Posterous theme by Cory Watilo

Filed under: culture

iPhone 090/365 - Cantonese Fried Rice Topped with Belly Pork

The photo was taken in the dark, so don't make any judgment from the photo. It doesn't tell you any truth.

I had a fried rice yesterday night. Chef gave me some leftover of belly pork to top on the fried rice. With the gravy and veggie, it added so much taste to the fried rice.

After starting this 365 project, I have done quite some research on the dishes I have made and ate. As I live with mostly Japanese language nowadays, many of the terms I know are alien in English to me. Even with that, I still find lots of things I didn't know, and Chinese dishes that the Japanese have seem very different, if not quite, from the original Chinese cuisine. The vector of difference I found it between Chinese and Japanese is so much bigger than, for instance the mainland Chinese Chinese and Malaysian Chinese. South Asian could be categorized as one here though.

There is something about the cultural filtering mechanism by the Japanese. With the sea across the ocean, anything that came over from mainland would be purified and culturally baptized according to this far east island belief.

For example, eunuch system in China was omitted when other authority systems came to Japan. This related to the slaughter for praying in Chinese culture but when it arrived in Japan, there wasn't any trace left in regards to slaughter.

I am jumping into some big topics again.

Anyway, the belly pork is called kakuni in Japanese, came into Japanese dining table via Okinawa; rafutei, belly pork stewed in awamori, Japanese soy sauce, and miso. But, it was from Taiwan, Tong Poh pork, apparently.

Long story to cut short, the fried rice with belly pork was yummy. :)

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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. 

The Making of Postcard

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At the local city hall just two blocks from the house, there was some event going on last week, which I can't remember what it was all about. Anyway, we went for lunch, on the way back home, we saw the event, so we went in.
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There comes the postcard. There was this booth used the recycled paper from used milk carton to make postcards. Let the kids experienced it. It didn't talke long. But, it didn't make the kids really understand the concept. Perhaps this is for primary school kids more than for kindergardeners. Is this called filtering?