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]

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