder made infant girls grow breasts." Read news story
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| Aug 7 2010 |
Chinese Spend More on Food and Drink than Europeans and Americans
A study has found that people in China eat out more than other nationalities. "… only 11 percent of UK workers compared to 38 percent of Chinese eat lunch outside of the office at restaurants or the like." No surprise there, but there is not necessarily the big discrepancy in price between home cooking and eating out in China that there usually is in Western countries. I doubt very much if the UK has the cheap and convenient eating options that China has – street food for one. Read news story
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| Aug 7 2010 |
Chinese Food Security Plan Shifts Focus to Wheat
"Chinese government policies to pursue food security will see land resources directed towards domestic production of rice and wheat at the expense of oilseeds and corn …" Read news story
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| Aug 2 2010 |
Cooking Tips Page
I have added a cooking tips page for Chinese food. Hardly an extensive guide, just the beginnings of some basic pointers for cooking and eating Chinese. Check it out.
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| July 28 2010 |
Eating China Now has an RSS Feed
RSS has been around for a few years now. The blogger services all have it. Now we have it (not so much jumping on the bandwagon, as chasing after it). Now you can stay up-to-date with the latest posts and changes on Eating China simply by subscribing to my RSS feed. Just click on the the orange Subscribe to RSS Feed (top right) link and get started. Your browser's RSS reader will ask you to subscribe. Don't know what RSS is? RSS Intro Most browsers come with RSS readers but their are other readers like Google Reader. So go ahead, try it.
Cheers.
Stephen
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| July 25 2010 |
Ode to Peanuts
I love peanuts
They go well with beer or whiskey
They’re healthy, cheap, and have a long history
Why some prefer crackers or chips remains a mystery
Unless you are allergic, then they can be risky
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| July 22 2010 |
China Calls for Crackdown on Unsafe Cooking Oil
"There's only a slim chance that you will be poisoned immediately afterwards if you eat this 'gutter oil.' The biggest problem is that after eating this overcooked oil, people could–though some don't–develop cancer in 10 or 20 years." News story
I am not an easily frightened diner but used cooking oil collected from drains and gutters, recycled and sold back to restaurants is scary, scary stuff. Any restauranteur caught should be jailed for 10 years and made to eat a bowl 'unrefined' drain sludge three times a day.
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| July 19 2010 |
“The things that people cannot do without everyday are firewood, rice, oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar, and tea.”
–Phrase coined in the late Southern Song dynasty.
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| July 15 2010 |
Giant Burgers are Giving Us Ape Jaws
Better is bigger, right?
Along the evolutionary road from ape to human our jaws and teeth shrunk. Now it seems that our jaws (if not teeth) are set to get bigger again, this time perhaps with a snap or crack. But that is only if you indulge in giant hamburgers or sandwiches (the Big Mac is hardly the biggest, yet to my mind it is already hideously oversized). Dentists in Taiwan are seeing patients who have injured their jaw trying to stretch it unnaturally around colossal burgers.
Gee, if we were meant to eat like that we would be built like snakes and only need to eat once a week.
The solution for Taiwanese is to approach the megaburger with a Chinese cuisine mindset: carry a pair of chopsticks to McDonald's and ask the staff to cut a Big Mac into 30 bite-sized pieces. Oh, and while you are at it … bring a couple of friends to share it with. News story
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| July 3 2010 |
Come on Kylie, Get Real
Now I like Aussie-Chinese TV chef Kylie Kwong, I do. I particularly liked the idea of a TV series/book she did: My China: A Feast for all the Senses. In it we are invited to “Travel with Kylie Kwong as she rediscovers her Chinese heritage, exploring the food and culture of a vast and enigmatic country.” She roams all over China, (including an emotional visit to her ancestral village), seeking out Chinese food as it is really cooked in the small restaurants and homes of China. This is great stuff. But then in the final Kylie cooks segment comes the clanger: instead of demonstrating a dish as the locals have taught her, KK proceeds to muck about with the recipe, and do it Kylie-style.
Yes, I know her thing is Asian fusion food, and that today’s top chefs build their reputation on originality or at least by adding some individual touch to an original dish, but I wonder what the Chinese people she features on the show, who teach her their recipes, think when they see Kylie’s version: “Aiya, why is she adding sea salt, extra virgin olive oil, and biodynamic tamarillo to my grandmother’s noodle soup recipe? And what the hell is biodynamic tamarillo?”
The two halves of the program simply do not mesh.
And (final gripe), Kylie please stop reading verbatim from your cookbook recipes on TV. ‘Add 1/2 tsp white sugar, add pinch Sichuan pepper, stir briskly, remove from heat, serve in bowls. Makes 4 servings,’ is instructionally clear but it flows like the Todd River, which is to say, rarely.
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| June 29 2010 |
Learn to Cook Sichuan Food in China
American Diane Drey is running Sichuanese cooking courses in the Chinese city of Chengdu. This is in conjunction with the Sichuan Higher Institute of Cuisine. The course was designed by Fuchsia Dunlop specifically for foreigners who want to plunge into the robust cuisine of western China. In the 1990s Dunlop was the school’s first foreign graduate, going on to author Land of Plenty, an excellent Sichuan cookbook, and the China food memoir Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper. She promises students will learn "how to prepare a mouthwatering selection of local delicacies, how to use the versatile Chinese cleaver to cut raw ingredients into different shapes, to create some of the famous complex flavors of Sichuan (including ‘numbing-and-hot flavour' and ‘fish-fragrant flavour'), and to control the heat of the wok."
The Chinese cooking classes will be taught by the school’s regular teachers assisted by an English translator.
For more information visit Cooking School In China
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| June 27 2010 |
Dogs at the Table
There was a time not so long ago when Chinese were eating our pets in their restaurants. That, of course is more a (Western) perception than reality but it is not untrue. Now their pets are eating in their restaurants. In Taiwan dogs seem to be banned from parks and supermarkets but not from restaurants. At a street stall or a simple eatery, I am used to having a wide-eyed, salivating stray dog at my chair coveting my food or a cat under my feet. I usually don’t mind too much. I might talk to the animal, pat it or feed it scraps. But when I walk through the door of a proper restaurant, that is another matter. Maybe I’m old-fashioned or uncool (definitely uncool) but I reckon the only live animals that have a place in a restaurant are those destined for the cooking pot. I am not really going to get into potential health issues because that doesn’t really bother me; there is just no need for a pet to be brought into a restaurant. Besides now Taiwan has pet restaurants set up specifically for people who have ‘pet separation issues.’ In more expensive restaurants I am paying not only for food and service, I am paying to get off the street, away from the cars, the heat or the rain, the dust and, yes, animals. Frankly, any restauranteur who risks even pissing off one customer by letting another customer bring in a pooch is an idiot.
Which brings me to our family trip last week to Taidong County in the southeast of Taiwan. With beaches that virtually touch the mountains and laid back people, a more relaxing place would be hard to find. One night we drove to the local fishing port, the village of Fugang (葍岡), to eat at a seafood restaurant. Next to us was a large group of people. We didn’t at first notice a middle-aged woman fussing over two lap dogs, one assigned to her Louis Vuitton bag, the other crouched on a chair at her side. Everything was all right until she passed Chair Doggy around the table for others to hug and smooch, an act that displeased Handbag Doggy who began to yap loudly, perhaps out of jealousy. This din went on for a several minutes causing great consternation at the table – consternation not about the effect of the noise on other diners, but about what was worrying the dog: “Oh poor Moochy. What’s the matter Moochy?”
Not one of them said, “Shut up Moochy!”
While I was trying to catch someone’s eye at their table so as to shoot a filthy look, and trying to think of something cleverly cutting to say (I came up with, “That dog looks delicious,” but that was two days later), I didn’t know that my missus had scurried over to cashier’s counter until I heard her loudly berating the manager. It was an exchange that left me torn between a cringe and a cheer.
“What are you going to do about that barking dog?”
“What dog?”
“Over there, there.”
“Oh, sorry, do you want to move upstairs.”
“Why should we move upstairs. Tell them to move upstairs.”
“Sorry, that is just the way it is in Taidong.”
Apologetic he was, but unwilling to even ask the other table to quieten their dog. The cynic in me was thinking, the bill for a table of 10 easily trumps that for a table of three, but more likely he was just avoiding confrontation.
In future I will try to remember to do a quick scan of a restaurant when I go in or ask the waitstaff if there are animals in the house.
See also Good for Dogs, Not so Good for Dog (meat) Lovers
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| June 12 2010 |
Dragon Boats and Rice Dumplings
Next Wednesday (June 16 2010), the 5th day of the 5th month on the Chinese Lunar Calendar, is the Dragon Boat Festival (端午節 Duan Wu Jie ). That can only mean two things: dragon boats and rice dumplings. But how did all this racing in gaudy longboats, and scoffing down leaf-wrapped dumplings come about? When I first came to Taiwan a student told me the story. It all began – as many great tales do – in ancient times.
It was the Period of the Warring States in the 3rd century BC – this was 200 years after Confucius. Qu Yuan was a noble-born scholar/poet, a man of honour, and an influential minister in the government of the Chu State, one of seven fractious kingdoms. At the time one state, the *Qin, was emerging as the most powerful, threatening to overpower the other six. To prevent this Qu Yuan urged the King to form an alliance of the six states to oppose the Qin. But in the court Qu Yuan had resentful rivals, men of weak morals and corrupt ways, who for their own gain, sought an allegiance with the Qin. They conspired against him and he was framed and banished from the court. Although he spent his time in exile writing poems that would lead to his recognition as China’s first great poet, he was a dejected man, wandering the countryside, sometimes visiting a particular well where he would observe his increasingly ageing, gaunt reflection.
Years later upon hearing that the Qin army had overrun the Chu capital, Qu Yuan walked to the nearby Miluo River, lifted a boulder to his chest and waded into the depths until the flowing water enveloped him and filled his lungs. The villagers, who held Qu Yuan in high esteem, raced in boats to save him but they were too late. When they could not locate and retrieve his body, the idea of the river fish eating Qu Yuan’s flesh was unbearable, so they threw cooked rice into the water to entice the fish to eat this instead of Qu Yuan. And so began the more than 2,000 year-old custom of commemorating the death of Qu Yuan, the upright official, with dragon boat races and rice dumplings, though these days none of the delicious food is wasted on the fish.
*The Qin would go on to defeat all and create the first Chinese Empire (Qin Dynasty 221–206 BC), with Qin Shihuang, its brilliant, brutal emperor achieving renewed fame after the rediscovery of his massive Terracotta Army in 1974 near Xi’an.
Make your own Chinese rice dumplings (粽子 zongzi) Recipe here
More Chinese recipes
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| May 15 2010 |
"As to drinks, we are naturally moderate except regarding tea."
–Lin Yutang, My Country and My People
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| May 12 2010 |
Red Cooked Beef Noodle Soup
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Back to cooking beef noodle soup this week. Tweaking the recipe which will go on the Recipe page later in the week. This photo shows the dish the way I like it, with chunks of carrot and daikon radish.
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| Mar 30 2010 |
"Yellow dog best, white dog second, followed by black dog."
Saying indicating the order of preference of a dog’s colour in matters pertaining to the Chinese culinary arts.
More Chinese food quotes
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| Feb 24 2010 |
Quality
Whisky from Where? Taiwan, of Course
Recently I was enjoying a
reunion dinner with old friends (including a certain Johnny
Walker), when one of them (not Johnny) made the drink-spluttering
announcement that a new brand of Taiwan whisky, Kavalan,
had beaten Scottish and English whiskies in a blind
taste test in Scotland. These were not aged whiskies, rather
mostly three-year olds, but it is amazing that a two-year
old single malt from a new distillery, from a country with
absolutely no history of whisky making, could take the
honours. And it must really piss off the high-end whisky
establishment whose marketing strategy is based entirely
on tradition and agedness.
Taiwan has a huge thirst for whisky – it is one of
the top 10
markets in the world despite a small population. Kavalan,
with its bold strategy and equally bold slogan: "A
lifetime is wasted without a taste of this whisky," wants
a slice of that lucrative market. The distillery was
created by Taiwan food and bev. giant King Car Group with
help from a Scottish master distiller. It is located near
Yilan on the east coast of Taiwan, drawing water from the
Central Mountain Range and the Snowy Mountain Range. According
to Kavalan head of R&D Ian YL Chang, the company imports
malted barley mainly from Europe.
I am dying to try Kavalan, though it is not cheap (from
NT$1,500/US$47), selling for far more than many well-known
brands of eight-year old Scotch.
Read review of Kavalan Whisky: Whisky
for Everyone
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| Jan 30 2010 |
Good
for Dogs, Not so Good for Dog (meat) Lovers
I have
not written here for ages but this headline surprised
me and shook me out of my torpor: "China
could ban dog and cat meat."
Dogs and humans have an amazing symbiotic relationship. In return for food the dog helps us hunt, herds our livestock, protects us and our property, keeps us company, rescues us, and sometimes, it feeds us (and I don’t mean in a waiterly kind of way).
The dog was the first animal domesticated in China 10,000 years ago, and the Chinese have probably been eating it since then, so we can safely say it is a tradition in Chinese cuisine, even if only relatively small numbers of people eat it today. Cat eaters are fewer still (in Taiwan I have never even heard of anyone who has heard of anyone eating cat, but when you ask people they always suggest the Cantonese as likely candidates!).
It is common yet nonetheless disturbing
to see a young woman bring a doggy date into
a restaurant, sit it on a chair or table and indulge it
like a tiny shaggy sultan.
This
proposed law to end the practise of eating dog meat shows
how much China has changed (Taiwan banned the sale of
'fragrant meat' in 2004). In China under Chairman Mao
pet dogs were considered a wasteful indulgence of the
bourgeois, and were banned. Now (at least in Taiwan)
lap dogs, dressed and pampered, are carried everywhere
by their coo-cooing owners, and that includes into supermarkets
and department stores. I have even seen a couple pushing
their pride and joy in its own pram. It is common yet
nonetheless disturbing to see a young woman bring a
doggy date into a restaurant, sit it on a chair or table
and indulge it like a tiny shaggy sultan.
Dog ownership in China has exploded in the last decade
in tandem with the booming economy. And with people
marrying later or not marrying at all, combined with
China's unique policy of mandated small families–that
nest gets emptied quite quickly–pets are an economical,
easy surrogate child/companion.
Dog owners don't like the idea of their
special animal being consumed anymore than pet pig owners like the idea
of eating pork, but the proposed law seems to miss the
point. Rather than trying to ban the eating of dog meat
(which after all is dead dog) activists for the new law
would be wiser to work on banning cruelty towards all living animals (including the human variety).
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What is Cassia?
Famous for its scenery, Guilin is one of south China’s leading tourist destinations. Translate guilin to English and you get cassia forest. The dried bark of the cassia tree (Cinnamomum cassia) which grows in abundance in the Guilin area, is one of the ingredients of five spice powder … read
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