Food Adventures

Of course, an important and endlessly fun part of learning about any culture involves exploring its food. Aside from eating out and exploring the traditional Chinese cuisine, Nathan and I have been cooking a good deal on our own. There is a great vegetable market on campus that has a wide variety of fruits and vegetables, both known and unknown. There are more vendors lining the sides of the market selling eggs, various grains and rice, clothes, and household supplies. Though we are making slow and steady progress in our Chinese language learning (we have learned how to ask what something is, but unfortunately cannot understand the response 99% of the time, which ultimately defeats the point of asking in the first place), Nathan and I still find ourselves relying on recognition in selecting our produce. So far this method has proved to be mostly successful, with a couple of entertaining exceptions that I thought I would share with you readers, whoever you are.

-As a vegetarian, one of my primary interests has been trying to find a protein source other than meat to supplement the rampant soy products available . This search has proven to be far more difficult than I was expecting. So you can imagine my joy when, at the market one afternoon, we came across what looked like a barrel full of dry pinto beans. We bought a bag full and went on our merry way home to soak the beans for dinner. A few hours later I peeked into the bowl of soaking pinto beans. The ‘beans’ had become swollen with absorbed water, but didn’t quite look like the pinto beans I was used to at home. Thinking they were probably just a different, Eastern variety of bean, I let them soak a while longer and then started to cook them around dinnertime. After they had been in the boiling water for about 20 minutes or so, I lifted the cover of the pot and caught a distinctly strong whiff of peanut. Unwilling to simply trust my nose on this one, I spooned a ‘bean’ out of the pot and tried it. Sure enough, it was a peanut. So, we had boiled peanuts for dinner, which, after looking up online, seem to be a beloved treat in the American South—a sort of American edamame if you will. Not quite what we were hoping for, but admittedly, a tasty alternative.

-While at the market looking at fruit to buy, the vendor pointed to a crate full of limes, or at least what looked exactly like limes (and having made my fair share of guacamole over the years, I consider myself able to identify a lime). We bought one and saved it until we were ready to make a dish that would be well complimented by the sour citrus. Last night we decided a little lime would go well in our eggplant, bok choi, and bean sprout stir fry, along with some sesame oil, garlic, and ginger. We cut the ‘lime’ in half and lo and behold, it was an orange. A bit of a sour orange, but an orange nonetheless. Thwarted again.

-Besides the market, there are a few supermarkets reminiscent of Wal-Mart in the area. While at Chicony, one of the European-style supermarkets (or so they advertise, and accordingly mark up the price), I spotted some packages of dried fruit. I am a fan of dried mango and so I decided to pick up a bag, thinking it would be a good snack for in-between classes. Later that afternoon I decided to try a piece. Immediately upon opening the bag, my heart sank as the smell that reached my nostrils was a mixture of vinegar, mildew, and Sweet’N Low sugar. I reached my hand into the bag and pulled out a shriveled black ball, a little larger than a walnut. Though I had never seen dried mango that was not bright orange and in thin strips, I took a bite out of the black mass, still hopeful it would be as sweet and satisfying as I remembered. I immediately spat the ‘mango’ out into the garbage, my taste buds now coated in the same rancid smell I had been met with upon opening the package. Perhaps these mangos were dehydrated or soaked in some chemical. Whatever the case, I tossed the bag and vowed not to buy any more dried fruit that did not come in a see-through bag.

-One of the things I like most about the food here is the spice. Asking for a spicy dish at an American restaurant often lands you with a heat level that merely taunts your taste buds, leaving them aching for more. Here, almost every meal leaves you sweating (well, mostly leaves Nathan sweating) and with a warm feeling in your chest. In our first week here I set out to stock the kitchen with the basics of Chinese cooking—vegetable oil, vinegar, sesame oil, soy sauce, etc. One night, we ate at a small dumpling restaurant, the tables at which had little bowls of soy sauce and a red chili sauce on them. Falling in love with the heat and flavor of this particular chili sauce, we searched for it in the markets and grocery stores. We found what looked exactly like the chili sauce at a convenience store down the street from campus. It had the same deep red color and through the plastic bottle we could see dried red pepper flakes. That night we had some of the sauce with a stir-fry and rice. Unlike the sauce we had at the restaurant, this sauce had a definite sweetness to it, and among the pepper flakes were cooked beans of some sort. The sauce itself wasn’t bad, but yet again, our purchase turned out to be something quite different from what we were expecting.