A Buddhist Monk’s Meal – Jieyin Hall On Mount Emei

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Bhuddist, China, Chinese, Emeishan, Food, low-calorie, Sichuan, Soup, Temple Food, Vegetables

Perhaps because of the Holiday season and all its indulgences and elaborate meals, I really find myself wanting to post about a wonderful meal I enjoyed on Mount Emei, one of the sacred Buddhist mountains in China.

While in Sichuan, we decided to hike up Mt. Emei, sleep at the top, and witness the sunrise on the Golden Summit, a spectacle that the Chinese flock to and that is really amazing to behold. Within about 2 minutes, you see the sun appear and fully rise above the horizon, bathing a Golden Pagoda on the summit in sparkling light. Lots of ooohs and aaahs and pictures!

But first things first – we hiked up Mt. Emei. This entailed waking up before the sun had risen, taking a bus to the base of the mountain, and climbing 23.5 kilometers (14.6 miles) of stairs, crossing a 3 kilometer (1.9 mile) height difference and a 23 degree Celsius (35 degree Fahrenheit) temperature difference. It took us 11 hours, sweat, bamboo poles as walking sticks (best 1 yuan we ever, ever spent!), desperate jokes and jello legs, but we made it. While some areas are accessible by cable car and teem with visitors, the vast majority of those 11 hours we spent alone, with the exception of 3 or so hours in the company of a total of maybe 15 Chinese people of all ages that were just as desperate as us. We arrived just as the sun was setting at Jieyin Hall, the last temple before the summit.

At the temple, we were shown to a room with beds with piles and piles of blankets and heating pads, as well as a wash bowl to take in the morning to wash. Then, we had a temple food – simple, vegetarian, wholesome, and beyond delicious.

There was rice, steamed winter melon (the cucumber-esque looking dish), a simple leafy green soup, stir-fried string beans (I ate 3 plates. What? They were the best string beans I have ever tasted, and I had just climbed 11 hours worth of stairs!) and boiled bamboo sprouts with mushrooms. It was a feast, we could have as much as we wanted, and I can’t begin to explain how wonderful this simple, Bhuddist meal was. No bells and whistles, no fancy ingredients – just beautiful produce prepared in the simplest ways to make it shine. Sometimes I wish more meals were like this.

Will you miss Holiday foods, or are you ready for a break from fancy meals? Have you had similar experiences with spiritually shaped dishes?

Balsamic Vinegar Roasted Red Beets (& Carrots)

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Beets, Carrots, CSA, Food, Local, low-calorie, Recipe, Vegetables

One of the foods I definitely avoided when growing up in Germany were red beets. Messy and just not desirable to me. In Germany, we eat these mostly raw as they are, raw in salads, or as a cooked compote-type dish. Neither held much appeal to me, and I pretty much managed to forget about their existence once I moved out, with the sole exception of the traditional Weihnachtssalat.

My CSA has been giving me bucket loads of beets, however, so I had to figure out something to do with them:

Ingredients:
– red beets
– carrots
– balsamic vinegar
– sweetener

Steps:
1. Peel and cube beets & carrots into 1/2 inch cubes. If available, wear gloves (I bring them home from the lab), unlike me during my brilliant first effort (although it’s a nice match with my nail polish, no?):

2. Keep the two vegetables separate, and toss each with 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar mixed with 1/2 packet of sweetener.

3. Still separate, roast in a glass baking dish at 375F for 1 hour.

4. Mix the two and serve as a wonderfully sweet, earthy and vibrant side dish!

On a side note: I discovered Chioggia beets, a wonderful Italian variety that is a tad milder and sweeter than your average red beet, and looks psychedelic pretty to boot!

These also taste great prepared this way, and don’t even need the addition of carrots:

What are some childhood foods you abhorred and have now rediscovered in different ways?

What other good beet recipes should I try?

Chinese Soups – A Tiny Sampling Of A Vast Menu

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Beijing, Breakfast, China, Chinese, Eggs, Meat, Sichuan, Soup, Vegetables

Soups, or tang, play a huge role in the Chinese menu – they are served at breakfast and every other meal. Typically, there is a whole soup section on even a small street eatery’s menu, and contrary to the concept of a soup as a starter, it is treated as a main dish and comes in a huge bowl that will serve 2 to 3 people, if not more.

Ingredients and the level of spiciness vary widely between each soup, although there appear to be some favorites. I’ll present a brief sampling that contains most of the soups I had while in China:

1) A dish you will find almost anywhere (including Chinese textbooks!) and that is a traditional, homey meal all across China, is xi hong shi ji dan, or tomato & egg soup. Some are essentially egg drop soup with cubes of tomatoes, others have whole omelets in broth, and yet others are almost more of a tomato bisque with some egg swirled in.

Here’s a version I had in Beijing, which started my love affair with this dish:

In Chengdu, I got the slightly bizarre omelett-in-soup variety:

In Leshan in Sichuan province, I got a much more tomato-soup like version:

2) In Chengdu, I had a lovely soup consisting of broth with baby bok choy leaves – sounds plain, but really wasn’t! Plus, I did the Chinese thing and added some dark rice vinegar 🙂

3) Also in Chengdu, we had a lovely pork and mushroom soup that was earthy and flavorful:

4) In Beijing, in a tiny restaurant near Beihai Park, we got what I think is pretty much hot and sour soup with pork, as one knows it from Chinese restaurants around here:

5) In Emeishan, we had another batch of kelp soup, or hai dai tang, similar to a breakfast dish we had in Wenchuan. This was slippery to eat with chopsticks, and only for those that like chewy seaweed, but I loved it:

6) And finally, from Tangshan, a dish called yun nan guo qiao mi xian, or “noodles that cross the bridge”. This is a specialty containing extremely long rice flour noodles with meat of seafood balls (my version had shrimp balls) as well as some vegetables in a mild, clear broth that can be spiced up with pepper-oil. This is super filling, super cheap, and delicious dish!

So, as a bottom line, tang, or soup, is always a great, warming, filling option you’ll find anywhere, it’s low in calories, healthy, and flavorful, and you can hardly go wrong (Well, except maybe that omelet-soup…). Since you most likely will face many a menu that has no English whatsoever (or random English, with dishes translated as “not food”!), finding the character for tang can be an easy way to point and always get something good, with a surprise element.

What are some of your favorite soups? Are soups strictly a winter food for you? I didn’t expect I’d love hot soups in the heat of China, but it was actually really refreshing and helped me adjust.

Apple Cider Vinegar Braised Leeks And Green Onions

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Apple Cider Vinegar, CSA, Food, Green Onions, Leeks, Local, low-calorie, Vegetables

When my CSA share contained leeks and green onions, I knew I wanted to braise them. And what better for a cold weather side dish than apple cider vinegar? Intensely flavorful, warming, and almost too low in calories to count at all, this one of my new Winter favorites!

Recipe adapted from Greene on Greens by Bert Greene

Ingredients:
– 1 large leek
– 3 large green onions
– 2 cloves garlic
– 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
– 1 packet sweetener
– 1 pinch salt
– ground black pepper to taste

Steps:
1. Spray a pan, then finely dice or crush garlic and brown slightly in pan.

2. Slice leek and green onions and add to pan. Cook over medium heat for about 3 minutes.

3. Add apple cider vinegar, sweetener and salt, stir well, cover and cook for about 15 minutes, until leeks and onions become tender.

4. Add pepper to taste and adjust sweetness if desired. Cook a few more minutes until liquid is reduced. (This version yields a very flavorful dish, but if you prefer it less vinegar-y, reduce apple cider vinegar and add water or apple cider to obtain 1/2 cup liquid total).

5. Enjoy!

Do you ever braise? I feel like braising gets forgotten way too often!

Airport Food in China

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Airport, China, Chinese, Food, Fruit, Vegetables

Since we just spent a whole day traveling from Ohio to Germany to see my family over the holidays, airport food and airplane meals are on my mind. We took some inner-Chinese flights between Beijing and Chengdu when we were in China, and so we spent some time at airports there. Naturally, we ate.

Now, don’t get me wrong, airplane fare is just as mushy, bland and lukewarm as on American flights, but airport selections were stellar in terms of healthy options. There were KFC and the like, but there were both Chinese fast food and regular restaurants that offered non-fried vegetable dishes and the like.

Observe, for example, my lunch at Beijing airport in the inner-Chinese terminal at a fast food chain called Flavor Tang, which was adjacent to KFC:

That’s right, bok choy in a light broth and a melon cup.

I mean, can you *imagine* fast food like this at an American (or German, for that matter) airport? I was in awe. It was really tasty, too.

Then on our last day, we grabbed lunch at Beijing airport in the international terminal before flying home, and I went to a restaurant called “Acting Halal”, which, as you can guess, offers halal choices (again, how impressive is that?). Here’s what I got:

A mix of mushrooms, cucumbers and peppers stir-fried in a mildly spicy, light brown sauce. Again, very tasty, and wonderfully low calorie and balanced.

Bottom line? European and American airports sure could learn something from the options offered at Chinese airports. Hands down win for China there.

Curried Vegetarian Cauliflower Stir Fry

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Cauliflower, CSA, Curry, Food, Indian, Local, Vegetables

The last few weeks that my CSA was going always included a head of cauliflower, so I tried my hand at some variations of what I normally would do with this vegetable.

Curried cauliflower is wonderfully spicy, warming and substantial and can be a main or a side dish, depending on your mood.

Ingredients:
– 1 head cauliflower
– 4 to 6 oz soy crumbles
– 1 tbsp ginger
– 2 garlic cloves
– 1 tbsp Madras Curry powder
– hot pepper to taste

Steps:
1. Remove central stem of cauliflower head, careful not to break up the florets

2. Steam covered with a wet paper towel for 5 minutes in the microwave
3. Meanwhile dice garlic, pepper and ginger and toast them in a pan over medium high heat with a pinch of curry powder
4. Add soy crumbles

5. Add cauliflower florets and a shot of water, stir fry for 10 to 15 more minutes, stirring frequently until cauliflower is tender

6. Enjoy!

Curried anything is a comfort food for me in the colder seasons of the year, and this works great with cauliflower. Feels hearty, is very healthy and low calorie. And vegetarian to boot! If you’d prefer, simply swap in lean ground meat of your choice.

What do you like to do with cauliflower? Is it a necessary evil or the star of your meal? Do you like to experiment with different cuisines?

The Noodle Loft In Beijing

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China, Chinese, Food, Fruit, Meat, Noodle Loft, Noodles, Restaurant, Review, Soup, Sweets, Vegetables

On our final night in Beijing, we went to the Noodle Loft, a wonderful, stylish and definitely pricy restaurant focused entirely on many types of noodle, especially Shaanxi-Province-style noodles. Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations show visited the restaurant, which is how we’d found out about it.

The interior is very sleek and modern, with a nice color palette supported by chrome and elegantly clad waiters:

The menu was huge, and we decided to start with a napa cabbage soup before the noodle courses:

The broth was light and vinegary, perfect as a starter.

Now to tackle the many noodle options! Noodle Loft offers knife-cut noodles that are thick and chewy in texture, sort of like udon, “cat’s ears” noodles which are small, shaped like cat ears and reminiscent of gnocchi in texture, hand-pulled noodles, and “noodles made with one single chopstick,” which are extremely long.

My friend went with a buckwheat version of the cat’s ears noodles (a Shaanxi specialty) stir fried with vegetables and sauce. These had  lovely bite to them and were quite different from any other Chinese noodle dish I’ve seen.

My wife opted for the hand-pulled noodles with a spicy beef dipping sauce. These noodles tasted essentially like udon, but weren’t eaten in a soup:

Personally, I ordered vegetable noodles made with a single chopstick, which were green from the vegetables and so long, I felt like I gave half my plate away when I let the others at the table taste one noodle! I chose a typical Shaanxi-style dipping sauce consisting of a lot of vinegar with some dried spices. These noodles were wonderful, filling and just luxurious to bite into!

Now for dessert, Noodle Loft offers a variety of Western-style cakes (cheesecake, chocolate torte, etc), which my friend and wife went for. I on the other hand was determined to have a Chinese dessert on our last night in China, which left many obscure herbal jelly options (one had the character for turtle in the name…), as well as cooked birdsnests (outrageously expensive delicacy). I had initially settled for double-boiled hashima served in a papaya cup, because I love papaya:

The menu depicted it like this:

I figured hashima might be some fruit mash, or glutinous rice meal, but became slightly nervous. My friend’s smart phone and Google rescued me, as we quickly found out that hashima are frog fallopian tubes. Yes. Frog fallopian tubes. They are supposed to cure anything from a headache to tuberculosis in Chinese medicine, and they are a popular dessert.

Let’s just say I quickly regrouped and went with steamed Chinese yam, or hui shan yao, the air root of a climbing vine, with a sea-buckthorn, or sha ji, berry sauce.

I can’t even begin to describe how delicious this warm dessert was! The yam was buttery soft and sweet, melting in your mouth, and its starchiness was wonderfully contrasted bu the almost gelee-like consistency of the sweet but refreshing buckthorn sauce. I was already very full, but couldn’t stand the thought of leaving a single bite behind. I would do anything to get my hands on the ingredients and a recipe!

Bottom line? While somewhat difficult to find, Noodle Loft is definitely worth the trip. The noodles are amazing, and a special treat you won’t find many places outside Shaanxi province, and all other dishes we tasted were simply wonderful as well. On the downside it is certainly pricey, and we had some misunderstandings with the wait staff despite my Chinese-speaking friend doing the ordering. Meat in the sauces/noodle dishes is very sparsely used, so don’t expect Italian meatball sized amounts! I would say it’s a great treat for a special night – 4/5 from me.

Mushroom And Cabbage Stir Fry

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Cabbage, Chinese, CSA, Food, Local, Mushrooms, Recipe, Vegetables

One day late because yesterday was dedicated to cookie devouring!

I’d mentioned that lovely baby bok choy and mushrooms stir fry I had in Beijing last week, and here is the promised recipe attempting to re-create it.

Now, baby bok choy isn’t available easily everywhere, and my CSA share contained green cabbage as well as some cooking greens, so I used those instead. The result wasn’t quite as buttery in texture, but still plenty tasty.

Ingredients:
– 1 small head cabbage
– 1 bunch cooking greens
– 10 oz sliced mushrooms
– 4 cloves garlic
– 2 tbsp ginger root
– 1/2 onion
– 1 hot pepper
– 1/3 cup low-sodium soy sauce
– 1/3 cup dark rice vinegar or balsamic vinegar

Steps:
1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil.
2. Chop cabbage and cooking greens into bite size strips and boil for 10 minutes

3. Finely dice garlic, pepper, ginger root and onion

4. Brown in a large pan

5. Add mushrooms, soy sauce and vinegar and simmer for 10 minutes.

6. When mushrooms are tender, add drained cabbage/greens and toss in the sauce mixture to re-heat.
7. Enjoy as a side, or pack lunches for the week that you can easily microwave! Makes about five 2 cup servings.

Are you a cabbage lover, or is it not for you? I’ll take bok choy over green cabbage any day, but I suppose my German nature will take any cabbage more than gladly. What’s your favorite way to highlight/disguise cabbage in a dish?

A Traditional Beijing-Style Dumpling Restaurant

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Beijing, China, Chinese, Dumplings, Food, Meat, Vegetables

While we were in Beijing, my friend showed us a traditional Beijing dumpling restaurant right around the corner from her work. Of course we went along happily!
The restaurant consisted of several completely separate rooms along a corridor, each of which was slightly different, but all felt kind of cozy with tons of plants, traditional clay figurines and muted lighting (sorry for the low quality pictures!). Many of the waitresses had traditional, complex braided hairdos that added to the flair of things.

We ordered a variety of dishes to share, starting with asparagus and chicken in a brown sauce that opened my eyes to the world of green asparagus. You see, in Germany we usually eat the white kind, and I had been suspicious of the green version. Now I’m a dedicated fan!

We also had a dish of baby bok choy and mushrooms that I loved so much, I tried to recreate it at home for a lunch staple, and I’ll post the recipe soon! Mildly savory and buttery soft bok choy with earthy mushrooms and ginger. Delicious!

And of course the dumplings. We each chose a filling, of which there was an entire separate menu with about 15 pages. Any meat, seafood, vegetable, sauce and combination thereof were available!
Beijing-style dumplings are boiled, not steamed or fried, and come with died wrappers (white, orange, green and purple). Unfortunately the colors don’t correspond to the fillings, and all three orders came in a colorful mixture, so that it was a take-a-bite-and-see experience. I think we each got at least one of each, and I liked them all very much. My wife had beef ones that were great, mine were a mixture of vegetables and mushrooms, and my friend had another meat-vegetable mix.

Going to a dumpling restaurant is a great, interactive meal if you have a small group of people, and all the dishes were absolutely delicious. Two thumbs up! On top, in pretty much any Chinese restaurant you’ll get a huge selection of vegetables that easily make your dinner much healthier than what you’d ever get overseas as Chinese cooking!

Do you like dumplings? What variety is your favorite kind? Have you been successful at keeping them from falling apart when making them yourself, unlike me?

Kohlrabi Curry

Tags

CSA, Curry, Food, Indian, Kohlrabi, Local, Recipe, Vegetables

Kohlrabi, a cabbage relative, is something I know well from growing up in Germany. The name translates as cabbage-turnip, and is one of those traditional vegetables many children try to avoid. You can actually eat them raw (after peeling), like an apple, or chop them into salads, but that never appealed to me.

When my CSA share contained kohlrabi, I swallowed and re-visited what I know about this vegetable foe of my childhood. It turns out that kohlrabi is one of the most popular vegetables in certain regions of India, and the local cuisine has cooked up many a tasty way to prepare it. So I ventured ahead and made a vegetarian kohlrabi curry inspired by this recipe with what I had at hand – I don’t claim this to be a traditional Indian recipe!

Ingredients:
– 3 kohlrabi with greens
– two roma tomatoes
– yellow curry powder
– 1/2 small onion
– 1 tsp minced ginger root
– 1/2 hot pepper
– 2 garlic cloves

Steps:
1. Cut the greens off the kohlrabi and reserve for later. Peel the bulb with a knife to reveal a white center.

2. Chop the kohlrabi bulb into 1/2 inch cubes and steam covered with a wet paper towel for 5 minutes in the microwave
3. Spray a pan, dice pepper, garlic, onion and ginger and brown in the pan.
4. Toast some yellow curry powder in the same pan

5. Add cubed kohlrabi to the pan
6. Finely dice the tomatoes and chop the kohlrabi greens, add to the pan
7. Simmer for about 10 to 20 minutes until chunks are tender, covered, over medium-high heat, stirring frequently.

Enjoy! Made from all fresh ingredients, very healthy, low calorie, and warming, flavorful and filling. Great dish!

Have you rediscovered staple ingredients in other cuisines and loved them? Or is there something you think nobody has managed to improve on, despite numerous attempts?