26 March 08 re: souvenirs from China

mb:

Welcome home!

m-c:

It's good to be back.

mb:

Where were you again?

m-c:

I was in China. Quite the world traveler, un-raveler. I'm still jet-lagged -- it gets worse every year. If the Wright brothers had had their wits about them, as soon as the Kitty Hawk flew, they would have immediately patented an array of time-zone medications.

mb:

What did you bring back?

m-c:

I went to an amazing restaurant-supply store in Beijing, with a floor of serving pieces, a floor for Western cooking, and a floor for Asian cooking.

I got four woks, two for me and two for you (I see a Chinese cookbook in the future for alteRecipes).

The other thing I got for myself was a yellow plastic bench knife, you know, a kind of scraper-thingie that you use to sweep up chopped ingredients and put them in a pan.

It's a kind of tool that I'm very fond of, but this model was a little different in shape than what I'm accustomed to, so I wasn't sure I would like it. There wasn't any way to take it out of the package and test it, so I bought just one.

But now that I've used it at home, I love it and will buy twenty more when I go back.

mb:

Anything else?

m-c:

Yes, I got two wonderful presents from dear friends there, a pair of potholders for the Year of the Rat (which is now) and an illustrated cookbook in Chinese and English with numerous tips and tricks that I would never have imagined on my own.

mb:

And?

m-c:

I went to an ex-pat store and wrote down the names of some of the packaged foods expatriates apparently cannot live without. There was all kinds of sensible stuff (sensible to me) like French cheese and German sausage, but then there were the stranger things, some clearly American, others perhaps beloved in . . . Australia?: I&J Golden Smackers 30 Real Fish Bites Michelina's Pizza Snack Rolls -- cheese flavor Lean Pockets Bacon, Egg & Low-Fat Cheese Flavor Gummy Worms Black Forest And -- ta-daa -- two different brands of colored marshmallows, with pink and orange the colors common to both but one added yellow and the other green, so you would have to buy both kinds to get . . . whatever effect it is that people who want colored marshmallows are trying to get.

mb:

And?

m-c:

And the English names of dishes at a restaurant I like a lot, always try to go there once or twice when I'm in Beijing. It's a dumpling house, so I had never even looked at the "regular" (non-dumpling) menu, but service was a little slow so I amused myself with transcribing the names of some of the dishes: "between river" "ebullition fish" "explodes fries (dryly explodes) the river prawn" "fragrant spicy cosmetology hoof" "the fragrant park fries five" "husband and wives lung piece" "oil bath double flower" "old Beijing sticks the cake" "the old mother burns the duck blood" "Peru system sauce pig's front trotters" "red roast (daily family) activity bean curd" "slightly fries the black goat"

mb:

There's something more. I can tell from that gleam in your eye.

m-c:

Yes, there is.

Last time I was in Beijing, a friend took me to an amazing restaurant where we had a fish dish in which the fish were cooked in abundant oil seasoned with zillions of whole hot red chile peppers and zillions more of mouth-numbing (Sichuan) peppers.

And guess what the "ebullition fish" mentioned in the list above turned out to be? (The likeness to the picture on the menu was unmistakable.)

I carefully copied the Chinese name as well as I could and then asked the waiter (in sign language) please to write it too. It looks something like this:

So now I'm going through my Chinese cookbooks trying to match those characters.

The fish with chiles and Sichuan pepper in Fuchsia Dunlop's Land of Plenty (W. W. Norton, no date, originally Michael Joseph, 2001, pages 278-279) is the closest so far, and I think I'll try it even if I do find the real one at some future point. She has us marinate the fish in ginger, garlic, scallions, and Shaoxing wine, coat them ... well, it's a process.

But if the reward is ebullition fish, I'm all for it.

mb:

What a haul!

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