Last week, I shared the top number 6 to 4 unbelievable Chinese dishes. Some of you may know one or two of the three dishes. Probably, you can accept one or two. I am so glad you are brave and lucky that you will know those delicious food that other people never taste. If you are curious about them, just go to try. You cannot judge them by their appearance or smell. You need to use your other senses to better assess one thing. To taste it, gustation is the best way to judge food. You never know how it tastes without tasting. Attention, if you still cannot accept the Chinese food culture I talked last week, please be careful about the content I am going to introduce later. Hahaha, I am not scaring you. I promise they are all delicious. I just want you know more about what Chinese eat that is different than foreign. It is part of Chinese culture. And I want people know more about China. TOP 3: Chinese style fish When I just came to United Sates to study, I found that people here only eat filleted fish without bone. While in China, we cook fish whole, which maintains the savory fish. You may think it is scared to see the fish head, it is not necessary to keep the head because there is nothing to eat, it is troublesome to eat fish with bones, while Chinese like to eat food what it is. keeping the head and bones makes food more flavorous. Of course, the fish will be completely scaled and gutted. There are many ways to cook fish, such as boiled fish as soup, steamed, braised, and fried. And there is a famous dish called steamed pepper fish head. For Chinese, the fish head is a very nourishing part that it contains a nutrient helping to "improve liver function and lower cholesterol." The fish head also can be commonly cooked as soup. And the steamed pepper fish head is much more famous with the spicy and sour flavor. it can be steamed with red pepper, green pepper, or red and green pepper. Usually, after finishing the fish head, we will keep the sauce and eat noodle with it. http://www.theworldofchinese.com/2015/10/flavor-in-a-fish-head/ TOP 2: Animal innards Well, you must think it is horrible, dirty, evil. But no, they are also edible ingredients from chicken, pig, beef...... I cannot believe how you miss these delicious food. Fuqi Fei Pian (Husband and Wife Lung Slices) This name came from a story that this dish is created and sold by a couple. Thus it known as the lung slices sold by a couple. It is made of beef slices and beef offal, including beef heart, lung, tongue, and tripe, stirring with special flavoured spicy sauce, Mao Xue Wang is made of duck blood and pig offal, also commonly with bean sprout, asparagus lettuce, ham, and eel. As you can see from the picture, it is spicy, but I love it! It is really delicious, it is a common dish in many Chinese restaurant. In addition to the two dishes that can be found at Chinese restaurant, there are many other home cooking dishes, such as braised pig intestine, stir fried scalloped pig kidney, stir fried chicken giblets with chicken heart, intestine, gizzard, so on, and the soup with spinach and pig liver. Although the first two dishes contain pepper, they are not spicy. But the stir fried chicken giblets is really spicy and delicious. Besides, we cook the spinach and pig liver together because both of the two ingredients are nutritious that they can relieve fatigue and blood deficiency. TOP 1: Pig's brain Here it is! This the the Top 1 that I think you probably will never try, even many Chinese can accept it. People are afraid of it because it is brain, While I like it. We eat pig's brain as food commonly spicy and with hot pot. There is a folk adage saying "you are what you eat" thus people think eat brain can make them smart, while I do not know whether it is true. Many people can accept it when they do not know what it is. Thus I think they are just scared what it is but it tastes good. Thank you for your reading of these two posts. Hope you do not hate Chinese food after reading. I hope you can have chance to try them without judgement of the name, looking, smell, just do it. Thank you again!
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Thank you all for loving Chinese food. This week I am going to tell you some dishes that are really delicious but are unbelievable and unacceptable to western people. People refuse to eat them may because they smell bad, look strange, or cannot accept what them made from. Actually, every country has their own special food culture, which may unacceptable to others. For example, many Chinese people cannot accept Cheese, rare steak, or Avocado. For my family, we cannot accept rare steak. Especially, I cannot accept the Steak tartare, which is made from chopped raw beef. But not all the people cannot accept the so called unbelievable food. There are so many Chinese like cheese and rare steak. It depends different people's taste. And now Let's look at the 6 dishes that I love and I think most of you may dislike or don't know. Top 6: Stinky Tofu Stinky tofu is a very popular street food in China. Don't be scared of the name. Yes, this kind of tofu has a strong smell. But just like cheese, they both have special smell but taste good. The stinky tofu is made by marinating fresh tofu in special brine usually contains fermented milk, fermented soy bean, shiitake mushroom, bamboo shoot, and many other ingredients depend on different regions. With different recipe of the brine, the color of the tofu is different. After Marinating, just fry the tofu and eat with sauce, commonly spicy sauce. It has crumbly outside and soft interior. I have to say it tastes amazing. Visit this website to know how a foreign's real feeling about this dish in China http://travel.cnn.com/shanghai/eat/diy-stinky-tofu-how-make-perfect-albeit-it-smelly-shanghai-street-food-310682/ Top 5: Animal‘s claws Most of you may think how can people eat animals' feet right? They look scared and even don't have meat, especially the chicken and duck feet. While we like how it taste differently than meat, very chewy and interesting by gnawing the skin and tendons off the bone. The common Chinese cuisine is stewing and simmering in flavored sauce, consisting soy sauce, Chinese prickly ash, star anise, cinnamon, and pepper. It is very common eating with beer and wine. And now there is a new recipe that add coke into the sauce to stew the claws, which will make a sweet flavor. Top 4: Animal's blood Blood! Are we Vampire?Of course not. I know that not only Chinese, many other Asian countries also eat blood as food. The animal blood, also known as "blood tofu" commonly from pig, chicken, duck, and goose, is make from coagulated blood. Animal blood dishes are usually braised as spicy or strong flavored. And there are many popular street food that cook duck blood with noddles, rice noodles, or bean thread, which I eat a lot when my mom is lazy doesn't want to cook for me. Here are the Top 6 to 4 special food from Chinese that I want to introduce to you. I stopped here because I want to give you time to accept these first and be ready for the next week.^_^ Today is the 15th day at the first month of the Lunar Calendar, which is the end of the Spring Festival celebration. At this day, people will make glutinous rice ball to celebrate it, which also called Yuanxiao Festival or Lantern Festival. Yuan in Chinese "圆“, in English "circle", meaning happy ending and family reunion. Well, as you can see, the shape of Yuanxiao is a ball, which also match the meaning of "Yuan". Since the glutinous rice ball is sweet, we usually eat it as desert. We eat Yuanxiao or Tangyuan not only for the Yuanxiao Festival, but also for Dongzhi, the Winter Solstice Festival. You might be curious why I put two pictures here. It is not because of the different flavors, while actually they are two different types of rice ball. In the South of China, they call it Tangyuan, and in the North of China they call it Yuanxiao. Yuanxiao and Tangyuan look and taste very similar, even I cannot distinguish them well. But they do have differences, the biggest difference is the way they been made. Let's see what are the two different ways to make it. Basically Yuanxiao or Tangyuan is made from glutinous rice flour mixed with water so that can be formed as ball, usually it has fillings, commonly with black sesame or red beans. Then cooked in boiled water, and eat with the soup. Tangyuan—--the wrapped ball The way of making Tangyuan is similar to dumplings, wrapping fillings with flour wrappers, but the wrapper for Tangyuan is much more thicker than dumpling's wrapper. Mix the glutinous flour with water and make wrappers. Then put fillings at the center of the wrapper and roll it into a ball with both hands. Lastly just cook them in boiled water until them floating on the water. Yuanxiao—--the rolling ball The point of making Yuanxiao is to roll the filling, which is formed as a ball, in glutinous flour, so that the filling ball can be coated with flour. Then take out the balls and steep them into water for seconds. After this you need to put them back into the flour and roll them again. Take out and steep into water...Roll..., repeat the two steps at least 3 times. If you want thicker wrapper, you can repeat few more times. Then at the last time you did rolling, you finished making process, you just need to put the rice balls into boiled water until them floating on the water. Due to the different making ways, Tangyuan tastes much more soft and has more fluent fillings. But they both delicious. We also have different flavor for the wrapper. You can choose carrots, spinach, sweet potato, or many other ingredients. For example, press vegetables into juice then add into the flour, so that you can have colorful wrappers. Thank you for your time! Hope you like this traditional festival desert!
There are many differences between Chinese and American food culture, while it is hard to list all the differences. Let's start from the first meal of the day - Breakfast! Chinese start their busy day early in the morning around 6am for job or school. Thus it is a big problem for them to have time to cook breakfast at home. The way Chinese eat breakfast is distinctive than American. It is easy because Chinese can buy various types of breakfast at street shops, while it is not easy because most of the breakfast dishes are not easy to make. Rice congee is the mainstay diet of Chinese breakfast. It is common and simple to make at home. With enough water that more than you use for cook rice, cook the rice for a long time until the rice get soft and thicker. It is great having warm and mild meal to start a nice day! Of course, you can add other ingredients to make various flavors. It can be sweet or salty with what ever you want, meat, vegetables, or seafoods. In addition to the variety of congee, we also have Tofu Pudding as one of the important diets for Chinese breakfast that you may never heard before. It is a kind tofu that is very soft and tastes like pudding that made from raw beans. While, depend on deferent regions in China, people like different flavor of tofu pudding. Generally, people from the North prefer salty tofu pudding, while people from South prefer sweet tofu pudding, besides, the tofu pudding also can be spicy, especially people from Sichuan love Spicy. Usually, we don't eat congee or tofu pudding alone, we have various side dishes to eat with. One of the traditional and typical snack is deep-fired dough slice. Just like its name, it is deep-fired sticks of dough. And it is great to eat with some soupy dishes, such as congee, tofu pudding, and soymilk. Another type of side dish that I love is steamed buns. It also has different flavors for you to change your choice everyday. Steamed buns are made from wheat flour. After fermentation, the buns have a spongy feel. The basic steamed bun (without any fillings) is called Mantou. It can be white made from wheat flour, brown made with wholemeal flour, or yellow made from corn flour. In addition to steamed buns, another famous Chinese cooking way is pan-frying. For example, the pan-fried buns called "Shengjian" and pan-fried dumplings called "Guotie" have crisp browned bottom, also have more juicy fillings. Shaomai is one of my favorite buns. It has thinner wrapper and different fillings than the buns that I have mentioned above. The most common fillings of shaomai are sticky rice, shiitake mushroom, and minced pork. Sticky rice as the basic ingredient of shaomai, you can replace the pork with other meat or seafoods, or you can make vegetarian shaomai. These are not all the dishes we eat for breakfast, there are many other delicious dishes such as various flavors of noodles, wonton (another type of dumpling), spring roll, egg pancake, and so on. Now, you know how different the Chinese breakfast and American Breakfast. Would you try Chinese breakfast? These video will teach you how to make these at home. Go to my Youtube page find the Chinese Breakfast playlist! Or you can just find a Chinese Restaurant to order these delicious dishes!
Thank you for your reading. See you next week! |
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April 2017
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