23 Aug 2010 No Comments
The Ultimate List of Cheap and Healthy Beijing Food
The fantastic thing about simple food is the reassurance that whatever restaurant you land into, these dishes may be made at the drop of a hat, even if they’re not on the menu (this is great when I do not really feel like reading Chinese characters). This isn’t food you’re going to locate at a banquet. Actually, I hate banquet food. The dishes below are naturally a bit lighter, not because they’re aimed at dieters and also the health-conscious, but because they’re just plain great. This really is simple, fresh, largely vegetarian food. But do not consider it that way. Just sit back and enjoy. Traditional Beijing breakfast is all hustle and bustle and sharing tables with old men who slurp loudly. If you are a germophobe, hard money lenders you might want to bring your own bowl and spoon to avoid cross-contamination. The options are fairly limited and served cafeteria style. I currently blogged about the numerous sorts of Chinese bread, so I’ll skip that. Just know that those are always breakfast choices. Rather, I want to talk about Dou Fu Nao. Unfortunately, the translation, “Tofu brains,” doesn’t do justice towards the currently unappealing-looking dish I had. It is not brains at all, but soft, creamy bean curd spooned from a vat of fresh tofu, then doused in a thick gravy of soy sauce and wood ear mushrooms. Adding chili oil only makes it much better, of course. I do not promise that most (or any) foreigners will like this on the first attempt, especially when you have an aversion to slimy food. But Dou Fu Nao is light, like eating clouds, the salinity with the sauce countered by the tofu’s mildness. For a blander version, try Dou Fu Nao’s cousin, Dou Fu Hua (Tofu flower), that is seasoned with scallions, ginger, and dried shrimp. What’s for lunch, you ask? Contrary to popular belief, Chinese cuisine does include salad! These salads, or much more microdermabrasion machines accurately, “cold dishes,” aren’t your typical lettuce and vinaigrette. No, they’re so much more interesting and varied than that. Eating only cold dishes for lunch could be taking Chinese dishes and consuming them Western style, but that doesn’t quit me from doing it. I find it difficult to fathom how people can sit outdoors in 100 degree weather wearing long pants, eating kung pao chicken and lamb kabobs. Quite often, I don’t bother taking a look at primary courses, opting rather to have a mixture of salads. Hole-in-the-walls with more restricted menus, nevertheless, most likely will only have one or two cold dishes: usually smashed cucumber with garlic and boiled peanuts. These are clearly just things to munch on, perhaps while downing a cold beer. Typical for me to do could be to go to a supermarket/food stand about the corner, where there had been at least 20 kinds of cold dishes on display: sliced lotus root, lengthy beans, carrots and tofu skin, bitter melon, cucumber, slivered jellyfish (which is just a texture food), and so on. Following choosing your cold dishes, everything gets dumped into a plastic bag, that metal detector you take home and eat as a type of “everything” salad. But just say you are lucky enough to find a restaurant with pages and pages of camera track dolly cold dishes. If the menu has pictures, that is typical, the selection of colors and textures is remarkable. Cold salads don’t have to be lettuce or perhaps have a speck of green, but you can find spicy chrysanthemum greens or lettuce in vinegar also. I’ve also had salads of cooked greens, like blanched spinach with pine nuts and smoked tofu. One of my preferred “alternative” noodles are jue gen fen, or fern noodles. Before being softened in hot water, they look like bunches of black twigs. Once soft, they turn out to be slightly clear and glisten like onyx. In restaurants, they’re served tossed with a lot of vinegar, chili oil and chopped chilis, then topped with tiny fried soy beans and something green (cilantro, scallions, cucumber, spinach, and so on). The outcome is really a tongue-puckering, slippery mess that, combined with the crunch with the soy beans, is super fun to eat. Then, we have liang pi, or “cold skin.” Almost any kind of starch can be used to create this linguini-like noodle, although potato starch and rice starch are the most common. Like Italian pasta, the noodles may also be colored and flavored with vegetables- the food court at my preferred shopping center has spinach, tomato and cucumber liang pi (they taste basically identical). The best liang pi I had had been a pale yellow, made from millet. Because they had been produced from whole grains, they had been chewier and more substantial, certainly a meal on their own. The noodles are prepared in front of you, so you are able to specify exactly what you do or do not want put on them. Vegans, take note: this really is the ideal dish for you. In the event you get the regular liang pi, the noodles are tossed with vinegar, roasted sesame paste, chili oil, garlic water, shredded cucumber, and diced seitan (wheat gluten). They’re tankless water heaters essentially a variant on cold sesame noodles, but with a far more fascinating texture. Next, vegetables. Generally, a menu will have a page merely listing what vegetables are available- broccoli, Chinese cabbage, bok choy, and spinach, to name some. You can request them stir-fried with just a bit of garlic and ginger. And if everything else fails and you are still getting greasy, salty food? Leave the city. Climb a mountain. Discover a place that serves nong jia cai, or country food. Try to avoid the gimmicky places pretending to be peasant food. Find a place owned by a loved ones with a garden and an outhouse in the back, ideally with chickens roaming around. I hope I’ve presented you to some Chinese dishes, the kind that you’d have to go out of your way to find on a Chinatown restaurant’s menu.