May I Repeat Your Order, Please?

By Beth Green

Have you ever ordered something in a restaurant because you thought it sounded good? I know I have. I’ve also ordered dishes just because they sounded strange.

You can find funny-sounding treats in restaurants all over the world. Deep fried candy bars is a conundrum I discovered in Florida—I always think of KFC-style secret recipe breading over a Butterfinger bar and gag a little. Menus in Asia, however, offer meme-worthy meal titles that pique your interest—and, sometimes, put off your palate.

I found reading English-translated restaurant menus in China to be one of the big perks of going out to eat in a “fancy” restaurant (“fancy” often just meaning tablecloths without holes and English-translated menus; you can infer the kind of “not-fancy” restaurants I usually frequented). Chinese dishes are often given names that are meant to be beautiful or auspicious, rather than descriptive of the ingredients and origin of the foodstuff. 

This is why you get menu entries like “Eight Tastes Chicken” (eight is lucky in China), “Ants Climbing a Tree,” “Crossing Bridge Noodles,” and “Crispy Pigeon Hanging Fire.”

“Ants Climbing a Tree” or ma yi shang shu (蚂蚁上树) is a popular dish from Sichuan province in the Southwest. It consists of ground pork in a fiery red sauce over thin noodles. I’ve had it with rice noodles and bean noodles. It has its name from the tiny bits of meat that cling to the noodles like insects on a branch.

“Crossing Bridge Noodles” or guo qiao mixian (过桥米线) is another famous Chinese entree with a strange name, this time from Yunnan province. Yunnan is the southwest-most province in China, abutting Thailand and Myanmar. As in Thailand and other Southeast Asian cultures, rice vermicelli is popular in Yunnan. To make Crossing Bridge Noodles, you start with hot broth, add ingredients (raw ones first, to be cooked by the hot liquid), and finally “cross the bridge” taking vermicelli from another bowl into your soup bowl. When you use chopsticks to do this, the noodles form a little bridge. There’s debate over whether this is really why the dish has this name, but I think this explanation is the most fun.

However, not all dishes have the same name throughout the country, or even from restaurant to restaurant. When I first moved to China, I enjoyed going to a hole-in-the-wall family restaurant that served food from far northern China. The first time I ate there some friends did all the ordering for the group.  When the food arrived, my partner and I were wowed by the restaurant’s lean, tangy sweet and sour pork. Then, a week or so later Dan and I went back by ourselves, armed with a dictionary, and showed the waiter a series of entries: “sweet,” “sour,” and, of course, “pork.” The waiter was patient and eager to help us, but completely baffled as to what we wanted. What on earth was this barbaric sweet and sour pork? We were stumped as well, since we knew we’d eaten exactly that just a week prior. That day we made do with our “point and shoot” method of ordering (akin to throwing a dart at a map and deciding to go there) and were sure to follow up with our friends later.

It turned out, the right way to order sweet and sour pork in that restaurant was to ask the waiter for guo bao rou, or, literally translated, “Pot Enveloped Meat” with “meat” being generally understood as “pork.” Unfortunately, as I found out when we moved towns, only that style of sweet and sour pork can be called that; going to other restaurants and ordering it only garnered me more than the usual amount of quizzical looks from staff.

Igor, bring me some...tofu.

Later, when I lived in Guizhou province, I discovered a tofu dish that I insisted on ordering for the pleasure of saying the name: “Brain Tofu,” dou fu nao (豆腐脑 ). A specialty of one particular restaurant in the town I lived in, it is a soft-set curd, the consistency of a not-quite-finished flan, resting in watery brine. It’s the color of our “little gray cells” too. Not entirely appetizing to look at, it was however a great fire quencher when paired with Guizhou’s other, spicy, cuisine.

What strange menu items have you found while traveling? 

Delectable Delights and Daring Dishes

By Alli Sinclair

Now, no one can ever accuse me of not being adventurous. In my backpacking days it was usually me that came up with harebrained schemes that resulted in many fellow travellers shaking their head and saying, “No way, I’m not doing that! Are all Australians crazy like you?” This adventurous spirit didn’t just include scaling mountains and visiting places I really shouldn’t have, it also included food.

When someone asks me about a country, I tend to base my decision on the friendliness of the people and the quality of the food. Everything else is icing on the cake. Turkey is on top of my list for excellent food, but Latin America tops the list of bizarre local dishes. Here’s a rundown on some I have tried (or had others try and got their feedback because, really, everyone has a line that can’t be crossed):

Cuy, Peru

It took alcohol to get me to try this. Lots. Of. Alcohol. Cuy, or guinea pigs as we know them, were traditionally a food only eaten by indigenous people in the Andean highlands but since the 1960s, cuy is eaten by people all over Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Colombia, including foreigners.

Guinea pigs are popular because they produce quickly, take up little space, and don’t eat much, plus their meat is high in protein and low in fat and cholesterol. The taste itself is gamey (like rabbit) and people serve cuy fried, boiled, roasted, or in a casserole or soup.

Peruvians eat around 65 million cuy a year, and it’s eaten as a celebration food for many religious festivals. This animal is so entrenched in the culture, there is even a painting of The Last Supper in a cathedral in Cuzco that has cooked cuy on the table.

My experience with Cuy was during the Summer Solstice festival in Peru. I’d been celebrating with friends who told me I couldn’t live in their country and not at least have tried cuy. I had been sitting in the sun at a restaurant, enjoying the local brew, Cusqueña, so it didn’t take too much persuading—until the cuy arrived at our table. The poor thing had been skewered, fried in fat and it looked at me with bucky teeth and arms and legs outstretched like it had just had a fright. I’m sure it did.

Not wanting to let my friends down, I bowed to the pressure and had a miniscule amount. I must add that I can’t stand anything gamey, so after my taste test I had to drink half a litre of beer to get rid of the greasy taste from my mouth. That was the day I discovered sometimes it is totally okay to say “no thank you.”

Anticucho, Peru

Beef heart skewers…really, what can I say about that one? Anticucho is served at many street stalls throughout Peru and locals delight in watching foreigner’s eyes bulge and mouths drop when they describe what this delicacy is. No, I didn’t try it, I didn’t have the heart (boom boom).

Calzones Rotos (Ripped Knickers), Chile

This is a Chilean dessert that tastes divine but it made it on my list of strange food because of the name—ripped knickers. Calzones rotos are flat dried pastry twisted into interesting shapes and topped with icing sugar. Yum yum. Add a cup of strong Chilean coffee and you won’t hear me utter a word until I’ve finished both.

Chirimoya, Andes (although some will argue Central America)

Chirimoya trees thrive in the tropics at altitudes of 1,300 to 2,600 metres (4,300 to 8,500 feet). It is now cultivated throughout the world but in my mind, Chirimoya will always be a South American fruit to me.

The name, chirimuya originates from Quechua, a language of the indigenous people of South America. Meaning “cold seeds” because it grows at high altitude, chirimuya morphed into chirimoya, a combination of Quechua and Spanish. The fruit has an array of varieties, textures, and shapes and the flavours can be acidy sweet or mellow sweet. Depending on the fruit and the person, people say it tastes like papaya, strawberry, pear, pineapple, apple, or banana.

I had a wonderful cherimoya supplier near the apartment where I lived I in Cuzco, and he would delight in offering the different variations to try. Not far down from the fruit seller was a lady who made the best fruit juices I’ve ever tasted and yes, chirimoya was one of my favourites.

How about you? What delicacies have you tried whilst travelling that you wouldn’t dare taste at home? Do tell!

Ice in Heaven and Other Culinary Imponderables

Cha'i por rang

By Heidi Noroozy

When I first began learning Farsi, my “lessons” often focused on the names of food and their methods of preparation. This is because I spent a great deal of time in the kitchen, helping my Iranian mother-in-law prepare Persian meals. She’d teach me words in her language, while I’d supply the English equivalents. After a time, our conversations sounded like a form of pidgin, with comments like, “Heidi-joon, water joosh amad!” (“The water is boiling”—a signal for me to add the rinsed and soaked rice for making chelo.) Learning another language means discovering a new way of thinking, and the art of cooking can be an adventure in cross-cultural communication.

 Take tea, one of the major food groups in Persian cuisine. In English, we describe how we like to drink this beverage in terms of taste. Tea is either strong or weak. But to an Iranian, color is paramount. “Do you like your cha’i por rang (with color)?” a hostess may ask, “or kam rang (with little color)?”

 

And don’t get me started on rice. English speakers make do with only one word for this versatile grain. But such simplicity is far too vague for a Persian cook. In Farsi, rice is berenj when it’s raw, polo when it’s mixed with vegetables, meat, and sometimes nuts and dried fruit. Steamed with butter or oil, it’s called kateh. Cooked in a two-step method, where the rice is first parboiled like pasta then steamed and served with a splash of golden saffron on top, it’s known as chelo. And let’s not forget tadigh, the crispy rice from the bottom of the pot.

Santa Claus melons

Then there are the names of things. The most puzzling one for me is kharbozeh, a melon with sweet, pale flesh and a mottled green and yellow rind. It takes its name from two animals—khar (donkey) and boz (goat). Donkey-goat melon? Trying to figure this one out gets me tangled in a confusion of mental images. Shaped like a football, it looks nothing like a goat. And since it’s easy to cut, peel, and serve, I can’t say it’s “as stubborn as a mule”—like a coconut, for instance.

The English equivalent is no more enlightening: Santa Claus melon. At least that’s what the vendors at my local farmer’s market call it. This moniker gets me wondering what St. Nick really does in the off-season. Raise melons in his North Pole greenhouse?
 

One of my favorite regional dishes is a garlicky appetizer from Gilan Province on the southern shore of the Caspian Sea. To prepare it, you sauté some onions and lots and lots of garlic with tomatoes and grilled eggplant. Then you add some eggs and whisk it all together on the stove until you have a pan of vegetable-packed (and very garlicky) scrambled eggs. It’s called mirza ghasemi, a name that refers to a person called Prince Ghasem. “Mirza” is an aristocratic title that dates back to the 19th-century Qajar dynasty. I haven’t a clue who Ghasem was, or even if he was a prince, since the title is also used to show respect for a prominent statesman or scholar, just as Hajji (someone who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca) can refer to any older man, whether or not he actually went on the Hajj. Perhaps Ghasem was a chef of such admirable skill his name became associated with Gilan’s most beloved dish. Or maybe he was a distinguished academic with a special fondness for eggplant, tomatoes, and garlic.

I can’t end a post on unusual culinary names without mentioning dessert. In this category, we have cookies called zabon (tongue) and gush-e fil (elephant’s ears), both flaky pastries made with lots of butter and a sugary glaze. Or bahmieh, a fried pastry, drenched in date syrup, which is named after a vegetable (okra).

Ice in Heaven
Credit: Sholeh (Flikr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Another delightful Persian confection is yakh dar behesht, or Ice in Heaven, a creamy pudding made of wheat or rice starch, milk, and sugar, flavored with cardamom and rose water. Usually it’s served in a soft, custardy form, which makes me wonder how it got such a frigid name. But some recipes call for a lot of starch, giving the dessert a chewy texture, much like Turkish Delight, so that it’s firm enough to be cut into individual, sugar-dusted “ice” cubes.

I may spend a lot of time pondering the origins of these culinary names, but there’s no mystery about how the dishes taste. Garlicky, refreshing, or sweet, they are all delicious enough to be served in heaven.

Off the Beaten Track: Grandmas Across the Ocean

Novel Adventurers is pleased to welcome our guest this week, Mary Beth Horiai.  Mary Beth has 32 years of experience living in and around Japan and it's culture. She a has a BA in Political Science with a Minor in Environmental Studies and a MA in International Relations. The research for her graduate thesis was on the challenges and responses to aging societies and declining populations with Japan as her case study. She is presently working on a personal manuscript about adjusting to life in an aging world. How will you grow old?  Mary Beth has established a not for profit organization that raises funds to assist Yamada families whose lives were impacted by the March 11th tsunami.  Visit Renew Yamada or Mary Beth's personal blog, Driver of Change for more information. 

My husband, Toshiaki, and I have been married nearly 27 years. Today, it's hard to believe that both sets of parents were not so thrilled about this union at the beginning.

Our upbringings were so very different. His mom and her nine sisters were rice farmers in Northern Japan, and his dad was a lumberman. Their hometown of Yamada is one the many rural fishing villages located 250 miles north of Tokyo on the very coastline recently destroyed by the March 11, 2011 tsunami. Toshiaki’s diet growing up consisted of what was caught by his brothers from the nearby sea and what was grown on their land.

I had a middle-class, American upbringing. My father was an executive in Los Angeles and my mother was a Leave it to Beaver housewife. My mother was always curious about my in-laws. Once while my daughter was admiring my mom’s high-heeled shoes, my mother innocently asked Miki whether her grandmother in Japan, her obaachan, wore high heels. Miki  diplomatically replied, "Grandma, this is America. Japan is Japan."

Our whole married life, I have wanted my family, especially my mom, to meet Toshiaki's family, or at least his mom. We have tried for many years to get Obaachan to agree to make the journey to the States, to no avail. I still hold out hope for my mother to visit Yamada someday, but the tsunami has changed the landscape in so many ways. While the homes of Toshiaki's parents and his three brothers are all on high ground and were not damaged, the majority of Yamada was washed away and still remains flattened and unchanged. Minus of course, scattered mountainous piles of random household trash and tall weeds and sunflowers growing where homes and small businesses once stood.

Toshiaki and Obaachan

On a visit to Yamada last summer, Ojiichan (Grandpa) met us at the door of their home with his usual big smile. Toshiaki brought our bags inside, while I started to walk next door to his brother’s house. From experience, I knew that my sister-in-law, Kazuko, had probably prepared some dishes to contribute to that night’s dinner, and I could help carry them over. On my way, I greeted Obaachan, who was watering her unusually dry batch of daikon, one bucket at a time. Unlike my homecomings in the states, there was no hugging or small talk. Instead, I quickly became her relay-woman, shuttling buckets of water to her fields of thirsty vegetables, as she grumbled on about not having enough rain this year. I tried to be more helpful and gingerly attempted to join her in the field, but she warned that my “city-slicker” shoes would get muddy (my words, not hers). I shamefully agreed and stuck to water patrol.

Later in the evening, another sister-in-law, Miwako, brought over additional dishes to add to the feast. The women knew that their husbands (my brothers in-laws), would all gather tonight to catch up with Toshiaki and their parents. Over the years, I have found my groove among the Horiai women. Somehow it was understood that I was excused from any cooking duties (phew), and I have gratefully settled into the role of setting the table with an assortment of tiny dishes then handling the washing and clearing afterwards.

After somewhat of a peaceful night’s rest (with only two mini-quakes to wake us), we woke to sounds of roosters squawking and people chattering. Obaachan and her 90-year-old sister, Setsuko, were downstairs in the kitchen. Setsuko usually made her rounds in the afternoon, but it was too miserably hot to walk around that August day. She knew we were visiting, and 6:30 am seemed as good a time as any to drop by to welcome us.

While Toshiaki and I joined them for a breakfast of fish, pickled vegetables, miso soup, and rice, it occurred to me what time it was in the States. I quickly contacted my mom via e-mail to set up a time to Skype then tried to explain the technology to my in-laws. They were intrigued and agreed to journey next door to Kazuko's Wi-Fi’d house.

As my mom's bright face and excited voice entered the room, she could see two sun-drenched farmer women shuffle into seats facing the screen. My sister, Meighan, stood beside my mom and Toshiaki, his brother, Satoshi and Kazuko, popped in behind Obaachan and Setsuko. At first, they all just smiled at each other, both sides commenting in their own language on how beautiful and young-looking their counterparts were. After I made all the introductions, we ventured into the three topics older people all over the globe hold dear: health, weather, and grandchildren. After we established all of their ages and when they recently stopped riding bicycles (late 70s for Obaachan and Mom, and 86 for super-Aunt Setsuko), we discussed weather conditions on both sides of the Pacific. There was a pause, where we all took in the incredibleness of the moment.

Then I asked Toshiaki's mom if she had anything she wanted to ask my Mom. After a moment, she leaned toward the screen and said, “Do you get to see our grandchildren, Emi and Miki, and are they well?” My mother gave a glowing “proud grandmother” report, and I knew that nothing could top that connection. Cyberspace has minimized the distance between our two worlds, but maybe they weren't so different after all. Everyone smiled and waved goodbye, and to me, it seemed both sides were changed. I know I was.