Posterous theme by Cory Watilo

Filed under: Chinese

Sinfully Delicious: The Story of Dongpo Pork

This post was from a mail newsletter. It hasn't been updated on their website, which I think later will appear here. 
[...]According to history, Su Dongpo was once the Mayor of Hangzhou City. He led people to build dams to prevent the beautiful West Lake from being polluted by algae. The local people showed their appreciation by sending a pig to his home. He asked his servants to follow his recipe to cook the pork and sent the cooked pork to the people working on the project. Since then, Dongpo Pork has become a famous dish of Hangzhou.
Su Dongpo wrote a poem called “Eating Pork”:
Huangzhou has good pork,
The price is as cheap as dirt
The rich don’t want to eat it
The poor don't know how to cook it
Cook slowly
With a little water
When the time comes, the pork will become delicious
A bowl of pork of every morning,
will satisfy a man enough to forget all cares.

This poem did not tell us detailed cooking process and ingredients, but “cook slowly with a little water” already told us how we should control heat, cooking time, and moisture.
P.S Update:
My friend sent me the below. 
東坡性喜嗜豬，在黃岡時嘗戲作《食豬肉詩》云：
「黃州好豬肉，價錢如糞土；富者不肯吃，貧者不解煮。慢著火，少著水，火候足時它自美。每日起來打兩碗，飽得自家君莫管。」
http://cls.hs.yzu.edu.tw/su_shih/su_people/su_ebook/yellow_remember1.htm

Fried Noodle with Thick Gravy

Japanese loves this thick gravy thing, the starchy sauce, ankake. It is nice. I've been thinking what is the equivalent of it in Chinese, somehow there isn't much mention about ankake. The most close dish that I could think of is the Cantonese style. Some restaurant menu that appears online has no mention about the gravy thing, it's the Japanese menu that stress out the ankake. Mind you, this is Chinese cooking. 

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There is another dish that derived from this is, the rice version, ankake gohan. It's just the thick gravy poured on the white rice. So, it's like the Chinese eat, instead of order a fried vege dish to eat with rice, it's put altogether. For the sake of convenient? May be. The blending with rice and eat with a Chinese spoon but not chopstick is the joy of it, I guess. 

I personally don't like the rice version, never have I ordered it initiatively. It's like gyudon, kind of cheap and low class dish to me. I know, there are tones of Chinese chef out there is making this ankake gohan and charge rather expensive! Still, the cheapness doesn't vaporize with any cooking to me. 

Sweet and Sour Pork - The Difference thinking between Japanese and Chinese Balanced Diet

Yi Shi Tong Yuan (医食同源), literally means medicine origins from healthy food, which means having good food keeps one healthy and away from sickness and disease. 

One topic that I am very keen in getting more in depth is the difference between Japanese and Chinese thinking about healthy eating. 

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There is this one Chinese dish, Sweet and Sour Pork, I ate a lot, and did cook myself too when I was young. Somehow, most of the ingredients that stayed in my mind was pork or may be onion, which I don't remember liking it. Pineapple was one option to replace the vegetables, but it wasn't that convenient to get for replacement. At first, I thought I was too obsessed with pork that I only used more pork than ever. Somehow, I found some similarity. If you googled for sweet and sour pork photos, my goodness, 2/3 or 7/8 is pork, pork, and pork! Most of them are by Chinese, I presume. The result of search and the volume of meat was a blow to me. I was such a normal Chinese dish lover, and that sadden me. 

It's only after I came to Japan, I then realised there was so much vegetables in the same dish prepared by any Chinese cook in any restaurant. At first I hated it; onion, green pepper, carrot, none were my favourites nor it ever existed in my shopping list. I thought Japan's things are expensive and people try to "cheat" themselves by adding more vegetables to get the balance of volume. 

It took quite a while for me to understand why the balance of Japanese cooking. For Japanese, each dish supposed to be on a balanced diet on its own. When Japanese order a sweet and sour pork lunch set, all the balanced diet are focused on that dish, with rice and may be a soup. That's the total balance of its universe. 

Whereas for Chinese, the balance comes from a bigger universe; we perhaps have more dishes — 3 to 4 from each different cooking — and it totals up at the end, may be in the stomach. This might not be true if you look into it in more details. But, with sweet and sour pork, I find it interesting to see the differences. Both have the same balanced diet, I think. 

Have you realised how you cook your sweet and sour pork? More pork or more vege? Enjoy, anyway! 

Now, I am curious how the thinking differences between the two if we look at the way to mix food.