Welcome back to Five Things I Ate! This week, it’s all about foods that are hard to Google on the English speaking internet. If you’re new, check out past posts here, and make sure to follow my new Instagram @fivethingsiate.
面茶 (miàn chá) at my mama’s kitchen
Back alleys in Beijing, my mom’s kitchen
Let’s start this newsletter with breakfast, the first (and some may say, best) meal of the day. More specifically, we’ll sit down to a bowl of 面茶 (miàn chá), or flour tea, an old Beijing breakfast treat. The “chá” is a little misleading: There’s no tea in this bowl, and the texture is too thick to be drinkable. 面茶 is more like a toasty, thick grain pudding, flavored with plenty of fat, black sesame seeds, and sugar. The way my mom makes it is by stir-frying some plain white flour in a saucepan, adding a sprinkle of chopped walnuts and black sesame seeds, crumbling in a big chunk of brown sugar, a spoonful of coconut oil, and then slowly stirring in some hot water until it’s nice and creamy. The internet says that the 面茶 you can still buy in hutongs are made with millet, topped with sesame paste and sweet osmanthus syrup. I say that a recipe that has immigrated to a new country and evolved for more than 50 years is about as “authentic” as any food can be.
打卤面 (dǎ lǔ miàn) at my mama’s kitchen
My mom’s kitchen
打卤面 (dǎ lǔ miàn), roughly translated as “beaten gravy noodles,” is one of my very favorite home-cooked comfort foods. A soothing bowl of soft noodles covered in a thick slurry of pork broth, it’s flavored with shitake mushrooms, wood ears, dried lily flowers and streaks of scrambled eggs, and topped with a few slices of pork belly. At least, that’s how my mama makes it; 打卤面 is very difficult to Google on the English-speaking internet, which is how you know it’s extra good. “All the recipes on the internet for 打卤面 are wrong,” said my mom, hovering behind the kitchen table. “I called your grandma to ask, and she said that mine is right.” Who am I to dispute with a 99-year-old woman who’s lived in Beijing for seven decades? Here’s the closest approximation I could find on the internet, but remember: All the recipes on the internet are wrong, so Google translate at your own peril.
“Clay pot” chicken with shiitake mushrooms and dried lilies over rice at my apartment
My kitchen, but why not yours, too?
High off the confidence that a big bowl of 打卤面 gave me, I went straight to a grocery store in Chinatown as soon as I got back to the city in an attempt to conjure up some Chinese home cooking in my Brooklyn apartment. Armed with a winter’s worth of dried shiitake mushrooms, wood ears, and lily flower buds, I tackled this recipe for chicken and mushroom clay pot rice from The Woks of Life (which is a fantastic food blog!). It turned out just as I’d craved, even though I didn’t have a clay pot. A heavy bottom pot, or if you’re fancy, a Le Creuset, works just fine. Some notes: I used two chicken thighs, skin on and bone-in, instead of drumettes and wings, and sushi rice instead of jasmine rice, which made it much denser and almost like sticky rice (my favorite!). I didn’t add any oil to the rice, I quadrupled the amount of fresh ginger, and I didn’t bother with dark soy sauce. It’s an easy, economical, and extremely comforting meal, and it gave me so much joy to come home after a long day to find the leftovers in my fridge. Oh, and the bottom forms an amazing crispy rice crust.
Braised winter bamboo shoots at my mama’s kitchen
My mom’s kitchen, but you should give it a try
On a miraculous planet, there exists a plant that’s both strong enough to build furniture with and delicious in stir fries. It’s not science fiction: that planet is Earth, and that plant is bamboo. In late winter, oversized bamboo shoots (冬笋, dōngsǔn or “winter bamboo”) emerge from the earth, and they might just be my favorite vegetable to eat. The flavor is bright, sweet, and clean; all you need is to braise them with a little sugar and soy sauce. I have not yet found a good source for fresh shoots in New York; if you have a good shop, drop me a note.
Steamed lotus wrap at Fay Da Bakery
321 6th Ave, New York, NY 10014 (And other locations)
If I was a magical anthropomorphic forest creature who lived in a tree, had a giant leaf for an umbrella, and collected small berries for a living, I would definitely tuck one of these lotus leaf parcels into my tiny backpack before I went out for the day, knowing it would sustain me for the whimsical adventures to come. Oh? Just me? Well, you could probably still benefit from this magical item, which makes a very filling meal or snack for under five dollars. A generous amount of sticky rice is packed into a squarish shape, with a thick, sticky paste of savory mushrooms and fatty pork in the center. There’s a chunk of Chinese sausage, which is undeniably the G.O.A.T. sausage (I will fight you), and one of my favorite foods as a kid. The whole combo is bursting with umami flavor, and is sticky and satisfying. It’s dangerous to go alone! Here, take this lotus leaf wrap.
Update: Friends! This is very important. My brand new INSTAPOT arrived on Thursday! Please send me all your best recipes, tips, and tricks (you can reply directly this email). Also, in insta-news: Five Things I Ate now has an Instagram! Follow me @fivethingsiate, and please send it to a friend.
Till next time,
Soph