Walking slowly and eating doufu

Màn màn chī nǐ de dòu fu! 

Chen mapo doufu (Pock-marked Granny Chen's tofu), Chengdu, Sichuan ©IBM

There are many wonderful Chinese expressions that I enjoy hearing and using. A simple, very common one that you hear everyday is 慢慢走 mànmàn zǒu! Literally "go or walk slowly" but the actual meaning is Please stay! What could be nicer? Writer/artist Rabih Alameddine expressed delight in this expression at the Bookworm Literally Festival and his impish comment made me think how right he was, why rush through life when every little second is so interesting that if you don't walk slowly you might miss its many colors, shades and nuances?

There is another similar expression, used at the beginning of a meal, when a Chinese host asks you to start eating: 慢慢吃 màn màn chī = lit. "eat slowly". The thought here is not for you to be a good girl and chew every morsel carefully but to "enjoy your meal", in other words " bon appetit!"

When I'm on the subject of Chinese expressions it makes me think of another one that I learnt the other day. (An aside to fellow "Skåningar": Why do I hear HippHipp in my head -  "Expressions, uuuttryck"??) 

Let me explain:

Next week my family and I and a bunch of friends are going up to the mountains around Songpan in northern Sichuan to ride horses on a three day "horse trek". Over twenty years ago I did this once before, at a time when it was very new and there were few tourists in the area. The bus from Chengdu to Songpan took two days, stopping either in Maoxian or Wenchuan on the way up and the road was horrendous. I met another foreigner on the bus and we decided to do the trek together. We rented horses with a horse handler. (The horse handler is what I'm eventually leading up to.) The other day here in Chengdu a Chinese friend explained to me how you say "goose someone" (actually "tease or flirt with someone") in Chinese slang: Eat their tofu (吃豆腐chī dòu fu). Back to the horseman: every time I wanted to get back up into the saddle he was there as fast as an oiled weasel ready to "help me" by giving me a firm crotch hoist into the saddle, all the while with a wily Tibetan grin on his face. Upon hearing my telling of this memory (after recounting her own trials and tribs on her trip to Songpan) she burst out laughing: Tā zhēnde chī nǐ de dòu fu le! He really ate your tofu!! 他真的吃你的豆腐了!

Fastlagsbullar at last!

©Ingrid Booz Morejohn

A few days ago I posted receiving marzipan from Susanna in Bangkok. Yesterday we used the marzipan and made Swedish "fastlagsbullar", 16 in all. Hmm-m, they were yummy! We invited a good friend and her children over to share the fun and we polished off the lot of them. First I baked the sweet buns, then Emy and I carved off a little "hat" and placed a square of marzipan inside with a generous dollop of whipped cream on top (generously supplied by Catherine P). The lid was then put back on and powdered sugar sprinkled on top. Baking with Chinese flour is a bit tricky, it's not exactly like Swedish (or American flour), slightly fluffier and airier so the buns were not as dense, chewy and golden brown as Swedish ones. It was also difficult to get the cream to stay "stiff" in the warm air but the taste was perfect.

Attempting to explain the science and cultural history of this baked treat to my British friend I realized I needed to know more, so here is what I found out:

My mother's side of the family is from the province of Skåne in the very south and the buns are called fastlagsbullar there, but in much of the rest of Sweden they are known as semlor (one bun = en semla). They can also be called fettisdagsbullar or hetvägg. Semla comes from the Latin semila, flour of a fine quality. 

In the beginning the bun (known as a lenten bun in English) was eaten only on fettisdagen (Shrove Tuesday) during fastlagen (Lent or Shrovetide). As Swedes gradually became more secular and few people fasted before Easter, it became the tradition to eat the bun every Tuesday during the seven weeks of fasting. These Tuesdays (tisdagar) became known as fettisdagar. Nowadays lenten buns appear around Christmas time and - to the detriment of every Swede's waistline - can be consumed every day of the week. Bakeries and cafés vie to bake the most popular fastlagsbulle, with the different tastes discussed in local newspapers and magazines. 

As mentioned above, Emy and I made 16 buns, all of which got consumed in one way or another by three adults and four children. One of our Swedish kings, Adolf Fredrik (the father of Gustav III) died on Fettisdagen February 12, 1771 by eating too many buns. It must be said however that he had also just digested a large amount of sauerkraut, boiled meat and turnips, lobster, Russian caviar, bloater, warm milk and a bottle of Champagne. He'd just returned from a health spa cure and the shock to his system caused stomach cramps, dizziness and later in the day  a stroke that killed him. Hardly surprising. 

After we ate our buns we went off to our local jumbly restaurant and ate a blow out Sichuan meal consisting of "twice-in-the-pan pork" (huiguo rou), The Palace Guard's Chicken (gongbao jiding), sugared corn, dry-fried potato slices (ganbian tudou si), dry-fried string beans (ganbian siji dou), doufu soup, beer and rice. I slept like a baby last night.

Lantern Festival: Tangyuan sticky rice balls

©Agencies/Chinadaily.com.cn

Found this wonderful image of a factory worker making glutinous rice balls (tangyuan) in a workshop in Nanjing, Jiangsu on the China Daily website today. Tangyuan (also called yuanxiao) have sweet or salty fillings and are eaten on the Lantern Festival on the last day of the Chinese New Year, which this year falls tomorrow February 9th, 2009. Shops and stores are full of bags of them, displacing ice cream and other frozen items in the iceboxes. When I first saw them I thought they were fishballs. Remember when eating them - they're not called sticky for nothing!

Snatching food from a beggar

It's been an interesting day.

First...

...my husband went out, got a haircut, came back looking like Pauli Walnuts in The Sopranos, went out again, had another haircut, and now looks like Gustav Wasa.

Then...

... we went to dinner, ordered too much food, asked for two doggy bags, one for Emy's lunch tomorrow and one to give to any street person we might come across on the way home. Walking home we found a man rummaging through a bag of old restaurant slops. I asked "Would you like some spare ribs?" He answered "Yes". I gave him one of the doggy bags and walked on. A minute later Burton says "I guess I'll give some other beggar the spare ribs". Realizing that I had given away the wrong doggy bag (Emy wanted the sweet-n-sour pork for lunch) I went back to the beggar - who was just opening up the bag I had given him -  and said "I made a mistake, here are the spareribs", switched the bag out of his hands and took back the sweet-n-sour pork.

When Gustav Wasa passed by a few minutes later the beggar was happily eating the spare ribs. 

Emy's going to have a great school lunch tomorrow.

Quiche to die for

Recipe/photos ©Ingrid Booz Morejohn

Burton decided he wanted to learn how to cook today so together we made a quiche. I concocted the recipe and stood guard, but Burton did everything himself. It turned out to be:

THE BEST QUICHE EVER CREATED

PIE SHELL

2 1/2 dl flour

100 gram cold butter in small cubes

2 tblsp cold water

FILLING

3 eggs

2 1/2 dl cream

Feta cheese with herbs (hexagonal glass jar with cheese in oil and herbs)

Package of bacon (cut into small pieces)

1 medium sized red onion (finely chopped)

Pinch of salt

Pinch of pepper

Handful of grated strongish-tasting cheese (we used Chengdu Ikea's Wästgöta Kloster Svart)...one sliced tomato and a few olives for garnish

PREPARATION

Start with pie shell. This is a standard recipe, the important thing is for the butter to be cold. (Butter, not margarine. If you don't want to get fat, then don't make this quiche. It only gets worse when you see what's in the filling.) Cut up butter into small cubes, mix with flour and then slowly add water. Quickly mix and form into a ball. Don't overwork. Put into refrigerator and let stabilize for 30 minutes.

Begin making filling by cutting a standard sized package of bacon into small pieces, fry in non-stick frying pan. Then add finely chopped red onions. Fry together on low heat until nice and soft and brown. Place aside.

Gently stir eggs and cream together in bowl.  Pour out most of oil from jar of feta cheese but try and retain most of the herbs. If you use plain feta in water, drain water and add a generous amount of Herbes de Provence to mixture. Through in the pinch of salt and pepper.

By this time your pie dough has been in the fridge for 30 minutes. Take out ball and place in non-stick pan (or whatever pan you want, a round quiche pleases the eye). Either roll out dough to edges or - as Burton did - press out dough with fingers until it fills the floor of the pan and goes about 1 1/2 inch up the sides of the pan (the dough will shrink later). Prick the bottom a couple of times. Pre-bake shell for 10 minutes in 200° C until nicely brown. 

Take out pie shell and fill bottom evenly with the bacon - onion mixture. Pour the egg-cream-feta mixture over this and cover evenly. Sprinkle grated cheese over top and decorate with tomato slices/wedges and olives. Place in middle of oven, bake for 30 minutes at 200°C.

Serve with large green or tomato salad with vinaigrette dressing.

 

Adults: You've got to drink a hearty glass of red wine with this because the amount of calories in this recipe will kick you in the gut like a mule.

Boys: If you learn to make something like this your future girlfriends will adore you.

Girls: Get your future boyfriends to make you a quiche like this.

Kinesiska nyåret: Matens betydelse

Trängsel i kassakön på Carrefour två dagar före  det kinesiska nyåret ©Ingrid Booz Morejohn

”It’s a madhouse”, brukar min mamma säga om någonting är alldeles tokigt och igår var det fullkomlig dårhus på matvaruhuset jag besökte. Precis som i väst när det ska handlas inför julen: trängsel, trängsel, trängsel, vagnar överallt, stressad personal och handlare som kör sina vagnar över andras tår, snor sista varan rätt framför näsan på en och blockerar alla passage. Hysterin skruvas upp lite till med megafonutrustad personal som basunerar ut erbjudande, musik på högsta volym, matberg som hotar ramlar över en och försäljare som försöker kränga allmöjliga ting. Lägg också till att kineserna är fler än 1,3 miljarder till antal och alla tycks vilja in i affären samtidigt så förstår ni att det är FULLKOMLIGT DJÄVULUSISKT att handla en bit mat så här års. Men kineser är född stoiker så inga hårda ord märktes i kön utan till och med lite skratt utlöstes här och var över tillvarons dårskap. 

Och vad ska min familj äta nyårsafton? Hemlagade köttbullar och svensk julmat inhandlat på IKEA ;-D

Ur På kinesiskt vis:

Det kanske är vid denna högtid, mer än någon annan, som maten har så stor betydelse. Till nyårsaftonens middag bör man servera minst tio rätter och vissa maträtter äts inte bara för att de är goda (och för en del kineser är det kanske enda gången under året som man har råd att servera dem), utan för att de rimmar på olika lyckobringande ord: kyckling (ji), fisk (yu) och sojabönsost (doufu) är likljudande på kinesiska som ”lyckobringande”, ”överflöd” och ”rikedom”. Kycklingen ska vara hel, det vill säga inklusive huvudet, gumpen och fötterna (detta representerar fullständighet). Nudlar får inte brytas under tillagningen och serveringen då de symboliserar långt liv. Mängder av apelsiner och småcitrus serveras då den gula färgen liknas vid guld och den runda formen symboliserar enighet inom familjen.

I stora delar av Kina äter man små degknyten, kallade jiaozi, på nyårsafton. Jiaozi med en liten förvanskning kan även låta som uttrycket ”att göra sig av med det gamla och välkomna det nya” så dessa serveras lämpligen vid midnatt då det nya året precis ska börja. Jiaozi ser också ut som forna tiders guld- eller silverklimpar och symboliserar rikedom och välstånd under det nya året. Det tar tid att göra jiaozi och här är det naturligt att hela familjen samlas runt bordet under tillagningen.

I vissa delar av Kina är det nyårskakor (niangao) som gäller – kakor gjorda på klibbris och fyllda med godsaker. Här är ordleken ”högre och högre” [välstånd], gao, ”år efter år”, nian.

I ett land som lägger så stor vikt vid familjen och relationerna tas även speciell hänsyn till de familjemedlemmar som avlidit. De anses ha lagt grunden till familjens fortlevnad och välstånd och ”bjuds in” att delta i festen vid ett speciellt dukat bord. Riktig mat är framdukad och man kanske lägger guldfärgat papper på alls säten där dessa släktingar ska ”sitta”.

Minst tio rätter ska det vara nyårsafton ©Ingrid Booz Morejohn

På kinesiskt vis ©Ingrid Booz Morejohn/Ica förlag, Forma Publishing

Hangzhou culinary experience: Dragon Well Manor

Timeless Wuzhen, Zhejiang Province Photo ©Ingrid Booz Morejohn

Cookbook author Fushcia Dunlop, specializing in Chinese cookery has written an article in The New Yorker about a special restaurant in Hangzhou, the Dragon Well Manor. (Read it online.) She begins the article with an interesting earful about the Chinese food industry and the art of food-foraging (sounds ominous but means everyday berry, mushroom-picking etc but in China more likely bamboo-shoot hunting). Her food guide in Hangzhou is Dai Jianjun, owner of the said Dragon Well Manor, committed to serving his guests only "natural ingredients, untainted by pesticides or melamine, and with no added MSG". This means buying only the best ingredients out in the countryside, handpicked and closely inspected.  Along the way we get a discourse on Hangzhou and Zhejiang cuisine, seasoning, MSG, food-safety, green food and much else. Just like when you read between the recipes in Fushcia's excellent cookbooks.

Dragon Well Manor, address:

龙井草堂
地址：西湖区龙井路龙井399号
电话：0571-87888777

Thanksgiving dinner in Laos

Luang Prabang morning market ©Ingrid Booz Morejohn

Instead of roast turkey, sage stuffing, corn on the cob and pumpkin pie the local offerings this November for a home-cooked Thanksgiving dinner at the morning market in Luang Prabang, Laos were bat, bamboo rat, mouse deer, grasshopper (crunchy but a slightly unpleasant undertone of tobacco juice), flying squirrel, wasp larvae, exotic birds and Mekong catfish. Not that I pooh-pooh local delicacies that for some are the very height of gourmet dining but on a special day you just kind of want to eat the traditional food that your mum served you as a child. For some Laotian I suppose that is a juicy bamboo rat but I just couldn't quite conjure up an image of turkey feathers on the fat rat so I gave it a skip. No warbled thank-you was to be had from the rat who only hissed at me through very unattractive front chompers. (Bamboo rats look like grossly fat rodents without the long tails but with hideous rabbit-like buckteeth). What sealed my vegetarian fate that day was a little bat who stared forlornly at me from a large platter of his fellow mammals, all trussed up by their feet. He, unlike them, had not yet succumbed to his fate, his liquid black eyes unblinking. I heard later that a special northern Laotian treat is bat stuffed in bamboo tubes then left for several days to ferment....

Photo sales at CIWC Christmas Bazaar

I just came back from one month in Vietnam, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia and have a lot of catching up to do. Keep your eyes peeled the next couple of weeks to catch new photos, postings and travel info to these extremely interesting countries. I'll be writing about bamboo rats, grasshoppers and mouse deer, Buddhist caves and dancing apsaras, hidden rocks and shoals on the Mekong, sailing amongst the karst islands of Halong Bay, lingering sorrow in Cambodia and shy smiles in Laos, Laotian coffee versus Vietnamese and tropical fruits like Nipa palm, jackfruit and pink pomelo...

But first some good news: we had great success with selling photos at the Third Annual CIWC Christmas Bazaar: 32 prints sold! That means around 7,000 RMB (about 1000 USD) will be given to the two charities working with the Sichuan earthquake victims. If anyone still wants photos please feel free to continue placing orders. All money will go to the quake charities. Thanks for all the support!

Photo: An afternoon bath in the Mekong, Luang Prabang, Laos

Photos for sale at CIWC Christmas Bazaar

Ballet class, Shanghai

Corn harvest, Lijiang, Yunnan

Moon Gate, West Slender Lake, Yanghzou, Jiangsu

Red Corridor, Wuhou Temple, Chengdu

Black Dragon Pool, Lijiang, Yunnan

Thailand

Lotus Pond

Tagong, West Sichuan

Women's Feast, Dali, Yunnan

Bamboo, Wuhou Temple, Chengdu

Autumn, Jiuzhaigou, Sichuan

Three Pagodas, Dali, Yunnan

Cormorant fishermen, Li River, Guangxi

Chopsticks

10,000 Buddha Peak, Emei Mountain, Sichuan

Tashilhunpo Monastery, Tibet

Lijiang, Yunnan Province

Lotus seed pod

Tibetan nun, Lhasa

Tibetan monk, Sumtsenling Monastery, Zhongdian

All of the pictures you see here are going to be on sale as prints at the 3rd Annual CIWC Christmas Bazaar at QSI International School (Meizhou Huayuan) on December 6, 2008. All proceeds from the sales of these images will go to two charities that work with earthquake relief projects in the Sichuan area that was devastated by the May 12th, 2008 earthquake : Ecologia and Sichuan Quake Relief. 

Ecologia needs 70,000 RMB to help a village rebuild homes and help families begin a cottage industry where they can earn a living. The remaining money earned will go to Sichuan Quake Relief – working on many projects in the quake area to help relieve the suffering of those living in the area.

More about the charities:
Ecologia http://www.ecologia.org/ 

Sichuan Quake Relief http://sichuan-quake-relief.org/ 

Each print will come mounted with a matt (passpartout) and cost 250 rmb. There will be 20 prints on sale.  If there is a special picture that you like please make a comment here below or send me an email: ingridmorejohn@gmail.com. Additional prints can be ordered and delivered before Christmas. The goal this year for the entire bazaar is to raise 100,000 RMB for charity. Please come and help make this possible!

NOTE! ALL IMAGES ©Ingrid Booz Morejohn