Noodles with Dried Shrimp and Scallion Oil (开洋葱油面)

When you cook a lot, you develop a "nose" not just literally but also when reading recipes of where magnificence may lie. This one is from Fuchsia Dunlop's latest book Land of Fish and Rice which are recipes from the Jiangnan region of China.

It was invented by a street food vendor which is evident since everything except the noodles and the very quick stir-fry can be made ahead of time.

Literally "spring onion oil noodles", this recipe is simplicity itself. She rightfully compares it to the Italian spaghetti aglio e peperoncino.

The textures blend perfectly — the soft noodles slippery coated with the oil, the crunchy shrimp soaked in flavor, the crispy and soft spring onions, the umami.

This recipe is also "naked". The short list of ingredients tell you that. It's also an umami-bomb. Perfect for a light lunch or a snack.

This stuff is seriously addictive. The CC will not be surprised if some (most?) of the blog readers here start craving it weekly.

(Source: Fuchsia Dunlop)

Ingredients

(serves 2)

7 oz dried noodles

2 tbsp dried shrimp
2 tsp Shaoxing wine

4 spring onions (cut into 2" pieces - both green and white)

4–5 tsp light or tamari soy sauce (to taste)

6 tbsp cooking oil

Note 1: The CC increases the amount of shrimp if he wants a heartier meal.

Recipe

Soak the shrimp in the Shaoxing wine along with some hot water to cover it for 30 minutes. Drain the shrimp. Discard the liquid.

In a wok, heat up the oil and add the onions. Stir fry till the white parts turn golden. Add the shrimp and stir-fry until the onions are browned but not burnt.

In parallel, cook the noodles and drain.

In a bowl, put the soy sauce at the bottom, the noodles above it, and pour the spring onion, shrimp, oil mixture over it. Mix with chopsticks and eat at once.

Soy Me Up, Soy me Down!

There are soy sauces and there are soy sauces but they are neither equivalent nor substitutes.

Historically, soy sauce arose in China but it spread across South-East Asia and then the world. As it spread, the production became local and its irresistible umami flavors were tweaked to local tastes.

That means that Chinese, Japanese and Thai soy sauces (just to use three as an example) are totally different. Even within a single culture there are multiple kinds of soy sauce that have different end uses. This parallels the equally different kinds of fish sauce each tweaked to local tastes.

The CC can hear the screams from the peanut gallery already.

"You mean to say, that I must now stock different kinds of soy sauces?!? Are you nuts?"

Sadly yes.

If you want to get the right flavors then yes, and yes the CC is nuts. (Not much doubt, was there?)

The point about the "right" flavor is made most memorably in one of the episodes of the serialized food manga Oishinbo (美味しんぼ).

The name is a portmanteau word between oishii (= 美味しい, delicious) and kuishinbou (= 食いしん坊, glutton). On the one hand, the manga has a simple format which is important in a serialized format just like a sit-com, which is why it ran for 30+ years, but it's so heavy-handed and Oedipal that Freud might have objected!

However, it's both excellent and makes important points. At one point, the father upstages the son by making the same dish with the same ingredients but using Chinese soy sauces rather than the equivalent Japanese versions because the dish is of Chinese-Japanese origin not truly Japanese. (As stated, heavy-handed but still with a point.)

If you choose to engage in this journey, these are not expensive products and they store indefinitely in a cool and dark environment so it's not as big a burden as it sounds.

How many can you get away with at the bare minimum?

The CC is guessing between four and six — two for Thai food, one or two for Japanese, and one to two for Chinese. More if you want to cook Indo-Chinese or Filipino.

Sorry.

Just don't shoot the messenger.

The Dark Side of Food

One of the most important concepts associated with food is that it is pretty much the only activity that we do daily. There's also shitting but that's the end result of eating.

We eat to live. Literally. Our bodies are just a mechanism by which food gets transformed into fuel for our brain.

Every other activity that we do daily is basically optional but not eating.

There are many consequences to this simple observation. We'll proceed from the relatively trivial to the relatively profound.

No, your mother's version of that dish is not the "best". It's not even "typical". It's probably even shit. Let's start with that.

It's just something you ate on a daily basis and hence established the basis on which you rest your (very shaky) foundation of food. You may even perpetuate that because it's the only thing that you know. If you want to break out of the arbitrariness of your birth, and it is extraordinarily hard to do so, then you must first accept this brutal fact.

Did you notice that the CC referred to your mother's cooking as "shit"?

Notice how the metaphor neatly connects to food. We work symbolically through food. Everything from "no free lunch" to "corny" to "sour grapes" to "dish fit for the gods" — Shakespeare made the last one up as he did also "salad days", "in a pickle" and "the milk of human kindness".

There are literally no languages that don't have wondrous phrases related to food. It's so elemental that it's taken for granted. Everything from "essere buono come il pane" ("to be as good as bread" = "as good as gold") to 羊頭狗肉 ("sheep's head, dog meat" = "false advertising".)

Since eating is literally the only mandatory activity that we do, it goes without surprise that it's the ideal mechanism of enforcing group conformity.

There are absolutely no religions in the world that don't have a mandatory taboo on some form of eating. Judaism has kosher laws, the various religions in India have strange forms of vegetarianism, Christianity imposed rules of eating on Fridays, etc.

Needless to say this is all bullshit. Humans are famously omnivore. What one group eschews another embraces. The Chinese would laugh at the Jews. The meat-eaters mock the vegetarians. Fish on Fridays? Please.

Notice the bullshit metaphor also works via food. The only thing worse than your own shit would be the shit of a bull.

These rules have nothing to do with food and everything to do with enforcing group identity. You define yourself not only by what you are but also but what you are not.

The group identity mechanism works via what the Japanese would call  内外 ("uchi-soto" = "inside-outside"). Follow the food rules and you're an insider. Don't and you will be brutally excommunicated.

Lest you think that this mechanism is "religious" in nature, the CC will be happy to pontificate.

Try arguing barbecue in the US. There's great barbecue everywhere from Virginia to South Carolina to Kentucky to Texas. However, none of these groups agree with each other. Everyone seems to think their own version is the "best" — an entirely laughable notion that any outsider (like the CC!) might care to disabuse them of. They're all great; they are just different.

So you see, your mother's version of that dish is not the "best". It's your own fierce form of enforcing identity. You are sticking by what little you know and even if your mother is a terrific cook, you are trying futilely to convince others that it is food fit for the gods.

The most famous example of this "food as identity" enforcement was the Spanish Reconquista — the re-establishment of Christian rule in Spain. The Arabs and the Jews were forced at sword-point to eat pork in public as proof of their "conversion" to Christianity. The Spanish then took their concept to the Philippines which had no particular ban on pork and hence turned the pig into a newly formed "religion".

The great ramen maker, Momofuku Ando, neatly also turned these religious identity rules to his advantage by casually observing that there was no religion in the world that didn't embrace the chicken. The first ramen noodle flavor was chicken. (He wasn't particularly interested in the vegetarians.)

Which brings us to the fact that vegetarianism is another example of an entirely post-facto-rationalized system erected on extraordinarily shaky foundations.

Humans are omnivorous. We will literally eat anything which you can plainly observe because what one country or ethnic group rejects, another will happily eat. Since they all can't be right and they're all equally human, it stands to reason that they all must be wrong.

Science backs it up in spades. We are omnivorous, and we definitely evolved because of our capacity to eat meat. Arthur Clarke famously points this out in 2001: A Space Odyssey and Kubrick gives this profound notion the utmost respect by filming it most memorably with a magnificent jump-cut.

We even have specialized meat receptors in our stomachs. Evolution at its finest. It gave us a powerful concentrated source of fuel and pushed our brains to much larger sizes.

Is there a point to this depressing discourse which is almost tailor-made to offend just about everyone? Why yes, there most certainly is.

If you really want to get to understand another culture, the ideal mechanism is through its food. Not only will you be wearing a different identity, it will make it far easier to discard your own. Discarding your identity is not for the weak. You will be left adrift and will be forced to fend on your own. The group enforcement mechanism will kick in dressed in full riot gear.

However, it's one of the few ways to throw off the arbitrariness of your birth (which you had no choice over) and get to enter into entirely new mindsets.

When phrased like that, you're looking at the greatest adventure in life. Needless to say, it's highly recommended.

Hiyashi Chūka (冷やし中華)

Literally "Chilled Chinese", this is the summer dish in Japan that only shows up on menus when the summer heat turns oppressive. Restaurants love it, since except for the ramen, the dish consists only of assembly. All the components are pre-made and chilled down ahead of time.

It's exactly as rock-star as it sounds. Perfect cold dish for the insane summer heat just like this week here.

There is an ugly fact here that is going to upset most readers.

Precision of effect frequently requires substantial expenditure of means.

Each piece needs to be precisely made, cut up, and "chilled" and then the whole gets put together. It's not at all hard but it does go against that "effortless" summer dish mojo.

So why is the CC sabotaging his own readership with something that takes effort?

The answer is the sheer awesomeness of the dish with ingredients that can be stored for another day.

What is it?

It's cold noodles with a umami-laden gingery sweet-and-salty sauce and cold toppings. Unlike salads, the sauce sits at the bottom of the dish. You mix whatever ingredients you like for the "next slurp" and, let's face it, you need to slurp the ramen, people! The ingredients have been arranged at the top for visual interest not for "mixing". Each mixed-up slurp is going to be unique and umami-laden thanks to the personal mixing and the sauce.

The dish can only be described as "cold magic for a hot summer's day".

It is absolutely modern and in spite of its name it's no more "Chinese" than the CC is. It's Japanese through and through. The name is advertising. Every culture likes "foreign" stuff because exotic stuff sells and this dish fits the bill. It could never have existed before the age of refrigeration. The tastes are purely Japanese and only the noodles are "kinda sorta vaguely" Chinese. Don't let the name fool you.

(There's a general trend here. Names of dishes that contain a country/place rarely originate in the country/place named. For example, French Fries, Chinese Chop-Suey, Pad Thai, Baked Alaska, Hamburger, etc. This list is long!)

The dish follows the rules of washoku (和食) even though it is not really traditional. Five flavors; five colors; visual interest.

Typically, you would work with five ingredients plus the ramen but the CC had most of the stuff in his apartment; he was bored, and he is a little bit crazy (Really?!? Who'd think that?)

Let's enumerate the ingredients starting from the "6 o' clock position".

• Simmered lotus roots.
• Simmered shiitake mushrooms in savory sauce.
• Wakame.
• Eggs cooked "mollet".
• Pickled carrots with sesame.
• Crab-stick.
• (Egg).
• Crab-stick.
• Cucumber.

In the center we have cherry tomatoes, strips of nori and "Chinese chives" (nira - にら).

There is one deviation that makes it "modern modern" (to ape the modern way of talking.) Traditionally, the eggs would have been cooked in a Japanese-style omelette and cut into strips. The rest is pretty much conventional.


As pointed out the dish is a game of assembly. Each of the ingredients was cooked or cut up and chilled in the refrigerator. When the time came to serve the dish, the ramen was cooked and quickly chilled in ice-water and the dish assembled. It's also easiest if you just chill the plates in the freezer ahead of time. That way everything stays cold.

Everything serves two but you are welcome to make more and store it. Each cooked component stores really well and you can always quickly cut up the other stuff in a few minutes.

Also if you read the recipe carefully, the sequence in which to make things is clearly to make the dashi first, then simmer the crab sticks, then the lotus roots, then add the ingredients to make the mushrooms, and use the reduced sauce as a component in the dipping sauce. That way everything gets used up and no flavors are wasted.

This sort of complex sequencing is really the heart of many "hard" dishes. In order to not repeat things, you must sequence them out correctly up-front.

Vegetables

Ingredients

8 cherry tomatoes
1 small cucumber
Japanese-style pickled carrots (just use fresh if you don't have this)
4-5 Chinese chives

Recipe

Cut the tomatoes in half. The cucumber, carrot and chives must be cut into long thin strips. Set aside and chill.

Seaweed

Ingredients

1/2 tsp dried wakame
1 sheet nori

Recipe

In a small bowl add cold water to the dried wakame. The nori must be cut into fine strips. You can drain the wakame just before assembly.

Crab Sticks, Lotus Roots & Egg

Ingredients

2 cups dashi
4-5 crab-sticks
1 small lotus root.
1 egg

Recipe

The crab sticks are generally frozen. Bring the dashi to a boil and cook them for about 3 minutes. Lift out and set aside.

Add the lotus roots to the dashi and let them cook for about 4-5 minutes. Lift them out and set aside.

Cook the eggs mollet-style in a separate pot with some water. 7 minutes. Immediately plunge them into an ice bath. Peel when cooled and set aside. You can slice them right before serving.

Simmered Mushrooms

Ingredients

8 dried shiitake mushrooms.
1 cup dashi
4 tbsp. soy sauce
2 tbsp. brown sugar

Recipe

Combine the ingredients and bring to a boil. Let it cook uncovered for about 8 minutes until the shiitake mushrooms are cooked through. You can reduce the sauce and use it in the dipping sauce.

Dipping Sauce

Ingredients

1/3 cup dashi
2 tbsp. soy sauce
2 tbsp. black sugar
2 tbsp. sesame oil
1 tbsp. grated ginger

Recipe

The measurements are a little approximate. Mix everything together like a vinaigrette. You will need to taste it and make sure it has the right balance of sweet and salty tastes. The dashi will provide the intense umami.

Ramen

Ingredients

2 packages frozen ramen
2 tbsp. roasted sesame seeds

Recipe

NOTE: The frozen ramen available in the Japanese grocery store are the preferred ones. They are the ones made traditional-style with alkaline water. They will look pale yellow.

Roast the sesame seeds on a medium-hot skillet until they are golden and set aside.

Prepare an ice-bath. Then in a large pot, bring water to a boil and add the frozen ramen. Cook as per the instructions. The ones the CC had said 2 minutes and 30 seconds. Yes, this level of precision matters.

Immediately drain them and plunge them in the ice-bath to ensure that they stop cooking and chill down. Drain.

Now assemble everything. Ramen in the center. Pour the sauce over it. Add the toppings all around. and on top. Strew the sesame seeds all over. Serve at once.

Boiled Peanuts

This recipe is so rock-star around the globe that it's hard to believe that it's only a few hundred years old.

Peanuts are ancient. We have evidence. They come from the Andes and date back about 5000 years.

However, their modern incarnation dates back to the Spanish conquest of Hispaniola (modern-day: Haiti and Dominican Republic) in 1502.

The nuts spread quickly across the globe. First to Europe and thence to South-East Asia, China and Africa. They also played a disproportionate role in the slave trade. Many Africans consider the peanut to be "native" but the CC would like to disenchant them of this entirely fictitious notion.

The peanut is not a "nut". It's really a legume more akin to peas and beans than to walnuts and hazelnuts.

If you've never had boiled peanuts, you are totally missing out. This is one of the great joys of life.

The CC presents three recipes from different parts around the globe. Add the ingredients and boil them with the peanuts. (A pressure cooker makes quick work but it's not strictly speaking necessary.)

Eat them with beer. Champagne if you want to get fancy. It's not exactly rocket surgery. But it's delicious.

Ingredients

1 lb. whole raw peanuts
6 cups water

Ingredients 1: Classic

4 tbsp. salt

Ingredients 2: Chinese

4 tbsp. salt
2 tbsp. palm sugar (substitute with brown sugar)

2 star anise
1 small piece of cinnamon
4 cloves
2 dried red chillies

Ingredients 3: Thai

4 tbsp. nahm pla (fish sauce)
2 tbsp. palm sugar (substitute with brown sugar)

2 Thai green chillies (slit lengthwise)

Recipe

Boil the peanuts with the ingredients. About 45 minutes. Test to see. This is hard to predict.

(In a pressure cooker, it takes about 10 minutes.)

Serve with beer.

Indian-Style Chinese Corn Soup

If you are not aware of the concept of "Indian-Chinese" food, you are in for a small shock and a treat to follow.

Chinese immigrants migrated from the Hakka region to Calcutta in the 19th-century when it was the de-facto economic capital of India under the British Raj. The laborers were the dark underbelly of the opium trade. Like all immigrants, the path to not being bonded laborers was to open food eateries. (It's the same today right now in modern-day New York!)

They brought with them their techniques but rapidly discovered that neither pork ("Muslim") nor beef ("Hindu") was going to work in the new situation. Additionally, the population wanted a different set of spices than what the immigrants were used to. However, adaptability is the name of the game as you might guess from the entirely analogous fact that there's no such Cantonese dish as "Chop-Suey" — it's a Chinese-American idea catering to vague Chinese ideas about American tastes in the 19th century from whence it spread nation-wide and thence world-wide.

And in the same vein, "Indian-Chinese" fusion cuisine was born.

It was a blockbuster hit from day one because the one fact about human nature that never changes is that we crave novelty.

Money makes the world go round so when the economic capital of India moved from Calcutta to Mumbai, the immigrants and the dishes followed. Now they are ubiquitous all over India.

This is a classic corn soup.

Corn is not Chinese, of course. Nor Indian. It's New World. Its global nature originates from the Spanish conquest of the New World after which it made its way to Europe and eventually along the Silk Road to most of Asia. There are multiple layers of fusion hooked up in this single dish.

It's emphatically not a high-falutin' dish. It's pretty low-brow.

The CC has wondered for the longest time how they got the tangy flavor in the vegetarian versions that they make?  How was it that you could get a superior version in any crap town in India than what he was making at home?

It took a while but it finally struck like the biggest "DUH!" of all times.

"Of course! They are using MSG."

We can now add Japanese 20th-century science to the fusion. Just to recap, we are now talking about Pan-American corn, Spanish conquest, Chinese immigrants and adaptation, Indian flavors and techniques, and Japanese food technology in a single dish.

It's umami that is making all the difference. So by substituting the MSG with the functionally-equivalent dashi, we have a winner with the exact same taste. BINGO!

Why does the recipe work in the first place? What makes it successful?

It's corn soup that's nutritious with a "hit-me-again" umami taste that's off the charts. You can add any protein to it. It's cheap, easy to make, and easy to sell. It reheats well. You can make it ahead of time. It's basically street food is what it is. The only thing stopping it from being street food is the fact that it's a soup — too hard to serve on the street.

So as the CC unambiguously pointed out above, it's low-brow but he means that in the best non-pejorative sense of the word. This dish is simply awesome.

There are a few standard variants — you can add shredded chicken or shredded crab or prawns; and/or a beaten egg.

If you have never had this, you are totally missing out.


Ingredients

Paste

1/2" ginger
3 cloves garlic
4 green chillies
2 scallions (both white and green parts)

1 can "cream-style" corn
1 cup fresh corn (frozen is fine)

5-6 cups dashi

1 cup carrots (diced fine)
1 cup green beans (cut into very thin rounds)

1 tbsp. corn starch
6 tbsp. ice water

salt
white pepper

To Serve

1 scallion (diced into fine rounds)

cilantro (finely chopped)

3 green chillies (diced into fine rounds)
1/2 cup vinegar

soy sauce

Recipe

The recipe is straightforward. It's the side servings that require a little explanation.

There are four conventional ones — soy sauce, finely diced cilantro and scallions are self-explanatory. The last is the super-spicy chillies plonked in a neutral vinegar (rice vinegar works!)

You can add as much of each as you like including the fact that you can just add the vinegar minus the chillies.

First prepare the paste. Just use a food processor to grind the ginger, garlic, green chillies, and scallions together.

Heat up some oil. Fry the paste languidly for about 6 minutes. Add the carrots and beans and let it fry for 3 minutes. Add the creamed corn and the dashi. Add salt and white pepper to taste.

Bring to a boil. You can skim off the fat if you like. Let it cook for 10 minutes or so.

Meanwhile, add the corn starch to the ice water and let it mix. It will not "dissolve". You are making a suspension. Whip well and add to the mixture.

Serve with the fixin's!

The Fetishization of Seasonal and Local

One of the great tragedies of the culinary world is that it is not only faddish but also completely ignorant of science, history, economics, and the mechanics of trade.

In an ideal world, we would all eat seasonal and local but it's not an ideal world. For starters, there are 7+ billion people in the world and they can't all eat locally. An increasing amount of the world's population lives in cities so it is literally impossible that everyone in the city eat locally. It's just a simple mathematical argument about the population versus the amount of arable space and the steepness of its value. (The value comes from the fact that the population provides steep "value" on the economic food chain.)

Simple economics argues against it. The crux of a modern city — and by modern we have to understand that this is at least 500+ years old — is upwardly-mobile cheap labor. The desire to have a better life propels the cheap labor into the cities in the first place. The idea that these people can eat "local" is risible beyond the extreme. If cheap labor propels cities then by definition, it's cheap food that propels the cheapness of the labor.

So cheap means invoking Ricardo's principle of comparative advantage. Source the produce from wherever labor is cheapest and that means Africa, Asia and South America.

Seasonal is another bugaboo.

Places that have absurdly short growing seasons (think: Japan, Korea, Russia, Poland) rely to an unprecedented degree on pickled salted food.

Before World War II, Japan had the highest rate of stomach cancer in the world. It was so high as to be a routine tear-jerker movie cliché most memorably exploited by Kurosawa in his masterpiece Ikiru (生きる). It was definitely due to a heavy reliance on salted, smoked, and nitrate- and nitrite-rich foods (cured meats), the heavy incidence of the bacterium H. Pylori which thrives in stomachs with heavy salt diets, heavy tobacco usage, and above all, the lack of fresh vegetables for all but the briefest of growing seasons.

The same happened in Korea, Russia, and most of Eastern Europe. The common factor is the "short growing season" which means a reliance on "pickled foods".

Compare with both China and India where in spite of the heavy smoking and an equally important pickling tradition, the vegetable-rich diet traditionally traveling along trade routes had stomach cancer incidences at de minimus levels.

This is not just speculation. We have evidence for this.

After World War II, when vegetables flooded the Japanese markets thanks to free trade, the rate of stomach cancer plummeted precipitously. (Even then today, it's still 4x the rate in the UK!)

Do we really want to go "seasonal" so that we can go back to these bad old days?

To rephrase, going non-local caused stomach cancer rates around the world to plummet. Is this a bad thing?

Seasonal and local are not bad things.

For one, the seasonal component gives you an extreme rush of excitement. There's an anticipation to looking forward to something pleasurable that won't come around for another six months. There's also the fact that seasonal actually means cheap. Whatever is plentiful is cheap by the simple laws of supply and demand.

Local is a good thing too.

You can talk to the farmer. You can actually ask for something that lies outside the norm and since you are there to pay for it, they will do it. (Try doing that at a supermarket!)

What's wrong is the fetish. The hide-bound rules that don't allow for five thousand years of trading history (think: spices!), and science (think: stomach cancer) and a certain flexibility of both thought and process. A certain give and take (trade pun intended!) in the approach to food and markets.

Why not have a rich understanding of the subject and the best of both worlds?

Fusion

The CC has never been against fusion. How could he?

We are nothing but the sum total of all our influences and that is true about all cuisines.

Indian food, both classically and modern, is an outgrowth of Persian cooking and New World foods. Japanese curry owes itself to British traders and an American commodore. New Orleans cuisine is based on French and African models with innovations (shrimp!) pushed by Filipino workers. Brazilian food grows out of Portuguese and African models and is reinforced by the importation of Japanese agricultural workers — the largest Japanese-speaking population outside of Japan.

Spanish cooking is based on Arabic models. In fact, most of the words for food substances have Arabic origins — aceituna (olive), azafran (saffron), naranja (orange). The word "lemon" comes from the Spanish limón which in turn comes from the Arabic laymoon which in turns come from the Chinese limung (modern-day Chinese: níngméng - 柠檬.)

Chinese food owes itself to Persian models with the extraordinarily heavy influence of Buddhism from India. Japanese food is an import of classical Chinese models. Even the language is an import of Chinese (kanji) and Indian phonetic models (Sanskrit - hiragana and katakana.)

Americans brought beef to Japan and its influence owes itself to the British Empire which in turn owes itself, ironically, to classical Persian models. The idea that meat was the food of the "rulers" not the "ruled" is based in ancient Persian hierarchical ideas about cuisine.

In the native Americas, Mexican cooking was heavily influenced by the Spanish invasion. Filipino food is based on Spanish and Mexican food because it was administered by Spain through Mexico.

 

Ancient Greek and Egyptian cuisine grows out of Persian models and even ancient Roman cooking is unambiguously based on Greek and Egyptian models (thanks Cleopatra!)

The CC can go on forever.

If one wants to look at the truly ur-models then it would be the Babylonian and after that Persian models (wheat, barley) because that's where the crux of all political organization (and hence cooking) began.

So whither authenticity?

All food is ultimately fusion. It just matters how far you go back and look.

That's because humans have been trading with each other for millennia and good ideas have a way of germinating in other places and great ideas spread fast.

The traders were the original internet.

The Chinese traders taught the Indians how to steam circa the 10th century. The British brought curry powder to the Japanese and the French. The French brought classical technique to Haiti and New Orleans.

So anytime someone complains about "fusion", the CC just goes "Huh?!? What are you smokin'?"

For the record, even marijuana has Persian origins. Quelle surprise?

Going Pork Crazy!

In the National Palace Museum in Taipei, there's a rather famous sculpture of a meat-shaped stone (肉形石).

From the catalog:

At first glance, this meat-shaped piece of stone looks like a luscious, mouth-watering piece of "Tung-p'o meat". Made from banded jasper, it is a naturally occurring stone that accumulates in layers over many years. With time, different impurities will result in the production of various colors and hues to the layers. The craftsman who made this meat-shaped stone took the rich natural resources of this stone and carved it with great precision, and then the skin was stained. This process resulted in the appearance of skin and lean and fatty layers of meat, the veining and hair follicles making the piece appear even more realistic.

What a Wonderfully Odd Fact!

Sometimes the best part of an article is a throwaway sentence that illuminates so much.

The process of sun-drying shrimp was introduced to Louisiana over a hundred years ago by Chinese and Filipino immigrants who saw the shrimp-rich region as an opportunity for export.
 

How wonderfully amazing!

And then local cooks started incorporating the concentrated flavors of the dried shrimp into their gumbo!

Chinese Chefs Taste Cheese

As many here know, the CC is a big fan of Fuchsia Dunlop and her two books on authentic Chinese cooking. She is the first foreigner (and woman) to train at the famous Sichuan Institute of Higher Cuisine in Chengdu.

Here, she writes about her experience with having chefs taste cheese which is basically milk that has been precisely spoilt.

Cheese is not a favourite food in China, to put it mildly. Traditionally, dairy products were associated with the nomadic people who lived on the fringes of China and who were regarded as fearful barbarians. The Han Chinese, with a few notable exceptions, avoided eating dairy foods altogether: many were, and still are, lactose-intolerant. Cheese, however, is still generally regarded as beyond the pale. A few sophisticated Shanghainese might eat Stilton just as sophisticated Londoners eat tripe and chitterlings, but many people, especially in the provinces, have never tasted it.

Over several visits to Shaoxing, I wondered what the locals, such ardent lovers of rotted soymilk and vegetable stalks, would make of rotted cow’s milk, otherwise known as cheese. Finally, I returned to Shaoxing with a boxful of artisanal cheeses from Neal’s Yard Dairy in London, including the smelliest I could find in the shop. I had selected one mild hard cheese, Isle of Mull, to serve as a kind of toe-in-the-water; Stichelton, which is an unpasteurised version of Stilton; pale, veined Harbourne Blue; Ardrahan, a fairly whiffy washed-rind cheese that I adore; Milleens, another washed-rind variety with a punchy, farmyardy aroma that acquires a hint of ammonia as it ripens; and a wildly smelly Brie de Meaux. By the time I reached Shaoxing after a week on the road, the cheeses had all ripened nicely, and some were beginning to ooze.

At the Xianheng, a waitress cut the cheeses into pieces, and the assembled tasters began to pick them up with their chopsticks, sniffing and tasting. And where I had been impressed by what cheese and stinky soya products had in common, these culinary professionals were immediately struck by their differences. “Although in some ways you could say the flavours of cheese and fermented beancurd are similar,” said Mao, “vegetable stinky foods are very clean and clear in the mouth (qing kou), and they disperse quickly, while milky foods are greasy in the mouth (ni kou), they coat your tongue and palate, and they have a long, lingering aftertaste.”

Two other chefs said the cheeses had a heavy shan wei (muttony odour), an ancient term used by southern Chinese to describe the slightly unsavoury tastes associated with the northern nomads. Another said that the selection “smells like Russians”. “The difference,” he added, “is that the stinky things Chinese people eat give them smelly breath, while stinky dairy things affect the sweat that comes out of your skin.”

The entire article is fascinating!

David Mamet on Christmas Traditions

(Source: Tablet Magazine.)

Dim Sum in Flushing

As promised here, a few pictures of dim sum in Flushing.

For those not from New York, Flushing is in Queens, and any self-respecting gourmet would tell you that the cornucopia of Chinese food (of all stripes and varieties) is some of the best to be found. (Chinatown is touristy; Flushing is "authentic".)

The fish balls were excellent. The chicken feet are too fatty for the CC. The tripe was excellent!

Skewers

Pictures from Beijing (courtesy of a friend of the CC's), who knows the CC's omnivorous tendencies.

Made for fascinating discussion over dim sum in Flushing (pictures of which will be posted at a later date.)

Foraging in Chinatown Markets

On a recent trip to Boston, the CC had a little time to kill in Chinatown. Needless to say, he went into the stores looking for interesting stuff.

Among the haul were dried rose buds, lily mushrooms and hedgehog mushrooms (along with shrimp crackers and crab crackers!)

You may have read the saga of the CC and the roses before.

The mushrooms are new. The CC had never heard of them. Clearly, they must be tried out. So they were bought, and the package enjoyed a free trip to Boston because there was no way in hell that the CC wasn't going to purchase everything right that minute.

It has been commented upon that the Chinatown markets act upon the CC a bit analogously to introducing a Snickers bar at a Fat Camp!

Lily Mushrooms
Hedgehog Mushrooms

A Sichuan Meal (at Home)

Stir-fried mushrooms with Chiles and Sichuan Pepper
Lotus roots in sweet-and-sour sauce
(Source: Fuchsia Dunlop.)

Recipes to follow. (And just for the record, the CC thinks she walks on water!)

Star Anise

A classic of Chinese and Vietnamese cooking, this is a probably fairly well known spice. (Latin: Illicium verum.)

It has an anise-like smell (no surprises there!) and should be fairly easy to find everywhere.

"Facing heaven" chilli

The CC finally managed to get them from the Chinese grocery store. "Heaven-facing"-chillies (朝天椒) They are crucial to Sichuan cooking (along with Sichuan peppercorns.)

Mystery Mushrooms

The CC was in Chinatown recently, and he spotted what could only be dried mushrooms except he hasn't a clue of what they are, or how they could be used.

Any clues, fellow foodies?

Sichuan Food

Last night, the CC had dinner at the most amazing Sichuan restaurant. They were told not to dumb down the food for the foreigner (the CC was the only non-Chinese person at the restaurant) but they did a slight dumbdown anyway. Oh well!

Vegetarians definitely need not apply here (or in general, for traditional Chinese food.)

For cold appetizers (traditional), we had seaweed, jellyfish and pig skin (three dishes.)

For the main course, we had carp.