Chinese Food Mania

Food is probably the no. 1 talking point among people, in particular for people living in other completely different (or bizarre?) cultural environment. From CCIV's blog Pulse, Lily, an American exchange student in HK, was asked about her favourite Chinese foods in Hong Kong. "I like '鳳爪' (chicken feet)," caught my eyes. I am a big fan of it. A Greek friend of mine loved it so much and even bought a hugh pack of chicken feet from the Chinatown. However, a German exchange student told me that she did not like it. Yes, not many people enjoy chicken feet, not even native Chinese.

Food can be bizarre to some people indeed. Spam sushi is popular in Hawaii but it never sets foot in Japan. Food is not just about food. It is more than food and it is about culture, identity, lifestyle and many more.

Anthelme Brillat-Savarin says "Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are." (The Physiology of Taste) The British say, "how can you expect the Chinese who cannot, usually, stand the smell of cheese, be able to understand the complex English. But you can argue too, how can the British, who cannot enjoy a succulent chicken's foot for breakfast, understand the Chinese?" 

I was no big fan of Chinese food. Living in the red-brick university campus in Manchester, I shared the same floor with a group of postgraduate folks, mostly international ones. Among the five Chinese of us (excluding one Anglo-Chinese), I was the least Chinese in terms of eating habit. Even my next-door hall-mate, a British, knew how to cook Chow Mein in his own style and serve food with Kung Pao sauce. Amazing! I did not have a wok or a Chinese-must-have rice cooker. Pak Choi and Choi Sum were rare treats on my menu while Chinese dried mushroom with pork was like a feast.

The cruel fact is that it is ridiculously expensive to buy Chinese ingredients in Chinatown, some of which are as much as twice in HK, let alone mainland China a lot cheaper. I always wondered why my mainland Chinese fellows would love to pay as much as ten times of money to buy Chinese veges. It was 3 pounds (GBP-HKD remained 14 at the time) per kg for Pak Choi or Choi Sum. How expensive and ridiculous!

As a poor student like me, I'd rather have local / western food. Pasta and bread were my best friends. Butter and jam were, and still are, my all-time favourites. Potatoes and chips came next. Cod and mackerel caught my stomach. Milk was like water and wine was my soulmate. Cheese and yoghurt were my snack and dessert. Yorkshire pudding was my supper.

Food dominates our lives. So it does to me. Currently food channels have even controled my home TV. Populr chiefs Jamie Oliver, Anthony Bourdain, Andrew Zimmern, Nigella Lawson, Curtis Stone, and Kylie Kwong all have captured my TV channels.

If you will have a chance to drop by a bookstore, you will find some of these names familiar. They are not only restaurateurs and television presenters but also cookbook writers (one of them claimed never read a book himself though).

Chinese food and cuisine have been featured in different degree. Kylie Kwong's programme is primarily devoted to Chinese cuisine, I should say, "in her own way", and she is the author of several Chinese cookbooks written in English. It seems like kind of Chinese food mania emerging nowadays.

Back in the late 1960s, however, there occurred a horrific discovery or panic about Chinese food in the U.S. It was called the Chinese restaurant syndrome. Diners of Chinese restaurants could feel "numbness at the back of the neck, gradually radiating to both arms and the back, general weekness and palpitation", "a most uncomfortable tightness on both sides of the head".

Rumours were going around about possible causes and the funniest one was "simple myopathy of the facial and neck muscles induced when Westerners try to eat with chopsticks." Can you believe it? Readers of this post should be aware of using chopsticks maybe. Seriously, the main cause is excessive use of the common food additive MSG (monosodium glutamate, now sometimes hidden as flavour enchancer [E621]). Are you still a big fan of Chinese food from now on?

(source: Ian Mosby, "'That Won-ton soup headache': the Chinese restaurant syndrome, MSG and the making of American food, 1968-1980," Social History of Medicine, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Feb., 2009), pp. 1-19.)

From Western mind to Western cuisine (Seiyō Ryōri): how Japanese housewives learn western cookery

I have been "excessively" downloading 19th and 20th centuries Japanese materials last week. I was thrilled. Not just because I found very important sources, but also some very interesting ones. Here is bit of it.

Western gunboat came with Western cuisine. Commodore Perry forced Japan to turn away from sakoku to kaikoku for good. Two American ladies, Mrs G. Binford and Miss Sarah Ellis, in the late 19th century, came to Japan to teach authentic western cookery to Japanese housewives.

Mrs. Binford had extensive experience in giving personal instruction to large cooking classes for Japanese women whereas Ellis was formerly a teacher of Domestic Science in America. Dedicated to "the housewives of Japan", The Tokiwa Cook Book 常磐西洋料理 Tokiwa seiyō ryōri (Yokohama: Tokiwasha, 1904) was written by these two competent teachers.

With its aim to provide the eager learners with a guide to foreign cookery which is "simple, practical and hygienic," the bible is divided into two parts: 1) Practical instructions and recipes for home cooking by Mrs. Binford; and 2) Invalid cookery by Ellis.

Starting from illustrating oven and spoons (such as teaspoon and tablespoon), it introduces different kinds of simple recipes with very detailed procedures, from baking bread to preparing cereals, making poached eggs to meat omelet. Mrs. Binford also brought in various kinds of sandwiches all of which are very common nowadays and need no explanation, e.g. meat sandwiches (quite remarkable, because Japanese people started to enjoy meat quite recently), ham sandwiches, chicken salad sandwiches, cucumber sandwiches, jelly and nut sandwiches. Soups are simply several common ones like clam broth and cream of chicken soup.

Meats are one of the most popular recipes (only after vegetables). Wagyu 和牛 today is among the most expensive beef in the world and is being enjoyed and highly praised by many peoples outside Japan. It is almost unimaginable that meat eating was prohibited for more than one thousand years prior to 1868. Buddhist influences were one of the major factors. Others are cultural ones like protecting draught animals in times of famine. Western mind, however, opened the gate for meat.

Like modern day cooking, Mrs. Binford taught the students 1) to season the beef steak with salt, oil and whole meal flour first. 2) fry beef fat and squeeze for oil. 3) fry the seasoned beef steak. 4) turn it over when the bottom side turns brown. 5) serve with warmed plate. Not unlike modern cooking recipes. Besides, she gave elaborate instructions to prepare gravy to serve with potato and meat.

Have to stop here for beef steak myself.