Cooking Lessons

Friday night dinner at the Kitchen! Both tables were full-a big group of six from Ireland at one table and three smaller parties at the main table. The menu was all familiar dishes except for the 春饼 and the black sesame 汤圆。 During Chinese New Year， each day has a specific dish that you are supposed to eat for auspicious reasons. This time, Chairman replaced the panfried guotie dumplings with chun bing, since the holiday is chun jie. The “chun” in both phrases means spring.

Basically, the chun bing are Chinese tortillas, or think of mushu pork wrappers, except this is authentic and more delicious than Americanized, overly salted cabbage filling. Chairman puts a little oil between two rounds of dough, rolls them thin and flat, then cooks them, light and almost fluffy. For family meal we filled them with glass noodles and bamboo shoots, some fried egg, and some cheap Chinese sausage. Serving them to paying customers, we left out the cheap sausage. For a little extra flavor, we spread on a sweet fermented flour sauce (very similar to Hoisin or plum sauce, which I haven’t seen anywhere in China and am beginning to suspect is a Westernized creation).

It was a good crowd of people, they ate everything (except the gongbao jiding, it was a little spicy, and Chairman kept a little of the hongshao pork aside for me to snack on, isn’t she awesome) and drank 12 bottles of wine! Good night! For dessert, instead of ice cream, Chairman taught me how to make tang yuan, sweet rice dumplings with a black sesame filling. These were another auspicious dish, served very simply in boiled water. Although the ingredients were simple: flour and water paste packed with sugar and crushed black sesame, and just sticky rice flour and water for the dough, actually assembling the dumplings was difficult because the dough and filling are both delicate, and the dumpling must be completely sealed or the filling leaks out during cooking.

Dice's five minute mapo tofu.

We were all still hungry after the guests left, so Dice threw together some mapo tofu, and we ate that and the gongbao chicken and a whole lot of rice while watching an episode of Top Chef. Some serious 麻 (numbing spiciness) was going on with the chicken, but it was good. I got home just after midnight and basically fell on my bed. I was so tired, I couldn’t even make myself walk up the stairs to talk to Bambi, I actually started emailing him from my room. Pathetic.

I finally made it to my first cooking lesson! I’ve been seriously excited. Today was noodle making day.

The dough was simply high gluten content flour and water, although for extra chewiness an egg can replace the water. No measurements here, everything done by feel, just “add enough to get a hard dough.” Add water bit by bit, push the flour into it, add water to the dry flour, and knead until you get a smooth dough ball. Allow to rest twenty minutes. We learned some cleaver skills (my knife skills are atrocious, I really butcher my way through cutting things, so I’m glad to learn real knife techniques) while getting the ingredients together for caramelized pork and eggplant sauce, and a simpler (and healthier) tomato egg sauce. The pork was 五花肉，or pork belly, for which I have a particular fondness. It’s fatty, so many Westerners don’t like it (except for in its bacon form), but so flavorful. In the past I’ve made Taiwanese minced pork belly, and tried some southern style recipes for braised pork served with grits (also serving it on crusty French bread with stewed apples), but this was a much shorter cook time.

Caramelized Pork and Eggplant Sauce

Tomato and Egg sauce

The pork was diced and caramelized in a little sugar and oil, then eggplant added. Really hit every surface of the eggplant with oil to give it a good, not mushy texture. Light and dark soy, star anise, chili peppers and some water all went in and let it simmer for a bit. The egg was lightly fried, the tomatoes cooked down, egg added back in with seasoning and soy and water and all that. Quick, easy, healthy, and I bet I can add some variety with different veggies, serve it over rice as well.

Back to the noodles: our dough rested, we pulled some off and kneaded it, rolled it thin, and then rolled it by wrapping it on the rolling pin, to really lengthen and flatten the dough. With liberal sprinkles of flour, folded it over itself in tidy piles then cut it with our cleavers. I really need to get a cleaver of my own.

Cat Ear Noodles in Pork Sauce

Next up, cat ear noodles. This was the most simple, just pulling off a pea sized bit of dough, then rolling your thumb over it on the cutting board the create a little curl. Similar to Italian orecchiette. We took a little break to sample our noodles and the sauce, then commenced with the daxiaomian (刀削面）or knife grated noodles. The dough was lightly kneaded into a big loaf, then put onto a cleaver, and shaved off with a special curved knife. Dice is really good at this, and two of the other students actually did a pretty good job, but suffice it to say I will not be a daoxiaomian master anytime soon. In restaurants, the cooks will have giant lumps of dough on big boards that they haul on their shoulders and slice off in lightning fast movements.

Daoxiaomian Being Cut Into The Boiling Pot

Lastly, hand pulled. This was a much stickier dough with more water. Rolled out flat and cut into strips attached on one end, well floured, twisted then gently pulled and stretched. It took a couple tries to pull without breaking, but these were very chewy and possibly my favorite.

Home Style Pulled Noodles

Since the leftovers were just going to be thrown out, and I live with boys, I asked to take the sauce and noodles home. No Tupperware to be had, but a few doubled-up plastic bags did the trick. I spent the forty minute walk home cradling a big bag of noodles and two smaller bags of sauce, terrified the handles might rip and that I would lose precious cargo.

Chunjie

祝你们春节快乐！恭喜！Happy Chinese New Year, everyone!
It’s hard to believe that I’ve been in China for a month now. Maybe it’s because I’ve been spending my days doing mundane things like apartment hunting and teaching English and cleaning, rather than the whirlwind tourism I usually participate in on trips abroad.

So a friend of mine from home, upon discovering I was moving to China, strongly recommended I talk to a friend of his, Film Director. We emailed and facebooked a bit back and forth before I got here, then I forgot he existed, and then remembered again and shot a little message out saying I’d love to meet, since I don’t know too many people here yet. Film Director invited me to a dumpling making party he was hosting, and I decided to go, not having any other plans.
My mom did a good job raising me, and always insisted I never go to anyone’s house empty handed (in particular, I remember one day planning to go to a friend’s house in early high school, and my mom trying to convince me I should bring a bottle of wine for her parents), so it occurred to me around 2 pm that I should probably make or bring something. I wasn’t sure if any stores were even open for New Year’s, and I was feeling a little bit lazy, so I cast my eye around the kitchen to see what could be done. Challenges: my rather sparse pantry with few ingredients, the complete lack of an oven and most other more sophisticated cooking apparatuses, and the only alcohol being a half empty bottle of Hendrick’s gin, two bottle of Harbin beer, and a bottle of Great Wall red wine. I thought about bringing the wine, but Great Wall is what I think of as a liberal use of the term wine. It’s cheap, bad, and probably best used for cooking in sauces that have to simmer for a long time. Showing up as a guest with a bottle of Great Wall in your hand might even be considered an insult.

So I decided to make a dessert. I had the basics; flour, sugar, butter, eggs, milk, even some cream. No oven. I though about maybe making a custard and improvising steaming them rather than baking, but I have no extracts or flavoring. Wait, what was this? One and a half lemons? I did a quick Google search for no-bake recipes, and decided a pudding might be my best bet. Lemon pudding and fresh whipped cream it was!
The pudding came out pretty well, despite my fears (the cornstarch I have is particularly for the tenderizing of meat, it includes salt and phosphoric acid), if a little on the thin side (I don’t think I cooked it long enough, and I used skim milk instead of whole milk), but even Bambi, who is not a pudding fan, said it was pretty good. Since the granulated sugar I bought is on the large side, I made a few tablespoons of simple syrup, stirred that into the heavy cream, and spent a good fifteen minutes whisking it. My grandmother used to sometimes make fresh whipped cream with a hand-cranked egg beater, and I’ve made cream and butter with an electric beater, but doing with just a whisk? Freaking exhausting.

I put it all in some rather inelegant tupperware and set off to find the bus to the apartment, which was somewhere near Sanlitun. Unfortunately, I wrote down the wrong bus stop, and got a little muddled, and ended up calling Film Director for better directions. And again, China, what is with you and confusing places to get to? I had to walk into a side alley, and then turn into an even smaller brick alley that didn’t look like an alley so much as a brick hallway for rapists to hang out, where not one but TWO separate fires were raging over the wall due to fireworks. A long, mostly unlit outdoor corridor, strange beeping sounds from the wires running along the top of the stone wall, silence except for the sound of far off explosions. I thought I was in a horror movie, and kept looking over my shoulder and was nearly running by the end. After getting back to a more proper public street, I was promptly nearly hit, crossing the street a man decided to start lighting off his firecrackers as I was approaching him, even though he saw me coming. I managed to get to the right building, only to have small children lighting off bottle rockets in the doorway.

Dinner was interesting, I met a fellow alum and one of Bambi’s coworkers (talk about a small world!), ate a lot of good food, and was treated to an impromptu performance of that Brazilian dance-fight thing. We watched fireworks, and it amazes me, where else are you able to look down at fireworks? Or to be basically inside the explosion (we were, at one point, almost concerned a stray rocket might go in the open window).

I left around 9:30 to meet up with Frisbee people at another party nearby. I walked through streets littered with the gutted remains of firecrackers, scraps of charred, red paper swirling around my feet like autumn leaves. I found my way (miraculously) to the correct apartment building where I was greeted with yet more delicious food. And of course, I was able to find the chocolate cheesecake within moments. There has been more than one party where I have chanced upon chocolate cheesecake, and then of course, had to walk around eating it and sharing the delicious bounty. The fireworks were amazing. Although they had been going on steadily all night, the real excitement began at midnight. Think of any official fireworks that you’ve been to in America, Independence Day or your Town Day or University pep day or whatnot, think about that, and imagine that everyone in the city, every big and small apartment building, is setting off that same exact display. Except it doesn’t just last half an hour max, you’ve been setting them off all day, and it doesn’t stop until 2 AM. That’s the first night of Chinese New Year. There was so much smoke that eventually, we stopped being able to see other buildings.

Trivia at Kro’s Nest again on Thursday. A little bit of an adventure getting there, I had looked up the address very quickly online, and then waited a long time trying to get a cab. Finally got one letting people out, he didn’t want to take me but I pleaded and said I was running late and I had been waiting outside forever, and I guess wherever I was going was on his way home. Only maybe I wasn’t very clear, or it’s just my luck, but I wasn’t too sure myself what part of the street the place was and I wasn’t looking on the right side of the road when we passed by, so then we got out to the fourth ring road, and the cabbie was like, this is where you want to go, get out, I’m going home! And then he sped off, leaving me slightly confused as to why I was standing in the middle of nowhere with a wide expanse of trees on one side and some development that everything was covered in tarps. Luckily, I was at least on the right street, and was able to get a bus back out of the middle of nowhere.

Some of decided we just really wanted to dance, so off to Sanlitun to see what the clubs there were like. The one we had loosely decided to go to turned out to be closed, so somehow we ended up at Kai, the sketchy place with disastrously cheap alcohol. They have these tables that offer a dice game, that my friends all became engrossed in playing. I had no interest in dice, so I just sat, had a beer, kind of danced to myself in the chair, and watched them, vaguely puzzled as to the rules of the dice game. That’s about when some of the Chinese girls there came over, grabbed my arm and dragged me up to dance with them, telling me not to be so shy and I was very pretty, lets dance. At this point I kind of figured out that they were probably the hookers that worked the tables up there. Oh boy.
After they finished playing the interminable game, I convinced people to go to the actual dance floor where we kind of took over (Small floor, 7-8 big Americans=takeover) . It was a lot of fun. We concluded the evening with some really amazing street food from the stalls set up all up and down Bar Street. One of the things I love best about Asia is the street food. Beijing so far hasn’t impressed me with selection, nothing compared to the night markets and stalls of Taiwan or Thailand, but what they do have is generally tasty.

chuanr stall on Jiu Ba Jie (Bar Street)

The chuanr (skewers) were pretty excellent, we got a selection of lamb and chicken, as was the grilled mianbao, or flat rounds of bread covered in cumin and other spices. I have to wonder at the people who set up there, I mean, some of them run a legitimate and pretty profitable business of feeding and hydrating drunk bar-goers, but there are a lot of beggars. Technically, they’re selling flowers, but I’ve never seen anyone buy the flowers, just give money to them, because the sellers are mostly young children, adorable little girls who can’t be older than 9 or 10. It’s an effective strategy on the part of the parents, working on the sympathy of foreigners, but is it so necessary? Why are you pushing your kids to beg at terrible hours of the night?

Cave Trolls

“You’ve never lived with boys, let me explain. We are cave trolls. We sit around and eat ridiculous amounts of food and pick our noses and plot how to kill hobbits.” Or so says Bambi, as he was reasoning why I should put two containers of the bolognese sauce I made in the fridge for easier consumption, rather than freezing them for the future. In preparation for Chunjie I finished setting my room to order (finally organizing all of my clothes instead of leaving them in a heap in my suitcase) and cleaned the apartment up a bit, and we had a nice little dinner at home. I ran out to the local Wumart to pick up a few things and borrowed Bambi’s bike. It being the first time biking in about 4 years, I was surprisingly comfortable, although I couldn’t adjust the seat at all, so the bike was far too tall for me (Bambi is a large long person, I am…not). I am eagerly awaiting the completion of our little apartment family, with Ginny, my second roommate, soon to arrive, and more University friends on the way. At this rate, people from our college are going to take over the expat community.

Chunjie has started, and the level of blowing shit up has skyrocketed from yesterday. I was awoken sometime around 7 by the sound of explosions, and it’s been going strong ever since. It’s far to early for that kind of thing and my everything hurts.

Last night, to kick off New Years, we went to a party way out in the middle of nowhere. I have no idea where we were, but there was just highway and apartment buildings, and nothing else, no restaurants, no stores, empty. To start things off, Bambi and I met up with three other Frisbee boys at the Dongzhimen subway. On the way there, Bambi prevented me from going and playing with the adorable children in our courtyard who were setting off firecrackers and sparklers. His reasoning is that children and pyrotechnics should be kept very, very separate and no good can come of it. I guess he’s probably right, but that was me as a child! Some of my fondest memories include waving around sparklers and setting off fireworks with my dad, hoping not to get magnesium burns while burning the expired flares, and almost getting shot by a bottle rocket by my sister. While waiting for Bambi to make a call, I wandered off and stumbled into this amazing shop filled with cute, adorable, funny things. I’m waiting to get paid, and then I am going there and spending money. Bambi was able to find me because “How did I know you would be in here? I went to the most Asian store I could find.”

The boys decided we were going to have a train party. Honestly, Americans (and other foreigners) have such a bad name in Asia, nothing we do will ever redeem our reputation, so why try? We bought a bunch of beer at the 7-11 (and giggled over the Pedobear candy and tissues we found prominently displayed, oh China, why?) and then embarked on a journey to nowhere. Funny, how the security people will tell a girl she can’t ride the subway because she has flammable hairspray in her shopping bag, but don’t care about a bunch of rowdy laowai with alcohol. Line 2 on the subway is just one big loop, so we rode it all the way around. We sat and drank our beers and had a very funny time. We clearly did not make any friends-we received many sideways and not so sideways glares, some envious glances, and a few laughs. The old men were really angry with me, giving me more grilling looks. I think that they expect the laowai boys to misbehave, but a girl? Drinking? In public? How shameful.

Paying the man for beer

Beer from a random man's trunk

The entire loop took us 50 minutes, after which we switched lines and ended up in this Beijing wasteland. The only people we saw around were running a fireworks stall, so we went over to ask if they knew anywhere we could buy beer to bring to the party. One guy who was just kind of hanging out nearby perks up when he hears us asking about beer. “Pijiu? you want pijiu? beer? yes? I have beer, you can buy beer from me!” And he trots over to the back of his car and opens it and there are several cases of Yanjing. Clearly, we had to buy it. His friend, sitting in the front seat, was just tickled silly by us strange 美国人 and had to take a picture, but I don’t blame her because I was heartily amused and took a few pictures myself. One of the boys also bought some firecrackers for good measure, which I had forgotten about until I discovered two strings of them in my jacket pocket this morning. Surprise pocket-firecrackers? Almost as good as finding money in your pocket.

Walking through this development of tall apartment buildings, we had terrible directions. At one point, Bambi, upon hearing English, started yelling up to people on a balcony about 15 stories up. Where’s the door? Is this the party? Are you the British people? They were really excited and friendly, but were Mexicans, and not the foreigners we were looking for. We eventually did make it to the right building, where we gleefully introduced the game of Slap Cup to the Brits.

I may have slightly overindulged, leading to a grumpy morning, as I woke up obscenely early to the sound of fireworks and firecrackers, which have only increased and will only increase more as the day goes on. Most of the foreigners here are making plans for 3-4 days of hard drinking, but I think my chunjie resolution is to not consume so much. I’ve got a dumpling making party today, and fireworks (I’m hoping to find my way to Houhai and watch them), and working at the Kitchen on Friday.