What's Fer Dinner?

[Raoul Duke]

Thanks, Ilunga. Helpful is the whole idea here, so I'm glad it's useful. I'll try to put up some more when my benighted m'kaying cheap piece of poo school computer is working again.

Xiaoyu, I DO eat the hot stuff. I eat MOSTLY hot stuff. I adore la bai cai. But I've had some hot pot soups that pushed my envelope...visit Hunan sometime! Or Changchun!

[Cossack]

in Canton (then anyway) the restuarant I was in had no english menu, however it was full of groups of people all frozen in surprise looking at me, so I played to the crowd & helped myself to the 'self-serve' beer fridge & whilst walking around I stood at a table of a dozen people & ordered by pointing at several dishes they were eating. They froze me in surprise however by giving me a massive hotpot big enough for 12 people !!

[Raoul Duke]

Thanks, guys, for keeping this thread going. All y'all please add more when you find a new dish you like.

A few new additions...

I've come to really like the standard green beans dish here...they're stir-fried with chopped garlic and sometimes a little chili pepper. Turns out the name for this depends upon how the beans are cut.

It's Si1 Ji1 Dou1 if the beans are cut into short pieces as usually seen in the west.

It's Chang2 Jiang1 Dou1 (like the river) if the beans are left in long (4-6 inches) pieces.

Given that wonderful Chinese logic, if the restaurant is serving short beans and you ask for the long ones, or vice versa, the waitress will simply say "mei you" ("Ain't got it, pal"), so you should know both terms.

There's a great egg dish...Pao3 Dan4 consists of scrambled eggs cooked into a round disc like an unfolded omelet. Here in my neighborhood a big load of shrimp meat is cooked into it. Sure, it's about a 2-week ration of eggs, but don't worry- Chinese food is healthy, right?

I also recently tried an extension of the Pot O' What cooking method. Try adding half a pound of red or black beans (pre-soak them to shorten cooking time) and using less rice. Throw in some sausage and shrimp, onion and garlic, and a larger dose of hot peppers, and it's the closest Chinese food may ever come to Cajun.

[Raoul Duke]

Another good one! A bakery chain here in Suzhou sells some innocuous-looking bun-things called Jia1 Cai4 Rou4 Si1 Bao1, or "Home-Style Vegetable & Shredded Pork Buns"...apparently to distinguish them from the vegetable & shredded pork buns served in places like Spago or Maxim's.

A layer of bread surrounds a filling of pickled veggies and meat. It's very slightly spicy. Apparently the whole thing is fried because the bread is a bit oily. So here you have the greasy decadence of donuts, the balanced nutrition of pickled vegetables, and the general deliciousness of Chinese anonymous meat-filling products.

Great stuff for breakfast- it's fast, portable, and surprisingly filling, and it'll give you the strength to go out and survive in the harsh and bitchy world of offshore English education.

The local bakery chain selling them is called "I Will"; perhaps they are in other towns too. Worth having a look for in your local bakeries.

[Raoul Duke]

Some more great dishes for ya. For my birthday I took my co-worker John (some of you met John at the party...) to dinner in a little DongBei restaurant I discovered in my neighborhood. I lived my first year+ in China in DongBei, and John is a Heilongjiang native, so this was a nice find.

I asked John to order all dishes I'd never had before (other than a healthy plate of stir-fried spinach- bo3 cai4). I told hime to stay away from bones, organs other than liver, and slimy gelatinous bottom-dwelling aquatic creatures.

John did great. He made sure I got my birthday long noodles (long noodles for a long life...) but said nothing and seemed a little surprised I knew the custom. He's a nice guy and a good friend. We had:

Niu2 Rou4 Fen3 Ci1 Bao3, Beef with Potato Noodles. Sliced beef and qing1 cai4 (a small cabbagey leafy vegetable) cooked in with potato noodles. Some hot peppers added for bite and a rich brown sauce cooked into it. Potato noodles are clear and look a little alarming but taste wonderful. They seem to be about 6 meters long and are a bit unwieldy to eat. This dish was worth the work. A DongBei specialty, but there are DongBei restaurants everywhere.

Bao4 Chao3 Zhu1 Gan1, Pork Liver with Peppers. Apologies to those who don't like liver but heaven for those who do. Slices of pork liver stir-fried with green bell peppers and a few red chiles, light sauce added.

Rou4 Mo4 Shao1 Qie2.Zi, Eggplant with Pork. Pretty straightforward- stir-fried eggplant pieces seasoned with bits of pork.

A fellow diner had a dish that intrigued us- sounded interesting but we didn't try it this trip.
Bo1 Luo1 Chao3 Xia1 Ren2, Stir-fried Shrimp with Pineapple, looked pretty good.

[Dr. Gonzo]

A few Shanghai faves were Suan4 Xiang1 Gu3, deep fried lean meaty pork ribs, marinated in garlic and fermented red tofu. Fantastic. And Hao2 You2 Niu4 Rou4, incredibly tender beef slices quickly stirfried with oyster sauce. Also the ubiquitous Suan1 La4 Tang1, hot and sour soup, which we make successfully here back home.
Loved Raoul's succinct and accurate piece on "dumplings" and steamed buns. I breakfasted on Guo Tie most mornings, though they were hard to find in summer.
We had a local Hun Tun franchisee with over 50 varieties of the 2 bite variety: you could dine in for a huge bowl at 3Y, or take out a frozen pack. We always kept some handy.
In addition, the Lanzhou Hui minority La4 Mian4, fresh wheat noodles in a peppery beef broth with bits of beef and a handful of fresh coriander. The fried version, featuring tomatoes, more vegetables than noodles and chilli [if desired] was great too. In Guangxi they use rice noodles for similar dishes.

Chinese street food is ace.

[Raoul Duke]

<Someone on the China Teachers' Forum (The Forum Formerly Known As Machinecat) was asking about making and using sauces. If this was good enough for them, it's good enough for you lot.>

Basic sauce:
After stir-frying your dish, remove the solids from the wok. Pour away the excess oil/food juices but leave enough to more than cover the food.

Mix a little cornstarch in a little water. Restart the fire, if it's out, and bring the wok liquids to a boil. Gradually pour in the cornstarch mix...stir quickly and thoroughly. Add a little soy sauce. As the liquid returns to a boil, return the solids to the wok and mix them into the sauce. Turn off the heat as the liquid starts to thicken.

Sweet-and-sour sauce: To a bit of hot meat juices/oil, add vinegar and sugar. Add some tomato ketchup for color and flavor. Thicken with cornstarch as above as the mix starts to boil.

Soy sauce, fish sauce, oyster sauce, hoisin sauce, etc.: Buy them at the store. Any of the first three make good additions to the Basic Sauce.

Apologies...I don't measure any more. A little experimentation leads to fast results.

I love soy sauce and I put it in just about everything I cook. Salt these days is reserved for french fries and tequila shots.

Fish sauce is a lot like soy (to me, anyway) but I like soy better.

Oyster sauce is great. Stir-fry up a bit of beef with onion, mushroom, and green pepper, drain the excess liquid, and douse it with some oyster sauce- treat as the Basic Sauce above. Serious stuff.

Hoisin sauce is really sweet...the stuff you use in Beijing duck. Good for dipping meats sometimes.

The big surprise for me is red vinegar (hong2 cu4). When I first came here, and for my first couple of years in China, I couldn't stand it. Now I can't imagine a day without it.

I use it for many things, especially The Perfect Dumpling Sauce:
1/2 soy sauce
1/2 red vinegar
as much red hot chili paste as your nervous system will tolerate
a generous dollop of sesame oil

Stir and you're ready to dip! Required for jiaozi, xiao long bao, guo tie, etc.
Option: a mess of fresh chopped garlic is good in here, too.

[Raoul Duke]

More dishes. A waitress at a neighborhood restaurant is aware that I am trying to enlarge my dining repertoire and has started recommending dishes that she thinks I may like. It's nice to have allies.

Xiao3 Cong1 Chao3 Rou4 is pork with green onions. Chunks of pork are coated in flour that seems to be sweetened a little. Well, this is the Shanghai area... The pork is fried to a golden brown; at the last moments some sections of fresh green onion are cooked in a little. The result is served without a sauce. I've seen a variant that used fatty pork and no flour coating, but I like the first version a lot better. Good stuff.

This restaurant also makes a kickass Pi2 Dan4 Dou1 Fu- Tofu with Thousand-Year Eggs. It's been discussed elsewhere on the Saloon but should be formalized here. A block of cold fresh tofu is set upon a bed of a dark, slightly sweet sauce and covered with slices of thousand-year eggs, fried-and-dried pork fat bits, and chopped green onion. Stir it all together and eat with a spoon. Cool and creamy- a nice summer dish.

Thousand-year eggs are really only about a month old. Fresh eggs, usually duck, are coated with a special, highly alkaline mud mixture and allowed to sit for a month. Yeah, this sounds a little startling, I know. They also look a little startling- egg-shaped brown glass with a green ball in the center. However, they are delicious and make a nice seasoning for tofu, soups, congee, etc. You also probably don't want to make a meal of the fried-and-dried pork fat bits, but again they are a good seasoning.

When Lager visited El Rancho Raoul a few days ago, I took him to this restaurant and ordered both of these dishes. He gave them the Laowai Seal of Approval.

[acjade]

You've whetted my appetite. But not my desire to cook. You wouldn't have a recipe for chinese chicken and cauliflower would you?

[Raoul Duke]

Nope. But I do have 2 new dishes....

Can you handle a little heat? Don't think green beans can be exciting? Check out Spicy Stir-Fried Green Beans, Gan1 Bian2 Si1 Ji1 Dou1!
Fresh green beans are stir-fried longer than usual...the beans look slightly wilted from the cooking. To this are added strips of onion cooked crispy, lots of red chilies, and numb peppers crystallized in salt. It's a pretty bold combination but it works like a charm.

Numb peppers are slightly anesthetic and often cooked into hot spicy foods. It's believed that the numbing effect makes the food a little less fiery- like so many things here this belief is of course bullpoo. They are like little peppercorns, and have a strong, peppery, bitter, somewhat mediciney flavor. Definitely an acquired taste, but they do work with the beans. Numb peppers are what put the "Ma (numb)" in dishes like Ma Po Dou Fu or Ma La Tang, the spicy soup used to cook Sichuan-style hotpot.

The other dish was originally a mistake. I was just trying to get some Cold Spicy Cucumber to go. When I opened the boxes at home I found I had been given Shou1 Ba3 Cai4. The best name I can give this is "Do-It-Yourself Vegetable Rolls".
I got two boxes of big chunks of raw cucumber, green pepper, and green onion. I got a big stack of squares of tofu skin, which is the dry outer surface resulting from producing fresh tofu. There was also a cup of an intense, rich sauce that appeared to have scrambled egg in it.

Take a square of tofu skin, put some chunks of veggie on it, add a dab of the sauce, roll or fold up, and eat.

It started as a mistake but I went back tonight and asked the name...it was wonderful. Cool and healthy, too. And cheap!

[burlives]

Numb peppers are "hua1jiao1". Or at least that's what they call them in Shaanxi.

That ganbian si ji dou is pretty good. A variation is gan1 bian2 niu2 rou4. A crispy beef strips thing with numb peppers, a poopload of chilli, a bit of onion and some green peppers. Probably a lot of salt too.

Good with beer and a lot of rice.

[Mr Nobody]

I thought the "Ma" in Ma Po ToFu was for "Pockmarked", as in "Pockmarked Grandmother's Bean Curd"?

The girlie just agreed, but then she would since I am her fiance, and a kung fu hero besides. Is the description regional?

[Newbs]

Mr N I concur. Pockmarked grandmother was what I was taught.

Newbs

[Raoul Duke]

But then here they call it Ma La Dou Fu.
Pockmarked spicy tofu?
Anything's possible. TIFC. And 'ma' is a hard sound to deal with in Chinese.

I must admit, "numb grandmother's tofu" has possibilities, too.

[Newbs]

My one regret thing that I'm damn glad I never did in China was eat stinky dofu. Smelt it, but. I walked into the canteen, sat down, and thought, oh no, the poor lady next to me has trod in some dog poo.

Newbs

[Mr Nobody]

There was/is a takeaway place for late night fried thingies in HK a short distance from my usual hotel in HK. Next door to it was a small shop that specialized in stinky tofu.

It is hard to explain my thoughts on the initial contact with my nose, then over the weeks and repeated visits to HK, I still regularly walk down that street. (it is directly between the hotel and my friends studio) It is still hard to explain my thoughts. I would have thought "Oh no, that poor lady is eating dog poo" but then, I am not as nice a guy as Newbs.

I have vowed to try it one day, but the rest of my body appears to be in no hurry.

PS, I thought the ma po tofu legend was supposed to have originated in Beijing.

[con's fly is open]

Turtle.

Headmaster took us out tonight to suck up for the extra summer workload. Our hotpot was graced with a turtle, brought to the table intact. They tore off the shell, and Mandi couldn't even look from that moment on. They had to turn the pot around so that the side without turtle was facing us.

N one else had tasted turtle before, either. The word on the street is that, since turtles live so long, eating turtule will help you live longer.

TIFC- I've heard worse logic.

So my piece had a back leg on it. Accustomed as I am to eating disgusting things in China, I tried it. The meat is splendid.

The fat: aa Instant gag reflex; one of the most foul, unnatural tasting things I've ever put in my mouth. The meat, as delicious as it was, will never pass my lips for fear that a crum of turtle fat might tag along.

I would eat a turtle TURD before turtle fat. Consider yourselves warned.

[acjade]

connell said:

I would eat a turtle TURD before turtle fat. Consider yourselves warned.

Erhm! Ah you probably did, Con. But don't worry. The fish likes it. ;D

[Mr Nobody]

Thanks for sharing. I will avoid it like the plague. Fortunately, the girlie has the same kind of problem I have. Doesn't want to eat pets. Too softhearted.

She likes turtles as pets, too. So probably won't be a problem. And if it becomes one somewhere, I will eat, carefully, only of the meat.

[Decurso]

When I first arrived in China my agency supplied me with a "menu" that had over 100 dishes written in Pinyin and Chinese characters along with descriptions of the dishes.It has been a lifesaver,I'd share...but most of the best selections have already been posted.Still...it has saved me the indignation of of resorting to making animal noises(with the notable exception of hotpot dinners).

I did see a funny English menu in Guangzhou.All the really bizarre stuff was described as "tasteful".Is this supposed to make it more appealing?"Tasteful Snake","Tasteful Pigs Ovaries"," :tasteful Pigs Head",ect...

[Lotus Eater]

YEehaa - just found a tea house similar to the one we patronised in Suzhou. Buy the tea - endless refill - with unlimited buffet, surrounded by glorious antiques.

One of my post-grad students took me there for dinner tonight. He, having handed in his final assignment is no longer a student, but can move into friend category. So in return I have invited him to our next party. He is heading off to study in England next semester, so I think he should become accustomed to Western style parties.

[Raoul Duke]

2 more dishes for youse....

Huang2 Gua2 La4 Pi2 is shreds of cucumber with a little shredded pork (enough to add a little flavor), and a little garlic. Some bites were spicy hot. Everything is shredded very fine so it's hard to tell if there are other ingredients too. The pork is fully cooked, of course, but the whole thing seems to be either only lightly stir-fried or somehow marinated. The cucumber was a bit limp as if it had been cooked, but the dish was served slightly cool. Anyway, it was quite good.

I had dinner tonight in Suzhou's Ya Ke Xi Xinjiang restaurant- the one we went to May Day- with my friends Sanjeev and Sophie. I was late (try getting a Suzhou taxi from the Dong Gang in the rain!) and when I arrived they were already elbow-deep in a dish the waitress told me was called Le1 Shi2 Kao3 Rou4. It was thinly sliced and deep fried potatoes, somewhere between potato chips (crisps for you Commonwealth types) and home fries. The potatoes were covered liberally with some kind of highly spiced ground meat mix with onion and garlic, with a crumbled-sausage-like effect. VERY spicy and rather hot. This dish rules and comes especially highly recommended.
Next time I may take along a little grated cheddar to put on it...

[Seth]

A few of my faves;

you1rou4...literally 'oil meat.' Cuts of pork with about an inch of fat left on them, and usually the skin, served in a thin garlicy sauce. It sounds disgusting but it's so good. The fat is creamy, not gristly like bacon fat. Supposedly it was Chairman Mao's favorite dish but he had to stop eating it when his health went downhill. Certainly not something you'd want to make a habit of eating.

Pao4mo3 is the famous 'bread soup' of Xi'an, but I've seen it in other central Chinese cities. Bits of flatbread with lamb broth, served with pickled garlic and cilantro. For some reason it's served in a rediculously large bowl, like noodle dishes tend to be. If you can eat a whole bowl of it, you are a better man than I. In Luoyang a gigantic bowl of it was 8 kuai, a smaller one (but still huge) was 6.

xiang2chang1 (literally translated as 'fragrant intestine'!) are those little red sausages, I loved them. I think they're made sweet with baijiu but they don't taste like baijiu to me.

In central China open-air grill restaurants seem to be popular. I went to a lot of them in Luoyang, but I didn't see any in Hangzhou. Raoul mentioned the grilled lamb bits, which are awesome. I wish I knew what spices they put on those things, I'd make it every day. I once went to one deep in the muslim part of town where all parts of a lamb were grilled on sticks with that certain spice mixture. Eyes, tongue, kidneys, stomach, you name it. The eyes were chewy.

Grill restaurants in the summer, hotpot in the winter.

There was also a rumour going about Luoyang that another local specialty was mouse fetus soup.

Hopefully my pinyin numbers are right...I keep getting 1 an 2 confused.

[acjade]

I'm not all that fond of the Muslim dish. It's a novelty but I like going into restaurants where the staff do the work, not me. Crumbling all that hard bread into tiny pieces takes forever. The result is a little like tearing up way too much bread and dunking it into your soup. Okay for a quick meal at home.
It always reminds me af my ex-sister-in-law. ' Oh X...!' she would exclaim to my ex-husband. 'Only shearers dunk their biscuits.' And ex-husbands apparently.

A few days ago I headed up to the village and, deciding to be adventurous, just pointed at the menu. I'm not sure and I really don't wanna be certain but I think I was served dog. It was incredibly tender and thinly sliced and resembled no other meat I've ever eaten. It was stirred fried very quickly with celery and onion and green peppers.
Last night the kid and his mother and I went to a local barb-b-que joint. I had a succulent and tasty whole grilled flounder. The kid and his mother had an exotic assortment of innards including bile ducts and intestines. The kid's ma always shakes her head despairingly at me and as I was enjoying my flounder she picks it up by the tail with her chopsticks and asks the kid in her dangerous to gastric juices voice why I'm not eating the skin.
'Tell her to Mckay off and let me enjoy my meal.'
Do I ask her why she continues to harden her arteries with pork fat and poison her self with uric acid from too many sheep's livers and kidneys or why she thinks duck oesophagus is delicious when to me it tastes like a pencil eraser?

[Mr Nobody]

I have an inordinate fondness for stuffed chillis, stuffed fried tofu, stuffed mushrooms and so on. Yummy.

Stuffed chilli = la4jiao1 niang4
mushrooms = mo2gu1 niang4
tofu = to4fu4 niang4

hope i got it right.

Can buy them fried, or buy them uncooked, then steam, fry or deepfry to your hearts content. I am going to try baking them sometime, also, to reduce the fat content.

Eating them fried will definitely interfere with any diet plans.