<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>
― dylannn, Sunday, 11 March 2012 00:22 (twelve years ago) link
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.
― dylannn, Sunday, 11 March 2012 00:23 (twelve years ago) link
http://www.binglang.info/Storage/FCKPro/Files/%E5%87%89%E7%9A%AE%281%29.jpg
xi'an specialty, liang pi'r
― dylannn, Sunday, 11 March 2012 00:26 (twelve years ago) link
http://img.huashanly.com/1001/1298861573433.jpg
― dylannn, Sunday, 11 March 2012 00:29 (twelve years ago) link
heeeeeeey didn't david chang invent that
― flagp∞st (dayo), Sunday, 11 March 2012 00:33 (twelve years ago) link
; )
<IMG SRC="http://www.dx.gansu.gov.cn/cn/rootimages/2011/05/21/1305852833341099-1305852833343171.jpg">
羊肉泡motherfuckin馍
― dylannn, Sunday, 11 March 2012 00:36 (twelve years ago) link
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
― dylannn, Sunday, 11 March 2012 00:38 (twelve years ago) link
meet u in xi'an bro
― dylannn, Sunday, 11 March 2012 00:39 (twelve years ago) link
hell yeah xi'an
http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2347/2529658427_a8875b227c.jpg
― lukas, Sunday, 11 March 2012 19:13 (twelve years ago) link
hah I've never had the egg variation
dayo, are your folks not from TW? It's like a staple there.
― Nude Gingrich (Leee), Sunday, 11 March 2012 19:31 (twelve years ago) link
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.)
― Nude Gingrich (Leee), Sunday, 11 March 2012 19:38 (twelve years ago) link
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.
― Euler, Sunday, 11 March 2012 19:40 (twelve years ago) link
― Nude Gingrich (Leee), Sunday, March 11, 2012 3:31 PM (56 minutes ago) Bookmark
nah they are from peking!
― flagp∞st (dayo), Sunday, 11 March 2012 20:28 (twelve years ago) link
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.
― dylannn, Monday, 12 March 2012 03:12 (twelve years ago) link
wtf is this why don't I have some
― Waxahachie Swap (Jimmy The Mod Awaits The Return Of His Beloved), Monday, 12 March 2012 03:26 (twelve years ago) link
tripe?
wheat gluten iirc
― flagp∞st (dayo), Monday, 12 March 2012 03:27 (twelve years ago) link
it looks spicy and delicious
― Waxahachie Swap (Jimmy The Mod Awaits The Return Of His Beloved), Monday, 12 March 2012 03:29 (twelve years ago) link
the broad strips are some kind of 凉粉 I imagine
― flagp∞st (dayo), Monday, 12 March 2012 03:29 (twelve years ago) link
the brainy looking stuff is 烤麸 I think, a kind of wheat gluten
http://i.imgur.com/So3jq.jpg
― flagp∞st (dayo), Monday, 12 March 2012 03:31 (twelve years ago) link
http://i.imgur.com/pl9J8.jpg
― flagp∞st (dayo), Monday, 12 March 2012 03:37 (twelve years ago) link
http://i.imgur.com/1XDE5.jpg
― flagp∞st (dayo), Monday, 12 March 2012 03:42 (twelve years ago) link
its liangpir 凉皮儿 dude http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liang_pi
― dylannn, Monday, 12 March 2012 04:27 (twelve years ago) link
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.
― dylannn, Monday, 12 March 2012 04:31 (twelve years ago) link
http://www.lovemshi.net/UploadFiles/2010-04/admin/2010041816312252411.jpg
ate this tonight braised spicy duck headsssss
― dylannn, Monday, 12 March 2012 04:44 (twelve years ago) link
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.
― I'm going to allow this! (LocalGarda), Tuesday, 13 March 2012 16:32 (twelve years ago) link
christ this thread is making me hungry
― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Tuesday, 13 March 2012 17:34 (twelve years ago) link
hey LG i've found this blog pretty good - http://sunflower-recipes.blogspot.com/
― just sayin, Tuesday, 13 March 2012 19:02 (twelve years ago) link
ah cool, thanks a lot.
― I'm going to allow this! (LocalGarda), Tuesday, 13 March 2012 20:20 (twelve years ago) link
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
― bosomy English rose (thomp), Tuesday, 13 March 2012 22:51 (twelve years ago) link
dayo this is a delicious thread thank u
― a little tiny crunk person (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 13 March 2012 22:52 (twelve years ago) link
^_^
― flagp∞st (dayo), Tuesday, 13 March 2012 23:07 (twelve years ago) link
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, 13 March 2012 23:08 (twelve years ago) link
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?
― instant coffee happening between us (a passing spacecadet), Tuesday, 13 March 2012 23:25 (twelve years ago) link
― 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
― flagp∞st (dayo), Tuesday, 13 March 2012 23:41 (twelve years ago) link
could also be a tofu skin roll
http://i.imgur.com/FVnKW.jpg
― flagp∞st (dayo), Tuesday, 13 March 2012 23:42 (twelve years ago) link
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.
― dylannn, Wednesday, 14 March 2012 00:39 (twelve years ago) link
yeah sounds like radish cake, man
http://static0.enjoyoung.cn/images/assets/Image/articles%20photo/20100224%E7%8C%AA%E7%9A%AE.jpg = pork skin
― dylannn, Wednesday, 14 March 2012 00:41 (twelve years ago) link
http://image4.club.sohu.com/pic/3a/a3/5be83a57eb26682929d3bf45e5b4a33a.jpg
http://www.techan-cn.com/uploads/allimg/110725/163025N58-0.jpg
anything like that?
― dylannn, Wednesday, 14 March 2012 00:42 (twelve years ago) link
yeah they looked just like the first "radish cake" picture that dayo posted, not so much like the others
it was rubbery and chewy iirc
― the late great, Wednesday, 14 March 2012 01:04 (twelve years ago) link
Shanghai rice cake is sometimes my favorite food:
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/46/157652886_5a5a98105c.jpg
especially because it doesn't look or taste anything like either rice or cake.
― Spencer Chow, Wednesday, 14 March 2012 01:07 (twelve years ago) link
my friends really had me going - you're telling me i wasn't eating a thick skin steak, right?
― the late great, Wednesday, 14 March 2012 01:08 (twelve years ago) link
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, anywayhttp://sunflower-recipes.blogspot.com/2008/09/fish-fragrant-pork.htmlfrom its name I thought it had fish sauce in but it seems not?― instant coffee happening between us (a passing spacecadet), Tuesday, March 13, 2012 11:25 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― instant coffee happening between us (a passing spacecadet), Tuesday, March 13, 2012 11:25 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
iirc in fuschia dunlops book she talks about this, its to do w/ the recipe using the same flavourings they usually use to cook fish
― just sayin, Wednesday, 14 March 2012 07:30 (twelve years ago) link
I've never had it, but that Shanghai rice cake looks A+. You had me at gai lan.
― On the sidelines in a trash can grumping (Dan Peterson), Wednesday, 14 March 2012 19:58 (twelve years ago) link
http://www.glulu.com/UploadFile/%E9%9F%A9%E5%BC%8F%E7%82%92%E5%B9%B4%E7%B3%95500x375--175445449.jpg
韩式炒年糕
韩式 okay but on the menu at every restaurant north from the tip of the liaodong peninsula to the songliao plains.
― dylannn, Wednesday, 14 March 2012 21:44 (twelve years ago) link
精彩不容错过,eh?let's see if womanfriend.com lets me link to it
http://www.womanfriend.com/happy/UploadFiles_2413/200812/20081205085103329.jpg
― dylannn, Wednesday, 14 March 2012 21:45 (twelve years ago) link