Entries tagged with 'Asia'
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[Photograph: Weird Asia News] If the square watermelon concept still kind of blows your mind, this will straight explode it. A Japanese farmer and his wife have cultivated a heart-shaped watermelon. "It was an act of love for the couple where they wanted the fruit of their labor to symbolize their feelings for each other," according to Weird Asia News. Each fruit, which took three years to perfect, is going for 15,750 yen ($160). Related Photo of the Day: Cute Teeth Eating Watermelon Pickled watermelon [Talk] Watermelon, Feta, and Arugula Salad...
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John Brunton of The Guardian picks his top ten street eats and cafes in Hong Kong for budget-friendly eating, "where the quality and freshness of the food is what counts, not the decor and service."...
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Chan Yan Tak, one of whose dim sum dishes was once described as "like eating clouds," has become the first Chinese chef to be awarded three Michelin stars. Despite the celestial nature of his cooking, we're told that the executive chef of Hong Kong's Lung King Heen is a very modest man. With no formal culinary training, he started working in kitchens at the age of 13. Mr. Chan is in good company. Only one other restaurant in the Hong Kong-Macau Michelin Guide unveiled today was awarded the maximum three stars; it's run by a chef you may have heard of—Joël Robuchon. Take a peek at Lung King Heen's menu. Of particular note is the Children's Menu, which is split...
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Wandering the streets of Hong Kong, I stumbled upon a sight I’d usually expect to see at a farmers’ market—a fresh noodle store. Unlike the oftentimes too-pricey-for-a-grad student handmade pasta, these noodles were much more affordable. At an average of four nests of noodles for sixty-five cents (each nest feeds one!) it made me wonder: what makes Italian pasta so much more expensive? Is it the ingredients? Or could it be that pasta-making is far more laborious than Chinese noodle-making? Are the two processes very different? History is littered with stories of how the string-like food made from unleavened dough came about. Some claim that Marco Polo introduced noodles to the Italians on his return from China (now debunked),...
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If you were on the run and had no access to electricity, what food would you pack? Field rations, space food, and/or squeeze packs of Nutella? (This last option gets my housemates’ unanimous vote.) 400 years ago, the Hakkas—an ethnic Chinese group fleeing South from the constant warfare in North China—invented "lei cha" or thunder tea rice to sustain them over the long, hazardous journey. With no means of heating water and limited resources, the original dish consisted of a handful of grains and beans ground to a fine powder and mixed with cold water. The “thunder” in the dish refers to the racket made as the ingredients were crushed with a traditional wood pestle in a coarse-surfaced clay...
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If you’re of South East Asian descent, you know that
being called a “potato eater” is a grave thing. It implies that you’ve rejected your culinary heritage of rice as the basis of, and main source of carbohydrates in, your diet. Instead, you’ve embraced the “white man’s” dietary staple of potatoes.
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A study by the Harvard School of Public Health found that modest soy consumption may significantly decrease sperm production due to the soy's isoflavones, the chemicals that act similar to estrogen. However, the study points out that soy consumption is higher in Asia, where there isn't a decreased fertility problem....
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Last month on a visit to Butuan City in the Philippines, writer Robyn Eckhardt and photographer David Hagerman of Eating Asia witnessed the traditional processing of the sago palm, a plant mostly used for its tapioca-like sago flour. They thoroughly document the breakdown of the "Tree of Life" in three parts: extracting starch from the hack-out trunk shreds, using the flour in sweet coconut-flavored sago flatcakes, and frying up the fat-rich sago worms that hatch in the sago palm's trunk. Never before have I wanted to try something made of sago so badly. But I think I'll save the fried worms for later, even if they tasted "crispy, salty, and greasy, with a lick of smoke."...
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One reason I don't like eating street food in New York City is because I either have to eat it while walking or find a place to sit down before digging into my food as it gets progressively cooler. If I lived in Tokyo I could just eat ramen or oden in front of a cart on the side of the street, as seen in PingMag's feature on Tokyo's mobile food bars in which they interview a handful of food cart vendors about how they run their businesses....
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According to Business Week, bigwig Western chocolate companies like Nestle and Hershey are trying to please Asian tastes, given a booming chocolate industry there. Say hello to azuki-bean Kit Kats in Japan, green tea Hershey's Kisses in China, and ginseng-enriched confections in South Korea. Here we thought Abba-Zaba was crazy! Check out the article's matching slideshow....
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