Food in China

Notice: Panda Express is NOT Chinese food.  And now that I've experienced the real deal Chinese food, I may not go back!  The only food I tried that I did not like was tofu. Oh, and cow stomach on a stick.  But I had to try that for bragging purposes :)

 

At Starfish, Anna and I were responsible for providing our own breakfast and dinner.  We bought some groceries at the Walmart in town and had package oatmeal or yogurt (which, in China, you drink through a straw) or PB&J on rolls for breakfast.  Lunch was always compliments of the fabulous and very kind cook (on the right).

She typically made three or four dishes served with rice which we ate in the traditional family style way.

Some of the dishes she made included: cold cucumbers and tomatoes in a sort of dressing, scrambled eggs and tomatoes, beef and potatoes, mushrooms and leeks, vegetarian dumplings with "la" sauce (the spicy red pepper sauce that is part of many meals) or garlic sauce, winter melon slices, red carrots, fried rice, and cold noodles with la sauce, and fried biscuits stuffed with veggies and meat.  All of the dishes are very flavorful (and very oily!), and it was always interesting to try new vegetables. And I must add I feel quite competent with chopsticks now.  Often, Anna and I saved the leftovers for dinner, but more frequently we walked down the street to our favorite corner place, a restaurant owned by the Wang family.  Our favorite dish was a super flavorful eggplant and green bean dish. 

We became quite regulars at the Wang's restaurant and loved nearly everything.  Their dumplings were great as was their kung pao chicken, and we tried everything from deep fried mushrooms (sort like the delicious Chinese version of onion rings) to battered fish (I wish I had photographed those little eyeballs staring up at me after I ate the meat off the bones) to yummy soup.  

Once we walked the other direction down the street and ate at a hot pot place.  I had never heard of hot pots before, but it was quite a fun way to eat a meal.  They bring each person a little pot, light the burner under it, and while the broth boils, you order what sort of meat and vegetables you would like in your pot.  They bring everything to you raw (we ordered pork, lamb, cabbage, spinach, and some sort of long, white, weirdly textured noodles that we had thought were going to be potatoes) and you plop it in the boiling broth til it cooks.  Then at the end the broth is flavored really well from everything you've cooked in it.  So fun!

We also tried the signature dish of Xi'an, called Pa Mo, which is a Muslim dish made of bread crumbs soaked in broth and served with meat and a whole bowl of garlic cloves.  Apparently you are supposed to eat those whole?  I tried one, and that was enough! But, overall that dish was quite tasty.

My favorite type of food in China, though, is the street food.  People set up their little carts on the sides of the roads and sell delicious finger foods for very cheap.  The Muslim Quarter (I'll write a whole post about that) is known for its delicious street food, but we've found pretty great stuff almost wherever we've looked.  We've had potstickers,

quail eggs brushed with sesame sauce on a stick,

 bing (I'm not sure what the translation for this is; it's like fried, flaky pastry dough, some plain and some flavored with tomato almost like pizza)

 and egg, tomato, and strange sauce sandwich!

 Looking at all of these, I'm thinking we should have taken more pictures of the food and less pictures of me eating it! Ah, well. :)  We've also found peanut brittle, sticky rice cakes with molasses syrup on a stick, bao zi (steamed buns filled with meat or vegetables; we ate these almost every morning for breakfast in Beijing), little peanut cubes the consistency of fudge with Chinese characters embossed on the top, and tortilla-like things stuffed with leeks and meat.  My most favorite street food is something called shi zi bing.   They make a dough out of persimmon and flour, stuff it with filling (there are tons of different kinds-- peanut, sesame, black bean curd, etc.) deep fry it, and you end up with this warm, orange, sweet cake of perfection.  Seriously it's delicious!! And you can get one for 1.5 RMB, about a quarter.  I could eat one of those every day for the rest of my life and be happy!