Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Human Rights Law Blogs -> Never In Our Names

Human Rights Law

: Never In Our Names

Cosinas Americanas: Chinese Peasant Cuisine

By blueness

In this edition of Our Alexa's "Cosinas Americanas," your humble sub, in honor of Chinese New Year, celebrated January 26 as "The Year of the Ox," presents three recipes from Chinese peasant cuisine.

Please feel free to add your own favored, or feared, Chinese dishes in the comments, below the fold.  
Anyone searching for a reason for the Chinese Revolution can start with a history of Chinese cuisine. There you'll learn that during the Qing Dynasty, a "light" meal consisted of over 40 courses, while dinner ran well over 100. This during a period when most of the citizenry subsisted on rice and a little soya. Rulers were fond of dishes such as Jade Chicken, which required cooks to patiently peel mountains of grapes, or Bird's Nest Soup, which required employment of a stable of young girls "with perfect vision," tasked with but one job: removing feathers and fluff from the nests of sea swallows.

This Snoot Food version of Birds' Nest Soup of course barely resembles the dish in its origin, which was the desperate, inventive work of peasants so starving they figured out a way to eat not only birds, but also their nests. The Snoot Food varietal includes smoked ham and a whole chicken, delicacies that most Asian peasants, back in the day, more often dreamed about than ate.

The real deal is still out there, recently consumed by gonzo chef Anthony Bourdain in Vietnam, and described by him thusly:

"What the hell is in bird's nest soup? Bird's nest, for one. After cooking, it has the flavor, consistency, and appearance of over-cooked angel-hair pasta or cellophane noodles, slightly translucent and, overall, pretty inoffensive. The chunks are the problem. Bird's nest soup is made by hacking up a whole rock dove (pigeon), putting the meat, bones and all, into a drained coconut, and then cooking it with the soaked nest, an assortment of Chinese medicinal herbs, dates, scallions, ginger, and the swallow's eggs. The coconut milk is poured back in and the whole thing is steamed for four hours . . . .

"I struggle with chopsticks to pick my way though all the hard-cooked eggs, slurp strands of nest dutifully, if unenthusiastically, managing to gnaw the meat off a few stringy bits of thigh and breast. But when the pigeon's head, beak, eyes, and all, comes popping up between the eggs and dates and bones and the rubbery sheets of coconut meat peeling off the shell, I have had enough."

Given a sufficient number of years of Republican rule, we in the United States will eventually be reduced to such dishes as Bird's Nest Soup. When we get there, I'll walk you through the dish, step by step. In the meantime, here are three recipes from the Chinese peasantry more attuned to present Western tastes.

Our first dish bears the truly appetizing name "Ants Creeping On The Trees." It derives its name from the fanciful observation that the tiny bits of pork resemble ants, perched upon the "branches" of vermicelli noodles.

2 ounces vermicelli
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
.5 pound minced ground pork
2 tablespoons dark soy sauce
1 teaspoon chili paste with garlic
.5 cup homemade chicken stock

If you're using Asian vermicelli (aka mung bean or "cellophane" noodles), soak in hot water for 20 minutes, then drain and cut into thirds. If you opt for Italian vermicelli, boil per package directions, but remove about 2 minutes early. Drain.

Set wok on burner turned to high. Add oil. Stir-fry pork for 1 minute. Add the vermicelli, blending well with the pig bits. Pour in the soy sauce, stock, and chili paste (the roasted, fiery red Thai chili paste works best). Cook about 2 to 3 minutes, stirring constantly. Eat.

The legend behind our second recipe, "Beggar's Chicken," concerns a starving beggar sunning himself one long-ago day by the banks of a creek. Suddenly, fortuitously, a chicken mosied on by. The beggar reached out and instantly wrung its neck.

Now: how to eat the thing? For the beggar had no knife, no kitchen. Necessity the mother of invention, he covered the chicken with mud and water. Gathering twigs, he built a fire. When the fire began burning brightly, he tossed into it his mud-caked chicken. When the fowl was finished, he cracked the clay mold, the feathers coming off with the clay, and enjoyed himself a hearty repast.

The following variation assumes you beggars have access to a stove.

3-pound whole chicken
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ginger juice
4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 green onions, finely sliced
4 ounces shredded pork
1 tablespoon sherry
1 tablespoon light soy sauce
1 teaspoon sugar
2 ounces preserved Yunan cabbage

Rub the cleaned chicken with the salt. Rub the ginger juice inside the chicken. (To achieve ginger juice, run fresh ginger through a garlic press. Or pound it with the back of a knife. Or get frustrated, give up, and just use very fine slivers of sliced ginger.)

Place wok over medium heat. Add 2 tablespoons olive oil. Stir fry the green onions 1 minute. Add the pork, turn up the heat to medium high, and stir fry 2 minutes. Add the sherry, soy sauce and sugar. Stir. Transfer to a bowl.

Return wok to medium-high heat. Add another 2 tablespoons of oil. Dump in the cabbage; stir-fry 1 minute. Return the pork mix to the wok; stir-fry an additional minute. Remove from heat.

Stuff the meat mixture into the interior of the chicken. Wrap the chicken in foil, and place in a roasting pan. Slide into an oven pre-heated to 350 degrees. Bake one hour. Increase heat to 400 degrees, and bake an additional 15 minutes.

Remove from oven. Remove foil. Extract stuffing. Cut the chicken into bite-sized pieces, and serve atop the stuffing.

Rich people can live their entire lives without needing to encounter a turnip. Peasants, of necessity, must learn to love them. This dish, "Turnip Cake," is classified in Chinese peasant cuisine as a "sweet."

2.5 pounds turnips
1 cup water (or more)
2 cups long-grain rice-flour
5 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 green onion, chopped fine
4 dried black mushrooms
.25 cup dried shrimp
1 tablespoon sherry
4 Chinese sausages, chopped fine
1 teaspoon salt
.5 teaspoon sugar
.5 teaspoon white pepper
1 tablespoon minced cilantro
1 tablespoon toasted sesame seeds

Peel and grate the turnips. Simmer in 1 cup water (or more, if necessary) for about 1 hour, until tender.

Submerge the mushrooms in hot water for 20 minutes. Then boil for 20 minutes. Chop fine.

Soak the dried shrimp in the sherry.

Mix the rice flour with the turnips in a bowl until they reach the consistency of thick oatmeal. Add 2 tablespoons of the oil. Mix well.

Pull forth your wok. Place on medium-heat. Heat 2 tablespoons of the oil. Stir-fry the green onion, mushrooms, shrimp, and sausages for two minutes. Remove from heat. Add to the turnip mixture. Toss in the salt, sugar, and pepper. Mix thoroughly.

Grease with unsalted butter a 6 x 9 cake pan. Pour into it the mix. Sprinkle with parsley and sesame seeds. (To toast the seeds, just put 'em in a pan, and shake it over low heat for two or three minutes.) Place on a rack in a steamer, and steam over briskly boiling water for 1 hour.

Let the thing get cold. Then refrigerate it overnight.

Cut the cake into slices .25 inch thick, 2 inches wide, and 3 inches long. Fry slices over medium heat in 1 tablespoon oil until golden brown. Serve hot.

Full post as published by Never In Our Names on January 28, 2009 (boomark / email).