Another night on the town

I get invited out to eat a lot. I know the other foreigners here all have the same problem. The Chinese are wonderful hosts, but at times it can feel like too much of a good thing. Take my weekend for example, on Saturday night my friend invited me out for dinner. When I told her I had no preference as to where we went, she decided on hot pot. I like hot pot, but I would only eat it about once every six months if I had my way. It's greasy, it's hot, it gets all over your clothes, and it's not really satisfying.

My friend wanted to check out a hot pot place that she always walked past but had never been to. Every evening there is a line out the door and around the corner. She called to see about reservations and was assured that we could find a seat anytime before six.

Dinner was good. We didn't order enough to sit for hours and pig out, just enough to satisfy us. I thought it was great, I'd made it out of a hot pot restaurant not feeling overly stuffed. I thought the night was over and she was going to take me home. Having dinner with these people is fun, but it's taxing as well.

It turns out we had a date to meet my friend's mother later that evening. We arrived at her parent's new apartment and were ushered in by her mom. After we all sat down around the television, she came back in with cups of hot Tang orange drink. Chinese people will swear that they don't like sweet things, but they sure love their sweet drinks. The Tang wasn't diluted enough, and the sweet left my mouth feeling sticky. She kept insisting that I eat some fruit until I finally had to give in. I'll admit it was good, but by this point I was feeling completely full.

After the visit to her mom's house, my friend insisted that we go out for coffee. The Chinese version of having coffee usually includes a sickingly sweet beverage poured on top of a handfull of purple tapioca balls. The drinks are made in all sorts of odd flavors. The Chinese seem to be really fond of green bean and corn flavored sweet things right now.

The sweet drink at the coffee house was what put me over the edge. Any one of our stops up until that point would have satisfied my hunger. But nope, we weren't done yet-- what night would be complete without a stop at the Chinese bbq stand?

I don't understand how people can eat so much and yet remain thin. I try to limit myself to one Chinese meal a day, two just feels like too much of a good thing.

Ice Cream

I don't crave Western food often. There are a couple of things that when mentioned, make my mouth water--cheese and Almond M&Ms. For a while I was craving popcorn, but my mom brought several bags from the States and the craving suddenly disappeared. I haven't actually eaten any yet, but I'll get to it...

Tonight Sarah's friend, Huang Jie treated us to a sundae at Haagendaz. I didn't realize how much I missed eating ice cream until Sarah invited me along last night. I've been thinking about it ever since I woke up this morning.

Haagendaz is one of the swankiest joints in town. The inside has the appearance of a Seattle-style coffee house, with dark lighting and comfortable chairs. I'd heard that Haagendaz was expensive and was only a place to take your date, but I'd never been there myself.

It turns out the rumors are all true, the place is expensive ($10 banana split!?) and full of young couples. Sarah, her friends and myself sat on a set of couches in the far corner. Being the guests, we were asked to order first. The problem was that everything on the menu was in the US $10 range, and we both felt guilty ordering what we wanted. We hemmed and hawed and argued for a bit until succeeded in making everyone else order first. Taking our cues from them, we ordered a banana split and a dulce de leche sundae. Mmmmmm...

I've been slowly coming up with a list of foods I want to eat upon return to the States. We've all talked amongst ourselves about what we want to eat as our first meal back at home. I think I'm going to revise mine. Mom, Dad: I'd like a homemade ice cream sundae with whip cream, chocolate sauce and cherries. Add that to the Thanksgiving dinner, pizza, spaghetti, lasagna, carne asada, caesar salad, cold cereal, block of cheese, apple pie...

What will become of me?

One of my biggest concerns about returning home is what I will eat upon arrival on American soil. This is a serious issue, and I've been devoting more time than I should thinking about it. This sounds like a ridiculous question, but I assure you it is very serious indeed.

I've been eating Chinese food for nearly eight months now, and I keep wondering when I'll get sick of it. Fortunately that day never comes, and I'm just as happy eating today as I will be tomorrow. In fact, while the food I eat at home fills me, the food I eat here makes me happy. I've been trying to figure out a way to bring food home with me in my suitcases. How much can I take? What's currently available in the US? What can't I find at home? What will make good gifts? I've even gone so far as to check online to see what can be shipped.

This may not sound like much, but it is. I cannot express how good the food I eat is. My roommate and I used to sit and rave over each dish we ate. After a while, that became too redundant as every dish we ate was delicious. Now it takes a conscience effort to only say it was good.

What is to become of me?

For those of you who think I can't do more than fry an egg--

You haven't seen me lately!

School started this week, and with every new semester comes new semester resolutions. One of mine is to make at least one authentic Sichuanese meal a week. I've been scouring my Sichuan cookbook in search of the best, most authenic, non-innard meals to make. Each recipe I want to master is marked with a yellow sticky note.

The first meal I tried is a noodle dish called dan dan mian. It's fairly simple and only requires a few ingredients. According to my cookbook, dan dan mian is one of the most famouse Sichuanese street snacks. The name "dan dan" comes from the fact that vendors would carry tubs of these noodles on a bamboo shoulder pole (called "dan"). I've only had these noodles on the street once, but I see them on the menu in many, many restaurants.

Finding the ingredients was the toughest part of this dish. Although I read some Chinese, I'm not particularly fluent in the spice aisle. I spent over an hour in the store looking at the various jars and bottles. Finally one of the clerks noticed I was spending an uncomfortable amount of time looking at lables and came over to help. Five minutes later, I had everything I needed.

Many noodle dishes in Chengdu are served sauce-on-bottom. You are left to do the mixing yourself at your table. The sauce for dan dan mian contains oil, preserved vegetable, light and dark soy sauce, chili oil, vinigar and Sichuan pepper. Basically, all these ingredients are cooked with the preserved vegetable and placed into small bowls to await the noodles.

For the topping, ground pork is cooked with Shaoxing rice wine and some soy sauce. Once the dish is ready to be served, a scattering of pork is placed on top of the noodles along with some fresh cut scallions.

Believe it or not, my dan dan mian noodles turned out spectacular. They were hot and filling, and easy enough that I could reduplicate it anytime I want.

Next time I make a dish (tomorrow), I'll be taking pictures of the process. Keep checking back!

More food-on-a-stick

I think the picture says it all, but I'll explain just to be sure. That picture isn't my doing, I stole it off another website. Trust me, if you had seen what I saw you would never read this blog again.

I love most everything in Chengdu that comes in kabob form. I ate lamb-on-a-stick and cantaloupe-on-a-stick for dinner tonight. For dessert I ate pineapple-on-a-stick. Everything on a stick is good! At least, that's what I used to think...

Yes, Gentle Reader, you can see from the picture above just how wrong I was on this matter. Yesterday I was taken to a food bazaar that was set up in celebration of Chinese New Year. There were booths selling every kind of food in China: Hong Kong style Chinese food, Sichuan style, Beijing style, and everything in between. There was lamb-on-a-stick, ostrich-on-a-stick, fish-on-a-stick, and even camel-on-a-stick. My friend and I didn't buy anything on our first trek around the bazaar. We just wanted to see what everyone was selling, so we could come back and buy what looked best. The food stalls were situated end to end down a long and narrow alleyway. The place was packed with locals and tourists alike, all trying to sample something exotic. As we neared the end of the alley, we suddenly noticed that one booth had attracted an unusually large group of onlookers. I pushed my way to the front of the crowd to see what was being sold. There on the table lay rows and rows of bugs-on-a-stick. The ones that you see above were there, as well as a number of bugs I didn't recognize. The worst offenders were the scorpion-on-a-stick. I watched as customers bought these, and then bit into their crunchy exoskeleton.

Situated between the scorpions and some beetles-on-a-stick sat something I thought I'd never see on a food table. Tarantulas. Big, fried, crispy-looking tarantulas.

Finally!

I'm finally accomplishing some of my goals! First, I had the opportunity to make jiaozi with some friends. Second, I finally figured out how to use the rice cooker!

For those of you who don't know, jiaozi are a form of Chinese dumpling. They're basically boiled pot stickers. There's a jiaozi restaurant on the SU campus. It's the perfect lunch on a cold day.
The place is always crowded, but the food is fresh and the service is relatively friendly. The woman who owns the place speaks a little English, so whenever we go in she likes to practice with us.

There are many different flavors of jiaozi, my favorites are: pork with tomato, pork with mushroom, and pork with chives. They're all made in the front of the shop, and then quickly boiled. We dip them in a sauce made of chili, soy sauce, vinegar, sugar and huajiao. Often, we order a bowl of boiled greens to go with the meal. One of these days I'm hoping to ask the owner if she'll teach me how to make the filling. I'm willing to work for free, if that's what it takes. I'm also thinking that a jiaozi restaurant would be a good business to open back home. I can have a jiaozi/cold noodle restaurant that will cater to all the cold Seattleites. I've posted several jiaozi pictures below. Just thinking about this is making me hungry!

Another great thing I've discovered is ginger tea. You take fresh ginger, slice it and boil it in a large pan. Once it boils, you turn it down and let it simmer for about an hour. Sarah and I have experimented with adding lemon and orange, and both are good. When the tea is ready, we use honey to sweeten. The more ginger you add, the spicer the tea will be. We drink this several times a week. It keeps me from munching all night, and also helps me stay warm.

Dinner with the prof.

A couple of weeks ago, my history professor invited myself and a few classmates out to dinner. The restaurant, he told us, was a peasant-owned place that he and his friends like to visit. Although it wasn't in Chengdu proper, it was still worth the drive.

We arrived at the restaurant only to find that our dinner companions had been waiting for us for over two hours. We sat down and dinner was promptly put on our table. We ate like kings; Mr. Zhou wasn't lying when he said this place was good. We ate pancakes, various plates of vegetables, meat, and of course, pig ears (what meal would be complete without it?) My classmate Deborah had assured me they were "crunchy, but good." They were crunchy, but not in a way I would call good. I can only describe it like eating a piece bacon with a sliver of cartilage through the middle. The Chinese are into eating the fatty portions of the meat, and I think cartilage falls into the same category. It was weird, but good.

After dinner we were taken to a majhong parlor/bar where we sat around a table and ate sunflower seeds while trading stories of America. One of my professor's friends, a lawyer, had just returned from a twenty day trip to the States. From what I gathered the entire trip was conducted Chinese style, meaning they transversed nearly a dozen cities in twice as many days. I did gain one cultural insight that is worth repeating. Everywhere we go we are subject to the Chinese picture torture. That is, if you go to a tourist destination, you will be the unwilling object of many pictures. If the photographer is feeling especially polite, they may even ask you before they start taking pictures of you and with you. Sarah, my roommate has a whole collection of these pictures. It's hard to explain without having actually been there, but needless to say it's weird. Anyway, this Chinese lawyer had a collection of "foreigner was here" pictures. With each picture he would voice the caption for us, making his random people pictures just a bit more understandable.

"This picture was of a beautiful woman. I really liked her hair. Here's a picture of some American college students. Notice how they carry such heavy backpacks... Here's a picture of a couple sitting on a park bench. See, they don't even flinch when I stand near them..."

We spent a couple of hours at the mahjong hall/bar before heading back to Chengdu. On the way out, on of my classmates said sarcastically "that's all?" The meaning of this short sentence was: "that was fun. Let's go home, I had a great time." It was interepreted by the Chinese as "We haven't had enough yet. Let's go to another bar."

We thought we were headed back to Chengdu and a restful night. Instead, we were on our way to a seedy bar on the outskirts of the city. The lawyer ordered a cheap bottle of whisky, and we sat in the bar listening to bad Chinese music until the bottle was empty. The food here in China is great, the alcohol is not so much.