Posts Tagged ‘Canada’

  1. Made in Jiānádà: Suzhou Porky Mooncakes

    August 31, 2012 by MaryAnne

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    Hello. I’ve been away for a while, haven’t I?

    It’s been a very hot,  busy summer, much of it nowhere near a kitchen to call my own.

    We were in Morocco for a month, which was lovely in spite of the fact that it was 46 degrees in the shade AND Ramadan for most of the time we were there. Whoops.

    Anyway. I’ve been back in Shanghai for nearly three weeks now and have yet to dust off the oven and check to see if it even still works. Poor thing. I’ve made chili and tacos and a ton of wok tortillas, but those aren’t new things so I can’t exactly re-write posts for them just for the sake of it.

    This one… this is one I made back in Canada just before I left, but never posted.

    Why?

    Because I royally screwed it up.  Kind of. I made Suzhou pork hockey pucks.

    You know, the Canadian interpretation. Like, say, chop suey or bison fried rice.

    Apparently my skillful light touch and intuitive cooking skills don’t apply to pastry.

    I love Suzhou mooncakes. In China, however, it isn’t worth the energy to actually make them at home because they are so good, so fresh and so cheap here.

    For the past two mornings, on my long, hot trek out to the Entry-Exit Bureau in deepest, darkest Pudong to renew my residence permit, I’ve stopped at a tiny stand at the bottom of our street to buy a little brown bag containing exactly two mooncakes, still hot and flakey and filled with lovely, juicy, umami seasoned ground pork, fresh from the oven. 6 kuai (under a buck) for a very solid breakfast.

    I was too busy eating them to take pictures, but below is one I took a few weeks ago when I was actually in Suzhou. See the little red stamp on the ones below? They stamp their mooncakes, yes. Much more low key than all the fiddly crimping and dough-engraving that goes on with the classical lotus paste and duck egg filled Cantonese style ones that are exchanged (and then re-gifted and re-gifted, like fruitcake) during the mid-autumn festival (coming very soon). (more…)

    Category Baked Things, Improbable Things, Made in Jianada, Uncategorized | Tags: ,,,,,, | 5 Comments

  2. Made in Jiānádà: Homestyle porky Eggplant (家常茄子)

    July 11, 2012 by MaryAnne

    We took ours camping. It reheats very well in a cast iron fry pan over a propane camp stove. Just so you know.

    Eggplant (茄子 or qiézi) was one of the first words I learned in Mandarin back in early 2009, partly because we ordered it so often that it inevitably had to stick in my head, and partly because it sounded like a hybrid between cheese and chaise (as in longue). Kind of like ch’yay’zuh.

    Except not really.

    If you are anything like me, your tones will be so inconceivably wrong that you could say it every day for three years and still only get it right half the time.

    And I do get practice saying it. We eat spiced deep fried eggplant slices, stewed umami eggplant fingers with sizzling red and green peppers, dry fried green beans with long melty lengths of lightly spiced eggplant with just a hint of pork crumble. At home, I’ve baked it and fried it and breaded it.

    When I lived in Turkey, I lived on it.

    And the thing is, until a decade ago, I thought I hated eggplant. I loathed it, in fact. It was on the list of things I told people I didn’t like, alongside all sorts of fungus and organ meats.

    What I failed to realize, however, was that 1. I just hated those big spongy bitter eggplants normally sold in Canada and 2. I hate big spongy chunks of poorly prepared eggplant.

    Those little tiny thin Asian and Turkish purple-black eggplants, properly sauteed or baked slowly and drizzled in olive oil? Those I like.

    This recipe is astonishingly easy to pull together and really quite tasty, even for those who think they hate eggplant. It’s not at all spongy and it’s not at all bitter. It tastes even better, reheated over a propane camp stove three days later, eaten plain with a spoon in little unbreakable bowls in the wilds of Vancouver Island.

    This is, as the name says, simple homestyle eggplant (家常茄子 – jiācháng qiézi). This is comfort food. (more…)

    Category Improbable Things, Made in Jianada, Spicy Things, Uncategorized | Tags: ,,,,,, | 6 Comments

  3. Made in Jiānádà: Pork and Green Beans, China-Style

    July 8, 2012 by MaryAnne

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    I’m not actually anywhere near my kitchen right now. In fact, I’m out in the wilds of Vancouver Island with my family, camping outside the gates of the Island Music Fest. My laptop is being powered by one of my dad’s spare car batteries and I’m stealing wifi from one of the sound stages. Music is drifting across the Grassy Knoll. No, not that grassy knoll. The other one.

    This recipe is one I made last week, before we drove up island to the Comox Valley for a week. Our culinary excursions here have consisted of reheating things we had made earlier on the tiny propane burner in the tiny little camper.

    For the record, eggplant with minced pork (to be posted when we get back) reheats fabulously.

    This is a whole other deal, though working within the porky paradigm. This is one we have eaten many times in Shanghai, though I have to limit my intake as Doug’s less of a green bean fan than I am. If I could, I’d live on spicy minced pork with green beans (and eggplant!).

    It’s very easy to make and the prep can be done in instalments. Do a little bit, walk away, come back later and do more. Assemble and cook when you’re ready.

    It goes well as a side dish or as a main dish with rice. We actually chopped up the leftovers into little pieces and used it to fill fresh Vietnamese rice rolls (you know, the discs that you soak briefly in warm water to soften), along with fresh cilantro, vinegared onions, scallions and a squeeze of fresh lime. Gorgeous. There are no photos of this because we ate EVERYTHING.

    They call these dry fried string beans in English in the recipe (technically it’s dry stirred- gān biān 干煸 - whatever that means) but they’re actually fried in oil, which isn’t exactly parched.

    Go figure.

    I kind of want to call out a square dance with this one, but with a hearty sìjì dòu instead of a do-si-do.

    Ladies and gents, I give you pork ‘n beans. Kind of. (more…)

    Category Improbable Things, Made in Jianada, Spicy Things, Uncategorized | Tags: ,,,,, | 5 Comments

  4. Made in Jiānádà: Lanzhou Lāmiàn (broth!)

    June 30, 2012 by MaryAnne

    The Super-Sized dinner version

    This is part 2 in my noodle series. Part 1 (the hand pulled noodles) is here.

    This is quite possibly the best broth in the whole universe. Except, perhaps, for a fine Tom Yam with all the bark and twigs still nestled at the bottom of the bowl. This one has its own mighty collection of bark and twigs, and plays the role of hearty autumn and winter to Thailand’s fierce summer in the Cartesian dialectic of soup broths.

    This is a broth that will make you pick up the bowl and sip away at the broth until it’s gone, leaving only a few stray chili seeds at the bottom, long after the noodles and greens have been spooned/chopsticked away.  The rich beefy scent, umami’d up to the hilt with soy, garlic, star anise and cinnamon, needs to be brought up close to your nostrils as you sip. The chilies and garlic will sternly resolve any colds you may have stubbornly residing in your system.

    Keep a few Tupperware containers of this stuff in your freezer for a cold, rainy day, then note how your mood significantly lifts after you heat up a bowl of it. Seriously. This stuff is mood altering, up there with crack and bath salts. (more…)

    Category Made in Jianada, Soupy Stewy Things, Spicy Things, Uncategorized | Tags: ,,,,,, | 7 Comments

  5. Made in Jiānádà: Garlic Shoots and Smoky Bacon

    June 28, 2012 by MaryAnne

    The knife is to fight off anyone who tries to steal your bacon.

    Welcome to Part 2 in my series of as yet undetermined length on cooking Chinese food in Canada!  Part 1 is here.

    We’re still on safe, neutral territory here- no bear paw, no jellyfish, no shark fin soup in my drafts folder, thank you very much. I’m sticking with the things I eat regularly in Shanghai (aside from those guanxi-heavy banquets for work) and I have, by nature, really simple tastes. Veggies will predominate, as they ought to. (more…)

    Category Improbable Things, Made in Jianada, Uncategorized | Tags: ,,,,, | 2 Comments

  6. Made in Jiānádà: Garlicky Chinese cucumber salad

    June 20, 2012 by MaryAnne

    Marinating the cucumber and garlickiness for half an hour in the fridge to make it super happy.

    Er, hello.

    It’s been a while. You may remember me as the person who used Xinjiang noodle dough to make pretty much everything.

    I’ve been, one might say, busy.

    I got a new job about two months ago. I can’t remember if I mentioned it. Academic director of a new start up school. Or, as I’d hoped to have on my business card, Queen of the Fire Spiders. Did I mention that the company that is in charge of this whole project is named Fire Spider? Yes. Hot, roaring, powerful and drops from the sky out of nowhere. Can’t get more auspicious than that. (more…)

    Category Made in Jianada, Spicy Things, Uncategorized | Tags: ,,,,,, | 15 Comments

  7. Made in Jiānádà: Lanzhou Lāmiàn (noodles!)

    May 17, 2012 by MaryAnne

    The noodles in the broth, ungarnished. Really simple, really yummy.

    This is Part 1 in a series on Lanzhou noodles. Part 2 (the broth) is here.

    This one has been a long time coming. Seriously. This dish is quite possibly the one thing we have eaten the most of in China. At 6rmb a bowl (like, 80 cents, maybe) and incredibly delicious, it’s hard to beat.

    I was introduced to Lanzhou lāmiàn on my second day in the country, still jet lagged and wondering what the hell I had gotten myself into.

    February in Shanghai, 2009;  cold, grey, grim, absurdly smoggy, rainy.

    I was flat hunting with Elaine, the admin assistant from my then new job, and I kept getting shown flats that were dishearteningly dreadful and embarrassingly over-priced (the laowai effect, I presume).

    Elaine took me to lunch at a tiny Lanzhou noodle place just up the street from the flat I would eventually take (and then get booted out of 3 months later when the landlord suddenly decided he was itching to sell).  She ordered me a bowl of piping hot 牛肉 拉面(niúròu lāmiàn), or beef pulled noodles.   (more…)

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    Category Made in Jianada, Pasta Things, Soupy Stewy Things, Uncategorized | Tags: ,,, | 7 Comments