Discussion Friday

[geraineon]

It's time for Discussion Friday again~!

I woke up really hungry so in my quest to make everyone as hungry as I am, we're going to talk about food.

Does reading make you hungry? Have you read a particular good description of food or cooking in a c-novel* that made you salivate? Or perhaps you've read something that sounds absolutely atrocious (which makes you want to try it for Science). Did anything you read inspire you to cook, or seek that dish out?

Share them and let's make everyone hungry!

*feel free to very loosely interpret c-novel here for Discussion Friday, e.g., Chinese web-novels, Chinese novels, Chinese novellas/short stories, other language novels translated into Chinese, novels by Chinese (nationality or diaspora) published in non-Chinese language

Comments

[geraineon]

I have multiple meetings I need to show my face at today so, probably will edit/add more later but the first thing that came to my mind is Mo Du, the exact food I forgot (dongbao pork? Braised pork? Something like that??).

More recently in "Restaurant At The End of the Universe: Taichi Mashed Taro" by Anna Wu, in The Way Spring Arrives (this short story was translated by Carmen Tiling Yan). It reminds me of orhnee (red: https://www.bearnakedfood.com/2020/07/29/teochew-sweet-yam-paste-orh-nee/)

I like orhnee! Alas I do not have taro or yam with me right now.

[halfcactus]

I think hongshaorou? There's an audiodrama scene where Tao Ran catches Luo Wenzhou learning to make it to feed Fei Du (idk if there are other scenes in the novel, but this one was memorable to me because it was in the audiodrama ending montage XD)

[geraineon]

Yes! Hongshaorou! Made me hungry for it reading it. But can't eat too much of it, and my housemate doesn't eat the fatty parts of the meat which makes cooking it hard because I'll have to eat most of it myself... I love braised meats so much!

[geraineon]

Oh, not exactly about food being appetizing, but there's a food metaphor that's so visceral (like I had an "oh" reaction) in Professional Body Double. Quoting my own description of it elsewhere: "There's a part in the novel about boiling water, and once the water is boiled, realizing that the ingredients you prepared to toss into the water has gone bad. Maybe because I enjoy food and cooking metaphors, but it does convey the "falling in love out-of-step" bit that I enjoy (there's something about the "too late", "too early" that hits me in my emotional happy place)."

[alterkrmn]

None of the cnovels I've read so far have any descriptions of food that made me crave the dishes, but that's because I've read only four (and one more in progress). But reading descriptions of food usually makes me hungry.

The only food related thing that comes to mind is Wei Wuxian's use of chili oil during Yi City arc to help the juniors with the corpse poisoning.

That made me realize one thing: as a mexican, the use of chili peppers is ubiquitous, almost everyone loves spicy food, some of them to levels I don't even consider edible.

And of course I have the knowledge that chili pepper is also used in Asian cuisines, but somehow I never even connected the dots that that wasn't always the case. That led me to read an academic book about the history of the chili pepper in China. This books traces the expansion of its use since it arrived from America to the point of becoming a very important part of Chinese cuisine.

This is absolutely one of those things I learn via the ADHD mental process lol

[full_metal_ox]

The only food related thing that comes to mind is Wei Wuxian's use of chili oil during Yi City arc to help the juniors with the corpse poisoning.

There’s actually some sound Traditional Chinese Medicine behind his reasoning: hot spices are extremely yang, and so would help to counter the toxic yin of corpse poisoning.

(For the same reason, you want sticky/glutinous rice rather than regular rice for first aid to counter an undead-related wound: sticky rice is yang, whereas regular rice is neutral. This specific bit of folklore comes via the 1985 Hong Kong horror-comedy film Mr. Vampire, which Moxiang Tongxiu cites as an influence: https://web.archive.org/web/20230517154400/https://asksythe.tumblr.com/post/716886554504740864/mxtx-interview-with-risa-wataya-for-subaru That film has a scene where a rice poultice proves ineffective against a vampire bite—-because the rice seller, having run low on sticky rice, diluted it with regular rice.

Heck, add garlic and it might be a defense against Western vampires as well.)

That made me realize one thing: as a mexican, the use of chili peppers is ubiquitous, almost everyone loves spicy food, some of them to levels I don't even consider edible.

I’ve seen Latin, African, and South Asian viewers of the various broadcast adaptations reacting to the amount of capsicum Wei Wuxian is dumping into that wok and seeing no problem.

This is absolutely one of those things I learn via the ADHD mental process lol

The things we learn chasing our hyperfixations down information rabbitholes and the weird turns they take at Albuquerque!

Speaking of Mo Dao Zu Shi: Jiang Yanli’s lotus root and pork rib soup, which is such an important narrative symbol of love and nurturance, is on my gastronomic bucket list—-ideally, prepared in a Chinese cultural context.

[geraineon]

Lotus root and pork rib is delish! It's not difficult to make, so I hope you get to try it soon! Would you mind elaborating what you mean by it being prepared in a Chinese cultural context? (just curious! because I pretty much grew up having that soup regularly).

[halfcactus]

Chiming in to say pork rib soup with any vegetable is generally what I consider a simple + homey comfort soup. :') Seeing it in MDZS made me think, "oh, that checks out" even though I've never had that combination and never in a Chinese context... I can imagine how lotus root pork rib tastes, and I feel like I'd also like to try it if I have happen to have lotus root on hand! But I'd still want other vegetables to go with it, I think...

[geraineon]

Lol yeah! It's usually pork ribs + some other vegetables so we had pork ribs + radish, pork ribs + lotus root, pork ribs + old cucumber (I really, really love this because I like eating the cucumber). Sometimes, the pork ribs + lotus roots also comes with groundnuts). So homey and comforting. It's something I try to make for myself once in a while here (because I always forget the prep work of actually defrosting the meat, and the soup needs to boiled for so long to be good so I end up making anchovy seaweed soup instead which is a lot faster).

[halfcactus]

Radish was the first closest equivalent I had in mind! My mom does potato and one leafy vegetable… And sometimes when someone gifts us with bak kut teh sachets we forego the vegetables altogether hahaha.

My fav part about these types of soups is that if the meat isn’t tender enough for lunch, it’ll be tender and the broth more flavorful at dinner. :’)

[geraineon]

Ahh, I don't think my family uses potatoes... oh wait, we do! ABC soup! I have all the ingredients for ABC soup, so maybe another day I'll make it.

Yes!! The meat is sooo good after boiling for a long time, and deepens in flavour over time. And soup serves as something on the side, plus can be eaten with rice. It's almost dinner time now and I'm hungry XD

[halfcactus]

Yeah boiled pork + potatoes + greens (+ optional corn) soup comes from my Filipino side... ABC seems specifically Malaysian Chinese? And a perfect soup for when you're sick. :')

[full_metal_ox]

And sometimes when someone gifts us with bak kut teh sachets we forego the vegetables altogether hahaha.

Speaking of bak cut teh: here’s a lyrical paean to 肉骨茶 (Meat Bone Tea) (and a rich infusion of poetry into feeding aer special someone) by S. Qiouyi Lu, from Uncanny Magazine, September/October 2016:

https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/meat-bone-tea/

[geraineon]

Thank you for sharing! I liked it but it did make me realize I have no clue what many of the herbs are called in English XD

It makes buying herbs overseas incredibly hard unless I can drop by to a shop selling herbs and just ask for what I want...

[full_metal_ox]

Would you mind elaborating what you mean by it being prepared in a Chinese cultural context?

Having it prepared in a Chinese restaurant or a household with some diasporic connection (and, of course, realizing that whatever I partake of will be one interpretation—comfort food is extremely subject to one’s particular region, ingredient availability, and mother.)

(My best friend, who grew up eating and learning to prepare her maternal family’s Chinese cookery, might well have made it for me eventually, but a conga line of major life events happened, culminating in my moving a thousand miles away.)

The Woks of Life is the collaborative cooking blog of a first-through-third-generation Chinese-American family; for some mysterious reason, about four years ago they started receiving a dramatic upsurge of comments on this recipe:

https://thewoksoflife.com/lotus-root-pork-soup/

[geraineon]

Ahh. Well, I hope you get to taste it! Idk how easy it is to get to a Chinese restaurant where you live, but you will probably find something like that somewhere with more Cantonese people (our blood is soup).

And yeah, different families tend to make them slightly different (e.g., whether one adds goji berries, dried red dates, dried scallops [umami bomb, yum!], dried squid [the cheaper version of umami bomb], nuts).

[full_metal_ox]

(our blood is soup).

That urgently needs to be the title of a Cantonese cookbook!

And you guys have a strong penchant for medicinal herbal soups, too; sometime I’d like to try the kind of…character-building herbal soup that was a staple among the Gusu Lan (although this one would fall into the For Science! column.)

(Second-gen Cantonese-American chef Grace Young includes several of these in her book The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen: https://www.amazon.com/Wisdom-Chinese-Kitchen-Grace-Young/dp/0684847396 )

[geraineon]

Surely someone has already done it (name a cookbook "our blood is soup"), I thought, and then I searched for it and huh, nobody has! An opportunity!

I love a number of herbal soups actually, but idk if those will taste too unfamiliar to people who are not used to it. I've had medicinal soups and tonics too and blergh, no, not fun...

Thanks for sharing about that cookbook! Reading the description of the story made me smile a little because my reaction to my first encounter with tamales is "this is like Mexican zhongzi." (Mexican food has very familiar tastes to me)

[full_metal_ox]

Reading the description of the story made me smile a little because my reaction to my first encounter with tamales is "this is like Mexican zhongzi." (Mexican food has very familiar tastes to me)

Which brings to mind the design choice made by the owners of El Sol Mexican Restaurant in Harrisonburg, Virginia when they bought out an erstwhile Chinese restaurant; since they couldn’t bring themselves to get rid of the cute landscape mural with pandas, they added a few touches to Mexicanize it:



(Image description: a landscape that started out as Chinese, with a yellow full moon rising over distant mountain peaks on the horizon, a bamboo clump at left, a meandering stream, and a fir tree at right. There are a couple low-growing cacti that probably originated as something else. The bamboo is now bearing chilies, overpainted on some of the leaf shapes, as fruit.

Pandas in sombreros inhabit the scene: one eating a bamboo shoot which has been converted into a taco filling, one drinking from the stream, one sniffing one of the cacti, and one using a small stringed instrument to serenade another panda (in a mantilla tagging her as feminine) perched in the fir tree.)

[geraineon]

That's really cute!

Thanks for sharing. I thought I replied but I must have navigated away without hitting post comment orz

[alterkrmn]

There’s actually some sound Traditional Chinese Medicine behind his reasoning: hot spices are extremely yang, and so would help to counter the toxic yin of corpse poisoning.

I remember reading about hot spices being yang at some point when I was still obsessed over mdzs and trying to understand many of the tropes and themes and unfamiliar details since it was my very first cnovel. I read a lot about so many different things and keep reading now depending on the novel. But my first thought was: "yup, it makes sense" since here we also use chile to "purify" the energy of those who eat the chile, or burn it to clean a place from bad energies or even ghosts. But also, to clear our sinuses if we have a cold lol

(For the same reason, you want sticky/glutinous rice rather than regular rice for first aid to counter an undead-related wound: sticky rice is yang, whereas regular rice is neutral. This specific bit of folklore comes via the 1985 Hong Kong horror-comedy film Mr. Vampire, which Moxiang Tongxiu cites as an influence: https://web.archive.org/web/20230517154400/https://asksythe.tumblr.com/post/716886554504740864/mxtx-interview-with-risa-wataya-for-subaru That film has a scene where a rice poultice proves ineffective against a vampire bite—-because the rice seller, having run low on sticky rice, diluted it with regular rice. Heck, add garlic and it might be a defense against Western vampires as well.)

Oh, nice. I'll check that link and probably track the movie some time.

I’ve seen Latin, African, and South Asian viewers of the various broadcast adaptations reacting to the amount of capsicum Wei Wuxian is dumping into that wok and seeing no problem.

I do see a problem, personally, but that's because I'm a very bad mexican and I cry if my food is too spicy. But many people around those regions you mention see eating fire in form of chiles like a totally normal thing to do. I have seen loved ones eat larger and larger amounts of spice through the years until their palates simply don't enjoy anything anymore if it doesn't have spice levels that would make me pass out. But to each their own *shrug*

The things we learn chasing our hyperfixations down information rabbitholes and the weird turns they take at Albuquerque!

Yup. It's amazing, honestly.

Speaking of Mo Dao Zu Shi: Jiang Yanli’s lotus root and pork rib soup, which is such an important narrative symbol of love and nurturance, is on my gastronomic bucket list—-ideally, prepared in a Chinese cultural context.

I totally forgot JYL's soup, which I definitely want to try at some point too. I don't know when or where, though, since there aren't any authentic chinese restaurants in my city. I will have to research the one in the capital. But yeah, that soup being constantly mentioned made me hungry more than once while reading.

[geraineon]

But my first thought was: "yup, it makes sense" since here we also use chile to "purify" the energy of those who eat the chile, or burn it to clean a place from bad energies or even ghosts. But also, to clear our sinuses if we have a cold lol

This is really cool to know, thank you for sharing! XD funny how we ended up in the exact same spot about chili

[full_metal_ox]

Here’s another example of different and unrelated cultures arriving at the same custom, with the same symbolism, for the same reason—by entirely different routes!

As You Know, Bob (and this presumptuous Westerner welcomes corrections), there’s a Chinese practice of eating some sort of leafy green vegetable for New Year’s: the word 菜 (cai ³ (Cantonese) or cai⁴ (Mandarin) being a play upon the word 財 (coi⁴ (Cantonese) or cai² (Mandarin), denoting wealth; that’s also why Lunar New Year parade lions contend over a bale of cabbage—unless they’re using real money as the prize.

However! A lot of Afro- and Euro-diasporic Americans also make a point of eating auspicious green vegetables—cabbage, fresh or as sauerkraut, kale, and collards are popular choices—because the green color evokes U.S. paper currency!

[geraineon]

XDD That's amusing.

There's another, related to symbolism. The pineapple! It's called "wong lai" in Malaysian Cantonese, which sounds like inviting fortune to come (I think it's similar in Hokkien too), so you'll see a lot of pineapples during New Year.

I learnt sometime this year that pineapples are a symbol of wealth in Europe because it was exotic and rare (and apparently often displayed rather than eaten).

[full_metal_ox]

I learnt sometime this year that pineapples are a symbol of wealth in Europe because it was exotic and rare (and apparently often displayed rather than eaten).

And in the U.S. as well, which is why you see the pineapple as a decorative motif in colonial and Victorian decor, in things like furniture posts and fabric design; it connoted wealth and cosmopolitanism, whether or not you had access to the actual fruit.

[geraineon]

Really interesting how things like these can sometimes converge!

21st-century Posh Pineapple sighting!

[full_metal_ox]

In an upper-middle-class home on the Gulf Coast of Florida:

Re: 21st-century Posh Pineapple sighting!

[geraineon]

What a fancy pineapple XD

[geraineon]

Amazing how the chili traveled everywhere isn't it?

I learnt a bit more about chili through this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fN8oRVFGM3A

I quite like that channel actually. And thanks for the link to the book (gonna look for it and add to the folder)!

[alterkrmn]

Amazing how the chili traveled everywhere isn't it?

Absolutely amazing how such a humble plant that only tried to not be eaten by predators can be so influential around the world because some birds ate them and spread their seeds all over America (the continent) and because humans love eating things that burn their mouths.

I learnt a bit more about chili through this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fN8oRVFGM3A I quite like that channel actually.

Thanks for the rec :D It was very interesting and entertaining. I liked the style. I'll check other videos from that channel.

And thanks for the link to the book (gonna look for it and add to the folder)!

I was going to send you the link but I see you have already added it. Yay!

[geraineon]

Little did plants know how masochistic we can be XD

Yes, I love that channel! Glad you liked it too!

<33

[halfcactus]

I did get hungry reading the early chapters of 我五行缺你 My Five Elements Lack You, where the MC is in charge of cooking for the household... Any mention or shot of noodles makes me crave them. XD

This post (and your mention of an anthology) just reminded me of a short story I read from a different collection (A Thousand Beginnings and Endings). The story is Olivia's Table by Alyssa Wong, which is about ghosts and food and *checks my old notes* apparently lesbians.

[geraineon]

Noodles! I love them too.

aaah I just read the story you linked. I love it! Thank you for sharing. My heart was a little achy after reading it, but it's beautiful.

[snowynight]

I love the food description in "The Heartbeat at the Tip of the Tongue" by Jiao Tang Dong Gua. The heroine learns to cook from the main guy (a blind famous chef) after entering a cooking competition reality show, which her best friend pushed her to try-out for. The explaination behind the cooking is eye opedning to me.

[geraineon]

Would you be able to share some of that explanation? I love reading/learning about the cooking process!

[snowynight]

Context: the heroine worries that losing the competition will reflect badly on ML. She asks the ML if he regrets mentoring her.

ML: "What will you do if you're asked to make a dish that you have seen the first time, and no recipes are given?"


FMC: "I don't know."

ML: "Firstly, you have to figure out the ingredients, including those flavour that you can't distinguish by sight... Then you have to figure out how they are combined and cooked. You have to observe their colours and shape, figuring out the cooking methods and the order of addition... Then you'll need to balance the ingredients flavour. This requires experience and knowledge about cooking time, quantity, the cutting size and thickness of the ingredients. "

"You need to review the result and think about what to do the next time. If I only teach you to cook a dish without telling you the rationale, you will only know how to make that dish instead of exploring new recipes."

(my translation)

I can't cook, but I really appreciate how ML lay out the learning process.

[geraineon]

That explanation makes sense to me! Figuring out the shapes, the order of operations + timing is how I learnt to cook (mostly through half remembered teachings from my grandmother, and when she was alive, she liked trying new things outside to see if she can figure out how the restaurants made them).

Thanks for sharing!

[full_metal_ox]

Although I’ve yet to read it, one work that I’m told spreads a sumptuous banquet of prose Food Porn is Sleuth of Ming Dynasty; I’d love to hear readers’ accounts.

[geraineon]

Oh yeah, that's a big part of what I've osmosed about the Sleuth of Ming Dynasty too! Perhaps when I get to it someday, I'll be able to enjoy that.