Dear Amber - Food Regions of China

mala?  When my girlfriend and I were in Fushun having dinner with her sister and husband, they ordered a beef dish that had a dipping sauce that I swear was lava.  I had sweat over my eye brow just looking at it.  I got enough heat from it just barely touching the sauce and they were eating pieces of meat with the sauce just oozing over the meat. 

I've been there 3 times now for 8-10 days each time and I don't believe that I've eaten rice once.  Noodles with just about every meal. There doesn't seem to be anything that is traditionally breakfast, or traditionally lunch etc.

Crossing the bridge noodles 过桥米线 (guò qiáo mĭxiàn). I love a dish with a traditional story behind it;adds to the magic.Here's a pic of that dish:

video discussion here.

kimiik posted a great map showing the ethnic minorities in Yunnan in his discussion of the Va ethnic minority here.

man2tou 馒头:

hua1jiao1[花椒]:

Not sure if this is the one referred to in the podcast,but this is Sichuan Ma Po Dofu 麻婆豆腐:

Does anyone know whether there is any Chinese cuisine that we might regard as being healthy in the West?  I mean anything that doesn't include large quantities of salt and/or oil and/or saturated/animal fat and/or sugar,  soya sauce and overcooked vegetables?

My favorite is Buddhist cuisine.  Wikipedia calls it 斋菜, but I don't see it in the dictionary.  Is this word widely used and understood?

My wife says the best she's had was at a temple.  I've only had it at a few different places, but my favorite restaurants were House of Vegetarian in NYC Chinatown, and Buddha Bodai in Flushing.

I would like to see some lessons on cooking - not just the names of the foods and their contents as per the Hungry Traveller series, but a lesson on the preparation of a particular dish - with vocab like
: add, stir, mix, heat, etc.  (Intermediate level) Perhaps a cooking movie would be great!

Thanks.

I think you forgot the best one, "小笼包" (xiao long bao) or (not a direct translation) "Shagnahi steamed bun"

You only briefly mentioned it, but another Chinese food-type is that of the Xinjiang region. There are a few restuarants of that food in Sydney. It is a mixture of middle eastern (maybe what might be referred to as Turkish) with Chinese influences. Of course they are largely muslim in that area, so you will have to miss out on the alcohol at the restuarants of the Uigher (the main ethnic group of the region).

BTW, although they come close (<100km from the Golden Triangle, where Thailand borders Laos and Myamar) there is no border between Thailand and China. However many ethnic minorities in Thailand, particularly northern Thailand, have Chinese origins and have a similar (often the same although named differently) ethnic group based in China.

Ma La Tang 麻辣汤:

Goat cheese,Yunnan style:

Pic of banana flower salad from Vietnam [couldn't find a pic from Yunnan] here.

Recipe for banana flower salad with pics of preparation here.

Came across this interesting old saying:

An old Chinese saying indicates how highly the cuisine of the Guangzhou ( Canton ) area is regarded:

"To be born in Suzhou
to live in Hangzhou
to eat in Guangzhou
and to die in Liuzhou "

I'm wondering what's behind the rest of the saying.

Dim sum:

char siew:

ha gau:

Shanghai hong shao rou:

Shanghai sheng jian bao:

Jiao hua ji [beggars chicken]:

Beggars chicken [apparently eaten on the winter solstice] in clay :

salt wrapped version of beggars chicken [also requiring mallet to open] here.

Kesirui,

you are right. I too love the "小笼包" (xiao long bao). We call them "dragon balls". My all time favorite food in SH.

RJ

That list of eight that didn't get finished intrigued me, so

This from Wikepedia -

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

There are eight main regional cuisines, or Eight Great Traditions (八大菜系): Anhui, Cantonese, Fujian, Hunan, Jiangsu, Shandong, Sichuan, and Zhejiang. Among them, Cantonese, Sichuan, Shandong, and Huaiyang cuisine (a major style and even viewed as the representation of the entire Jiangsu cuisine) are often considered as the standouts of Chinese cuisine and due to their influence are proclaimed as the Four Great Traditions (四大菜系). Occasionally, Beijing cuisine and Shanghai cuisine are also cited along with the aforementioned eight regional styles as the Ten Great Traditions (十大菜系). There are also featured Buddhist and Muslim sub-cuisines within the greater Chinese cuisine, with an emphasis on vegetarian and halal-based diets respectively.

ezweig,

Thanks for that.While I enjoyed the simplification given in the podcast into compass points which summed things up nicely,I too was curious about the eight great traditions.

You can see a number of these dishes made in the movie: "Eat, Drink, Man, Woman" by Ahn Lee (the movie is in Mandarin with English subtitles). 

The dish that sticks out in my mind is the beggars chicken, where Chef Zhu busts open the clay chicken.

One of my favorite dishes in China is (I hope I've got the characters right) 干煸辣子鸡.  This is small bit sized bits of chicken (with bone in) stir fried with a little oil at high heat, with red peppers (辣椒), fragrant peppercorns (花椒..mentioned in the lesson, see above), garlic (蒜）。 

中国有八大菜系。zhong1guo2you3ba1da4cai4xi4.

China has eight cuisines.

鲁菜  川菜  粤菜  闽菜  苏菜  浙菜  湘菜  徽菜

lu3cai4 chuan1cai4 yue4cai4 min2cai4 su1cai4 zhe4cai4 xiang1cai4 hui1cai4.

佛跳墙 Fó tiào qiáng（Steamed Abalone with Shark＇s Fin and Fish Maw）

佛跳墙is the most famous dish in闽菜，which has a very interesting story that the monks jump over the wall and want to try it when they smell the delicious dish.( As we all know that monks can not eat meat.)

The Eight Great Traditions provide such a wide variety of tastes there has to be something for just about everyone to like.

I am partial to 川菜 chuan1cai4. 渔香茄子 yu2xiang1 qie2zi is my favorite dish as long as it is 麻辣 ma2la4. Add a bowl of rice and I am a happy man.

Sometime in the next year I am going to retire. One of my plans is to eat my way across China, experiencing the best of what the Eight Great Traditions have to offer (though I'll probably pass on the Civet Cat in Guangdong).

My absolute favorite 川菜 is 四季豆, also known as four spiced beans... they are fantastic! One of the spices included in the four is 花椒

I tried adding a picture, but it didn't work! Not technologically inclined!

hua1jiao1[花椒]:translated to bastard peppers in our family ..... but we love them, they kill our tase buds every time!!! gets the chili freaks every time..

I find Shanghai food very bland, and not exciting compaed to manyof the other cuisine.

"Shanghai hong shao rou" look very much like the pork from North China, they love the fat in the cold winter along with the hot pots, like tonight is going to be -14 degrees !!!! back to Shanghai quick !!

Bababardwan, If you find yourself in Suzhou, ask some locals about the 哑巴生煎(Yaba Shengjian) near 观前街(guānqiánjiē) . Although you'll most likely have to queue up when the fresh batches are ready, they are worth the wait.

I must say that when done well, 毛血旺 (máoxuěwàng) has to be one of my favourite Sichuanese dishes (but with duck's blood rather than pig's)

Here's a pic of what it should look like, this one was disappointing - the blood pieces were made from reconstituted duck's blood.

Here's a picture of some goodies from THE BEST      毛血旺 (máoxuěwàng) I've ever had.

Those wonderful 花椒 (huājiāo) Sichuan peppercorns are also less widely known as Chinese Prickly Ash.

Yum!

What about those of us with hot-chili-phobia?  Will I starve in Sichuan?  Are any hot-pots not spicy hot?  Am I the only sissy here?

我的很喜欢的川菜！

matt_c,

Thanks fellow Aussie for your advice and pics.I have read that Suzhou is just south west of Yang Cheng Lake where the best hairy crabs come from.Have you tried them? I found an interesting article about them here.

leslie2009  - Regardless of whether you are eating the old style coal hotpot or a modern hotpot, I'm aware that one can order a 鸳鸯火锅 (yuānyang huǒguō) which will be half spicy hot and half non spicy.  Enjoy!

Oh "Ma Po Doufu"! My Taiwanese friends showed me how to make this a couple of months ago! I love it and I frequently cook it myself in big batches to eat over the course of the week.. but I can never get the doufu to stay as rigid as that.. the doufu generally melts within minutes of putting it in the pot.

Hi Light487,    I make my mapo tofu "shaken, not stirred"  ,  and it tends to stay together for the most part.   

A Sichuan dish I like is called Pǎo Cài. (I'm guessing on the pronunciation/accent.)  It is a Sichuanese variation on Korean Kimchee... quite spicy, and also eaten raw.  

Does anyone know how to write it?

c,andrew_c

[no wonder your pic appears on the front page of CPod promo now;congrats :) ]

Many years ago I ate at a restaurant in Chengdu that claimed to have invented 麻婆豆腐. We picked up the dish at a window, and the last thing they did was to top it with a spoon of ground peppercorns. It was great, but I was perspiring so much that a 服务员 brought me a bowl of broth unsolicited.  Even better, there were ladies selling ice cream just outside.

tvan

pàocài 泡菜 is the correct putonghua pronunciation for Sichuanese pickled vegetables, not sure if they are fermented like Kimchi but they do hold their own as a good 冷盘 lěngpán （cold dish). :-)

Hi panda2

Just saw your comment about calling 花椒 "bastard peppers." Funny stuff.

Have you ever eaten them raw? That's an experience you will not forget, as the saliva dribbles from your numbed lips.

What a great podcast to start my Monday morning. I'm TOTALLY hungry now! :)

Pete, are most receipes learned via culinary schools? Or are they passed on through the generations via family members, neighbors, friends, etc?

Thanks!

Hi all, 

There are certainly plenty of savvy food-o-philes here. It makes me a little sad seeing all those examples of great 四川food, though.  Basically I can't tolerate 红油 (red oil) even in small amounts...  spiciness I can handle, up to a point, but that red oil is a deal-breaker for me.  Of course, that eliminates vast amounts of great Chinese food from my diet.  As my wife says: 'Tragic.'   Good thing she's from Shandong, where they basically don't use the stuff.

illyria1013,

                If I may answer the question you asked Pete - think there is a definite difference between restaurant food and home style cooking, of course there are the main dishes like 红烧肉 (hóngshāoròu) ，  辣子鸡  (làzijī)，宫保鸡丁 (gōngbǎojīdīng) etc. that are popular in restaurants and homes alike, which are taught in both culinary schools and/or down through the generations. Many small restaurants in China are run by untrained chefs who learned to cook at home and decided to start a business. Of course if you were to go to a finer establishment the cooking staff will either have had some sort of formal training, or enough experience in the kitchen under a formally trained head chef to say that they were trained. There are many possiblities so in answer to your question; yes, yes and yes :)

At our house we have meals that we purchase defiite ingredients to make, but then more often that not we look at what vegetables and meat are available in the fridge and make what we can - then it's just a matter of deciding the type of flavour to create using the herbs and spices at our disposal.

农家菜 (nóngjiācài) is often used in restaurnt names that offer 'authentic' regional/rural flavours, but in my opinion eating 家常菜 (jiāchángcài) in people's homes is the best way to sample the most authentic food any where in the world.

:)

Thanks matt_c !

In retrospect, I should have fleshed out my question more, but you elaborated and answered what I was curious about -- which was the degree of "training" needed to be a chef.

Your explanation was most appreciated! :)

谢谢.

Hi bababardwan, 

There are different explanations as to the reasons of the verse "To be born in Suzhou, to live in Hangzhou, to eat in Guangzhou, and to die in Liuzhou " but here is one version:

Suzhou is a traditionally rich province and Suzhou girls are said to be prettiest.  Hangzhou is a nice place to live because of the climate and the scenary.  Guangzhou is good for eating. Liuzhou is famous for its timber and Chinese coffin craftsmanship! 

matt_c, thanks for the writing. I've always just ordered 泡菜.  The first time I ordered it, they served it stir fried with ground pork... because "That's how Americans like it."  When I complained that it wasn't as good as kimchee, I was surrounded the entire wait staff and, eventually, given the real thing.

As for the saying, I don't remember being born; however, I'd rather live in Yunnan, eat in Sichuan, and die of chile poisoning!

I hate spice, it burns my stomach

Leslie, there is plenty of non-spicy food in Sichuan, don't worry. And if you are getting dumplings or noodles, or barbecue you will often be asked if you want hot pepper or not.

wow these are my favorite food,xiao long bao,ma la tang, ma la dou fu,then need to eat again someday again,can't wait..