Reading Menus in Chinese
suxiaoya
October 13, 2010, 06:35 AM posted in General DiscussionI just came across a long-buried post about reading menus in Chinese and I thought I'd share it here.
The post was created by user mongo and links to his website (http://sinoplanet.com/wiki/Chinese_Cuisine ) which contains vocabulary and English recipes for a wide array of Chinese dishes. It's pretty cool, so I am reviving the post so that it may be of help to members of this group!
Also, sticking on ChinesePod for the minute, the Menu Stealer video series is definitely worth a watch if you've never seen it.
Does anyone have any interesting/amusing experiences of ordering food in Chinese?
suxiaoya
The Chinese do great things with aubergine. I was in Yangshuo a few weeks ago and the street food vendors had amazing grilled aubergine, slathered with garlicky oil. No shrimps though, I don't think...
Good luck with the recipe experimentation. Out of interest, do you have a Chinese supermarket near you, or can you get authentic ingredients in regular supermarkets? I always wished Sainsbury's stocked a better variety of tofu - but I guess there's just not the market for it in England :-(
xiao_liang
Oh yea, there's several chinese supermarkets near me - just need to know where to look! There's 3 in the centre of Birmingham alone, and a bigger one just outside the centre. Lots of chinese students see? :-)
jen_not_jenny
October 14, 2010, 02:40 AMI have a very dear friend in China who, in spite of being quite intelligent, is a twee gullible at times. Her first six months in the country, she ate a lot of 田鸡, thinking it was really field chicken/free range chicken.
It is, in fact, frog...and quite tasty!
xiao_liang
November 16, 2010, 09:41 AMHey Sarah. I finally got around to looking at that site properly... it's not quite as useful as you'd hope :-p It seems someone's taken Chinese recipes and just run them through Google Translate. Here's an example of one of their instructions:
5. Moisture basic income dry transfer small fire, even covered with chicken and mushrooms in the casserole topped with the edge of oil (to prevent burning, but also can have rice crust Oh), cover cook 3 minutes
Unfortunately they didn't even include the original Chinese for comparison!
xiao_liang
October 13, 2010, 09:06 AMOh, that site is brilliant - I will test the recipes out on my unwilling victims, I mean, friends and family.
I've taken to asking my girlfriend to order for me "something nice", which drives her nuts! So perhaps I need to pay more attention to what things are!
I love aubergines (eggplant), back when I was a vegetarian I saw something that sounded delicious - "three threasures" something or other, involving aubergines wrapped around something. turns out the something was shrimps... oops :-)