thread of pictures of real chinese food

people who are allowed to post itt: dylannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn, ken c, people who have been to china

http://i.imgur.com/kv4RQ.jpg

http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/bella/pandaexpressfood.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/YrcEH.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/MMLkn.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/EsT1c.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/e4bHt.jpg

mmmm that one looks good

http://i.imgur.com/UDM24.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/Ggr3j.png

oh whoops how did that get in here *blushes*

http://i.imgur.com/kEueC.jpg

How about Chinese food by way of Indonesia:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2174/2504681483_baef5d95d0.jpg
Pangsit Mie Ujung Pandang by closari, on Flickr

also acceptable

http://i.imgur.com/LIACM.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/XYlHj.jpg

annotations pls

i go to a restaurant every couple weeks w my mom where all the food looks like this. her & her husband started going bc a food critic friend of theirs (recently died of cancer rip) told them it was the closest to what he had eaten on trips to china. even tho it is insanely good & unlike any other chinese food i was kind of incredulous cause its p salty. but ive eaten at least a few of these there

http://i.imgur.com/D0QuM.jpg

^^ imperative that you use fresh shrimp, preferably from the sea

boy all this image searching is making me tired! I think I'm gonna take a break. btw vegetarians sorry, chinese cuisine can definitely be vegetarian friendly but it's hard and I don't know too much about that! I will try to search for more veg dishes later

the tinfoil island makes it

before I stop you can all have some DUMPLINGS!

http://i.imgur.com/VFOz1.jpg

okay I couldn't stop here is a vegetarian one (sometimes, it usually has ground pork but you can ask them to not put it in or eat around it?)

http://i.imgur.com/RXUdG.jpg

oh jeez how do those pictures keep on ending up in my thread http://i982.photobucket.com/albums/ae301/EarlyMemphis/Smileys/BlushingSmiley.gif

http://i.imgur.com/SkNgc.jpg

what is the purple stuff

eggplant

so, so purple

I think the only thing I never could get with with Chinese cooking is the excessivbe amount of dishes glossed up or thickened with that cornflour/water gloop. And the heavy saltiness, yeah.

some of the pictures are a little too 'colorful' but it does look that way irl! one of the criteria chinese chefs are judged on is 'color' (strangely enough)

the cornflour/water goop is a sign of cantonese cooking. the shiny stuff you're seeing in these pictures is oil (lol).

Oh hahaha :D

what is the first picture on the thread? feel like it could be just about anything

pork belly

same dish

http://i.imgur.com/BitdY.jpg

ah, okay

pork belly is such a wonderful thing

Serious pavlovian response to this.

eggplant is a top 5 food and that looks amazing

annotations pls

― diouf est le papa du foot galsen merde lè haters (nakhchivan), Monday, September 5, 2011 7:37 PM (59 minutes ago) Bookmark

1. 红烧肉
2。 panda express
3。 口水鸡
4。 I forget, it just looks pretty
5。 刀削面
6。 炸酱面
7。 兰州拉面
8。 松鼠鱼
9。 Pangsit Mie Ujung Pandang
10。 干炒牛河
11。干锅
12。白灼虾
13。 水饺
14。 鱼香茄子or maybe 红烧茄子
15。 红烧肉

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4054/4224921451_68c45e0538.jpg

菜包

http://i.imgur.com/sBv25.jpg

糖醋藕片

#5 is going to haunt me

http://i.imgur.com/RfyMh.jpg

西兰花清炒香菇

dayo you should send that last one to buff and max's mom

Ooh whats that steamed bun full of greens? That looks delish.

http://i.imgur.com/TzaCc.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/rcABG.jpg

炒芥兰菜

http://i.imgur.com/Lf2Ly.jpg

蒜炒豆苗

Ah, gai lan in oyster sauce, love that stuff.

http://i.imgur.com/SsOgu.jpg

炒白菜

http://i.imgur.com/9uY58.jpg

西红柿炒蛋

http://i.imgur.com/fjHjV.jpg

蒜蓉

http://i.imgur.com/qra3u.jpg

芝麻汤圆

http://i.imgur.com/ykdcc.jpg

YESSSS.

err xpost

http://i.imgur.com/r5o4Y.jpg

麻团

What...IS...that?

xxxp

Leee I had no idea you were so excited about the truth

btw, let me add another annotation to the Panda Express pic.

Laurel, it's mochi (is it mochi?) filled with sweet sesame seed paste.

Knowing that it's sesame seed-based helps...slightly.

Well dayo I feel that we need to get to the bottom of that plate of sesame buns filled with red bean paste.

Laurel it is a taste explosion.

http://i.imgur.com/wQ8w6.jpg

金银馒头

well it's made with sticky rice, mochi has a more specific meaning but yeah it's sesame wrapped in sticky rice

speaking of

http://i.imgur.com/rrpo5.jpg

炒年糕

http://i.imgur.com/ONwQ6.jpg

奶黄包

in honor of the upcoming mid-autumn festival, 月饼

http://i.imgur.com/4C3gP.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/vFYTW.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/UlsYe.jpg

Oh wait upon further inspection that's actually blobfish soup.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lr2uprzWej1qbypg1o1_500.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/HCrEr.jpg

lmbo leee

dayo will have to do the sinification, but here's an egg tart, which is the business:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/00/Egg_custard_tarts.jpg/800px-Egg_custard_tarts.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/rZWcn.jpg

煎饼

Oh, I had egg tarts at dim sum! They were too sweet for me. But pretty.

damm now i want sum panda express

I see you Leeee

http://i.imgur.com/UEHt2.jpg

蛋挞

http://s3-media3.px.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/4k1oMzk4ssmYL_VAQhFVsw/l.jpg

... and now, I shall eat real Chinese food.

http://www.biginhongkong.com/content/binary/JadeGarden.AbaloneSiuMai.JPG

http://www.eatinginvancouver.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/IMG_2203.jpg

dayo, what is the soup-looking thing up there with the noodles and all the cilantro floating around in it?

ramen

http://www.flickr.com/photos/55017688@N00/4441951499/

dammit all i want to do is post a picture of some century egg congee w. a doughnut

http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lkdz2gkKrj1qihv0oo1_500.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/iYiIU.jpg

皮蛋粥

del that's pulled noodles, the name means 'pulled noodles' in chinese

here's a video of a boss dude making them

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMjIzNTY5Mzk2.html

it starts getting good after 1:45

but then he starts over because he pulled them too thin : (

everybody seems to like picture number five which are knife sliced noodles well here's a video of ultraman making knife sliced noodles

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMzAwMzU2MzUy.html

oh my god

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMzAwMzI0MzI0.html

cool, ha!

this video made a big impression on me when i was a kid
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWPwfnWHhdA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grwmxvxwChM

this video was taken in flushing so maybe you can find good chinese food in flushing

but it costs $10 and you have to listen to a patronizing foreigner talking in your ear

pretty much the norm for nyc

I kind of want to learn to make something like this: http://leitesculinaria.com/27156/recipes-slow-cooked-pork-belly.html

There's a Chinese place in my college town that has something very similar and I love it

here is another way of making noodles

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbmgZZ8DjsA

man, vancouver is 90% chinese but the food will never live up to the shittiest mainland china backwater, i think. just... i dunno. i'll say this: really good high end cantonese food. enjoy the king crab and catch a glimpse of fugitive lai changxing (note: no longer possible).

lately i've been eating for dinner: century egg + large fries from mcdonalds... mix with a bit of black vinegar and dark soy sauce....

anyways

http://pylon.xiangoo.com/step/photo/5/8/KYBvkMxOQDtC_m.jpg

there's something so satisfying about the visual of dude pulling the noodles apart

my mom makes that all the time mh! the 'preserved mustard' or w/e it is gives it a very distinct flavor. it's great

i'll say this: really good high end cantonese food.

otm, I had dinner at a 5 star hotel's cantonese restaurant and it was like

THAT IS 把子肉 BAZIROU

YOU HAVE A GIANT CAULDRON OF STUFF (LIKE ABOVE) STEWING IN A POT ALL DAY AND YOU CHOOSE WHAT YOU WANT IN YOUR BOWL BY POINTING
THE BAZIROU IS THE ACTUAL STEWED PORK BELLY BUT IT INCLUDES EVERYTHING. EATEN WITH A BOWL OF WHITE RICE. AND EVERY PLACE HAS FREE FILL YOUR OWN RICE RUNOFF 米汁 THE STARCHY STEAMING WATER FROM COOKING RICE. OH MY GOD. HOMETOWN:　ＮＯＲＴＨＥＲＮ　ＪＩＡＮＧＳＵ．

I would be so fat if I lived in china

I look at american food and it's just so sad

http://i975.photobucket.com/albums/ae232/daggerlee/2356eefb.gif

http://i.imgur.com/olSLM.jpg

卤肉

http://pica.nipic.com/2008-02-29/2008229101143338_2.jpg

粉蒸肉 MEAT STEAMED WITH GROUND UP RICE MASHED ALL OVER IT. GOD. THIS IS AMAZING.

http://i.imgur.com/NvJip.jpg

牛肉面

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3252/2700015194_a9b1ebe06a.jpg

蟹炒年糕

i want to fuck my face with all of these

http://www.168food.com.cn/pictures/images/20090830194117691.jpg

鸭血粉丝 duckblood fensi

http://i.imgur.com/qwEhY.jpg

I posted this before but it's so good. the green things are 蒜薹, which means garlic shoots, and you absolutely cannot get this in the US because they don't sell garlic shoots in the supermarket!

vancouver is cool in that you can get stuff like that. "garlic bolts" is usually the translation.

http://www.ttmeishi.com/Images/CaiPu_Upload/2008-7/20080727102723273.jpg

凉拌猪肚

this is a favorite

ok two more k-classic dishes that everybody in china knows how to make and then I'm done for today

http://i.imgur.com/aAfwx.png

http://i.imgur.com/BVz85.jpg

鱼香肉丝

http://i.imgur.com/7zLB7.jpg

宫保鸡丁

you may be more familiar with the second one as 'kung pao chicken' here is a lol american version

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5287/5282457865_123c95eac4_z.jpg

lol america *smh*

if only china wasn't being run by a brutal autocracy

http://i52.tinypic.com/mhzp1y.jpg

http://www.eat4.com/upimg/110312/1_013014_1.jpg

蚕豆炒莴笋

my saliva glands hurt

if anyone would like to continue you can go here

http://www.meishij.net/chufang/diy/jiangchangcaipu/

and click the little numbers at the bottom to go to the next page, or hit the button that says 下一页

莴笋 is another example of a chinese vegetable that is very hard or impossible to find in the states. my parents tried very hard to grow some last year and were only able to harvest enough for half a meal. : (

it's available in vancouver... locally grown, too, as i understand it. there's a hunan restaurant here that has a dish of 炒 eel, bacon (super smoky eerie white hunan bacon) and wosun.

sounds like I should move to vancouver

richmond is like china if all the poor people were gone

rip chinas poor people

hey, let's not end on a bummer

Let's go west for Baked Bun Soaked in Mutton Soup:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3259/3121995269_7995caf5e2.jpg

The white doughy pieces are actually torn up bits of these pancakes/buns:
http://www.tourschina.com/travel-xian/images/food/yangroupaomo1.jpg

When you're served this, they come intact like that picture, and you're supposed to break them up and toss them into the stew.

thanks.

i truly hate you for this thread, dayo

coming out of retirement because reading about chinese bacon made me crave this

http://i.imgur.com/ycCgP.jpg

腊肉

if you think chinese food is salty you haven't tried this!!

lol horseshoe you won't after watching this

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMzAwMzI0MzI0.html

but yeah dylannnnnnnnnnnnnnn is otm when he says

man, vancouver is 90% chinese but the food will never live up to the shittiest mainland china backwater, i think.

and this is why NYC can never have great chinese food. even in flushing. THE END.

http://jingtheory.com/blog/2010/11/taste-of-chengdu/

http://eatingasia.typepad.com/eatingasia/2010/10/chengdu-dou-hua-flower-beancurd-street-food.html and http://eatingasia.typepad.com/eatingasia/2010/12/what-mr-zhang-taught-me.html

greatest country in the world

LOOK at that

think I told this story before on ILX but the spiciest, hottest food I ever had was in chengdu - some 特辣 chicken wings that had me on a vision quest, for reals. and normally I don't back down from spicy food. I think they used a ghost pepper or the chinese equivalent.

I remember sweating profusely, my vision getting dizzy, stumbling across a city square during a very cold winter day with a starbucks frappuchino in one hand, a bottle of water in the other, double fisting. took about 20 minutes for the spiciness to wear off. jesus.

that blog post about chengdu is otm though - as china's people get wealthier the food is getting shittier. I had more disappointments in my most recent trip to beijing (this past winter) than I did in all the previous times I had been back. china should look to hong kong as a warning to what happens when your city gets overrun with franchises.

otoh taiwan is still great and they are pretty rich! taiwan has the best street food in the world.

in fact taiwan may have the highest concentration of great chinese food in all of the world. love taiwan.

I mean, I get it! when you become middle class you don't have time to worry about food. you are staring at a computer screen all day. and you can actually afford a house and to create a good environment for your kid to live in. but it still makes me sad, a little bit. china makes me sad, sometimes. godspeed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Um_rXMBXAs

good intro to xiao long bao making skills at 3:38

chef dude is a DUDE

http://bestvacationdealstoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Hong-Kong-Night-Street-Snacks.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/98seg.jpg

if i wanted to be reminded of stupid shit i said years ago, i'd get married

― https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i_qxQztHRI (Princess TamTam), Saturday, September 3, 2011 12:00 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark

http://metcn8.com/001-home-cooking/005-steamed-fish.jpg

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_zAw58ivw-TA/TKf-YGz4tMI/AAAAAAAAEEM/6keokGRE9ao/s1600/DSCN1768.JPG

http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQjKmjjT6bLhCVMDyJ7U7lNWDOdBAP5R5U0OfUxp85hX6NgqpICXQ

http://www.seriouseats.com/images/20080321eggquarters.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_rzfOlRkWCUY/R_ETLH6grII/AAAAAAAAARU/eHyztVD7H68/s320/P1030554.JPG

http://otherpics.wcgame.ru/data/2011-07-03/singaporean-hainan-chicken-rice.jpg

http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTocHldP0xJsjgRREi0ysZRKp3OLt0M5XE-DIWgREDwcUeTDyAP

http://photos-e.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash2/31363_385707692516_659427516_4489206_2309958_n.jpg

http://i56.tinypic.com/15s39lg.jpg

http://images.travelpod.com/users/aniemi/1.1301652070.fish-tank-in-dim-sum-restaurant.jpg

no idea wtf that thing is that's looming in the top left booth

errr.. that was the wrong pic
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1274/4669499606_7561ebd551.jpg

http://thumbs.ifood.tv/files/images/food/clam-with-black-bean-sauce-01.jpg

http://theinput.net/2008/02/14/beagle_wins_westminster.jpg

it looks like a picture from a dog show or something

http://i56.tinypic.com/6zopid.jpg

aaaah damn sorry

oh, wait, i just got it

你这个死美国佬胖怪物，回去把自己的小鸡鸡切了算了.

回去把自己的小鸡鸡切了算了.
http://www.foodnut.com/i/Saigon-Seafood-Harbor-Sunnyvale/Saigon-Seafood-Harbor-Steamed-Chicken.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/Soy_Sauce_Chicken.jpg

http://www.palacechinese.com.au/images/big/b_Chicken_Feet.JPG

I’ve been so obsessed with Szechuan cuisine lately it’s redic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_stock

Apparently I did not take any pictures of the amazing food I had in Chengdu :(

would love to go there.

There are claims of master stocks in China that are hundreds of years old, passed down through generations of cooks in this way

wau

I am really fucking hungry now

Like Thailand made me think "this is fantastic, but some Thai food in the US is also decent"

China: "I have never had anything like real Chinese food before"

I guess Thai food travels better than Chinese food for some reason? idk

dayo, what was the name of that place you were repping for by philly?

someone told me it's that the thai food most tourists have is the one that's served in tourist destinations, which is... tailored to fit the tourist's tastes.

I've been to an area north of phuket where no tourists go, and the thai food was definitely different than what I had experienced, but it wasn't that mind blowing. could be that that area was relatively impoverished

aerosol http://www.yelp.com/biz/e-mei-restaurant-philadelphia-2#query:emei

not really sure if they offer just one menu or an american menu and a secret chinese menu. I would be happy to take you there next time I am in the philly area! and any other philly ilxors

dude! south jersey/philly chinese food FAP would be awesome

probably another reason for the lack of great chinese food in america is that the model of a chinese-american restaurant as profitable business has already entered into the fabric of the US. americans already have a fixed idea of what chinese take-out is and recent immigrants are more than happy to provide that experience. it takes creative rebranding to break out of that rut, i.e. by labeling your restaurant as a 'sichuan/szechuan' restaurant specifically instead of as a 'chinese' restaurant.

someone told me it's that the thai food most tourists have is the one that's served in tourist destinations, which is... tailored to fit the tourist's tastes.

yeah probably true. also i was staying with a local in chengdu, not so in thailand. not so mysterious i guess.

chengdu has a reputation of being a foodie paradise in china. no mistake that the three blog posts dylannnn referenced were all about chengdu. my own tour of chengdu was def pretty amazing, that's where I had 干锅 (pictured somewhere in this thread). probably the only other place I thought comparable to chengdu in food terms is taipei.

http://jessieandthegiantplate.com/media/blogs/a//potsclosed.JPG

The real, slow-baked deal, however, can be found just outside Chengdu in Pixian, where the Zhao Feng He company has been producing doubanjiang using only traditional methods since 1666. In their courtyard, thousands of earthen-ware pots are neatly arranged according to their level in the fermentation process. The doubanjiang here is mixed everyday, the lids of the pots taken off in good weather, and the product is left to ferment for at least two years before being sold to private customers only. Various ages of doubanjiang are available at Zhao Feng He, including an eight year-old, limited vintage - the finest and most unadulterated doubanjiang in China.

http://jessieandthegiantplate.com/media/blogs/a//douban.JPG

by the person I stayed with in Chengdu

salivating

I think the best meal i had in China was in a cheap restaurant somewhere like Guiyang which was just a huge plate of vegetables i've never subsequently been able to identify, soy sauce, garlic and something that looked like cumin seeds but wasn't. Brought in a sizzling, spitting iron pot. Cost 12 RMB, as far as i can remember.

Another reason Chinese food tends to taste better in China, certainly in smaller towns and cities, is the link with fresh local produce. I can buy any number of Chinese vegetables in London but most have been out of the ground for a week by the time they get to me. English vegetables aren't much better. Most of the places i went to in Yunnan or Guizhou were cooking stuff that was still growing earlier that day.

12 RMB sounds expensive!

dude! south jersey/philly chinese food FAP would be awesome

I would definitely be down for this if I were in the area (about a 1/4 chance)

^^^would get on a train from DC for this

ive definitely had my eyes opened abt chinese food since some places serving more regional food have opened up in london

http://i.imgur.com/1bdwm.jpg

红烧狮子头

also people who complain about the saltiness of chinese food, ever eat a big bag of potato chips in one go? my tongue is swollen

Australian Chinese food:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JYvTgrndSpA/TmsFC07g4kI/AAAAAAAAED4/Vll1vVRgiYk/s1600/photo.PNG

i hear there's plenty good chinese food in australia?

It's down under, do you see.

http://dzh.mop.com/whbm/20110917/0/5glzglI27aa1fbFl.shtml

http://i.imgur.com/UGhuL.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/OaYQu.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/p9c1C.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/wUwzi.jpg

goddamn i hate/love this thread.

http://static.quna.com/meishi/caipuimg/819/185819.jpg

杀猪菜

http://img02.taobaocdn.com/bao/uploaded/i2/T1VzpwXaVaXXc3uiM4_053346.jpg_310x310.jpg

【【【【【哈尔滨红肠】】】】

http://i937.photobucket.com/albums/ad215/jiaoqu/cheeselobster.jpg

Classic Great Taste

http://i.imgur.com/OaYQu.jpg

what is that jelly stuff

you mean the egg ”white“? its century egg / thousand year old egg 皮蛋 with peppers on top

On June 28, 2011, CNN's division CNNGo.com published an account of a Texan blogger in an article on "the most 'revolting' food in the world". The blogger said the dish "tastes like the devil cooked eggs for me".[5] [......] A week later, CNN officially apologized for its remarks on century eggs,[6] describing it "a delicacy in Chinese culture and by global gourmets in the know."

i dunno, i find it more mellow than a hardboiled egg. not particularly offensive.

i don't know if i described it on this thread but i used to buy large mcdonalds fries, peel 2 pidan, and mix them up like a salad. works best with the softer yolked pidan. :(( so good.

Apropos of those Lay's lobster chips, I'm allergic to crustaceans, on top of my revulsion for all fish dishes. Thought my fellow AZNs should know.

there'll be no degustations, of friendly crustaceans, under the leee

http://i.imgur.com/efICi.jpg

mmmmmmmmmmmmm

http://i.imgur.com/bBzSZ.jpg

i am technically allowed to post itt since i briefly lived in shanghai, i guess, but since i'm a complete idiot when it comes to food i will refrain. i will only state the obvious, which is that real chinese food is pretty much the best food ever. i really miss it.

everybody is allowed to post itt! Z S what was the best thing you had in shanghai

I'm invited to go to a meeting in Xi'an in a few months; should I go? I'm kinda squeamish about traveling that far, but I've heard the food's fantastic, & that might be enough to tip the balance.

xi'an is okay, I found the soldiers part to be pretty boring, idk what specialties xi'an has but pretty much any restaurant you go to will have really great chinese food

sorta have to decide whether to go through Beijing or Shanghai on the flight in; which is going to be less bewildering qua getting great food, when I don't speak any Mandarine & will be alone?

how long would you be staying?

oh, my memory is awful, so i can't remember the "best" thing, but i do remember loving the easy access to xiaolongbao, the Shanghai style DUMPLINGS! that are filled with broth:

http://www.cityspoonful.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/DUMPLINGS!.jpg

Also, street food! i used to grab a Cōng Yóu Bǐng on the way to work EVERY DAY, and never got sick of it:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_WuCYra3-fYw/S_epPaFaNtI/AAAAAAAAAx4/ReJmmPhYtsw/s400/_MG_0513.jpg

those are both really simple things and don't do chinese food justice, but i was obsessed with both.

the conference in Xi'an is for like 5 days; I'm thinking of adding a couple of days at the start (or end? too?) in whatever city I connect in. I don't even know if this is a good idea, as I don't know how easy it's gonna be for me to get into town from the airport & then back out to the airport. I'm kinda stressed by the prospect just b/c I've heard that China's pretty unforgiving, even to the experienced traveler.

looooool, the top image broke because the part of the URL that mentioned d-umplin-gs was replaced with DUMPLINGS!!

xiaolongbao:

http://www.chinatownconnection.com/images/xiao_long_bao.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/vcl6w.jpg

mmmmmmm, DUMPLINGS!..

so, so good. bite the top off, suck out the broth, then slip the rest..

this is getting a little sexy

Z S I made some congyoubing today! (葱油饼）well to be accurate my dad made some dough and I froze it and fried it today and it was great. my dad kind of taught me how to make them too and it's pretty nifty actually, there's a reason why they're layered after you fry them

the conference in Xi'an is for like 5 days; I'm thinking of adding a couple of days at the start (or end? too?) in whatever city I connect in. I don't even know if this is a good idea, as I don't know how easy it's gonna be for me to get into town from the airport & then back out to the airport. I'm kinda stressed by the prospect just b/c I've heard that China's pretty unforgiving, even to the experienced traveler.

― Euler, Saturday, March 10, 2012 3:14 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

I think it's probably a wash between BJ and SH - lot of opportunities to get scammed either way. but if you're adventurous I'd go for it!

i make them myself, occasionally, although i'm a bad cook and it's not nearly as good as the real thing. but it's really fun to crack the egg on top of the pancake and then flip it all over.

hah I've never had the egg variation

xps, I found Beijing and Shanghai super-easy to negotiate despite not speaking any Mandarin. Shanghai's probably easier to get in to and out of - iirc Beijing's main airport is a fair distance out and Shanghai has a Maglev connecting the airport to the centre.

Food shouldn't be a problem - they're both international cities with a lot of foreign visitors. Shanghai feels more cosmopolitan and would probably be more manageable in a few days.

Shanghai has a Maglev connecting the airport to the centre.

at the time i was there, it was the fastest one in the world. not sure if that's still true but it's reaaaally fun.

yeah I guess I'm worried about eating at touristy places that aren't great just b/c I don't know my way around & don't speak the language (hold no currency)

I mean I'm in France now & my French isn't great but I eat ridically well b/c I've been here so many times, & I'd love to have a similar experience in China b/c of e.g. this thread but but but

the shanghai maglev caught on fire once!

xp, tbh, you can eat really well by going to a night market and just pointing at things. Lots of less touristy places will still have picture menus.

just want to add that xi'an has deep fucking local food culture. serious food destination imho.

also just spend those extra days in shanghai. take the superfast train out to xi'an.

http://www.chinaculture.org/gb/cn_zgwh/2004-06/28/content_52130.htm

i wish u could all read chinese or there was a good translation of this. great miniessays on shaanxi food by jia pingwa.

<i>They say southerners are meticulous and northerners are crude. If that's true, then northwesterners are even more crude, even more rough. Their language is thick, rich with falling tones. Men are swarthy and it's rare to find a girl with a narrow waist. And the cuisine is vibrant; light on the sugar but heavy on the salt. Ah, this blessed land. Shaanxi! North: the yellow loess plateaus. In the middle: the Wei River plains. Heading south, the Qinling Mountains begin to rise. Looking over the vast banquet of Shaanxi cuisine, most of it seems to come from the palace kitchens of earlier ages, the estates of the Tang bureaucrats, and then from the tables of the commoners, and then the minority peoples of the province add a few dishes, and we get a few of the famous dishes from the city restaurants. It looks like the food of the north, but there are a few differences. Of course, in my hometown (a place that I've played at writing into my fiction), we never saw any great banquets or ate extravagant dishes. But as I've wandered around the province, I've eaten</i> xiaochi <i>like an anthropologist collecting folk songs. Just like folk songs, these</i> xiaochi <i>let you understand a little bit about where they came from. So, as I've got a moment of free time and can put together a sentence or two, I ventured to write down what little I know about each dish. Think of it as an unpaid advertisement, and I'll think of it as a chance to relive the experience of sitting down to eat each dish, a chance to see if I can recall the particular flavor of all those minor delicacies.</i>

FUCK BB CODE

They say southerners are meticulous and northerners are crude. If that's true, then northwesterners are even more crude, even more rough. Their language is thick, rich with falling tones. Men are swarthy and it's rare to find a girl with a narrow waist. And the cuisine is vibrant; light on the sugar but heavy on the salt. Ah, this blessed land. Shaanxi! North: the yellow loess plateaus. In the middle: the Wei River plains. Heading south, the Qinling Mountains begin to rise. Looking over the vast banquet of Shaanxi cuisine, most of it seems to come from the palace kitchens of earlier ages, the estates of the Tang bureaucrats, and then from the tables of the commoners, and then the minority peoples of the province add a few dishes, and we get a few of the famous dishes from the city restaurants. It looks like the food of the north, but there are a few differences. Of course, in my hometown (a place that I've played at writing into my fiction), we never saw any great banquets or ate extravagant dishes. But as I've wandered around the province, I've eaten xiaochi like an anthropologist collecting folk songs. Just like folk songs, these xiaochi let you understand a little bit about where they came from. So, as I've got a moment of free time and can put together a sentence or two, I ventured to write down what little I know about each dish. Think of it as an unpaid advertisement, and I'll think of it as a chance to relive the experience of sitting down to eat each dish, a chance to see if I can recall the particular flavor of all those minor delicacies.

http://www.binglang.info/Storage/FCKPro/Files/%E5%87%89%E7%9A%AE%281%29.jpg

xi'an specialty, liang pi'r

http://img.huashanly.com/1001/1298861573433.jpg

heeeeeeey didn't david chang invent that

; )

<IMG SRC="http://www.dx.gansu.gov.cn/cn/rootimages/2011/05/21/1305852833341099-1305852833343171.jpg";>

羊肉泡motherfuckin馍

god.

http://www.dx.gansu.gov.cn/cn/rootimages/2011/05/21/1305852833341099-1305852833343171.jpg

http://food.chinese.cn/image/attachement/jpg/site2/20110118/0023ae99e1440e9f4de807.jpg

辣子蒜羊血

spicy garlicky lambsblood

meet u in xi'an bro

hell yeah xi'an

http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2347/2529658427_a8875b227c.jpg

hah I've never had the egg variation

dayo, are your folks not from TW? It's like a staple there.

Euler, I went to Xi'an 10 (!) years ago (I remember the year vividly because the Giants were in the WS and I had to watch it at same janky time) and the local delicacy of choice, as far as I could determine, is Baked Bun Soaked in Mutton Soup (romanized as Yang Rou Pao Mo). Hopefully they've cleaned up the air since then -- awful smog problem there when I went.

(Another vivid non-food memory is of a kid, probably 6-7 years old, standing alone on the thin median strip waiting to cross through heavy traffic.)

oh man this is helping! I'm sure the air will still be awful but in Xi'an I'd be with locals + Westerners who speak the language / study the culture & go there often. mostly I'm wimpy about making my way in the big cities in the east, but prob I should just do it.

dayo, are your folks not from TW? It's like a staple there.

― Nude Gingrich (Leee), Sunday, March 11, 2012 3:31 PM (56 minutes ago) Bookmark

nah they are from peking!

i'm sure you'll still find the air obscenely bad.

in the last 10 years, traffic has only got worse + crazy sprawl + it'll be hot and humid and the air will be like parking your car in a sauna and rolling down the windows.

xi'an is not a beautiful city.

http://www.binglang.info/Storage/FCKPro/Files/%E5%87%89%E7%9A%AE%281%29.jpg

wtf is this why don't I have some

tripe?

wheat gluten iirc

it looks spicy and delicious

the broad strips are some kind of 凉粉 I imagine

the brainy looking stuff is 烤麸 I think, a kind of wheat gluten

http://i.imgur.com/So3jq.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/pl9J8.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/1XDE5.jpg

its liangpir 凉皮儿 dude http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liang_pi

wheat flour, baking soda, salt + water -- mix into a paste -- put in cheesecloth and steam -- slice it up into those noodle things -- mix with black vinegar, sesame sauce, chili oil etc

liangpir specialty places in the middle of summer are full of broads. it's fucking good. i love it ice cold and spicy/sour/salty/sweet.

http://www.lovemshi.net/UploadFiles/2010-04/admin/2010041816312252411.jpg

ate this tonight braised spicy duck headsssss

i like this thread and wanted to ask about like... what sites are good for these kind of recipes? there's a really friendly and cool chinese supermarket near me now and i would like to make use of it a bit more - any general recommendation of stuff I should look out for would be really good. i've been experimenting with this and that but of course there lots of things stocked that i've no real idea about what they are.

christ this thread is making me hungry

hey LG i've found this blog pretty good - http://sunflower-recipes.blogspot.com/

ah cool, thanks a lot.

as a vegetarian i enjoy how the terrifying entrail looking things in this thread are always wheat gluten, and how the completely anonymous things are calcified blood or kidney mash or pancreas cakes

dayo this is a delicious thread thank u

^_^

one time i went to dim sum and ate like five rectangular patties (about 1/2" thick each) of what i thought was tofu before my friends informed me it was like long-stewed skin of some sort ... don't remember if it was pig or shark or cow or what

does that sound right?

or were they jerking me around?

hooray, that blog looks interesting and has a recipe for 魚香肉絲 which is pictured upthread and which various Chinese restaurants round here call "sea spicy shredded pork" - suspect the local variety is not very authentic but we like it, anyway

http://sunflower-recipes.blogspot.com/2008/09/fish-fragrant-pork.html

from its name I thought it had fish sauce in but it seems not?

one time i went to dim sum and ate like five rectangular patties (about 1/2" thick each) of what i thought was tofu before my friends informed me it was like long-stewed skin of some sort ... don't remember if it was pig or shark or cow or what

does that sound right?

― the late great, Tuesday, March 13, 2012 7:08 PM (30 minutes ago) Bookmark

description makes me think of radish cakes

http://i.imgur.com/O3tCh.jpg

but there is also 'tofu skin'

http://i.imgur.com/xt4vd.jpg

could also be a tofu skin roll

http://i.imgur.com/FVnKW.jpg

i think the fuschia dunlop books are good if u want to cook the food from this thread mostly because even if they are based on hunan/sichuan etc. they discuss crucial cooking methods at length and give you a good idea of how "real chinese food" can be reproduced.

yeah sounds like radish cake, man

http://static0.enjoyoung.cn/images/assets/Image/articles%20photo/20100224%E7%8C%AA%E7%9A%AE.jpg = pork skin

http://image4.club.sohu.com/pic/3a/a3/5be83a57eb26682929d3bf45e5b4a33a.jpg

http://www.techan-cn.com/uploads/allimg/110725/163025N58-0.jpg

anything like that?

yeah they looked just like the first "radish cake" picture that dayo posted, not so much like the others

it was rubbery and chewy iirc

Shanghai rice cake is sometimes my favorite food:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/46/157652886_5a5a98105c.jpg

especially because it doesn't look or taste anything like either rice or cake.

my friends really had me going - you're telling me i wasn't eating a thick skin steak, right?

hooray, that blog looks interesting and has a recipe for 魚香肉絲 which is pictured upthread and which various Chinese restaurants round here call "sea spicy shredded pork" - suspect the local variety is not very authentic but we like it, anyway

http://sunflower-recipes.blogspot.com/2008/09/fish-fragrant-pork.html

from its name I thought it had fish sauce in but it seems not?

― instant coffee happening between us (a passing spacecadet), Tuesday, March 13, 2012 11:25 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

iirc in fuschia dunlops book she talks about this, its to do w/ the recipe using the same flavourings they usually use to cook fish

I've never had it, but that Shanghai rice cake looks A+. You had me at gai lan.

http://www.glulu.com/UploadFile/%E9%9F%A9%E5%BC%8F%E7%82%92%E5%B9%B4%E7%B3%95500x375--175445449.jpg

韩式炒年糕

韩式 okay but on the menu at every restaurant north from the tip of the liaodong peninsula to the songliao plains.

精彩不容错过，eh？let's see if womanfriend.com lets me link to it

http://www.womanfriend.com/happy/UploadFiles_2413/200812/20081205085103329.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tteokbokki

one time i went to dim sum and ate like five rectangular patties (about 1/2" thick each) of what i thought was tofu before my friends informed me it was like long-stewed skin of some sort ... don't remember if it was pig or shark or cow or what
does that sound right?
― the late great, Tuesday, March 13, 2012 7:08 PM (30 minutes ago) Bookmark

not these i take it..
http://a3.att.hudong.com/68/61/01300000280411123780612007947_s.jpg
(pig skin)

not sure why radish cake would be rubbery..

or there are these things
http://img.dwnews.com/houtai/201005/2010052701402690659920.jpg

豬皮凍
which i have never tasted.

^ i assume the above is served cold.. hence "凍"

or pigs blood
http://http.cdnlayer.com/smoola/00/00/47/70752eead50a568a_m.jpg

^ f-ing tasty (and apparently good for you)

猪皮冻 is like..... pigskin + other stuff in the gelatin from the pig skin, right?

http://fjbak.86516.com/month_0708/20070807_8829271a803cf3223b77MiZ8gEOINzbE.jpg

蛙鱼儿

“蛙鱼儿”，江苏应该很多城市都有。只是，我只喜欢徐州的。起初，我并未听过如此的小吃。当朋友说带我去吃“蛙鱼儿”时，以为是一种鱼。当吃的时候才发现，就是用凉粉做的，一小点儿，一小点儿。放入盘中，加点醋，放点糖，再加上一些咸菜，最好再放进冰箱稍加冰冻，一盘可口的“蛙鱼儿”，就“出炉”了。轻轻喝上一口，凉爽入心。午饭或晚饭前喝上一碗，着实给炎热的夏天带去一丝凉意。

“蛙鱼儿”，江苏应该很多城市都有。只是，我只喜欢徐州的。起初，我并未听过如此的小吃。当朋友说带我去吃“蛙鱼儿”时，以为是一种鱼。当吃的时候才发现，就是用凉粉做的，一小点儿，一小点儿。放入盘中，加点醋，放点糖，再加上一些咸菜，最好再放进冰箱稍加冰冻，一盘可口的“蛙鱼儿”，就“出炉”了。轻轻喝上一口，凉爽入心。午饭或晚饭前喝上一碗，着实给炎热的夏天带去一丝凉意。

sorry chinese characters + italics are hard on the eyes

http://a3.att.hudong.com/68/61/01300000280411123780612007947_s.jpg

oh yeah, that's pretty much exactly what it looked like except it was in a shallow, broad rectangular pan, one layer thick, and w/ a sauce the same color as the stuff

that is thick pieces of stewed pig skin? guess my friend wasn't lying.

I hope I'm not being culturally insensitive, Asian food is yummy and nutritious. I like all of the vegetables in it. But many of the pictures show food that is not attractive in its presentation.

I went to a "real" Chinese restaurant once to have a real Chinese meal...and I was surprised at how few vegetarian items they had! Back to Charlie Chu's or whatever, steaming plate of veggies is fine, whether it's "authentic" or not.

i'm with you, a lot of this stuff looks pretty nasty to me

then again, i grew up eating and loving food that looked dirt, mud and poop, so i'm not one to judge

On the other hand, lots of Asian restaurants put pictures of the food in the windows...it never looks ugly there! I think it's people's inexperience with digital photography.

aw that pains me greatly

otoh I think the dishes you linked to look pretty damn good xp

I think it's sort of a truism that Chinese cuisines aren't typically vegetarian-friendly, even though it has a lot of great vegetable dishes.

i think chinese homecooking is a lot less meaty. especially anywhere south of hebei. a table of dishes is going to be mostly vegetables, rice and maybe meat would be the special singular important item, a half of a roast duck picked up at the xiaoqu gate and meant to last for that dinner, next day's lunch, and then another dinner. in my experience. but possibly eating at the home of a family in zhejiang or shandong is not feasible for everyone.

so. if it's a "real" chinese restaurant taht "real" chinese people go to, they might not order a tableful of

http://www.eat4.com/upimg/070724/4_085139.jpg
http://www.5nong.com/article/Img/2011-7/2011717174064252.jpg
http://pic.fuwoo.com/4175/Photo/L_ef0e58b1aaf44b77a894c7ee910317d6.jpg

yeah - when I stayed in this small town/city in guangxi, we would go to this stir-fry place where you'd just go to table with ten or so vegetables laid out and you'd point to three or four and the guy would take them and stir fry them into something really good. if there was meat it was ground meat and used very sparingly

also the place used this weird cooking oil that had the consistency of water, I'm sure it was some illegal or adulterated shit but it wasn't so bad

I think a vegetarian's real beef (ha ha) with china is that when you ask for something like tofu, they'll still find a way to put ground beef or pork in it

right.

i think also, actual chinese vegetarian restaurants tend to be horrible (especially outside of china).

yeah it's all this deep fried soy fake meat jizzed with sweet sauce ish

dylannn, what are those three delicious-looking dishes?

炒空心菜 stirfried kongxin cai (semiaquatic, tropical plant grown as a leaf vegetable)
凉拌莴笋丝 cold salad of wosun strips (cultivar of lettuce grown primarily for its thick stem, used as a vegetable)
芝麻酱拌生菜 sesame sauce and lettuce

this is one of my favorite threads

http://www.palacechinese.com.au/images/big/b_Chicken_Feet.JPG

fried hands of small children o_O

the realest shit i ever ate

http://www.3qhouse.com/blog/attachment/201107/16/15301_1310807666IDr2.jpg

in dongbei there's this great thing i was reminded of by that picture of lettuce and sesame sauce

when i lived in vancouver, i lived in one room of a vancouver special on no. 2 road and the landlord's elderly parents from haerbin lived in the lower level, tended a garden

they ate 生菜沾酱, which is any green leafy vegetable (lettuce, dandelion greens, whatever), washed and then dipped in a sauce made from pork + fermented soybean paste kinda like this recipe http://www.yihesu.com/?action-viewnews-itemid-973-parenttype-menu so good

I bet that 凉拌莴笋丝 has some sichuan peppercorn oil dripped over it

http://blogs.wsj.com/scene/2012/06/11/cctvs-bite-of-china-takes-off-and-steam-pots-pigs-feet-benefit-too/

China would love the Food network, too!

http://img5.itiexue.net/1400/14002013.jpg

哦

http://i937.photobucket.com/albums/ad215/jiaoqu/hardlyworthit.jpg

watched the first episode of that 'bite of china' series

mostly about special ingredients used in chinese food and how they're harvested

felt sadness and despair that these rare fungi and fish will be overharvested now that everybody wants them after watching this delicious documentary

http://i.imgur.com/hWwfg.jpg

http://shanghaiist.com/2012/09/12/dish_of_the_day_pork_ribs_di_shui_d.php

anybody wanna stop by real quick :(

watched some of 'a bite of china' last night; p.good

drunken frog looks...

http://images.meishij.net/p/20121012/88f5df59d3531457f73ff6dd61efed58.jpg

http://www.meishij.net/zuofa/suantianpaigu_4.html

*dies*

I don't eat ribs at all but i would tear those up.

http://images.china.cn/attachement/jpg/site1000/20120919/0019b91ec8ad11c364ef52.jpg

no dude, don't eat the table, the huge cake is right there

http://i.imgur.com/ZkPB4nh.jpg

http://www.0817china.com/cbttmtu/2008/200809/20080918006.jpg

【开水白菜】

在周恩来几次三番的盛邀之下，女客才勉强用小勺舀了些汤，谁知一尝之下立即目瞪口呆，狼吞虎咽之余不忘询问总理：为何白水煮白菜竟然可以这般美味？

boiled cabbage. floating in a clarified broth made from pork, game, jinhua ham, dried scallops. properly made, this is one of the best things you will ever taste.

http://showshanti.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/20100331_Baishi-Cun-family-Zhou-ShowShanti_ShowShanti-5.jpg

http://showshanti.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/20100322_Chengdu-chili-liangfen-Luodai-Ancient-Town-mung-bean-jelly-ShowShanti-Sichuan-spicy_ShowShanti.jpg

川北凉粉

http://img.blog.voc.com.cn/jpg/200908/12/5988_926e2a934c3ad15.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/fwsz3Jk.jpg

http://shanghaiist.com/2013/05/15/dish_of_the_day_braised_pork_should.php

I used to really really love bacon. Then I was into ribs. Nowadays, the pork shoulder braise is the highest form of pig I know. I want all of them.

http://i975.photobucket.com/albums/ae232/daggerlee/null_zpsa0879cd5.jpg

my parents made garlic scapes tonight

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsT-4oJuqTU

http://blogs.wsj.com/scene/2013/08/23/consider-the-gua-bao/

Oh man, thank you for posting that! I go to Taiwan in February! Gonna eat all the gua baos, had not heard of them before!

http://i.imgur.com/dSU42yX.jpg

Something in spicy black bean sauce? Was gonna say squid, but maybe some sort of pork fat?

my guess is 蒜泥白肉

translation, please!

mashed garlic and boiled slices of pork belly + some chili oil and other stuff

might be something else, though.

http://img208.poco.cn/mypoco/myphoto/20101116/10/5571590520101116100551083_640.jpg

i like it when the slices of pork are rolled up with a slice of cucumber of equal size and thickness inside of them.

how would you translate dope (adj)

Xp is that cold? I think ive had that

i was reading about vegetarian food on this thread. i have a long story about eating vegetarian food:

in guangzhou, i'm either sick of or unimpressed by cantonese or southern food in general and quite often, i seek out a lanzhou lamian place. they're pretty standard across china, despite being operated by usually muslim chinese from different ethnic groups and regions-- like, the menu is fairly standard and the pictures of the dishes on the wall are pretty standard and there's usually a picture of the blue mosque in istanbul or wherever the blue mosque is, and quite often oversaturated pictures of western chinese grasslands and super blue-green lakes, but the way that they make the actual food might not correspond to the picture on the wall, so you might get cumin lamb and it might be crispy slices of lamb dusted with cumin or it might be a briefly stewed dish with tomatoes and tomato soup and lamb mixed up, but you can order cumin lamb, no matter where you go. i like that standardization and maybe when i first went to china, i liked the sort of refuge from chineseness or at least chinese food and it was cool to hang out with a bunch of guys that were very much on the outside of chinese society in important ways and could barely read the menu at their restaurant and quite honestly maybe it's like americans hanging out at irish bars in shanghai or something, really stupid but i did feel that way before and i did appreciate the foreignness of those types of places, anyways right now i just like the chance to escape the cantonese love of rice starch products and sweetness and i want CILANTRO and vinegar and spice and products made from wheat. most of the lanzhou lamian restaurants in guangzhou are run by people from qinghai, which i know nothing about and have never been to, and it can be interesting to talk to the people running them, at least, and it's cheap and it's always good, and even my bougiest chinese friends will usually agree to eating at a lanzhou lamian restaurant because they think of them as "clean" and less likely to use recycled cooking oil due to muslim dietary rules and that's their theory not mine and fuck it, i'm not going to eat a 50 rmb bowl of ramen in tianhe when we could go get some pulled noodles and drink some sweet tea or coca-cola out of a little glass bottle with a long straw and look at pictures of the tibetan plateau and it's about 12 rmb at most for a bowl of noodles and a half hour sitting in air conditioning.

the other day, in a haze of hangover depression and self-pity, i took the wrong street coming home and came across a street that had a few restaurants on it, somewhere near luoxi metro station. i went into a lanzhou lamian restaurant, looked pretty standard: girl from qinghai working the front of house. i noticed that it was particularly clean and along with tidied up variations on standard lanzhou lamian restaurant pictures, there was a big banner on the wall that was talking in vague terms about how eating green food, healthy food leads to a healthier spirit. i also noticed that the menu was a bit strange. like, there was no "beef pulled noodles" or anything, but just a generic "lanzhou pulled noodles." the only time the character for meat occurred on the menu was in 肉夹馍, meat in bread, which i think should always be made with really greasy boiled for hours in coffee-colored broth pork belly and raw chili peppers and cilantro but in these types of places involves a sort of dense flatbread and generic stirfried beef. i got that and i got "braised noodles," which should have been listed as "braised beef noodles." okay. when i got the bread and meat, i thought it was okay but the texture was off and i opened it to discover it was stuffed with tiny cubes of mushroom and a pressed tofu product. my suspicions were confirmed. i had somehow managed to find the only vegetarian halal fake lanzhou lamian restaurant in china. and when my noodles came, they weren't even pulled noodles and were floating in a slightly sweet tomato broth and the meat had been replaced with a multilayered bean curd product.

the usual patrons of lanzhou lamian restaurants, single men silently eating plates of noodles and lamb under buzzing fans while pretending to check their cellphones for messages from people that won't ever message them, were replaced by a group of chatty older cantonese-speaking ladies that had brought some kind of fermented yeast drink to accompany their meal and talked about eating vegetarian food during their meal. i felt deeply out of place and dissatisfied and confused.

should be ice cold imho

http://pic2.nipic.com/20090423/562443_132051082_2.jpg

fuckin nipic

anyways, here's some roujiamo maybe

http://img.gudumami.cn/gu/attachment/Mon_1005/116084_TSomwnTnZeWSVmf.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/TWObHdO.jpg

I am pretty intimidated about feeding myself in China. I want the bestest Chinese food experiences, but with zero language skills I don't know how to shot!

you're gonna get food poisoning on your first day in china and you'll only eat white rice and plain congee for the rest of your trip

That is not going to happen. I have a stomach of steel that will have been acclimated in Taiwan!

i used to just stand up and point at dishes on other people's tables. kinda rude but people didn't seem to mind.

I do this already in Chinese restaurants (the really awesome ones in Montgomery County, MD), so y'know might as well continue. . .

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/whats-the-difference-between-a-szechuan-pepper-and-a-vibrator-8809364.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9CJqs5s23c

http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1308358/confucius-cuisine-takes-sage-whole-new-level

http://i.imgur.com/G0lEF0I.jpg

it's mooncake seaaaaaassooooooooonn

http://i.imgur.com/WlTnmz4.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/yjpzPlK.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/fXiJlXA.jpg

lol http://i.imgur.com/ninukad.jpg http://i.imgur.com/pAKuHwY.jpg

i've never had a good mooncake.

Mooncakes are awesome fuiud

lotus seed paste mooncake==untouchable

I've had chicken feet in black bean sauce. What are other preparations I should be seeking out?

http://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/09/chinas-newest-innovation-live-crab-vending-machines/279650/

Dowd's cliche of the day: Mooncakes look too good to eat.

i never saw this phenomenon before but everyday when i arrive at work i get off the metro in tianhe and for a couple square kilometers around the metro exit mouth there are people holding signs saying they'll buy mooncake coupons and you can buy the coupons they buy at a discount and regift them, i guess. i'm honestly not sure how it works.

i don't know. i've only eaten one meal in the last three days and am so hungry that i would eat any food product offered to me right now so it's hard to write what i hate about mooncakes but

sometimes too dense, too oily, too sweet but i understand that
there are many types of mooncakes and i've just never had the right kind.

I've never eaten a mooncake for the same reason I've never eaten a rainbow or a unicorn. No matter how hungry I am I could never eat a monet...

oh the pics above are misleading - 99% of mooncakes look like this:

http://i.imgur.com/e10dhqd.jpg

http://js.people.com.cn/forum/upload/day_110901/201109011400013164.jpg

whatever, it was a mooncake that looks like an ASS

http://i.imgur.com/ZF2gKeE.jpg

the classic mooncake for me is the red bean mooncake, limit yourself to a slice every hour or so at minimum. it's dense, yeah, but i dunno, no denser than a dark chocolate tort or piece of fudge. i used to hate the duck egg yolk ones but now i've come to appreciate the yolk. even the lotus paste ones i tolerate

right, i guess the idea is to enjoy them over a longer period of time with bitter hot tea to cut through the sweetness and richness rather than biting into them like a hostess cupcake.

That looks like a cross between a pork pie and these http://static4.depositphotos.com/1005455/276/i/950/depositphotos_2766865-Jelly-fruit.jpg I don't want that...

http://www.smartbeijing.com/blogpix/flyer1358756775.jpg

http://www.gdfs.gov.cn/yswh/UploadFiles_2001/200705/20070514174719918.jpg

艇仔粥

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323595004579065142981469178.html

Hell Yeah

Revisiting the country last year, Mr. Hales managed to train informally in two Dongbei restaurants, in preparation for Blackbrick's late-October opening. "I like to find something new that I can introduce," said Mr. Hales, who has opened two Korean-style restaurants and a food truck in Miami in the last few years. "I'm excited to do it again with Chinese."

But could we get real chinese dudes to do this, not white dudes who backpacked in asia for a month

Thanks

if he at least has a Chinese chef can we give him a partial pass

i think a fusion of cuisines that uses the system or thinking of a mother cuisine to present local products is basically a good idea, whether it's like west coast chefs using japanese-inspired presentation and general approach to seafood or produce, whatever, or even say on the other side japanese chefs using french or general european approaches to japanese foods. but... i feel like in this case you've got guys doing it sort of backwards and trying to work with chinese flavors and tastes and products without being interested in or finding out why the general overall system works, starting with like how a piece of meat is cut, the method of building flavors in a dish beyond just a list of what goes in it, i dunno.

like my boy dyao said it's kind of fucked up and lame to think that it would work, like if a dude claimed, "yeah, i trained informally in a bistro in rouen for two months and now i'm going to take french cuisine to the next level."

i don't know what the nyc or miami chinese dining scene is like but in vancouver at least it's always extra depressing when a place opens up selling DUMPLINGS! and the spurious idea of chinese food brought up to the level of every yaletown/kits small plates place set down in some 1930s art deco in a gentrified chinatown building and a drinks menu that features ginger and longan syrup martinis because there are lots of great and innovative and hey even expensive if you want and hey they even have tasting menus if you want and hey there's a great wine list if you want high end and medium end chinese places within a 20 minute drive or a 5 minute walk depending on where you are.

vancouver does manage to make room for places like bao bei and still maintain the best chinese restaurants in north america though.

i guess i could ease off and say i guess it's cool that these guys would go to harbin and be inspired or something... but this kind of shit is just fucking lame and i can't get behind it.

otm all around

there is something really lame about what i have to assume is a superficial take on a deep cuisine. i want chinese restaurants that bring a mother broth from overseas and that's their one claim to fame. i want pots fermenting somewhere in Humboldt next to weed grows. mostly i want really good actual chinese chefs to get recognition.

not sure if you've had a chance to eat at Mission Chinese Food but imo that's an example of a "creative" take on Sichuan working. I prefer traditional, but I appreciate what he's trying to do. it's not disrespectful (calling out Z&Y at launch was just his way of saying hi) and most of his stuff works.

even so, i wish that 10% of the people that went to Mission Chinese Food would also visit Pot Sticker to have the real thing.

you know, like a food truck, but in chinese

I want to go to Flushing for noodles so bad.

nah you wanna go to flushing for a rack of muslim lamb ribs

http://i975.photobucket.com/albums/ae232/daggerlee/null_zps4f7a3d7b.jpg

Well yes, but that is always a true statement unrelated to anything else.

Where do I want to go for noodles?

Maybe the place chinavision was into, that could work.

http://m.yelp.com/biz/king-5-noodle-house-flushing

noodles i think are really easy and satisfying to make at home with limited actual work time and limited ingredients: flour, eggs, bones, meat, things to flavor a broth.

surely just buy the noodles?

I find a lot of noodles to be unexciting but my dirty Beijing mouth will always open for 炸酱面

no. do not just buy noodles. i swear to god. flour, egg, and water and after a few tries, you'll be able to whip it up quicker than it takes a pot of rice to boil and you can start to figure out what you need to do to customize chewiness, experiment with shapes.

the broth is easier to get better than any noodle place and within a batches of noodles, you can produce a noodle that might not be as good as the best places but will definitely be better than storebought and at the very least it's easy to produce a good rustic chewy noodle that's incredibly satisfying with a bowl of beef broth with a handful of cilantro and green onion on top or with like fried tomato and egg or other simple dish.

braising beef and putting big chewy noodles into the pot is nearly impossible to screw up and is an amazing meal. same with fat flat noodles and fried tomato and egg. cannot go wrong.

http://img6.ph.126.net/g8-V45ZU00gEsXCuHzLToA==/1296755217723776966.jpg

All hail thick chewy noodles, death to mushy flabby noodles

http://big5.citygf.com/FD/014001/200909/W020090907378336412629.jpg

i hope that picture works but if not

http://big5.citygf.com/FD/014001/200909/t20090907_116849.html

濑粉 làifěn or laaih fun??? it's starchy and savory thick like campbells cream of chicken soup

Is that hot or cold? Looks awesome either way.

yo dylaaaaaaaan the best canto dict is http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/dictionary/

so that'd be: laai fan (6, 2)

it's hot.

my friend took me to eat it and was like, "do you think it's weird???" and it is a bit strange the combination of thick starchy and slightly gooey noodles but it manages to push all sorts of childhood school lunch / comfort food buttons at once that it's so familiar and good.

http://z.abang.com/d/guangzhoumeishi/1/3/b/X/-/-/1313572820.jpg

http://file20.mafengwo.net/M00/95/6C/wKgB3FETu2SACFdPAAiZjuBmpjI56.groupinfo.w600.jpeg

i got it from here--- http://www.mafengwo.cn/i/1105145.html
check it out for pictures of real chinese food + my new hometown

same friend took me to eat "the best" 肠粉/chángfěn/cheuhng fan in guangzhou for lunch
穗银肠粉 suìyín chángfěn
name changed after breaking away from local branch 银记肠粉 yínjìchángfěn
and it was pretty impressive cheuhng fan

frank bruni eats his way thru china

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/16/dining/reviews/chinas-dining-acrobatics.html?ref=international-home&;_r=0

The skin of this duck! Almost as thin as paper, almost as crisp as a potato chip. And the meat! Dark, rich — the chocolate of flesh.

gross, dude

http://i.imgur.com/4Xbvks0.png

i guess she's hungry!

I would expect her to pull a Mr. Burns

http://dc.eater.com/archives/2011/10/31/10-chinese-dishes-that-real-chinese-people-dont-eat.php

FYI Eater, a type of sweet and sour pork / chicken is pretty popular in Hong Kong, where it's known as Pineapple Chicken

http://i.imgur.com/bgHOv4p.jpg

i've had guo bao rou at a few '''''real''''' chinese places & its pretty much sweet n sour pork

Sweet and sour pork is wonderful

yeah... sweet and sour is eaten in china as just straight up 糖醋xxx / tángcù(sugar+vinegar)xxx, like 糖醋里脊肉, but there are lots of other sweet and sour combos that involve pork and chicken. in northern jiangsu, i ate flattened deepfried pork with sweetened with strips of haws jelly and soured with black vinegar.

salad... you've got 凉拌 liángbàn, which often take the form of vegetables, tofu, etc. tossed with sesame oil, vinegar, soy. in dongbei, i ate a lot of fresh greens dipped in sauce. no mention of concerns over dysentery.

and there is broccoli in east asia. sometimes people eat it with beef.

http://food.chinese.cn/image/attachement/jpg/site2/20110118/0023ae99e1440e9f4de807.jpg

辣子蒜羊血
chili garlic sheepblood

将羊扳倒，白刀子进，红刀子出，热血接入盆中。用马尾箩滤去杂质，倒进同量的食盐水，细棍搅之，匀，凝结成块后改切成较小的块，投开水锅煮，小火血固如嫩豆腐，捞出，呈褐红色，舌舔之略咸。
　　
至此羊血制成，可泡在清水盆里备用。
　　
清晨，或是傍晚，食摊安在小巷街头，摆设十分简单，一个木架，架子上是各类碗盏，分别放在盐、酱、醋、蒜水、油泼辣子、香油。木架旁是一火炉，炉上有锅，水开而不翻滚，锅里煮的是切成小方块的羊血。羊血捞在碗里，并无许多汤，加各类调料便可下口了：羊血鲜嫩汤味辣、呛、咸，花椒、小茴香味窜扑鼻。
　　
咸阳有一人，可以说什么的都不缺，只是缺钱；也可以说什么的都没有，只是有病。病不是大病，体弱时常感冒。中医告之：每日喝人参汤半碗，喝过半月即根除感冒。此人拍拍钱包，一笑了之。卖辣子蒜羊血的说：买羊骨砸碎熬汤每早喝一碗；再每晚吃羊血一碗吧。如此早晚不断，一月后病断。

Put the lamb on the ground and stick it in the neck with a knife. Drain the blood into a basin. Use a sieve to filter any impurities out of the blood. Add an equal amount of brine to the blood. Stir. Divide. After the blood congeals, cut it into smaller pieces. Poach over a low flame. After cooking, the blood cubes will have a texture similar to soft tofu. The blood will change to a reddish-brown and will have a slightly salty flavor.

At this point, the blood can be stored in clean water in a basin.

Early in the morning or around dusk, you will see the sheep blood sellers setting up. At their stalls, you will see dishes with all of the condiments for the dish prepared: salt, soy, vinegar, garlic paste, chili and oil, and sesame oil. Beside the condiments, there will be a small stove, where a pot of soup and cubes of sheep blood simmer. The blood is tossed into a bowl, just a little bit of soup with it, and all of the seasonings and condiments are set on top.

I knew a guy from Xianyang, a village near Xi'an. He wasn't lacking anything but money; he didn't have anything, either, except a cold. He went to a doctor of Chinese medicine, who told him: Drink half a bowl of ginseng soup everyday for two weeks and you'll be fine. The doctor chuckled and tapped his wallet. He went to a guy that ran a sheep blood kiosk, who told him: Every morning, buy some lamb bones and boil soup from them; every night, eat some sheep blood. Keep going for a month and you'll be back to normal.

http://www.csklx.net/upload/201392775445177.jpg

牛杂 only missing curry fish balls and ketchup on top

http://www.yoyomacau.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/rjnz2.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/3ekbg24.jpg

Had some of this on a stick

Excellent with soy sauce and mustard

Well tell us what it is, for christ's sake.

Pig intestine

looks pretty awesome, imo

dylann, is ketchup on top a thing? for specific dishes or just as a condiment?

i don't think i ever saw ketchup as a condiment in china before living in guangzhou. i often see it offered as a condiment/topping for things like: fish balls, beef blood and guts in soup like above, 手抓饼 (??? it's like a flaky dough thing with ham and egg in it and the sauce options are ketchup or mayo), chicken wings, sausages and other meat things on a stick, other streetside and mallside snacks.

Ketchup is a condiment with many Chinese characteristics. Sweet, sour + umami all in one sauce. It's great

My dad has been known to make marinades and sauces with ketchup. You can make a pretty good 红烧 anything with it

i never see it in the north though, i don't think. maybe i do. i wanted to speculate about the conservativeness of northern foodways vs. cantonese cuisine's or the cantonese eater's approach to outside influences or maybe ketchup came via hk.

It'll catch pretty soon I think

It's very suited to the Chinese palate

It's also true that it's been in HK since forever, and not the American kind either

Most of the big HK saucehouses have their own version

http://i.imgur.com/yTpgVl0.jpg

northerners do cook with it, too. but yeah they love their ketchup in the south, mh.

makes sense, thanks!

http://travel.cnn.com/explorations/eat/40-taiwanese-food-296093

Taiwanese food is seriously incredible

Inspired to make an oyster omelette tonight

what are the best chinese dishes with game birds

I went to a place in Beijing that put something like 7+ different kinds of game birds into a big soup

Some of the birds were really tiny

There drumsticks were comically sized and hard to eat

The bones could function as toothpicks afterwards

But in general I think duck and goose are staples, and you can get them every which way

the idea of putting them in a soup is that it boils all the meat off the tiny bones i guess

duck and goose work well in all sorts of cuisines, especially those with ample source of umami/sourness/sweetness to complement the fattiness, game birds have more flavour but are mostly very lean

Yeah that's true although my favorite duck preparation doesn't use sourness/sweetness at all

http://i.imgur.com/fRLHFY8.jpg

The end result is quite lean and gamey, probably due to the smoking process. I'm not sure where the fat goes

Plum sauce is definitely a thing but there are many different ways of eating a duck

I'm not aware of any broadly popular recipes that call for a game bird

But I'm sure there are some regions of China that will use a game bird in a regional specialty

Do pigeons count as game birds

You can see how some people have chosen to cook pigeon here

http://www.meishichina.com/YuanLiao/GeZi/1/

yeah pigeons count

Mom uncorked a bottle of Great Wall red wine for some reason

http://i975.photobucket.com/albums/ae232/daggerlee/7A4233FC-0C7D-4844-B704-BC727DF479FA_zpsln9pbp3k.jpg

We've had it for god knows how long

Tastes awful. Really dry and bitter

Looks awesome, about as appealing as licking red vermouth off my carpet.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/12/02/248195661/ketchup-the-all-american-condiment-that-comes-from-asia?ft=1&f=1015

Wow you could argue that ketchup came from China originally. Crazy world. Globalization. Trade.

Kind of funny "ketchup" just meant a sauce originally and that tomato ketchup took a while to catch on. Kind of reminds me of the Americanization of "salsa" they mentioned, where it mostly means some runny tomato-based sauce you eat on tortilla chips but is basically just any of a number of sauces.

We're all lactose intolerant.

That's not true, is it!? I drink milk every day!

http://so.cntv.cn/language/english/?qtext=snacking&type=0

in case the link doesn't work: cctv's snacking across China doc

I'm eating real chinese food all the time now

It's fucking amazing

龜 please tell me about a delicious Chinese breakfast

I'm eating real chinese food all the time now

It's fucking amazing

me too/yes, yes it is

I am also curious about actual delicious Chinese breakfast; all I know is that Taipei has tons of great bakeries, so breakfast for me is delicious, delicious bread/pastry. Oh and sometimes noodle soup.

I do not get congee, but I would like to understand the appeal.

quincie just get up in the morning and take a walk and figure out where all the Chinese people are eating and walk in and point at things

http://travel.cnn.com/explorations/eat/40-taiwanese-food-296093

Think I've hit about ten of these in the first week, but have not yet visited a night market (that will happen in the next few days) and will no doubt knock off a bunch of these in one go.

xpost: there is definitely a Taiwan breakfast thing that involves an egg and a thin pancake/crepe type thing that I will try. Also various soup sorts of things. None of these places has an English menu (or any menu, actually), so I will definitely point and say thank you six hundred times and hopefully not come off as a complete asshole.

But still, congee. What is up with that? I like lots of the pickled things, so maybe the idea is to use congee as a vehicle for that stuff? IDGI though, would rather have a nice bowl of rice.

龜 please tell me about a delicious Chinese breakfast

― pretty krulls make glaives (flamboyant goon tie included), Sunday, January 19, 2014 12:37 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark

I went out for a walk this morning and bought some scallion pancakes from this really nice lady on the street

And this like """pastry""" made with scallions and eggs

It's just like 100x better than what you can get in NYC Chinatown. And I was just there

Like the people are the same but the ingredients, how they cook it, what they cook it on, I think it all makes a difference

Maybe it's the heavy metals + chemicals

But every iteration is just better over here man

But still, congee. What is up with that? I like lots of the pickled things, so maybe the idea is to use congee as a vehicle for that stuff? IDGI though, would rather have a nice bowl of rice.

― quincie, Sunday, January 19, 2014 5:44 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

Yeah you eat the pickled salty things and drink the congee to take the edge off

It's like a chaser

It's an acquired taste

I like to just have congee plain by itself, it's really good for settling your stomach or if you're feeling queasy you know

xpost: there is definitely a Taiwan breakfast thing that involves an egg and a thin pancake/crepe type thing that I will try

I've had this it's really really good

scallion pancakes sound so good

http://i.imgur.com/DgatTcJ.jpg

You know what's even better than soup DUMPLINGS!? These lil guys

I have not had those lil guys, but I have had a bigger version (steam bun that gets crisped on the bottom).

Hard to imagine anything better than soup DUMPLINGS!, tho.

I have had "crummy" North American (Canadian) versions of scallion pancakes, for breakfast too, one of my favourite ways to start a day

Been pestering all administrative bodies to get my ass to China asap

The DUMPLINGS! I just posted are also soup DUMPLINGS! they have soup inside of them

It's darker grittier reboot of the soup dumpling

BTW some of the western food is better here than in America too

For example the fancy cheeses are imported from France where they're allowed to use unpasteurized milk

Like I have never really liked brie but my roommate bought some French brie and it was fantastic

China is turning me into a food libertarian

Bathe me in gutter oil

Think my heart just stopped

It's been nice, posting here

Please don't die before I get to Shanghai! That rhymes, see.

congee is nice warm comfort food. spiced with ginger and add a dash of pepper and spring onion what's not to like?

Surely you're being ironic

像你的婚禮當天的雨

I have a real chinese food cooking question. Say I am a real chinese home cook, and I'm making something that requires beef or chicken (or fish, or pork, whatevs) broth. What do I do if I'm not equipped to make that stuff from scratch? Do I get a can from the supermarket, or is there a frozen version, or do I go to my local brothmonger and ask for some plain broth to take home?

You can totally get a can from the supermarket! #nevercookedrealchinesefoodinhislife

Honestly have never been to a Chinese person's kitchen that didn't have this in the pantry

http://i.imgur.com/LNyVgTS.jpg

I don't think beef stock is a big part of Chinese cooking since it wasn't until recently that beef became a part of Chinese cuisine (iirc cows were too valuable in the field to use for food)

Pork bone soup is a big thing but I can't really recall if there are any recipes that call for only pork stock

Hungry now, FYI.

I suppose this is the thread where I confess that I've eaten chicken bouillon powder by the spoonful from the can :(

Isn't that called the #highlyfe?

Hmmmmm OK I'm think the answer is "go out for beef noodle soup, do not try to make at home." Which is fine because there are a couple of places to choose from within a ten-minute walk, and it costs like $7 USD for both of us WITH BEER.

Why would I cook this at home, is the real question.

Yeah seriously

I think there's more going on in beef noodle soup than just the stock

Much more

Yeah I'm being an idiot.

I think I turned a real chinese food corner recently: went out for indian and found using a fork kind of weird/awkward.

chicken stock
http://www.ocado.com/catalog/images-hires/11114011_H.jpg?identifier=1678083e7ff90bd404baad3f60bffa37

beef noodle soup at home
http://www.acrimonie.com/a/src/138973192542.jpg

I really don't think there's ever an economy in making your own stock unless you have access to a lot of bones and you are feeding 50 people.

I suppose this is the thread where I confess that I've eaten chicken bouillon powder by the spoonful from the can :(

well isn't that the basis for...

http://static1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130117092525/evchk/images/thumb/c/c6/17la2p3.jpg/480px-17la2p3.jpg

http://images.sbar.com.cn/2010/04/21/ee549d22215dd5b1340fcf5e9e507a3c.jpg

^^^ I love greens prepared like this. I have not managed to replicate it at home very well.

I thought of this thread yesterday when I was buying some steam buns from a department store food hall and the guy selling them assured me, "no MSG, no chicken powder!" And I'm thinking "but chicken powder is a *good* thing, right?"

i think you could make yourself a nice beef noodle soup by following basically

-- get some fatty but not too fatty beef, preferably with some bones. don't be too picky about what beef is going in there. short rib would even work. and you can put some beef tendon in too, if you like that.

-- boil beef briefly, drain water and clean beef with cold water.

-- hot oil, add white part of scallion, whole cloves of garlic, pixian bean paste, a tiny amount of sugar or a small amount of tomato, add in beef, let it brown and get dank on the bottom of the pan, add in star anise + cassia + sichuan peppercorn + salt + maybe some dried chilies if you want it spicy.

-- cover everything in water and let it boil away until your beef is reduced to a pieces that can barely withstand the pressure of a chopstick squeeze.

-- optional but not fully recommended: strain your stock and remove the beef, freeze the stock and scrape off the pearly white fat from the top, reheat.

-- grab some flour and a big bowl, add eggs and water and salt and make dough, knead it until it's barely kneadable anymore, roll it out, cut it into strips, rolls the strips flat or however the hell you want to make noodles.

-- boil noodles in separate pot of salted water, take them out and give them a rinse so that they won't affect the perfectly balanced viscosity of your soup with floury thickness. put in bowl. if you're feeding a bunch of people, the noodles can chill in the bowl for a while, don't worry.

-- optional: get some fresh greens and let them barely cook through on top of your stock, just dunking them in and out with chopsticks.

-- cover cooked noodles in bowl with dank brownish red (red from the bean paste!) beef stock, agitate to destick the noodles.

-- put greens on top, put beef on top making sure to equally divide fatty or white skin sort of pieces and tendon pieces if those are in there, put pickled mustard greens on top, put a sprinkling of green scallion on top which should be leftover from putting the white part in the oil.

-- provide black vinegar when serving to allow the individual diner to balance the fattiness of the stock with the acidity of the vinegar.

it sounds like a lot of work but i promise it's not.

shopping in the west, i can't bear the price charged for lamb but careful supermarket shopping or a kindly butcher can provide you with very, very cheap lamb bones that are still fairly meaty. brewing up a milky white rich as fuck lamb soup threaded with boiled off shreds of meat and then turning it into a welcoming home for your simple noodles and a bit of vinegar, amazing. and i like doing this thing i learned from a qinghai restaurant where they prepare a tomato base in a separate pan, just cooking down some tomatoes, bit of salt, bit of cumin, bit of chili, and then mixing tomato mixture + lamb soup + maybe some stirfried lamb liver or other lamb pieces + noodles in a bowl.

oh, cilantro with that lamb soup, of course. heaped with cilantro at the end.

and the availability of the type of chicken appropriate for making stock is... the situation is not the same in china, you get a lot of old, old chickens that can't be turned into anything but stock. throw it in, head and all and boil it for an afternoon, then add some goji berries or whatever other sorta medicinal and tasty elements at the end: good to go.

and pork bones, man, if you're not in china, somebody somewhere is just throwing away perfectly good pork bones that you could be making a simple stock with.

i think the chinese home stock situation is a lot less complicated than you're all making it out to be. they just boil bones and meat! there's like serious chinese stock recipes but you're not going down that road, you're not clarifying anything! you parboil and clean whatever you're going to boil, bone or meatwise, then let it ride.

quincie the veg there is tung choi 通菜 it's very soft (the stem is hollow). fry the veg in the wok with a bit of shrimp paste and garlic (and a tiny bit of chopped chilli) is all you need. takes 5 mins.

Hah up north we call that 空心菜 (hollow heart vegetable)

通菜 seems more elegant though

Excellent home cooking tips, thanking u!

I'm definitely gonna give it a go when I'm back in the states, dylannnnnnnn. Right now I'm in a super under-equipped kitchen in a rental apartment (even making rice was a struggle until nice landlady lent us her rice maker), so I'm not gonna undertake much in the way of cooking adventures here (here = Taipei, I'm here for another two weeks before Shanghai). But I'm c&p your recipe/instructions for use back in DC. I have good access to inter'l/"ethnic" grocery stores in the DC 'burbs, so I should be able to made this bones things happen.

Ken c, did not know about shrimp paste thing. I never know what the saucy stuff is. Oyster sauce, sometimes? I dunno but I have yet to run into sauteed green stuff here that I don't like a lot. Had some pea shoots that were so good I swear I might give up pork for them. Not really but I mean, close.

oh dylannnnnn and anyone else, I posed this question to dayo on 77 borad, any insight?

Hey dayo do you know anything about Dandong? Should I go to there after N. Korea y/n (it would mean less time in Beijing and also more $$$).

― quincie, Wednesday, January 29, 2014 10:56 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Don't know anything

Now that dylannnnnn has resurfaced, you should ask him

I believe he's been to at least one of the NK border towns

― 龜, Wednesday, January 29, 2014 11:32 AM (26 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://pic6.nipic.com/20100330/2590383_154854004777_2.jpg

lol http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-laLziW8cjpU/TzhrIJUpq3I/AAAAAAAABlE/BjpANfJ-Nxk/s1600/IMG_7493_watermark.jpg

Not really getting the cheese part of that!

I've had that exact dish fyi

is this a Real Chinese Food y/n

Had 腊八蒜 today, garlic cloves soaked in black vinegar

http://i975.photobucket.com/albums/ae232/daggerlee/SH/AD6B7F51-DBC4-4B05-A471-575A682BAEDF_zpsuhs5rba4.jpg

http://i975.photobucket.com/albums/ae232/daggerlee/SH/79B82362-DDD6-43C6-8B4E-B16493DA38B9_zpsff09gpu0.jpg

The 腊八 refers to the date on the lunar calendar when you first start to pickle 'em

Apparently if you pickle them at any other time of year they won't turn green

In the second pic, that is what a clove looks like when bit straight through

It's unbelievably green actually

I'm gonna count it xp

i think it is as real as it gets. yeah the one that didn't link shows much better cheese

Here buddy

http://i.imgur.com/1oJ6xq1.jpg

Harold McGee explains the coloring behind laba garlic:

To start off: news that an old kitchen worry has now been explained in full and converted from a worry into an opportunity.

I hear every year from cooks who have been alarmed at seeing normally pale garlic turn bright green and even blue, sometimes when the cloves are pickled whole, sometimes when they’re chopped and cooked with other ingredients. I’d often been puzzled by little blue-green specks when I made garlic bread with loaves of sourdough, but I was really rattled the first time I puréed raw garlic, onion and ginger together in a blender to make chicken in yogurt from Madhur Jaffrey’s “Invitation to Indian Cooking.” When I fried the purée the entire mass turned turquoise blue.

I asked a couple of Indian friends who happen to be plant biologists whether they knew what was going on. They said they had never seen the blue purée, because Indian cooks don’t grind onions and garlic together. They grind or chop them separately and usually fry the onions first.

For them, blue was the color of an American shortcut. For me it’s been a reliable curiosity every time I cook Ms. Jaffrey’s happily efficient recipes for chicken and cauliflower and okra, one that goes away as the purée browns and I add turmeric and the rest of the ingredients.

As I learned from one of my regular food-chemistry reads, it’s not necessary to see these color changes as problems. The northern Chinese think of them as attractive and auspicious. They make an intentionally intensely green pickle by aging fresh garlic heads for several months, then peeling the cloves and immersing them in vinegar for a week. The resulting Laba garlic pickle is served with DUMPLINGS! to celebrate the New Year.

According to chemists at the China Agricultural University in Beijing, aging the garlic gives it a chance to accumulate large quantities of one of the chemicals that generate the color; fresh garlic doesn’t green much at all. And a strong green color develops in Laba garlic only with acetic acid, the main acid in vinegar (also found in sourdough), because it’s especially effective at breaching internal membranes and mixing the cell chemicals that react together to create the green pigment. The pigment itself turns out to be a close chemical relative of chlorophyll, which gives all green leaves their color.

Glad that Harold McGee is as excited about DUMPLINGS! as the rest of ILX

^ that's the one

going to include hong kong borscht in this bitch too
http://s3-media2.ak.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/-8degCoqy-LVr2BFycyHiw/l.jpg

the red one obvs.

蒸水蛋
http://news.xinhuanet.com/food/2007-04/24/xinsrc_57204042410304212932269.jpg

chinese lays flavors once or still does include a shrimp n cheese flavor

curry fish balls and ting
http://fewdblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/HK_Fishball_meat_stick_2.jpg

duck
http://chowtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/_MG_2559.jpg

Haven't seen that around yet but I wanna try this which is everywhere

http://i.imgur.com/cUGv7nW.jpg

Also the "Zesty Tomato" flavor which I assume is the Lay's version of the ketchup potato chip

they have one called like WILDLY GRILLED RIBS too in that same serieis

雞蛋仔
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZLJZ-AAWe8o/Ugh6QYFDaVI/AAAAAAAAS4I/4Pd0MvpB1Ds/s320/Tai+O+Hong+Kong+street+food+gai+daan+zai+egg+waffle.JPG

QUINCIE I FIND THE BORDER REGION THE NK CHINESE BORDER REGION VERY FASCINATING AND THERE'S SO MUCH INTERESTING ACADEMIC WORK COMING OUT ABOUT THE REGION IN GENERAL AND IT'S REALLY IMPORTANT TO THE RELAT BW CHINA AND NK AND IS REALLY A RICH INTERESTING PIECE OF GEOGRAPHY BUT

1_ DANDONG IS NOT THE PLACE TO SEE IT
2_ DANDONG IN THE WINTER WILL BE FUCKING GRIM, I CAN ASSURE YOU.
3_ AS THE COMMERCIAL REPEATED 100X A DAY ON CCTV 16 REMINDS US, DANDONG IS "a new shipping hub in northeast asia!" BUT THERE ISN'T FUCK ALL ELSE TO SEE THERE

AND I'D ONLY RECOMMEND IT IF:

1_ YOU HAVE TIME TO WASTE
2_ YOU HAVE SOME PARTICULAR INTEREST IN DANDONG
3_ YOU WON'T HAVE ANY OTHER OPPORTUNITY TO SPEND TIME IN GREATER NORTHEASTERN CHINA (AND SOME WOULD ARGUE DANDONG DOESN'T EVEN COUNT)-- AND IF YOU DO HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY, GO SOMEWHERE ELSE.

i think the answer is no

it's grim up north

POSTED ORIGINALLY NOV 19 2011

http://i937.photobucket.com/albums/ad215/jiaoqu/cheeselobster.jpg

dont think they have them anymore.

the best chinese lays flavor is the american classic one, which beat our standard regular chips somehow. they're just better. they're just better.

so want

ugh :( xpost

very informational post, dylannn!

well i don't want everyone rushing to the store looking for lobster cheese chips that were likely pulled from the market more than a year ago.

does anyone remember the lemon tea flavor lays? maybe that's a summer only flavor.

hah, I meant the one about Dandong, but the lobster cheese chip fact is important, too

I'm down to the last freezer-burned chicken thighs in the freezer and whatever I can find in my cabinets and this thread is making me delirious. Will def require at the very least some Chinatown or Flushing Chinese food next weekend when I get paid.

i got a fuschia dunlop book (every grain of rice) as an xmas gift and have been LOVING those recipes so far.

on sunday i made something almost exactly like the recipe dylannn described above, but with buckwheat noodles i purchased (not chinese but they were the closest thing i could find to the recipe) and a leaner cut of beef. the beef broth was INCREDIBLE tho and i will definitely be making it again

as a total noob to sichuan cooking that book is just perfect, once you stock up initially you can make a huge range of dishes

Dandong is officially off the table, both because dylannnnnnnn's feedback (thank you! although it kind of makes me EVEN MORE curious) and because of insurmountable logistical obstacles i.e. U.S. citizens cannot take the train across the border and we can't make a flight work.

i also got 'every grain of rice' recently and it has made me pretty interested in chinese food (which, historically, i have never really liked all that much)

Nice

Have definitely heard good things about the Fuchsia Dunlop book

Had Beijing Roast Duck today

http://i975.photobucket.com/albums/ae232/daggerlee/SH/A6B7AABD-9A4F-4766-9D4D-E0B6AC56C97C_zpszxwqxc6f.jpg

Amazing that the skin just looks like that naturally

Ended up just reinforcing my conclusion that most duck prepared in America is just such a joke :( :( :(

It's weird that I grew up in a state with a huge duck-hunting thing going on, but never really got a taste for duck until I left the US.

(Happy Chinese New Year, everybody).

Yeah happy CNY (and LNY) to everybody! I'm setting off fireworks tonight

http://i975.photobucket.com/albums/ae232/daggerlee/SH/9612E7B4-F6B6-4D12-8F7A-EBFA3EFE9812_zpsxydwa66z.jpg

^^ About all the duck you're supposed to get from a properly sliced whole Peking duck

Note the color + the skin to meat ratio

http://i.imgur.com/aoiZTqE.jpg

^ Duck from the "Peking Duck House" in NYC, which afaict is the only Chinese restaurant in NYC dedicated to serving Beijing roast duck

I haven't been myself because I know that I would just complain. But you get the idea

http://i.imgur.com/TGNm2du.jpg

Cantonese style duck

Which is good in its own right but doesn't come close as a substitution

Note the much deeper coloring + the darker hue of the meat

The Sichuan restaurant in my neighbourhood is very good, and if you go to dinner during the CNY period, DANCING LIONS IN DINING ROOM.

the fuschia dunlop books, the hunan and sichuan books and every grain of rice, are good for setting out very basic chinese kitchen procedures that are necessary to pull off the dishes and crucial to have a dedicated walkthrough because they quite often differ from western kitchen techniques and also the dedication to tracking down the social history of particular snacks and dishes esp in land of plenty.

Certainly a step up from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkbkHhT_JNw

Also there are like literally a hundred different ways to make a duck but I just included the cantonese version because that's the one you'll see most often hanging in windows in overseas Chinatowns

I mean it's a good duck but it just can't be the kind of prestige dish that Beijing Roast Duck is

poor allie. leaving aside other issues, i question the economy of her recipe.

i'd eat any of those ducks any day.

and geese, obv
http://hk.etw.nextmedia.com/images/next-photos/Eat_Travel/486/640pixfolder/EFET669-009-2/002no.jpg

that dan dan noodles sounds like the crap you can get in mission chinese food

Everytime I see her name I just think of

http://i.imgur.com/uJlPJTd.jpg

http://instagram.com/p/jy6f-yv0Kr/

^ Magical cave in which delicious ducks live

oooh

I am embarrassed to say that I had something that may have been duck and may have been goose, but I am not sure which, a couple of days ago. It was really delicious, served very simply on rice with some side veg&pickle, with serve-yourself soup for the taking. I was convince it was duck but now I'm like "oh shit maybe it was goose." Will now google.

Oh and v. happy New Year! Lots of fireworks going off atm.

the fuschia dunlop books, the hunan and sichuan books and every grain of rice, are good for setting out very basic chinese kitchen procedures that are necessary to pull off the dishes and crucial to have a dedicated walkthrough because they quite often differ from western kitchen techniques and also the dedication to tracking down the social history of particular snacks and dishes esp in land of plenty.

― dylannn, Thursday, 30 January 2014 10:24 (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I love the Hunan and esp. the Sichuan books, curious about Every Grain of Rice - from the description it seems to be more of an intro to Chinese food in general? Does it have much overlap with the other two?

I do not like any of these ducks, can I still post here occasionally?

i guess every grain of rice has a few similar recipes and anectdotes from the first two books, so it sounds like people who have those books are usually a little disappointed with it. i think it's her transitioning to a mostly vegetarian diet, so it's supposedly less meaty and a bit less bold with the spices

I don't find that to be the case. The focus is everyday home recipes and I find them to be a lot simpler and more practical than the Hunan and Sichuan recipes, with barely any overlap. Certainly very little disappointment here as I'm cooking from it a couple of times a week right now.

I'm cooking a few things tonight I will post pictures.

I think it's less meaty because Chinese use meat more as a flavouring in home cooking rather than the main event.

yeah, i can't say that i find it disappointing at all! i don't have the other books, just relaying what i've heard/read. it's definitely more of an everyday cookbook, which is sorta what makes it so great. you get all the history/context and a it's a lot less work

Cool, I guess I'll pick it up.

http://instagram.com/p/j1Ckh6rimM/
香油青豆 - Sichuanese Green Soy Bean Salad
算你拍黄瓜 - Smacked Cucumber in Garlicy sauce

Is there vinegar in the cucumber?

garlic, vinegar, sugar, chilli oil, salt

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HK3iG2LyWnY

The cucumber looked boss btw, Ed

Here's the recipe for it. Super quick and easy

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/recipes/9272084/Smacked-cucumber-in-garlicky-sauce.html

Foods I did not anticipate to be Real Chinese Food:

--cheesecake
--corn on the cob

debate with girlfriend over her claim that 提拉米苏 japanese

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-juKW7RhSxzw/TlT5wWxAtqI/AAAAAAAAAhQ/gjhw456VnYI/s400/Picture+081.jpg

Is that from the Australian Dairy Co because I"ve eaten there

I don't think so the tables don't look right

Chinese are serious about their corn business

Most cheesecake I've seen is the Japanese kind, light, fluffy and lemoney... been real hard to get a NY style Cheesecake

I've been a fan of tiramisu for as long as I can remember, wonder if there's some secret affinity between Chinese tastebuds and a big slab of cocoa powder coffee covered mascarpone cheese

Feel like the http://i.imgur.com/B0JWaS5.jpg is something that has been stocked in Chinese freezers for a pretty long time

not my pic - but the blog it's from claims it was.

does it live up to hype? never eaten there.

Oh yeah I just googled it and I've outsmarted myself : (

I'm not a fan personally but the scrambled eggs were about as good as scrambled eggs can be, I'm just not a fan of scrambled eggs

The milk pudding is great though

corn makes me think of

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-S4v-wxhPpeQ/UT2XOiiN9SI/AAAAAAAAEWQ/xOLL7QCHh88/s320/fish.JPG
i've never seen it not look disgusting, but yet i have nostalgic cravings every so often.

i will visit next time in hong kong i think. i like a nice egg sandwich

What I remember most about the Australian Dairy Co is the waitstaff that work together like a well-oiled heist crew

Each of them wearing the same dirty white dress shirt with a shirt pocket covered in blue ballpoint ink scratches, pad of cheap recycled paper in hand

http://i.imgur.com/7OKM2aN.jpg

typical 茶餐廳 look?

a lot of them though!

have also been making 蔥油雞排撈丁 at home but never tried the actual one in HK

Yeah a very typical 茶餐廳

I'm not a fan of 茶餐廳 fare in general but gimme some stirfried ramen noodles in XO sauce or 干炒牛河 with a cup of any of the following 1.) HK milk tea 2.) Yin-yeung 3.) 7 up with lemon slices (like 5 of 'em)

^ this

stir fried ramen is genius
or a bowl of ramen in soup with some fried spam and a small twig of greens

coke with slices of lemon

i do consider opening one such shop in london now and again

hahaha I'm laughing over the "no strollers" graphic after all that NYT shit whenever it was about some Park Slope (iirc) coffee house's stroller ban and the ensuing brouhaha. Was there righteous indignation in HK, I wonder?

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-S4v-wxhPpeQ/UT2XOiiN9SI/AAAAAAAAEWQ/xOLL7QCHh88/s320/fish.JPG

You never said what this is... I have literally no idea. It looks like the contents of my stomach after a binge served over breaded chicken strips.

Fish fillets (or other protein) in a corn sauce

it is actually nice! very satisfying.. once you stop looking at it

Will my mouth be offended if I put Panda Express in it?

I live in China. Here's what I ate in a (pretty normal) week.

http://i138.photobucket.com/albums/q276/james-errington/Monday.jpg
http://i138.photobucket.com/albums/q276/james-errington/Tuesday.jpg
http://i138.photobucket.com/albums/q276/james-errington/Wednesday.jpg
http://i138.photobucket.com/albums/q276/james-errington/Thursday.jpg
http://i138.photobucket.com/albums/q276/james-errington/Friday.jpg
http://i138.photobucket.com/albums/q276/james-errington/Saturday.jpg
http://i138.photobucket.com/albums/q276/james-errington/Sunday.jpg

that panino looks a little out of place

That's what I ate that day. You could also point out the raisin bran.

is that a pop tart? v curious about chinese pop tart flavors

Very nice, is that your host family or your family's cooking

It would take me longer to get used to changing what I normally eat for breakfast than for any other meal. I'm very attached to my breakfast habits. The raisin bran makes sense in that context.

Many of those pics (the ones of actual Chinese food) make me nostalgic and also angry that I can't get the awesome nuclear-fired wok magic going on greens I cook at home.

Very nice, is that your host family or your family's cooking

My family, I suppose, though I married into it - some food is from the work canteen or restaurants.

The pop tart is a boring normal one from an import shop, bought because I wanted to try them again. Still like oversweetened hot cardboard.

It would take me longer to get used to changing what I normally eat for breakfast than for any other meal. I'm very attached to my breakfast habits. The raisin bran makes sense in that context.

First few years in China I tried to get used to Chinese breakfasts, but just don't like mantou and youtiao is way too oily. Funny as my wife's family are from Hubei, where they actually have great breakfast, dry spicy noodles and tofu skin, for some reason they don't make that at home though.

Savoury breakfast are better imo

Never understood the Western predilection for starting out with a bowl of sugar

Noodle or dumpling soup is my dream breakfast. I could make it happen all the time in China, but not so much in the U.S. Pho joints that open early are a good option, tho.

Yeah, not into oversweet breakfasts either, but mantou and hard-boiled eggs is just a load of nothing.

Lots of Chinese eat "Western breakfast" now - that's a slice of nasty sweetened bread with no topping and a carton of UHT milk, which seems like the worst of both worlds.

In Singapore and Thailand earlier this year the places we stayed all had savory breakfast other than fruit - noodles, bao, rice porridge, the nasi lemak bar at the cheap hotel, curries, etc. But the default coffee and tea was all insanely sweet for my sludgy french press / espresso tastes, especially first thing in the morning.

It's true that white people make everything bad xp

http://i.imgur.com/WqWHoj5.png

http://i.imgur.com/TF9WT4N.png

http://i.imgur.com/TYfmbY1.png

http://i.imgur.com/ckvANH0.png

does that arrive at your table via pneumatic tube

No idea where to post this so

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyyIP-9sJDs

I don't know why I am on this thread atm but it makes me miss chinese food a whole lot.

Good news: found a Taiwanese joint outside DC and the greens are like "omg *this is just the right taste*" and they serve old-school Taiwan Beer and are really nice.

Bad news: by "outside DC" I mean like exurbs an hour away or at least seems like it. Requires car. But happy/nostalgic about Taiwan right now.

what place is that?

In Ashburn, will look up name 'cause I don't remember perhaps because I am just back from wine tasting *hiccup*

Yen's Cafe

cool, thanks