Guess what I found when I was in New York’s Chinatown last week. This beautiful looking hulu! I’ve not seen them before in New York nor anywhere in the U.S. Hulu (葫蘆) is a bottle shaped gourd often seen in Chinese brush paintings. Sages or monks carrying hulu flask are common themes in Chinese art. But these sinuous shaped gourds are also delicious as vegetables.
Photography by Ron Boszko
When was the last time you ordered a salad or cold dish in a Chinese restaurant? In fact I bet you never have. You probably don’t even associate cold dishes with Chinese food. I can hardly blame you. The majority of Chinese restaurants in America do not even serve cold dishes although they are a staple of a Chinese meal in Asia. Learn how to make this cool cucumber salad.
Located virtually on the equator, Singapore offers a wide variety of fresh fruits year round. Although many tropical fruits are harvested year round, a small number of them are seasonal. When I lived in Singapore I used to follow these seasonal fruits like people in temperate climates follow changing season. Among the seasonal fruits, mango is the one I always eagerly anticipated. Its season starts at the end of the dry months, which is around July. Local mangoes start appearing in the market around August and continue to be available through October.
We take for granted that stir-frying is just combining a bunch of ingredients, frying them in a wok, and seasoning them appropriately; that is partially accurate. What is rarely understood is that there are variations in stir-frying technique. Broadly classified the variations are 1) plain stir-fry (清炒 or QingChao), 2) moist stir-fry (滑炒 or HuaChao) and 3) dry wok stir-fry (煸炒 or BianChao). In this third part of Stir-fry Fortnight series post let me show you how simple it is to make plain vegetable stir-fry.
Photography by Ron Boszko
When I was growing up I hated the smell and taste of chives, specifically Chinese chives. I remembered encountering Chinese chives in stir-fries with ground pork or shrimp, or sprinkled on top of steamed rice cake. I would always pick the chives off carefully before eating. I do not recall when it was that my palate changed and I began to enjoy Chinese chives. Now I don’t just enjoy them; I adore them.
We braved the subzero temperatures last Wednesday night to view the lunar eclipse. It was too cold to spend much time outside, but we managed to witness the beautiful red moon at its peak. This beautiful sight made me ponder the moon’s place in Chinese traditions and lore. The moon’s round shape is very appealing [...]
Valentine’s Day is not a Chinese tradition, but young Chinese are taking in droves to emulate Western culture by celebrating love every year on the 14th of February. Yet the divorce rate in China is also rising precariously. Is there a correlation here? I will let the sociologist research this problem to their hearts content. I am however more interested in what are the options for a Chinese cook to celebrate this bourgeois decadent Western festival. Read what I’d serve for this Valentine’s Day.
I was in Chinatown last weekend shopping for Chinese provisions to bring back to Harlem. To my delight I noticed that dong sun (冬筍), or winter bamboo shoots, are in season. Winter bamboo shoots are one of the prized vegetables, along with dong gu mushrooms (冬菇 or winter mushroom) eagerly awaited in markets [...]
