Entries tagged with 'Chinese food'
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What do you do on Christmas if you're Jewish? Chinese food and a movie. Brandon Walker sings about this perennial pairing, after the jump....
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You can’t always eat glazed chicken feet or stinky tofu or braised cold tendon in chili oil. Sometimes you just want an honest crab rangoon. But then you think, am I going to lose my serious eater’s card for indulging in American Tiki-craze Trader Vic-inspired goodies like deep fried wonton-wrapped cream cheese studded with fake krab meat and scallions? Such was my state of mind a few weeks ago when I sidled into the vinyl booths at the 40-plus years old Lincoln Square Chinese restaurant Shanghai Inn. The décor alone was an homage to the American-Cantonese almond boneless chicken serving palaces of my youth. Chinese zodiac placemats, check. Paper lanterns, check. Fortune cookies, check. This was the kind of place...
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OK. Memes are spawning memes are spawning memes. It's like an experiment gone out of control. Mutations are rampant, and they're spreading like viruses. You remember The Omnivore's 100, right? Then there was The Traveling Omnivore's 20. Then the 10 Texas Sausages to Eat Before You Die. Now, the blog Appetite for China has birthed The 100 Chinese Foods to Eat Before You Die. The rules are similar to Omnivore's 100: Copy the list, paste it into your own blog, and bold all the foods you've had. There's also a 100 Japanese Foods to Try list, but I'm saving that post for tomorrow. My Chinese list, after the jump....
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Crispy lamb filets with chili cumin from Szechuan Gourmet. Photograph taken by Kathryn Yu Wall Street Journal food writer Raymond Sokolov poses this very question as he decries the dearth of both high-quality, high-end Chinese restaurants in America and contemporary non-Chinese chefs in American kitchens who rarely look to China for inspiration. Is he right? I have an opinion, but I'm sure many other serious eaters do as well....
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In honor of the Beijing Olympics, this week's Cook the Book selection is The Shun Lee Cookbook: Recipes from a Chinese Restaurant Dynasty, by chef, restaurant owner, and culinary visionary Michael Tong. Until the 1960s Chinese food in America consisted of bungled Cantonese dishes like egg foo young and barbecued spare ribs. But that all changed when Tong opened his first restaurant in New York City. He introduced spicy, regional recipes for crispy sea bass, dry sautéed string beans, and red cooked chicken. In the process, he elevated the status of Chinese food from takeout to fine dining. (Restaurants don't get much more elegant than Shun Lee West, with its arresting red-eyed dragon that winds around the ceiling.) Intimidated by...
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In preparation for the impending Olympics, the Beijing municipal government has released a 170-page book of standardized menu translations that eschews the strange literal translations of over 2,000 Chinese dishes and instead features names that make a little more sense. No longer will you order "pock-marked old lady's tofu" and "government-abused chicken" (that's mapo tofu and kung pao chicken, respectively). The less-than-palatable translation "husband and wife's lung slice" will now more helpfully be tagged as "beef and ox tripe in chili sauce." Translating the names of certain Chinese dishes into English can be tricky—unlike Western dishes, which are usually named after their ingredients and cooking methods, Chinese dishes are more often named for their appearance rather than composition. Props to...
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Photograph from The Fortune Cookie Chronicles When the buttery croissants and fragrant lavender gets old, those traveling in the French countryside can scout out this streetside truck called "Delices d’Asie," or "Delicacies of Asia." Deli enthusiast David Sax, the creator of Save the Deli, saw locals lining up for the exquisite dim sum and stir fries while he was shopping at a nearby farmer's market for more traditionally French foods (cheese and bread). "There were shrimp toasts and har gao that looked like French pastries, arranged in military precision behind the glass." French-Vietnamese food is one thing, but French-Chinese, eh? What an intriguing fusion....
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In a New York Times op-ed piece, Fred Ferretti decries both the lack of authentic Chinese food in America and the misinformation about Chinese food conveyed by various news organizations and cookbook authors. He ends up challenging the talented Chinese chefs cooking in America to "step up" in so many words and challenge our palates by cooking authentic Chinese food. How is Ferretti wrong? Let me count the ways....
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Serious Eats has lunch with
Fuchsia Dunlop and finds out why she focused on Hunanese cuisine for her latest cookbook: “Nothing’s been written on it," Ms. Dunlop says. "It is hearty and rustic, and I think that’s what people love to cook at home. That’s what I love to cook myself. Also, although many people have heard of Hunanese food, there is a misconception about what it actually is.”
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In honor of the upcoming Chinese New Year (Sunday, February 18 ushers in the
Year of the Pig), we talked to our food-loving friends around the country to find out where they'd send Serious Eaters for some
great Chinese food. Inside, picks from
Atlanta, Seattle, Miami, San Francisco, and more, along with the symbolism of some of the food eaten on the eve of the new lunar year. Year of the Pig—Serious Eaters, don't you love that?!?
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