thread of pictures of real chinese food

the conference in Xi'an is for like 5 days; I'm thinking of adding a couple of days at the start (or end? too?) in whatever city I connect in. I don't even know if this is a good idea, as I don't know how easy it's gonna be for me to get into town from the airport & then back out to the airport. I'm kinda stressed by the prospect just b/c I've heard that China's pretty unforgiving, even to the experienced traveler.

― Euler, Saturday, March 10, 2012 3:14 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

I think it's probably a wash between BJ and SH - lot of opportunities to get scammed either way. but if you're adventurous I'd go for it!

i make them myself, occasionally, although i'm a bad cook and it's not nearly as good as the real thing. but it's really fun to crack the egg on top of the pancake and then flip it all over.

hah I've never had the egg variation

xps, I found Beijing and Shanghai super-easy to negotiate despite not speaking any Mandarin. Shanghai's probably easier to get in to and out of - iirc Beijing's main airport is a fair distance out and Shanghai has a Maglev connecting the airport to the centre.

Food shouldn't be a problem - they're both international cities with a lot of foreign visitors. Shanghai feels more cosmopolitan and would probably be more manageable in a few days.

Shanghai has a Maglev connecting the airport to the centre.

at the time i was there, it was the fastest one in the world. not sure if that's still true but it's reaaaally fun.

yeah I guess I'm worried about eating at touristy places that aren't great just b/c I don't know my way around & don't speak the language (hold no currency)

I mean I'm in France now & my French isn't great but I eat ridically well b/c I've been here so many times, & I'd love to have a similar experience in China b/c of e.g. this thread but but but

the shanghai maglev caught on fire once!

xp, tbh, you can eat really well by going to a night market and just pointing at things. Lots of less touristy places will still have picture menus.

just want to add that xi'an has deep fucking local food culture. serious food destination imho.

also just spend those extra days in shanghai. take the superfast train out to xi'an.

http://www.chinaculture.org/gb/cn_zgwh/2004-06/28/content_52130.htm

i wish u could all read chinese or there was a good translation of this. great miniessays on shaanxi food by jia pingwa.

<i>They say southerners are meticulous and northerners are crude. If that's true, then northwesterners are even more crude, even more rough. Their language is thick, rich with falling tones. Men are swarthy and it's rare to find a girl with a narrow waist. And the cuisine is vibrant; light on the sugar but heavy on the salt. Ah, this blessed land. Shaanxi! North: the yellow loess plateaus. In the middle: the Wei River plains. Heading south, the Qinling Mountains begin to rise. Looking over the vast banquet of Shaanxi cuisine, most of it seems to come from the palace kitchens of earlier ages, the estates of the Tang bureaucrats, and then from the tables of the commoners, and then the minority peoples of the province add a few dishes, and we get a few of the famous dishes from the city restaurants. It looks like the food of the north, but there are a few differences. Of course, in my hometown (a place that I've played at writing into my fiction), we never saw any great banquets or ate extravagant dishes. But as I've wandered around the province, I've eaten</i> xiaochi <i>like an anthropologist collecting folk songs. Just like folk songs, these</i> xiaochi <i>let you understand a little bit about where they came from. So, as I've got a moment of free time and can put together a sentence or two, I ventured to write down what little I know about each dish. Think of it as an unpaid advertisement, and I'll think of it as a chance to relive the experience of sitting down to eat each dish, a chance to see if I can recall the particular flavor of all those minor delicacies.</i>

FUCK BB CODE

They say southerners are meticulous and northerners are crude. If that's true, then northwesterners are even more crude, even more rough. Their language is thick, rich with falling tones. Men are swarthy and it's rare to find a girl with a narrow waist. And the cuisine is vibrant; light on the sugar but heavy on the salt. Ah, this blessed land. Shaanxi! North: the yellow loess plateaus. In the middle: the Wei River plains. Heading south, the Qinling Mountains begin to rise. Looking over the vast banquet of Shaanxi cuisine, most of it seems to come from the palace kitchens of earlier ages, the estates of the Tang bureaucrats, and then from the tables of the commoners, and then the minority peoples of the province add a few dishes, and we get a few of the famous dishes from the city restaurants. It looks like the food of the north, but there are a few differences. Of course, in my hometown (a place that I've played at writing into my fiction), we never saw any great banquets or ate extravagant dishes. But as I've wandered around the province, I've eaten xiaochi like an anthropologist collecting folk songs. Just like folk songs, these xiaochi let you understand a little bit about where they came from. So, as I've got a moment of free time and can put together a sentence or two, I ventured to write down what little I know about each dish. Think of it as an unpaid advertisement, and I'll think of it as a chance to relive the experience of sitting down to eat each dish, a chance to see if I can recall the particular flavor of all those minor delicacies.

http://www.binglang.info/Storage/FCKPro/Files/%E5%87%89%E7%9A%AE%281%29.jpg

xi'an specialty, liang pi'r

http://img.huashanly.com/1001/1298861573433.jpg

heeeeeeey didn't david chang invent that

; )

<IMG SRC="http://www.dx.gansu.gov.cn/cn/rootimages/2011/05/21/1305852833341099-1305852833343171.jpg";>

羊肉泡motherfuckin馍

god.

http://www.dx.gansu.gov.cn/cn/rootimages/2011/05/21/1305852833341099-1305852833343171.jpg

http://food.chinese.cn/image/attachement/jpg/site2/20110118/0023ae99e1440e9f4de807.jpg

辣子蒜羊血

spicy garlicky lambsblood

meet u in xi'an bro

hell yeah xi'an

http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2347/2529658427_a8875b227c.jpg

hah I've never had the egg variation

dayo, are your folks not from TW? It's like a staple there.

Euler, I went to Xi'an 10 (!) years ago (I remember the year vividly because the Giants were in the WS and I had to watch it at same janky time) and the local delicacy of choice, as far as I could determine, is Baked Bun Soaked in Mutton Soup (romanized as Yang Rou Pao Mo). Hopefully they've cleaned up the air since then -- awful smog problem there when I went.

(Another vivid non-food memory is of a kid, probably 6-7 years old, standing alone on the thin median strip waiting to cross through heavy traffic.)

oh man this is helping! I'm sure the air will still be awful but in Xi'an I'd be with locals + Westerners who speak the language / study the culture & go there often. mostly I'm wimpy about making my way in the big cities in the east, but prob I should just do it.

dayo, are your folks not from TW? It's like a staple there.

― Nude Gingrich (Leee), Sunday, March 11, 2012 3:31 PM (56 minutes ago) Bookmark

nah they are from peking!

i'm sure you'll still find the air obscenely bad.

in the last 10 years, traffic has only got worse + crazy sprawl + it'll be hot and humid and the air will be like parking your car in a sauna and rolling down the windows.

xi'an is not a beautiful city.

http://www.binglang.info/Storage/FCKPro/Files/%E5%87%89%E7%9A%AE%281%29.jpg

wtf is this why don't I have some

tripe?

wheat gluten iirc

it looks spicy and delicious

the broad strips are some kind of 凉粉 I imagine

the brainy looking stuff is 烤麸 I think, a kind of wheat gluten

http://i.imgur.com/So3jq.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/pl9J8.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/1XDE5.jpg

its liangpir 凉皮儿 dude http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liang_pi

wheat flour, baking soda, salt + water -- mix into a paste -- put in cheesecloth and steam -- slice it up into those noodle things -- mix with black vinegar, sesame sauce, chili oil etc

liangpir specialty places in the middle of summer are full of broads. it's fucking good. i love it ice cold and spicy/sour/salty/sweet.

http://www.lovemshi.net/UploadFiles/2010-04/admin/2010041816312252411.jpg

ate this tonight braised spicy duck headsssss

i like this thread and wanted to ask about like... what sites are good for these kind of recipes? there's a really friendly and cool chinese supermarket near me now and i would like to make use of it a bit more - any general recommendation of stuff I should look out for would be really good. i've been experimenting with this and that but of course there lots of things stocked that i've no real idea about what they are.

christ this thread is making me hungry

hey LG i've found this blog pretty good - http://sunflower-recipes.blogspot.com/

ah cool, thanks a lot.

as a vegetarian i enjoy how the terrifying entrail looking things in this thread are always wheat gluten, and how the completely anonymous things are calcified blood or kidney mash or pancreas cakes

dayo this is a delicious thread thank u

^_^

one time i went to dim sum and ate like five rectangular patties (about 1/2" thick each) of what i thought was tofu before my friends informed me it was like long-stewed skin of some sort ... don't remember if it was pig or shark or cow or what

does that sound right?

or were they jerking me around?

hooray, that blog looks interesting and has a recipe for 魚香肉絲 which is pictured upthread and which various Chinese restaurants round here call "sea spicy shredded pork" - suspect the local variety is not very authentic but we like it, anyway

http://sunflower-recipes.blogspot.com/2008/09/fish-fragrant-pork.html

from its name I thought it had fish sauce in but it seems not?

one time i went to dim sum and ate like five rectangular patties (about 1/2" thick each) of what i thought was tofu before my friends informed me it was like long-stewed skin of some sort ... don't remember if it was pig or shark or cow or what

does that sound right?

― the late great, Tuesday, March 13, 2012 7:08 PM (30 minutes ago) Bookmark

description makes me think of radish cakes

http://i.imgur.com/O3tCh.jpg

but there is also 'tofu skin'

http://i.imgur.com/xt4vd.jpg

could also be a tofu skin roll

http://i.imgur.com/FVnKW.jpg

i think the fuschia dunlop books are good if u want to cook the food from this thread mostly because even if they are based on hunan/sichuan etc. they discuss crucial cooking methods at length and give you a good idea of how "real chinese food" can be reproduced.