http://wtv-zone.com/JBond/chowmein.swf
i got a giggle or two out of this.
That was beautifull man. Got a hanky?
Reminds me of the place in Mass. that got busted for pressing the cabbage between the parking lot and a sheet of plywood with a pickup truck.
I’m not a big fan of Chinese-American food. Give me Veitnamese or Thai food any day.
Chinese-American food, fa_jing?
Try my “HKV Egg Fu Yung” with white rice for breakfast:
1 or 2 eggs
a TINY bit of ground beef
1 stalk scallion (minced)
fresh potato (chopped)
1 tomato
a touch of parsley or coriander
fresh garlic
soy sauce
oyster sauce
sesame oil
ground pepper
- Cook garlic and potato first in wok or skillet
- Remove potato, cook ground beef
- Add all the other ingredients, season to taste.
- Mix a tiny bit of cornstarch in water and add to skillet if you don’t want your eggs TOO runny.
this never ceases to amuse me,
and I always feel guilty that it does.
haha. I just love it.
thanks,
Cody
Slightly OT
Inside the world’s largest collection of Chinese menus
The Thread Tracy Mumford · Apr 28, 2016
Harvey Spiller collected Chinese menus from all across the country – and the world. These are some of the 10,000 menus acquired by the University of Toronto. Courtesy of the University of Toronto
Fifty-seven banker boxes.
One thousand one hundred pounds.
Ten thousand Chinese menus.
That’s what Harley Spiller delivered to the University of Toronto when the school purchased his decades-in-the-making collection. It’s the largest assortment of Chinese menus on the planet. The menus go back more than 100 years and come from all over the world, from 1920s California to 1940s India to Spiller’s favorite place, just down the street from his New York apartment.
“Anybody who’s working in food studies knows about this collection,” said professor Daniel Bender, director of the university’s food studies center. “It’s the Rosetta Stone of understanding the history of Chinese foods.”
This Chinese menu comes from Portland, Ore., in the 1950s. It is one of the 10,000 menus from Harvey Spiller’s collection, which was acquired by the University of Toronto. Courtesy of the University of Toronto
For the last year, librarians and archivists at the school have been sorting through the menus, studying how best to make the information available to the public. The menus don’t just document the rising price of chow mein or the world’s changing palates, Bender said. They speak to the history of Chinese immigration around the world.
“The oldest one that we found in the collection is from 1896, which is a really interesting time. That’s around the time, or shortly after, the United States and Canada and many other places passed very restrictive Chinese exclusion acts,” Bender said.
When countries closed their borders to Chinese immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, immigrants already in the U.S. found a loophole: Chinese restaurant owners were allowed to bring in workers for their kitchens. Thousands of people entered the country that way.
“The Chinese restaurant boom and Chinese exclusion happened really at the same time,” Bender said. “Chinese restaurants became popular at the same moment that Chinese immigrants were looked at with suspicion.”
This menu comes from Phoenix in the 1980s. It is one of the 10,000 menus from Harvey Spiller’s collection, which was acquired by the University of Toronto. Courtesy of the University of Toronto
None of this history was on Harley Spiller’s mind when he started his collection.
It began in the summer of 1981, when he moved to New York City. He was in his early 20s, and unfamiliar with city life.
“I’m renting a room in a friend’s apartment, and they were out and I was all alone,” Spiller said. "I heard a scuffle at the door, and I thought to myself: ‘Oh great, I didn’t even make it a week and I’m getting robbed.’ So I hid in the bedroom.
"About five to ten minutes later, I poked my head out and went to see what was going on. It was a Chinese menu, shoved under the door.
"It was interesting to me because I was an English major, and there were typos, and there were foods I didn’t know were foods. I thought squid were in the science lab, fermented. I didn’t know you could eat it. I was a meat-and-potato kind of guy.
“Now I eat squid like peas,” Spiller said.
This menu comes from Empire Taipei in New York City. Moving to New York is what triggered Harvey Spiller’s menu collection. His 10,000 menus were acquired by the University of Toronto. Courtesy of the University of Toronto
That first menu shoved underneath the door sparked his fascination.
“I couldn’t afford to subscribe to The New York Times. I couldn’t get magazines. So I read menus. They were up and down the avenues in my new town for the taking. I would take walks after dinner, check out the new neighborhood and grab those. They were spare-time reading material.”
For those who think the ubiquitous paper menus are worthless, Spiller disagrees: “A menu is a book. It has covers and it has pictures and it has sections like chapters. It’s a container for ideas. That’s a book!”
Spiller went from casually collecting menus on the street to seeking out historical menus and menus from far-off locales. Older acquaintances ripped Chinese food menus out of their wedding scrapbooks for him. Friends brought them back from vacation.
He dreamed of driving across the country, stopping at flea markets and buying up every old Chinese menu he could found. But instead, the flea markets came to him: eBay was invented.
“In 1997, I was off: I bid on every single Chinese menu that came up on eBay the first year. I bought most of them, and then I looked at my bank account and I went cold turkey.”
The University of Toronto’s Food Studies program acquired Harvey Spiller’s collection of 10,000 Chinese menus. The collection will allow researchers to track the rise and fall of certain dishes across time and location. Courtesy of the University of Toronto
That didn’t stop the collection from growing, though.
One weekend in 2004 or 2005, a team of nine people gathered to count the menus for the Guinness Book of World Records. They stopped counting at 5,006, which handily beat the previous world record of 4,001. They were still only halfway through the collection.
As three decades of collecting came and went, though, Spiller decided it was time to find the menus a new home. He was delighted to hear about the University of Toronto’s interest. Other potential buyers wanted to cherry-pick menus from the collection, choosing the most exotic or rare among them, but the university wanted the whole thing — and it wanted to make the collection available to the public.
“It started as a lark but it’s going to end up helping people writing histories and working on immigration studies,” Spiller said. “It helps normalize the immigrant experience.”
Professor Bender agrees. “I like to think of that person who finds their own grandparents in that collection, finds the restaurant they worked at … It’s a bit like finding out your parents painted a great painting and now it’s hung in a museum.”
Spiller’s collecting days aren’t over, though. He still has a collection of rare coins. And wishbones. And yellow pencils. And blue bottle caps. And plastic spoons.
Harvey Spiller collected matchbooks from Chinese restaurants, too. They are included in the archive purchased by the University of Toronto. Courtesy of the University of Toronto
“That’s a collection that I started to see if anything could arise from a dumb collection,” he said.
Did moving the 1,100 pounds of Chinese menus out of his apartment free up any space?
“You know how if you squeeze a bowl of Jell-O, it just squirts everywhere?” Spiller laughed. “It’s like that. The shelves that were emptied were immediately filled.”
The menus allow researchers to track changing trends in Chinese food over the years. This historic menu is from a restaurant in San Francisco. It’s one of 10,000 menus in the collection that the University of Toronto acquired. Courtesy of the University of Toronto
Harvey Spiller started by simply collecting the Chinese menus on the streets of New York City, but later began seeking out menus from across the country. This menu from Seattle is one of the 10,000 from Spiller’s collection. Courtesy of the University of Toronto
Let me also take a moment here to point out our Dim-Sum-dian-xin thread. 
I love Chinese food but I love Japanese food more.
Giraffe Soup
[video=vimeo;164195616]https://vimeo.com/164195616[/video]
Chinese food is delicious. Link is not working anymore :C
Sichuan food
Szechuan for you old skool Americans. Sichuan food is my favorite Chinese food, and I have yet to visit Sichuan.
Lost tradition feared as Sichuanese food booms in popularity
By Chris Buckley New York Times
June 21, 2016
NEW YORK TIMES Lan Guijun prepares a dish of salmon stewed in a broad bean sauce at his Sichuan fusion restaurant Yu Zhi Lan in Chengdu, China.
NEW YORK TIMES Lan Guijun prepares a dish of salmon stewed in a broad bean sauce at his Sichuan fusion restaurant Yu Zhi Lan in Chengdu, China.
NEW YORK TIMES The kitchen at Lian Ying, a contemporary Sichuan restaurant in Chengdu, China.
The kitchen at Lian Ying, a contemporary Sichuan restaurant in Chengdu, China.
NEW YORK TIMES
San hua kao ji, or three-flower roast chicken, adapted from a recipe by chef and restauranteur Yang Wen, in Beacon, N.Y.
NEW YORK TIMES
San hua kao ji, or three-flower roast chicken, adapted from a recipe by chef and restauranteur Yang Wen, in Beacon, N.Y.
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HENGDU, China >> The tang of the famed cooking of Sichuan wafts through streets crowded with restaurants. Hot pots of chili and oil simmer like restless volcanoes. Chicken, rabbit and frog bathe in stews tingling with red and green peppercorns. Favorites like Pock-Marked Grandma Tofu abound.
But along with all the pungent aromas, a whiff of panic is in the air here in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province in southwest China.
“Sichuanese cuisine really faces a crisis,” said Wang Kaifa, a 71-year-old chef who has been leading a campaign against what he sees as the creeping debasement of the region’s celebrated cooking.
“The scene feels like it’s booming, but this is a chaotic boom that has had a lot of negatives,” he said. “Finally, they could become a sickness that brings down Sichuanese cuisine.”
Such gloom seems surprising. Chengdu has a bustling food scene with many thousands of restaurants, from chic newer ones to hole-in-the-wall places called “fly diners.” Tourists go there just for the food.
Sichuanese cooking has been conquering the world, making major inroads in New York, London and other intensely competitive dining cities abroad.
But many in Chengdu worry that tradition is being lost and Sichuan*ese cooks are selling out for easy but fleeting hits.
Rapid growth has debased much restaurant cooking. Menus are often narrowed to dauntingly spicy dishes, like boiled duck-blood curd and tripe in chili broth, ignoring the great variety and nuance of the cuisine.
“Our taste buds have been battered into decline so that we demand it to be spicier and spicier,” said Shi Guanghua, a food writer and former restaurateur. “Sichuan*ese cuisine has become shallow and flattened.”
In Chengdu, people dissect their meals with the reverence that other cities devote to sports teams. Lively debate surrounds finding the balance between preserving tradition and embracing new ways and new customers.
And in this country where almost every problem prompts a state plan, the province’s government last year upgraded its guidelines for standard Sichuanese dishes. The guidelines advise, for instance, that “strange-flavored chicken strips,” a cold dish that includes dark vinegar, should use the meat of a year-old rooster.
To outsiders, this alarm may seem over the top. But the angst over Sichuan cooking distills wider anxieties about the place of tradition, as China becomes increasingly unmoored from its past.
“Shocks from commercialization and the simplification of tastes have created a crisis,” said Shi, who is on a supervisory panel for the restaurant-rating plan. “Sichuanese cuisine can’t survive without its traditions, but how to preserve them and reinvigorate them at the same time? That’s the focus of discussion.”
Early this year, dozens of retired chefs formed the Sichuan Old Chef Traditional Artistry Society to restore time-honored ways they say are under assault. Its 160 members, most in their 60s and 70s, meet weekly.
They gripe about young cooks who use new ingredients, like mayonnaise, and recall neglected classics, like sliced pig kidneys fried in fermented bean paste. Wang said he was inspired to start the society after watching while a 30-year-old chef from a five-star hotel added celtuce, also called asparagus lettuce, to kung pao chicken.
“I was furious,” he said with a grimace. The dish should be an uncluttered mix of chicken, peanuts, stubby dried red chilies and spices, he said. “Young chefs these days just don’t understand what tradition is.”
Of course no cuisine stands still. Classic French food evolves, as does every other cuisine. In Sichuan, the question is what elements to preserve and how to change without betraying the culinary heritage.
A camp of chefs here hopes to remake Sichuanese cooking for urbane middle-class tastes in airy modern restaurants, building on the core of traditional ingredients and techniques.
“You do have to maintain tradition, but it’s not a display in a museum,” said Yang Wen, a rare woman among the legions of male cooks here. “There’s no survival without innovation.”
Yang is the chef at Lotus Shadow, where refined dishes, like braised shrimp infused with jasmine tea, are a world away from the homespun fare favored by old-school revivalists. “It’s preserving the essence of tradition while meeting modern expectations,” she said. “Sichuanese food has never stood still.”
She has a point. Sichuanese cooking is classified as one of the eight great cuisines of China. But its roots are relatively recent. Over several centuries of war, trade and migration, outsiders brought in chilies, fermented bean paste, sugar and other spices, and their own cooking traditions.
These influences melded only a few generations ago to create an unusually aromatic and versatile toolbox of flavors. Sichuan’s historic openness to other influences should be seen as a virtue, say some food lovers here.
“The truest Sichuanese food has only about a century or so of history behind it,” said Wang Shiwu, a food critic at Sichuan Gastronomy magazine.
“The attractiveness of Sichuanese food is that it’s a big melting pot. Whatever is attractive in your cuisine, I can absorb and adapt it.”
SAN HUA KAO KO (THREE-FLOWER ROAST CHICKEN)
1 3- to 3-1/2-pound chicken
>> Marinade:
2 tablespoons kosher salt
2 tablespoons Chinese rice wine
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon red Sichuan peppercorns
1 tablespoon good-quality jasmine tea
1 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 cup coarsely chopped green onion
1 tablespoon coarsely chopped ginger
>> Poaching seasonings:
1/2 cup kosher salt
5 dried whole chili peppers, about 3 inches long
3 tablespoons jasmine tea
3 green onions, coarsely chopped
3 1/4-inch-thick slices ginger
2 whole star anise
6 bay leaves
>> Stuffing:
1/4 cup good-quality jasmine tea leaves
2 stalks green onion
2 1/4-inch-thick slices ginger
1 whole star anise
2 bay leaves
Wash chicken and pat dry, then ***** the thick part of the breast, legs and thighs with a sharp fork.
Combine marinade ingredients in blender or food processor and pulse into coarse paste. Rub chicken cavity and skin with paste; put in plastic bag and refrigerate 10 hours or overnight.
Combine poaching seasonings with 3 quarts water and bring to a boil in heavy 5-quart pot. Add chicken, breast side down; reduce heat to simmer. Cook, covered, 15 minutes. Turn off heat and let stand, covered, 30 minutes. Turn chicken and let stand, covered, another 15 minutes. Remove chicken, drain and let cool slightly.
Heat oven to 400 degrees. Steep tea for stuffing in hot water about 3 minutes. Drain tea, reserving wet leaves. Stuff chicken with half the leaves and remaining stuffing ingredients. Coat chicken with remaining leaves. Discard tea.
Loosely wrap chicken in foil; set it on baking sheet. Poke 4 to 5 small holes in foil to let steam escape and liquid to drain. Bake 30 minutes on middle rack.
Take out of oven. Remove foil and drain any liquid. Leave chicken in pan, breast side up, and bake until dark brown, 45 minutes to an hour. Cool slightly, then gently pull off chicken meat in coarse strips. Discard skin, bones and stuffing. Serve chicken warm or cool with some of tea leaves. Serves 6 to 8.
Nutritional information unavailable.
Panda Express
How Two Chinese Immigrants Built A Billion-Dollar Fast-Food Empire More Successful Than In-N-Out
FOOD NEWS 2 DAYS AGO
NEXTSHARK
Panda Express, the beloved fast-casual dining restaurant, was founded by Chinese immigrants who believe treating their employees right is the key to building their now billion dollar empire.
The Chinese-American fast food chain made $2 billion in sales in 2015 three times that of fast-food burger joint In-N-Out. According to Business Insider, Panda Express has no franchises and operates with 1,800 outlets in the United States, Mexico and Canada.
Panda Express, which is headquartered in Rosemead, California, is solely owned by the same family that founded it back in the 1970s. That couple, Andrew and Peggy Cherng, who are both 67, have an estimated net worth of $3 billion today.
HUMBLE BEGINNINGS
Andrews father, Ming-Tsai, worked at a restaurant in Taiwan after leaving Yangzhou, China in 1947. The family eventually relocated to Yokohama, Japan where his father found work as a chef. Andrew received a scholarship and moved to Kansas where he met his future wife and co-CEO Peggy at Baker University.
Peggy, also a Chinese immigrant, was raised off the mainland in Burma. After Kansas, she transferred to the University of Missouri where she studied computer science and eventually earned her PhD. Andrew moved to Missouri to be reunited with Peggy and earned his masters in applied mathematics.
GROWING AN EMPIRE
The couple wed after moving to Los Angeles and Andrew later convinced his parents to help him open Panda Inn on Foothill Boulevard in Pasadena in 1973. It was very much a family owned restaurant and business where his mother cooked the rice and Andrew focused on hospitality.
Panda Inn was slow getting off the ground at first and the business struggled initially. The future Panda Express billionaire once had to try to lure people into his restaurant by offering deals such as three entrees for the price of two.
THE FIRST PANDA EXPRESS
In 1983, Andrew opened the first Panda Express in the new food court of Glendale Galleria. Peggy, a computer programmer at McDonnell Douglas at the time, decided to help her husband with the accounting and payroll for his business.
Her technical knowledge allowed her to spearhead Panda Expresss growth by tracking purchasing history and shifts in customer behavior using pattern-recognition software. She said:
The kitchen area is low tech, but the management system can be high tech-how to catch the data, how to analyze data to see whats most salable, whats not selling, and to determine what to offer and what not to offer.
Andrews vision is that he doesnt see anything thats not possible. But visionaries need a system and structure to provide the growth.
A BUSINESS POWER COUPLE
Andrew takes the role of the charismatic leader and motivational CEO while Peggy is the chief technician in charge of operations, the financial tracking system and supply-chain management system. Though they may have differing roles, the couple agree that business is about the people. Peggy said:
The restaurant business is the people business, and people are our investment. If we want to be loved by guests, we have to focus on food with passion and service with heart, ambience and pride. If that value equation is really good, then guests will come.
Panda Expresses invests in their employees and the results show. Andrew said:
Our job is to develop people. When you have a good set of people and theyre in a good place inside and out-in their livelihood and in who they are then chances are they will take care of the customer better.
continued next post
Continued from previous post
HOW THEY TREAT EMPLOYEES
Panda Express is known for their better quality food and positive treatment of employees. The results are higher pay and better benefits. Panda Express pays $9.50 an hour for starting entry-level positions and about $14 an hour for assistant managers.
Benefits for Panda employees include health care, paid sick leave, paid vacation, 401(k)s and company-subsidized college courses after six months. The company is focused on self-growth and encourage employees to read books like “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen Covey and “Re-Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins.”
They are also encouraged to join Toastmasters International and enroll in personal-improvement seminars such as Dale Carnegie Training and Landmark Forum.
CARRYING THE TORCH
Of the Cherng’s three daughters, their eldest, Andrea, is the only one to go into the family business. Andrea said of her parents:
“This idea of a purposeful or meaningful life is something that Andrew and Peggy are very dedicated to.”
Andrea holds a law degree from Duke and an M.B.A from University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. She gained experience elsewhere in the private sector before she assumed her role at the Panda Restaurant Group with her parents.
Her parents informed her and her sisters at a young age that the whole family were responsible for a number of dependents from the business. She said:
“At dinner or the breakfast table my parents would ask me, ‘What are you going to do for our people?’ far before I could do anything for our people.”
Today, Andrea heads the Panda Express Innovation Kitchen in Pasadena where she tests out new recipes and restaurant decor. She said:
“The Innovation Kitchen is like a concept car. The products there can be replicated throughout the entire system three to five years out.”
Her younger sister Nicole is a real estate investor while her other sister Michelle is a teacher.
Written by NextShark
I’ve always disdained Panda Express, but this article has changed my opinion.
Greetings,
Chinese cuisine has gone off into the deep end in NYC. I was going to create a thread about the death of Chinese food, It is that bad. There has been a spiked increase in the use of frozen vegetables and the menus are essentially the “formula for success,” meaning that they are the same for every restaurant. When I would call for food prepared a particular way the response is something along the lines of, “So, you want it Chinese style!”. That, alone, should give you some idea about what is on the menu. The egg rolls are now contain bit pieces of pork and the worst part of the cabbage – there used to be so much more in those things. Then again they are not a traditional Chinese food. I could go on but lets just leave it as a worsening situation in NYC that has been created by increasing rent, property values and a poor economy.
mickey
Boob Buns
A Restaurant In China Serves a Boob-Shaped Custard Bun That Lactates on Command. Watch.
By Khushbu Shah June 24, 2016
The year 2016 has showed the world that pretty much anything is possible: The U.K. actually voted in favor of leaving the European Union, the possibility of a Donald Trump presidency is very real and restaurants can make dim sum dishes that make you ask, “Is it bun? Is it the nipple of a lactating breast? Is it a vomiting baby?”
Enter the Chinese dish from Hong Kong dim sum restaurant Dim Sum Icon that looks like all three:
[QUOTE]danielfooddiary
20.7k views
1w
danielfooddiaryMUST WATCH. How u feel when boss chases u for work during weekends. LOL.
Hong Kong has the weirdest dum sum ever, a vomiting Kobitos bun.
That is milk custard by the way.
Follow @DanielFoodDiary on Snapchat to see what I ate in #HongKong #DFDHongKong
The dish which is actually just a custard bun is shaped like a perky breast. It has a strange baby’s face that appears to vomit what Instagrammer Daniel’s Food Diary wrote is “milk custard” when a hole is poked into the bun.
In reality, the dish is not part of the female anatomy, it’s just a “vomiting Kobitos bun.” Kobitos is a character from a popular series of Japanese books. This bun in particular appears to be modeled off of the “Hiding Peach Bottom Kobitos.” Still, there is no denying its resemblance to a lactating breast.
This is not the only err, creative, bun Dim Sum Icon serves. It’s also home to a bun that looks like it has the runs. When customers poke a hole on the backside of the Gudetama chocolate bun (Gudetama is a popular Sanrio character), the chocolate filling oozes out in a realistic manner that might make your stomach a bit queasy.
danielfooddiary DIM SUM ICON
Follow
Click video for sound
15.8k views
5d
danielfooddiary"That LOOK when someone s*** near you, literally"
Warning: Video may cause some to feel uncomfortable. #DFDHongKong
Makes the over-the-top culinary abomination that is Burger King’s Mac n’ Cheetos look G-rated, no? [/QUOTE]
Worth the click to see the instagram vids. Well, sort of…
Hoisin sauce
Amusing article. Anyone who has ever done research on China can relate. :rolleyes:
The Mysterious Origins of Hoisin Sauce
The elusive history of a classic condiment.
By JOANNA SCIARRINO Art by SALLY THURER
The Internet-available information about hoisin sauce is all very, very shallow: it’s Chinese, it’s sweet, it’s good with many things. But what is it? Where does it come from? When was it created? Its name means “seafood,” but the sauce contains no seafood. The trail goes cold quickly if you want to know something substantive about the stuff that comes with your pho.
I reached out to Hong Kong– based food company Lee Kum Kee, which has been making hoisin for more than thirty years, hoping they could answer me. Their response:
Hoisin was traditionally used in southern Chinese cooking, specifically for seafood. The word hoisin is from the Chinese word for seafood. At that time it was used for stir-fries and dipping primarily. Now it has become a staple ingredient for all types of cooking and is used as a base, glaze, and marinade. It has become a multi-purpose sauce.
For a company that could fill swimming pools with the stuff, I was hoping for a little more insight. Plus, there’s plenty of informed opinion out there to the contrary: in a 1997 issue of the Chinese food-focused magazine Flavor & Fortune, Eva Koveos wrote, “Ironically hoisin means ‘sea freshness’ sauce in Chinese, but it contains no trace of seafood and usually is not served with it; rather it is popular in Chinese dishes containing poultry and pork.”
I was flummoxed. So I enlisted the help of Chinese-cuisine expert and scholar Fuchsia Dunlop to clear things up:
Hoisin sauce (hai xian jiang) is mainly a Cantonese thing. Many sources on Chinese ingredients don’t mention it at all. I did find one entry in a good culinary encyclopedia that says hai xian jiang is a collective name for seafood sauces, such as shrimp sauce, crab sauce, and clam sauce. I also found one Hong Kong chefs’ handbook that says it’s made from a smooth black bean sauce with added “seafood (hai xian),” cane sugar, garlic, vinegar, and five-spice powder. I’ve also found some recipes online that are made with fermented shrimp sauce.
So, without being able to answer you definitively, I would guess that it was originally a kind of sauce based either on fermented black beans or sweet fermented wheat sauce with some kind of dried/fermented seafood element added for extra umami flavor, as well as other seasonings, and that over time manufacturers cut back on the more expensive seafood ingredients. This seems the most likely explanation, because, as you know, hoisin sauce is more commonly used for ingredients such as pork, and not much for seafood, which would be the other logical reason for the name.
This would explain the absence of any seafood and/or shellfish product in today’s bottled hoisin. But I can’t fully corroborate any one theory about hoisin’s origins. Maybe hoisin once had seafood in it, maybe it didn’t. Maybe it made its way from China to Vietnam in the twentieth century, or maybe it evolved out of another bean-based condiment in Vietnam. Maybe it’s from Mars.
So after my futile quest for discovery, the most important facts about hoisin are those that you can confirm for yourself: it tastes good on char siu, Peking duck, and moo shu pork. It’s great in a Taiwanese-style pork bun. And it is very nice to have along- side a bowl of pho.
Wth?!
Oh man…China…:rolleyes:
Beijing hotpot restaurant serves up Barbie doll wrapped in meat that you undress while you eat
A hotpot restaurant is drawing some heat online, thanks to its new menu item – a Barbie doll wrapped up in strips of mutton.
Typically, a hotpot restaurant serves its customers with plates of meat that they cook at their leisure; however, one hotpot restaurant in Beijing provides diners with a beautiful female doll in a red gown.
Well, upon closer inspection, she’s actually wrapped up in strips of mutton (), Shanghai Daily reports. Therefore, if diners want to eat the mutton, they have to peel off each layer of meat, slowly undressing the Barbie, exposing her naked plastic to everyone.
While the restaurant owner must have thought that this was a brilliant idea to promote his hotpot shop, netizens on Weibo are a bit disgusted by the “sexist” display.
“Why can’t we just eat meats without any kind of stupid tricks like this?” one asked.
“It’s very disgusting. We don’t even know whether the staff cleaned the doll or not,” another commented.
“Let’s just throw the doll into the hotpot! It’s really time consuming to pull away all those strips of meat,” one netizen joked.
Wait, where have we seen that meat dress before? Some netizens immediately thought of the recently possibly banned Lady Gaga, saying that the hotpot restaurant should stop trying to imitate Lady Gaga’s style, because apparently it isn’t working.
Apparently, this place didn’t get the memo that China is trying to cut its meat consumpion in half.
By Katie Ngai
[Images via Weibo]
Wth?!
Oh man…China…:rolleyes:
Footage posted online on October 22 shows the man tucking into leeches
He tried to dip the struggling worms into a plate of oil using chopsticks
Fat worms can be seen squirming in the plate of dipping sauce
The man is believed to be dining out with friends at a Chinese restaurant
By JULIAN LUK FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 08:03 EST, 24 October 2016 | UPDATED: 09:38 EST, 24 October 2016
Bizarre footage posted online on October 22 shows the moment a man in China tucks into a meal of squirming leeches.
The man can be seen using chopsticks to dip three leeches into a small plate of oil in a restaurant thought to be in southern China.
The excited diner can be heard saying ‘Wow, they are so yummy!’ in Cantonese, a dialect spoken in southern China.
Unsettling moment shows man eating LIVE leeches in restaurant
A man can be seen using chopsticks to dip three leeches into a small plate of oil
It’s a real challenge to hold the leeches, still alive and wiggling, using the two sticks. Some leeches was left squirming in the plate of oil
In the video posted online by Weibo user Lie QI Xiao Dao Dan on October 22, the man can be seen struggling to keep hold of the leeches with his chopsticks.
The animals are still alive and wiggling as the man tries to keep control using the two sticks.
A female diner can be heard saying: ‘They are good quality. They are still moving!’
The man, struggles to capture the final leech which fell in the small plate of oil.
He says: ‘Two leeches are not enough. Let me get a third one. It has to be big.’
The man then picks up a fat worm from a big plate of purple and red coloured leeches.
The man then turned to big plate of leeches to pick up another fat worm
The man tries to show off the freshness of his food. He says: ‘Let them move a bit first. Otherwise people will say they are dead.’
The video then cuts to a close up of the man opening wide to eat more of the leeches.
He then gives a thumbs up before the video ends.
The video then came with a close up of how the man opened his mouth big to enjoy the fresh food
The clip, posted on October 22, is believed to be taken in a restaurant in southern China, home to Cantonese cuisine.
Cantonese cuisine virtually includes all edible food in addition to the common staple of pork, beef and chicken, Xinhua reports.
Other than leeches, a diverse species of worms and insects are common Cantonese dishes, including ****roaches, water beetles, cicada, according to the report.
However, most are cooked and processed before eating.
There’s a vid on the other side of the link, but I don’t recommend watching it.
Mahjong dumplings
They will bring you good fortune! Food lover makes dumplings that look like mahjong tiles
One man in China has put a creative spin on a traditional dessert dumplings eaten in winter
The food is typically enjoyed on the Lantern Festival at the end of Lunar New Year for good luck
Game lovers joked that people might eat the real mahjong tiles by mistake if they play while eating
By TIFFANY LO FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 06:29 EST, 10 February 2017 | UPDATED: 06:30 EST, 10 February 2017
Food plays an important part in Chinese culture and different dishes are dedicated to different festivals.
A man from east China has put a creative spin on the traditional Chinese dessert dumplings, which are eaten on the last day of Lunar New Year celebrations in hope of good fortune.
Web users have been amazed by the pictures of his lucky food which are shaped after mahjong tiles, a popular game in China usually played by four people.
Tasteful game! A man in China has shared pictures of innovative dumplings which look like tiles of a traditional game
Vivid: The mahjong dumplings (right) look so real that people have joked that game players might mix the two by mistake
Got a sweet tooth? The dumplings are filled with red bean paste, like the ordinary sweet dumplings found in Chinese stores
According to People’s Daily Online, the images have attracted great attention on the Chinese social media because the Lantern Festival, the occasion to eat these dumplings, will fall on this Saturday.
Lantern Festival, also known as Yuan Xiao Jie, is an event characterised by its iconic red Chinese lanterns. The festival marks the first full moon in a Lunar New Year.
Traditionally, the festival also signals the end of a two-week-long Lunar New Year celebrations.
Normally, sweet dumplings eaten on the day are shaped like a ball, a reminiscent of the roundness of a full moon. The sweet dumplings are made of glutinous rice flour with various fillings such as sesame paste and red bean paste.
The food lover’s mahjong dumplings, however, are decorated with dots, strokes and Chinese characters, just like the tiles used in the game.
Quick and easy: Shaped in a mold, the sweet dumplings can be made with glutinous rice flour, jam and red bean paste
Mahjong lovers commented on social media that these colourful dumplings might bring extra luck to the diners
Time to make your own! Mahjong dumplings can be made easily at home, with a simple recipe and few equipment
Mahjong lovers joked that the sweet dumplings will bring them luck. However, some are concerned that people might eat the real mahjong tiles by mistake if they have the food while playing the game.
Web user ‘New Hao’ said: ‘What if people play pranks on the others and they eat the real tiles?’
According to China Daily, mahjong dumpling first appeared in China in 2015 at a one hotpot restaurant, called ‘BaShu LongMen’ in Shanghai. The dumplings come in a portion of four, available in peanut paste and black sesame paste and cost six yuan (70p) per bowl.
[QUOTE]STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE: HOW TO MAKE MAHJONG DUMPLINGS
Ingredients: Mahjong tiles baking mold, food colouring or jam, glutinous rice flour and red bean paste
Mix glutinous rice flour and water to make a dough
Reshape the dough to a long stick and cut them into small pieces
Take a small piece of dough, flatten it with hands and place the red bean paste in the middle
Place the mixture into a mahjong tiles baking mold
Decorate the characters with food colouring or jam using an icing decorating pen
[/QUOTE]
144 tiles in a set. That’s a lot of dumplings if they make them all.
American-Chinese food in China
This is a great culture clash piece. It reminds me of the situation we had with our 10th Anniversary and not decapitating the fish.
China Doesn’t Understand the Concept of American Chinese Food
JAMIE FULLERTON
APR 27 2017, 11:00AM
Photo by Jamie Fullerton
Meet Fung and Dave, two Americans who opened up a Chinese-American restaurant in Shanghai, where the cooks shake their heads at dishes like crab rangoon and orange chicken and the customers don’t understand the point of fortune cookies.
This article originally appeared on MUNCHIES in May 2014. Fortune Cookie closed in January 2016.
If you’re a Westerner, even if the closest you’ve got to Asian culture is stumbling across the Great Wall on Google Earth, you know that Chinese people don’t crack open fortune cookies after every meal. And as a Brit living in Shanghai since a year ago, I can confirm that rather than sweet and sour chicken, most Chinese people prefer a nice pile of crispy chicken feet.
In fact, as the wonderfully named former New York Times reporter Jennifer 8. Lee pointed out in her 2008 TED Talk, most Chinese people don’t even know what chop suey actually is. Since Chinese food first began being served in the USA in the 19th century, it has had generations to evolve and suit US tastes, so much so that it’s completely disconnected to traditional dishes served in China, both now and then.
[QUOTE]“In China they like bones, but we had the staff spend hours deboning the chicken,” says Fung. "They were saying, ‘Why are we doing this?’
Given that most Chinese people wouldn’t recognize a plate of sticky orange chicken if it was splattered in their face, it seems an odd move to open an eatery almost exclusively serving American-style Chinese food in the middle of Shanghai. But that’s what New Yorker Fung Lam and California-born Dave Rossi have done in the shape of Fortune Cookie, which opened ten months ago.
Photo by Jamie Fullerton
Above, Fung (left) and Dave (right). All photos by the author.
Having failed in their bid to launch a salad-based venue in Shanghai two years ago, the pair, who had quit white collar jobs and moved to China to try to launch a venue together, were craving American-Chinese comfort food and couldn’t find it in China.
"When somebody feels like they’ve broken up with their girlfriend, they don’t think, I really want a salad,‘’ says David. “We wanted orange chicken, something fried, and cold beer. We couldn’t find it in Shanghai, so we decided to do it ourselves. When we signed the lease we thought, If this bombs, at least we can eat the food we’ve been missing for six months.”
But it didn’t bomb. Fung’s family owns 15 Chinese restaurants in the US, the first of which his grandfather set up in Brooklyn in the 60s. Fung flew his dad, who is head chef of all 15 restaurants, over to Shanghai to train up the newly hired Chinese kitchen staff.
Photo by Jamie Fullerton
“In China they like bones, but we had the staff spend hours deboning the chicken,” says Fung. “They were saying, ‘Why are we doing this?’ We also got them to fill wontons with cheese. They were thinking, What is going on? Some of them were eating cream cheese for the first time. They were shaking their heads.”
Photo by Jamie Fullerton
When Fung transferred his family’s fantastic recipes (including a rich orange chicken, Kung Pao chicken, General Tso’s beef, and tofu chop suey) to China and served them alongside imported US beers, Western expats latched on quickly. But locals needed to be won over, tooa goal that was achieved when the pair started selling themselves as providing “American food” rather than “Chinese food with an American twist.”
Photo by Jamie Fullerton
That’s not to say that things haven’t got lost in translation sometimes. “The first response from locals is always about portion size,” says Dave. "They think they’re huge. We had two petite women come in early on when we opened and order seven dishes. After the second one came out they just started laughing. Also, people hadn’t seen the take-out boxes we use anywhere other than on The Big Bang Theory. Our Chinese assistant just said, “‘Oh, that’s what Sheldon eats.’”
In her talk, Jennifer 8. Lee showed a video of Chinese people looking bemused as they were shown fortune cookies for the first time. (Fortune cookies actually originated from Japan.) The responses have been similar over here: “A lot of our guests are opening their first fortune cookies,” says Dave. “Some of them eat the paper or put it in their purse thinking it’s a free gift.”
Photo by Jamie Fullerton
Fung believes that it is quality rather than novelty that’s earned them the respect of both locals and expats, though. “We’re not finding recipes on the internet, we’re doing this for real,” he says. “Every American-Chinese family has their own recipe for orange chicken, and this is something my grandfather passed on. This food tastes like it does in New York and is legit, with 40 years of history.”
Photo by Jamie Fullerton
As our interview wraps up, Dave hands me a fortune cookie. I break open to reveal a paper slip bearing a message so fitting, I suspect he may have set it up: If you build it, they will come.
Photo by Jamie Fullerton
Don’t expect to get such poignant messages here in the near future. Fung and Dave say they wrote all the fortunes themselves (initially to replace the first batch they ordered that turned out to be written in Dutch), but have run out of ideas. Now they use suggestions written by customers and left in a collection box by the door. “They’re always something ridiculously sexual,” says Dave. “Or phone numbers with ‘For a good time call’ next to them. And, of course, a huge amount of pictures of *****es.”[/QUOTE]
A somewhat odd story, but not unbelievable: