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Published: June 20th 2009
after a chat with K a few nights ago, i thought it would be interesting for you all to hear about the delicious chinese cuisine i have been enjoying. most of the time when we go out to eat, we eat family style. usually we order some eggplant (either braised in soy sauce or cooked in sugar and vinegar), bok choy, tofu... my favorite vegetarian dish aside from eggplant is called xi hong shi chao ji dan, which is tomato fried with egg. we will usually order some meat dishes too, a lot of pork and chicken.
i really enjoy going for hot pot, which is sort of like fondue in that you have a pot of hot broth in which you cook a variety of things. we went for hot pot last night. it was a long dinner, we started with a bowl of shrimp. let me tell you something about the shrimp here, they are not shelled. so you grab the whole thing and either pull the shell off or stick it in your mouth with the shell on. i usually bite of the head and set it aside, sometimes i will eat the shell some times I'll spit it out. the exoskeleton isn't so bad though. after we ate all the shrimp, we added broth to the left over seasonings in the pot. this is the point where it becomes like fondue. we ordered nian gao (which is made of cooked rice, its cylindrical) i love nian gao, sometimes i get it fried on a stick with hot sauce. we also ordered cabbage, bok choy, lamb, fish balls, muer which is an edible fungus. its not really like a mushroom, maybe you could call it tree ear. we also ordered pig brain. when the pigs brain came it was much like what you'd expect a raw brain to look like, pink, bloody with Gyri and Sulci very clearly defined. the brain was frozen when it arrived. we saved it for the end of the hot pot. when we added it to the boiling broth, it was submerged for a few minutes then rose to the top when it was ready. the color changed to a whitish grey and it was very soft. the taste was kind of metallic, much the way blood has a distinct iron taste. the texture was smooth. it wasn't bad, but i didn't eat much of it. mike however was very excited and managed to finish two of the pieces.
some other things i have eaten here include: crayfish, goose, various animal livers and intestines, frog, lots of yummy roast duck. there are a bunch of different varieties of tofu here, its too bad we don't have as much back home. tofu skin is really good, its like a tofu noodle. also, most of the meat dishes are cooked with the bones in, so eating can sometimes be arduous as you spit out bone pieces. but its delicious anyway.
ordering is hard and a lot of times we don't know what we're going to get. it makes eating out fun and we always end up eating something tasty and interesting.
as for food i miss. i crave avocados. at breakfast in suzhou i started crying because of how much i wanted an avocado. carolyn was on her way back to the states where she would then be working in san fransisco and was boasting about how many avocados she would be enjoying. and my face dropped, my eyes watered and i cried. so i've decided my first meal when i get home will be: fish tacos with chips and guacamole with a nice cold margarita!
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Carolyn
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Whoa! Pig brain! You guys are being so adventurous! I wish that there was a way that I could send you an avocado! Maybe in CA I'll be closer and it'll be possible! I miss you a ton! Right now I'm held up with the stomach flu (and therefore only able to eat plain white rice!) and watching endless documentaries on Chinese wildlife and rice production on the Travel Channel. It barely feels like I've left Hefei at all! Wo ai ni! Wo hen xiang ni! I hope that you're weekend is lots and lots of fun!