1 gastronomy in general and history 2 Gastronomy in China 3 Dim Sum Dumplings list and Yum Cha meals 4 Ceremonies of Food 5 Indian Food Glossary of English to Hindi 6 GUIDE TO INDIAN FOOD 7 dangers in preparing food and BBQs cancer 8 British Irish Fare 9 Korean cuisine 10 Cuban Food 11 Pasta & Noodles 12 Raw Sophistication 13 Malaysian Cuisine \1 gastronomy in general is the art of selecting, preparing, serving, and enjoying fine food. Savarin called gastronomy "the intelligent knowledge of whatever concerns man's nourishment." Through the ages gastronomy has proved to be a stronger cultural force among the peoples of the world than linguistic or other influences. Today, the world may be divided into definite gastronomic regions, areas where distinctive cuisines prevail and common culinary methods are practiced. Rice is the staple in most of Southeast Asia. The distinctive feature of the cooking of India and Indonesia is the generous and imaginative use of spices to lend an added zest to foods. Olive oil is the common denominator of the Mediterranean cuisines. Northern Europe and North America use a variety of cooking fats, among them butter, cream, lard, and goose and chicken fats, but the common gastronomic denominator throughout most of these lands is wheat, the basic crop. In Latin America corn (maize) is the staple and is used in a wide variety of forms. This article covers the history of gastronomy from ancient civilizations through Greece and Rome, the Middle Ages, and the Italian Renaissance; the development of the great cuisines of Franceand of China; and the leading regional and national cuisines of the world. History No matter which way you slice the last millennium, a thousand years adds up to a lot of meals. Some were more memorable than others. For a majority of the human race, the challenge for most of the last 10 centuries was not eating well, but merely eating. Thin soup with a few vegetables was the plat du jour for the mass of humankind, but even for the lucky ones who could count on three meals every day, dining rarely deserved much notice, judging by the written record. Museum of the City of New York, Byron Collection (Billings); Photofest ("A Christmas Carol") DINNER EVOLVES In the last millennium food has been relished, flaunted and eaten at greater speeds. From top: A McDonald's in the 1950's, a scene from "A Christmas Carol," with Alastair Sim as Scrooge, and C.K.G Billings's horseback dinner at Sherry's, 1903. Only rarely does food break through to history's front page, but through the current millennium, it has been the pivot point for encounters and events -- some actual, some fictional -- that have resonated down the corridors of time. Not many people can explain the causes of the Franco-Prussian War, but nearly everyone feels the power of Proust's madeleine. The economics of Plymouth Colony feel remote, but the great dinner that became Thanksgiving lives on, a central fact of American life. It would be foolish to try to name the greatest meals of the last thousand years. The historical record is too spotty. But it is possible to isolate a dozen moments that, for various reasons, still grip the imagination, define the human experience or seem, in retrospect, brimming with implication for the future. Fusion is as old as the first European traveler to come back from the Middle East with a bagful of spices. Trendy restaurants have existed since the first French chefs, thrown out of work when the revolution erased the ancien regime, came up with the idea of hanging out a shingle and printing up a menu. Nouvelle cuisine, in the narrow sense, is a creation of the 1970s, but what could be more nouvelle than the movement codified in the writings of La Varenne and the other giants who developed haute cuisine? If a tour of the last 1,000 years of eating feels eerily familiar, perhaps that's because styles change, but human appetite and behavior remain as fixed as the North Star. 1191: Slush in the Desert During the Third Crusade, the Christian army, commanded by Richard the Lion-Hearted, presses within a few miles of Jerusalem and defeats the Saracens at Arsuf. It is hot. As a form of tribute, Richard's adversary, the great Saladin, sends him a cold treat, all the more startling given the desert setting. History's soft-focus lens obscures the dish. It is either a bowl of sherbet or a sharbat, a drink of rose water chilled with snow collected from the mountains of Lebanon. Either way, it is one of the first, and greatest, examples of East-West culinary exchange, and a seminal moment in the grand tradition of frozen desserts, one of the most universal of all foods. The Arabic word becomes the French "sorbet" and the Italian "sorbetto." The offspring of that Lebanese slush include the 7-Eleven Slurpee and ice cream in every form, from vanilla to jalapeno. Richard gets the dessert but fails to capture Jerusalem. 1280: West Meets, and Eats, East Marco Polo, traveling through the Mongol empire, becomes the first European to develop a fascination with Chinese cuisine, and as such, should be considered the patron saint of Sunday dim sum, if not the West's first foodie. In the city of Hangchow, he finds restaurants specializing in blood soup, others that specialize in dishes made from organ meat and others that serve vegetarian Buddhist temple food. To give an idea of the vast quantities of food consumed in Hangchow, he calculates the amount of pepper conuumed every day and comes up with a figure of 43 cartloads, a cartload equaling 223 pounds. Nothing gives him pause. In the same deadpan prose used to describe men with tails, he reports on the Tatar custom of mincing up raw beef or horsemeat and mixing it with onions and garlic. The dish has ever since been known as steak tartare. Contrary to legend, Polo does not bring back noodles to Italy. But takeout food in white cardboard cartons eventually spreads throughout the West. 1518: One Fat Englishman In a single day of feasting, Henry VIII and his courtiers consume 11 beef carcasses, 6 sheep, 17 hogs and pigs, 45 dozen chickens, 15 swans, 6 cranes, 384 pigeons, 648 larks, 72 geese and 4 peacocks; the meat is flavored by 3,000 pears and 1,300 apples. Three thousand loaves of bread and 400 dishes of butter are also consumed. It is a substantial meal. By 1541, Henry's waist will expand from 37 inches to 57 inches. In the age of exploration and mercantile globe-gobbling, Henry stands supreme as a symbol of unbridled appetite, with an insatiable hunger -- for power, for women, for gambling and for food. He is, without question, the man who ate everything. The image will become indelible when Charles Laughton portrays him on film seated at a banquet table and waving a giant leg of lamb in the air. 1549: Paris Fiorentina On June 16, Catherine de' Medici formally enters Paris as the bride of Henry II. The ensuing celebrations include a feast organized around birds, including 30 peacocks, 21 swans, 9 cranes, 66 herons and 33 egrets, along with smaller birds, hares and rabbits. As a display of the city's power as a culinary center, the meal is unrivaled, reflecting the highly developed system of markets and specialized guilds and the wealth of ingredients that will soon give rise to haute cuisine. French ascendancy throughout much of the world will last nearly to the end of the millennium. Catherine, a Florentine, will also touch off one of the longest-running controversies in food history. Her retinue includes Italian cooks, pastry makers, confectioners and distillers, and in her baggage are such novel ingredients as artichokes and parsley. With time, it becomes accepted that Italy (or, as Diderot's Encyclopedia put it, "that crowd of corrupt Italians who served at the court of Catherine de' Medici") taught France to cast off heavily spiced, sweet-and-sour medieval cooking and to develop the more refined, complex principles of haute cuisine. The Oxford Companion to Food relegates the theory to an article titled "Culinary Mythology." Italian scholars refuse to budge. 1621: New American Cuisine Sometime between Sept. 21 and Nov. 9, the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony sit down to dinner with Chief Massasoit and 99 braves from the Wampanoag tribe to celebrate the first harvest. Fowl are served, although it is not now clear that turkey was on the menu. Other dishes, many of them provided by the Indians, are oysters, eel, corn bread, goose, venison, watercress, leeks, berries and plums. The Indians also bring popcorn, thereby initiating a longstanding American tradition of taking food to potluck dinners that costs virtually nothing but takes up a lot of space. Despite the absence of football games on television, the dinner goes smoothly. At the second Thanksgiving, in 1623, turkey, pumpkin pie and cranberries gain a place on the menu and never leave it. The multiethnic origins of the feast will later inspire Southwestern-style stuffings, Afrocentric side dishes and Asian glazes. In any language, it will translate into leftovers that achieve deep levels of obscurity in the refrigerator. 1671: Chef en Brochette On April 24, the Prince de Conde receives Louis XIV, his cousin, at Chantilly, where the steward Vatel organizes a feast fit for the Sun King. But a small detail gone awry begins to gnaw at Vatel: because extra guests show up unexpectedly, two tables are left without roast meat, plunging Vatel, who has not slept for 12 nights running, into a deep depression. The following day, Vatel waits expectantly for fish deliveries to arrive. When only one purveyor shows up, he turns to his assistant and says: "I shall not be able to live down this disgrace. I shall lose my reputation and self-respect." Vatel goes to his room, props his sword against the door and falls on it, inflicting a mortal wound. The missing fish arrive soon after. Antonin Careme, the great 19th-century chef, honors Vatel as one of the profession's martyrs. In the popular imagination, he remains the high-strung, perfectionist French chef par excellence, the kind who virtually dares diners to send a dish back. 1794: The French Take Boston Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, aristocrat and gourmet, speeds northward from New York to Boston to try the menu at a new restaurant, Julien, where the consomme achieves overnight fame and earns its creator, formerly a chef to the archbishop of Bordeaux, the title "Prince of Soups." There is no velvet rope, and supermodels lie far off in the future, but Julien is nonetheless America's first hot restaurant, a gastronomic destination that introduces Americans to such fare as fondue and Perigord truffles. It spawns the thousand and one fancy French restaurants that will epitomize stylish dining in the United States for the next two centuries. 1843: Curse of the Cratchits Dickens, the supreme poet of English food and drink, creates Christmas dinner for the ages in "A Christmas Carol." His evocation of holiday meals past and present is so powerful that most readers do not realize that several dinners are involved. The most famous is Bob Cratchit's. On a clerk's salary, Scrooge's oppressed employee manages to assemble a heartwarming meal of goose stuffed with onion and sage, accompanied by applesauce and mashed potatoes. Christmas pudding follows, along with roast chestnuts, apples, oranges and a jug of punch. Families around the world will experience high levels of stress and an undefined sense of failure trying to recreate the warm Dickensian glow year after year at Yuletide. 1903: New York Haute, on Horseback On March 29, a select gathering of New York's rich and powerful turn up at Sherry's restaurant on Fifth Avenue to help C.K.G. Billings celebrate the completion of his new racing stables in Washington Park. The guests sit on horseback, and against a canvas backdrop depicting an English pastoral scene, they eat from trays attached to their saddles and sip Champagne through straws from bottles in their saddlebags. When it comes to excessive, swaggering display, New York once again raises the bar. The city's dining scene will continue to be defined by such power restaurants, although lavish feasting will give way to conspicuous nonconsumption, as the relationship between girth and social status goes into reverse. Important restaurateurs will continue to play the role of social gatekeepers. 1913: Little Cookie, Big Book Proust's narrator, Marcel, recalls the moment when the crumbs of a madeleine soaked in lime tea reveal to him the great artistic project he must undertake. As the English food writer Jane Grigson later points out, that madeleine is deceptive. As food, there is nothing much to recommend it. It works its spell precisely because Marcel has dropped the habit of eating one with tea. When his mother offers him one unexpectedly, its taste unearths buried memories of Combray, the country town where Marcel went to visit his grandmother. The term "comfort food" does not yet exist, but this is it -- food whose power to nourish and sustain, even to flood the soul with joy, cannot be explained in terms of taste alone. Amateur cooks trying to recapture the Proustian moment discover that a madeleine is nothing more than a soft cookie. If a tiny madeleine can generate six fat volumes, A.J. Liebling wonders, what would have resulted if the narrator had polished off a normal meal, say "a dozen Gardiners Island oysters, a bowl of clam chowder, a peck of steamers, some bay scallops, three sauteed soft-shell crabs, a few ears of fresh-picked corn, a thin swordfish steak of generous area, a pair of lobsters and a Long Island duck"? 1930: Hold the Linguine Filippo Marinetti issues "The Manifesto of Futurist Cooking," calling for more chemicals, meat sculpture, the abolition of the knife and fork and absolute originality in all forms of food. He offers two recipes, Alaskan salmon in the rays of the sun with Mars sauce, and woodcock with Venus sauce. Some of his ideas are prescient. His proposal that diners be presented with an ever-changing array of canapes with 10 or 20 flavors to be tasted quickly anticipates the ambitious tasting menus of today's leading restaurants. His call for abolishing traditional mixtures in favor of experimentation with "new, apparently absurd mixtures" will be realized in French nouvelle cuisine. His demand for an end to pasta does not catch on, however. 1955: Today Des Plaines, Tomorrow the World Ray Kroc opens his first McDonald's hamburger stand on April 15 in Des Plaines, Ill., after buying the rights to the McDonald's name from the owners of a hamburger stand in San Bernardino, Calif. The burgers are 15 cents. The fries are a dime. The rapid spread of the golden arches across the the United States and later all over the world will make burger-fries-Coke the most compelling food combination since loaves and fishes, and a powerful symbol of American commercial power. In 1999, Jose Bove, a French farmer, becomes a national hero when he leads a fleet of tractors that tear down part of the roof of a McDonald's under construction in Millau. The French nation rallies around the sentiment that "McDo" is the leading edge of American global domination and soulless Anglo-Saxon free-market values. As it happens, French children, like Japanese and Russian and Chinese children, love McDonald's and continue to eat at them. The company, which has restaurants in 115 countries on six continents, opens its 25,000th franchise in May 1999. The new millennium has Big Mac written all over it. A Thousand Years of Dining, by WILLIAM GRIMES Dec 29 99. \2 Gastronomy in China To say that the consumption of food is a vital part of the chemical process of life is to state the obvious, but sometimes we fail to realize that food is more than just vital. The only other activity that we engage in that is of comparable importance to our lives and to the life of our species is sex. As Kao Tzu, a Warring States-period philosopher and keen observer of human nature, said, "Appetite for food and sex is nature."1 But these two activities are quite different. We are, I believe, much closer to our animal base in our sexual endeavors than we are in our eating habits. Too, the range of variations is infinitely wider in food than in sex. In fact, the importance of food in understanding human culture lies precisely in its infinite variability -variability that is not essential for species survival. For survival needs, all men everywhere could eat the same food, to be measured only in calories, fats, carbohydrates, proteins, and vitamins. But no, people of different backgrounds eat very differently. The basic stuffs from which food is prepared; the ways in which it is preserved, cut up, cooked (if at all); the amount and variety at each meal; the tastes that are liked and disliked; the customs of serving food; the utensils; the beliefs about the food's properties -these all vary. The number of such "food variables" is great. An anthropological approach to the study of food would be to isolate and identify the food variables, arrange these variables systematically, and explain why some of these variables go together or do not go together. For convenience, we may use culture as a divider in relating food variables' hierarchically. I am using the word culture here in a classificatory sense implying the pattern or style of behavior of a group of people who share it. Food habits may be used as an important, or even determining, criterion in this connection. People who have the same culture share the same food habits, that is, they share the same assemblage of food variables. Peoples of different cultures share different assemblages of food variables. We might say that different cultures have different food choices. (The word choices is used here not necessarily in an active sense, granting the possibility that some choices could be imposed rather than selected.) Why these choices? What determines them? These are among the first questions in any study of food habits. Within the same culture, the food habits are not at all necessarily homogeneous. In fact, as a rule they are not. Within the same general food style, there are different manifestations of food variables of a smaller range, for different social situations. People of different social classes or occupations eat differently. People on festive occasions, in mourning, or on a daily routine eat again differently. Different religious sects have different eating codes. Men and women, in various stages of their lives, eat differently. Different individuals have different tastes. Some of these differences are ones of preference, but others may be downright prescribed. Identifying these differences, explaining them, and relating them to other facets of social life are again among the tasks of a serious scholar of food. Finally, systematically articulated food variables can be laid out in a time perspective, as in historical periods of varying lengths. We see how food habits change and seek to explore the reasons and consequences. . . My own generalizations pertain above all to the question: What characterizes Chinese food? . . . I see the following common themes: The food style of a culture is certainly first of all determined by the natural resources that are available for its use. . . . It is thus not surprising that Chinese food is above all characterized by an assemblage of plants and animals that grew prosperously in the Chinese land for a long time. A detailed list would be out of place here, and quantitative data are not available. The following enumeration is highly impressionistic: Starch Staples: millet, rice, kao-liang, wheat, maize, buckwheat, yam, sweet potato. Legumes: soybean, broad bean, pea- nut, mung bean. Vegetables: malva, amaranth, Chi- nese cabbage, mustard green, turnip, radish, mushroom. Fruits: peach, apricot, plum, apple, jujube date, pear, crab apple, mountain haw, longan, litchi, orange. Meats: pork, dog, beef, mutton, venison, chicken, duck, goose, pheasant, many fishes. Spices: red pepper, ginger, garlic, spring onion, cinnamon. Chinese cooking is, in this sense, the manipulation of these foodstuffs as basic ingredients. Since ingredients are not the same everywhere, Chinese food begins to assume a local character simply by virtue of the ingredients it uses. Obviously ingredients are not sufficient for characterization, but they are a good beginning. Compare, for example, the above list with one in which dairy products occupy a prominent place, and one immediately comes upon a significant contrast between the two food traditions. One important point about the distinctive assemblage of ingredients is its change through history. Concerning food, the Chinese are not nationalistic to the point of resisting imports. In fact, foreign foodstuffs have been readily adopted since the dawn of history. Wheat and sheep and goats were possibly introduced from western Asia in prehistoric times, many fruits and vegetables came in from central Asia during the Han and the T'ang periods, and peanuts and sweet potatoes from coastal traders during the Ming period. These all became integral ingredients of Chinese food. At the same time,. . . milk and dairy products, to this date, have not taken a prominent place in Chinese cuisine. . . . In the Chinese culture, the whole process of preparing food from raw ingredients to morsels ready for the mouth involves a complex of interrelated variables that is highly distinctive when compared with other food traditions of major magnitude. At the base of this complex is the division between fan, grains and other starch foods, and ts'ai, vegetable and meat dishes. To prepare a balanced meal, it must have an appropriate amount of both fan and ts'ai, and ingredients are readied along both tracks. Grains are cooked whole or as flour, making up the fan half of the meal in various forms: fan (in the narrow sense, "cooked rice"), steamed wheat-, millet-, or corn-flour bread, ping ("pancakes"), and noodles. Vegetables and meats are cut up and mixed in various ways into individual dishes to constitute the ts'ai half. Even in meals in which the staple starch portion and the meat-and-vegetable portion are apparently joined together, such as in . . . "wonton" . . . they are in fact put together but not mixed up, and each still retains its due proportion and own distinction. . . . For the preparation of ts'ai, the use of multiple ingredients and the mixing of flavors are the rules, which above all means that ingredients are usually cut up and not done whole, and that they are variously combined into individual dishes of vastly differing flavors. Pork for example, may be diced, slice shredded, or ground, and when combined with other meats and with various vegetable ingredients and spice produces dishes of utterly diverge, shapes, flavors, colors, tastes, and aromas. The parallelism of fan and ts'ai an the above-described principles of ts'ai' preparation account for a number ( other features of the Chinese food culture, especially in the area of utensil To begin with, there are fan utensils and ts'ai utensils, both for cooking an for serving. In the modem kitchen, fan kuo ("rice cooker") and Ts'ai kuo ("wok") are very different and as a rule not interchangeable utensils. . . . To prepare the kind of ts'ai that we have characterized, the chopping knife or cleaver and the chopping anvil are standard equipment in every Chines kitchen, ancient and modem. To sweep the cooked grains into the mouth, and to serve the cut-up morsel of the meat-and-vegetable dishes chopsticks have proved more service able than hands or other instrument (such as spoons and forks, the former being used in China alongside the chopsticks). This complex of interrelated features of Chinese food may be described, for the purpose of shorthand reference, as the Chinese fan-ts'ai principle. Send a Chinese cook into an American kitchen, given Chinese or American ingredients, and he or she will (a) prepare an adequate amount of fan, (b) cut up the ingredients and mix them up in various combinations, and (c) cook the ingredients into several dishes and, perhaps, a soup. Given the right ingredients, the "Chineseness" of the meal would increase, but even with entirely native American ingredients and cooked in American utensils, it is still a Chinese meal. The above example shows that the Chinese way of eating is characterized by a notable flexibility and adaptability. Since a ts'ai dish is made of a mixture of ingredients, its distinctive appearance, taste, and flavor do not depend on the exact number of ingredients, nor, in most cases, on any single item. The same is true for a meal, made up of a combination of dishes. In times of affluence, a few more expensive items may be added, but if the times are hard they may be omitted without doing irreparable damage. If the season is not quite right, substitutes may be used. With the basic principles, a Chinese cook can prepare "Chinese" dishes for the poor as well as the rich, in times of scarcity as well as abundance, and even in a foreign country without many familiar ingredients. The Chinese way of cooking must have helped the Chinese people through some hard times throughout their history. And, of course, one may also say that the Chinese cook the way they do because of their need and desire for adaptability. This adaptability is shown in at least two other features. The first is the amazing knowledge the Chinese have acquired about their wild plant resources. . . . The Chinese peasants apparently know every edible plant in their environment, and plants there are many. Most do not ordinarily belong on the dinner table, but they may be easily adapted for consumption in time of famine. . . . Here again is this flexibility: A smaller number of familiar foodstuffs are used ordinarily, but, if needed, a greater variety of wild plants would be made use of. The knowledge of these "famine plants" was carefully handed down as a living culture -apparently this knowledge was not placed in dead storage too long or too often. Another feature of Chinese food habits that contributed to their notable adaptability is the large number and great variety of preserved foods. . . . Food is preserved by smoking, salting, sugaring, steeping, pickling, drying, soaking in many kinds of soy sauces, and so forth, and the whole range of foodstuffs is involved-grains, meat, fruit, eggs, vegetables, and everything else. Again, with preserved food, the Chinese people were ever ready in the event of hardship or scarcity. The Chinese way of eating is further characterized by the ideas and beliefs about food, which actively affect the ways . . . in which food is prepared and taken. The overriding idea about food in China -in all likelihood an idea with solid, but as yet unrevealed, scientific backing-is that the kind and the amount of food one takes is intimately relevant to one's health. Food not only affects health as a matter of general principle, the selection of the right food at any particular time must also be dependent upon one's health condition at that time. Food, therefore, is also medicine. The regulation of diet as a disease preventive or cure is certainly as Western as it is Chinese. Common Western examples are the diet for arthritics and the recent organic food craze. But the Chinese case is distinctive for its underlying principles. The bodily functions, in the Chinese view, follow the basic yin-yang principles. Many foods are also classifiable into those that possess the yin quality and those of the yang quality. When yin and yang forces in the body are not balanced, problems result. Proper amounts of food of one kind or the other may then be administered (i.e., eaten) to counterbalance the yin and yang disequilibrium. If the body is normal, overeating of one kind of food would result in an excess of that force in the body, causing diseases. . . . At least two other concepts belong to the native Chinese food tradition. One is that, in consuming a meal, appro-priate amounts of both fan and ts'ai should be taken. In fact, of the two, fan is the more fundamental and indis-pensable... The other concept is frugality. Overindul-gence in food and drink is a sin of such proportions that dynasties could fall on its account... Although both the fants'ai and the frugality considerations are health based, at least in part they are related to China's traditional poverty in food resources. Finally, perhaps the most important aspect of the Chinese food culture is the importance of food itself in Chinese culture. That Chinese cuisine is the greatest in the world is highly debatable and is essentially irrelevant. But few can take exception to the statement that few other cultures are as food oriented as the Chinese. And this orientation appears to be as ancient as Chinese culture itself. According to Lun yu (Confucian Ana). "Wei Ling Kung"), when the duke Ling of Wei asked Confucius (551-479 BC) about military tactics, Confucius replied, "I have indeed heard about matters pertaining to tsu (meat stand) and tou (meat platter), but I have not learned military matters." Indeed, perhaps one of the most important qualifications of a Chinese gentleman was his knowledge and skill pertaining to food and drink... The importance of the kitchen in the king's palace is amply shown in the personnel roster recorded in Chou li. Out of the almost four thousand persons who had the res-ponsibility of running the king's residential quarters, 2,271, or almost 60%, of them handled food and wine. What these specialists tended to were not just the king's palate pleasures: eating was also very serious business. In I li, the book that describes various ceremonies, food cannot be separated from ritual...[In] Chou texts [12th cen BC.-221 B.C.] refs were made of the use of the ting cauldron, a cooking vessel, as the prime symbol of the state. I cannot feel more confident to say that the ancient Chinese were among the peoples of the world who have been particularly preoccupied with food and eating. Furthermore, as Jacques Gernet has stated, "there is no doubt that in this sphere China has shown a greater inventiveness than any other civilization."2 Food in Chinese Culture. Adapted from K.C. Chang, Food in Chinese Culture: Anthropological and Historical Perspectives, New Haven, CT: Yale Univ Press, 1977. www.index-china-food.com Apart from the French cuisine, the highest expression of the gastronomic art is generally regarded to be that of the Chinese. It is no accident that China and France should have produced the world's most distinctive and respected cuisines. Both countries were naturally blessed with an abundance and rich variety of raw ingredients. In each of these countries gastronomy traditionally commanded great interest and respect. The intellectual, artistic, political, and financial leaders of China and France traditionally attached great importance to good eating. It has already been noted how this worked in the case of the Bourbon kings of France and with statesmen of such eminence as Talleyrand. In ancient China the preparation and service of food played an important part in court rituals. The first act ofmmany emperors was to appoint a court chef, and once they were on the job these chefs strove mightily to outdo each other. In ancient China, hunting and foraging supplied much of the food. Wild game, such as deer, elk, boar, muntjac (a small deer), wolf, quail, and pheasant, was eaten, along with beef, mutton, and pork. Vegetables such as royal fern, smartweed, and the leafy thistle (Sonchus) were picked off the land. Meats were preserved by salt-curing, pounding with spices, or fermenting in wine. To provide a contrast in flavours the meat was fried in the fat of a different animal. As Chinese agriculture developed, styles of food were determined to a great degree by the natural resources available in certain parts of the country, thus the vastly different manners of cooking and the development of distinctive regional cuisines of China. As a more varied fare began to emerge, tastes grew more refined. By the time of Confucius (551-479 BC) gastronomes of considerable sophistication had appeared on the scene. Confucius wrote of one of these fastidious eaters, For him the rice could never be white enough. When it was not cooked right, he would not eat. When the food was not in season, he would not eat. When the meat was not cut correctly, he would not eat. When the food was not served with the proper sauce, he would not eat. Emergence of a cuisine Like all other forms of haute cuisine, classic Chinese cooking is the product of an affluent society. By the 2nd century AD the Chinese court had achieved great splendour, and the complaint was heard that idle noblemen were lounging about all day, feasting on smoked meats and roasts. By the 10th or 11th century a distinctive cuisine had begun to emerge, one that was developed with great attention to detail. It was to reach its zenith in the Ch'ing dynasty (1644-1911/12). This cuisine was a unique blend of simplicity and elegance. The object of cooking and the preparation of food was to extract from each ingredient its unique and most enjoyable quality. As in the case of the French cuisine, the hors d'oeuvre set the tone of the meal. "The hors d'oeuvre must look neat," say the Chinese gastronomic authorities Tsuifeng Lin and her daughter Hsiang Ju Lin. They are best served in matched dishes, each containing one item. Many people like to garnish the dishes with parsley and vegetables cut in the shape of birds, fish, bats, etc., or even to make baskets of flowers from food. These are all acceptable if kept under control, and if the rest of the meal is served in the same florid style. The worst offense would be to start with a florid display of food and then suddenly change style midway . . . Common foods and traditions The theory of balancing fan (grains and rice) with ts'ai (vegetables and meat) is one of the factors that distinguish Chinese gastronomy from that of all other nations. This refined proportion of harmony and symmetry of ingredients was practiced whenever possible in households throughout the ages and is not limited to formal or high cuisine or to meals served on special occasions. In addition to taste that pleases (a most elemental requirement in China), astrological, geographical, and personal characteristics had to satisfy the complex system of the yin-yang balance of hot and cold, based on Taoist perception of the cosmic equilibrium. According to this theory, every foodstuff possesses an inherent humour; thus, consuming foods and beverages at proper and complementary temperatures can adjust the possible deviation of the normal state of the two intertwining forces. Certain foods and culinary traditions are prevalent throughout most of the country. Rice is the staple except in the north, where wheat flour takes its place. Fish is extremely important in all regions. Pork, chicken, and duck are widely consumed, as well as large quantities of such vegetables as mushrooms, bamboo shoots, water chestnuts, and bean sprouts. The Chinese season their dishes with monosodium glutamate and soybean sauce, which takes the place of salt. Another distinctive feature of Chinese cooking is the varied and highly imaginative use of fat, which is prepared in many different ways and achieves the quality of a true delicacy in the hands of a talented Chinese cook. The Chinese take tea with their meals, whether green or fermented. Jasmine tea is served with flowers and leaves in small-handled cups. The variety and value of food to be encountered in the NE region of China are as good as anywhere in China. Cheap, clean restaurants are the best bet. The high turnover gives you a better chance of avoiding stomach bugs. The more expensive ones, unless very popular, are rarely worth it. Every city has its own special local dish. Many outlets specialize in dishes from other provinces, notably Sichuan. The coastal cities, Qingdao, Tianjin, and Dalian, enjoy a plentiful range of good seafood. Dalian in particular has some of the best seafood in China. Farther north, hotpot is a great favorite; you can choose from any number of ingredients and spices to cook food at your own table. Snacks, including yogurt, are available at street corners and are also quite tasty. If you want to take a break from Chinese food, you'll find Korean and Japanese street-front and hotel restaurants in many cities. For Western food, it is better to stick to the restaurants in leading foreign-managed or joint-venture hotels. Often these offer excellent value Western-style buffet lunches. East Central China East Central China covers a lot of ground, both physically and culinarily. While the same basic dishes cooked with greater or lesser success? can be found at cheap sit-down eateries pretty much everywhere in China, both the more serious specialty restaurants and the ubiquitous street foods vary here. The emphasis here is on fish; the region is rich in water, with two major rivers and an ocean coast, as well as numerous lakes. Another tendency, especially in the more eastern cities, is an unfortunate liberality with oil. Concentrations of the Hui Islamic minority in the western cities lend much of the food a Muslim flavor. Sweets tasting slightly like halvah and sticky rice with dates and sweet sauces bear the marks of a Middle Eastern influence, while lamb or beef dumplings, steamed or fried, differ from regular Han Chinese versions only in the absence of pork. In some cities, restaurants commonly frequented by the locals provide great enough variety and high enough quality to render them a desirable choice you can see how the populace eats without compromising your own expectations of taste and cleanliness. Other cities have a less developed dining culture; the local restaurants tend toward a Chinese version of fast food and provide faiÿ-to-middling quality in a setting not quite up to many visitors' stds. Your best alternatives here usually lie with the city's high-class restaurants and the often excellent food served in the local hotels. Even the fancier venues are often quite affordable by Western standards. Most sizable hotels serving foreigners have a western as well as a Chinese kitchen. The Chinese restaurant may serve specialties of other regions, such as Sichuan and Canton, which are more famous for their cuisine than is East Central China. Southeastern China The vastness of the area allows for a wide variety of cooking, most of it delicious. The cuisine of Fujian is considered by some to have its own characteristics and by others to form part of the Eastern tradition, one of the four major styles of Chinese cooking. It also shares some characteristics of its famous culinary neighbor to the south, Guangdong, but tends to fry more than steam. Spare ribs are a specialty, as are soups, and stews using a soy and rice wine stock. The coastal cities of Fujian offer a wonderful range of seafood, including shark's fin soup, a great delicacy usually served at the beginning of the meal rather than at the end, which otherwise is the usual custom with soups. Other dishes to look for are river eel with leeks, fried jumbo prawns, drunken chicken (chicken soused in Shaoxing wine), and steamed crab. The cooking of Hunan tends to be spicy, not unlike Sichuanese food. Although it lacks Sichuan's variety, it produces some fine dishes, such as hot bean curd, spicy noodles, chicken with peanut sauce, and dishes cooked in a sauce heavily spiced with ginger, garlic, and chili. As Guangxi and Guizhou are closer to the tropics, their cooking tends to be more exotic, with strong influences from both Guangdong and the spicy cooking of Hunan and Sichuan. There is a wide range of vegetables and fruit and a love of what are to westerners at best exotic and at worst repellent dishes — snake, dog, and, illegally, rare animals such as the pangolin. Both snake and dog are said to have warming effects and are therefore winter specialties. Guizhou in particular has a wide variety of traditional dishes, as the province is home to so many ethnic groups; bean curd is again a specialty, most famously "fall in love bean curd" (bean curd with chili sauce mixed with wild garlic shoots, vinegar, and soy sauce). An unexpected specialty of Guizhou is beef kebab, introduced by Uigur immigrants from Xinjiang and adapted to local produce. Look also for hotpot and for ginkgo fruit served in beaten egg white. Jiangxi, never noted for its cooking, has tended to absorb the traditions of the provinces that surround it. However, there are a few specialties to try — five-flower pork (slices of pork cooked in spice), sautéed frog, and soy-braised chicken. West Central China In Ningxia and Gansu the food is unexceptional, but in Yunnan and, above all, in Sichuan, the food is excellent. Sichuanese-style cooking is hot, spicy, and strongly flavored, a more hearty version of traditional Chinese cooking. It is said that the use of peppers and spices, which abound in the province, came about to make people sweat in summer (in order to cool the eater in the great summer heat) and to warm them in winter. The adaptable Sichuan peppercorn, when mixed with other ingredients, can produce a whole range of flavors, such as "fishy" (fermented soya with garlic) or "peculiar" (vinegary and peppery, with a hint of sweetness). A famous Sichuanese dish is mapo doufu (bean curd with minced pork, chili sauce, and hot peppers); its name comes from its supposed inventor, a certain Pockmarked Granny Chen, who owned a restaurant in Chengdu. Dumplings are very good in Sichuan, too for example, tangyuan, which might consist of four separate dumplings, each stuffed with a different honeyed filling. In Chongqing, in particular, it is easy to sample the Sichuanese huoguo (hotpot), a simmering broth flavored with hot bean paste and fermented soya bean into which raw meat, vegetables, and noodles are dipped to cook. And then there is gongbao jiding (viceroy's chicken diced chicken, peanuts, and green chilies quickly fried). Lijiang, in Yunnan, is famous for its baba (pancakes), while the minority peoples in the subtropical part of the province are liberal with coconut, fish, lemon grass, bamboo, and peanuts. Fried river moss and Burmese-style food are delicacies in the border areas. In Kunming, try guoqiao mian ("across-the-bridge-noodles" a bowl of hot soup with a film of oil, into which you add raw pork or chicken, vegetables,aand noodles to cook). The Muslim quarter has good food, too. Dress is usually casual by western standards in even the more upscale places, but tends to be more formal in the hotel restaurants, especially the western sections. Res are almost never necessary; in fact, many rest are loath to give out their phone numbers at all. Note: In Harbin particularly though the practice can be seen elsewhere in the NE red lanterns are hung outside Chinese rest to denote cost and quality. The greater the number the max is usually five the higher the cost and quality. Blue lanterns denote Hui (a Muslim minority) rest. The Qianjin district contains a number of fish restaurants, regarded highly by locals. A Spanish Diplomat Visits China from J.H. Parry, ed., The European Reconnaissance, (New York: Harper & Row, 1968), as excerpted in William J. Duiker and Jackson J. Speigelvogel, World History, (Minneapolis/St. Paul: West, 1994), p. 662 [Duiker Introduction] Europeans approached China with considerable curiosity. In this extract, a Spanish member of a diplomatic delegation to the Ming dynasty in 1575 comments on Chinese eating habits, including the practice of eating with chopsticks. The mission had no immediate consequences, and the first Catholic missionaries did not arrive in Beijing until early in the seventeenth century. The principal food of all Chinese is rice, for although they have wheat and sell bread kneaded therefrom, yet they do not eat it save as if it were a fruit. Their chief bread is cooked rice, and they even make a wine from it which is comparable with a reasonable grapewine and might even be mistaken for it. They eat seated at tables, but they do not use table-cloths or napkins; for they do not touch with their fingers anything that they are going to eat, but. they pick up everything with two long little sticks, They are so expert in this, that they can take anything, however small, and carry it to their mouth, even if it is round, like plums and other such fruits. At the beginning of a meal they eat meat without bread, and afterwards instead of bread they eat three or four dishes of cooked rice, which they likewise eat with their chopsticks, even though somewhat hoggishly. At banquets, a table is placed for each guest, and when the banquet is a formal one, each guest gets many tables and to explain this I would like to recount what sort of banquets they offered us, and the way in which they were served. In a large room, at the top of the hall, they placed seven tables in a row for each one of the clergy, and along the side-walls five tables for each of the Spanish laymen who were there, and three tables for each of the Chinese captains who accompanied us. And next to the doors of the hall, opposite the clergy, sat the captains who had 'invited us, each one at his own table. In our room they had arranged on one side three tables bearing the covers for each one of us. All these tables were loaded as much as they could be with plates and dishes of food, save that only the principal table contained cooked meats, and all the uncooked food was on the other tables which were for grandeur and display. There were whole geese and ducks, capons and hens, gammons of bacon and other chops of pork, fresh pieces of veal and beef, many kinds of fish, a great quantity of fruits of all kinds, with elegant pitchers and bowls and other knickknacks all made of sugar, and so forth. All this which was put upon the tables, when we got therefrom, was put into hampers and carried to our lodgings. In sort that everything which is put their for display all belongs to the guests. Using Chopsticks an extract from Cao Xueqin, The Dream of the Red Chamber, from Liu Wu-chi, An Introduction to Chinese Literature, (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1966), as excerpted in William J. Duiker and Jackson J, Speigelvogel, World History, (Minneapolis/St. Paul: West, 1994), p. 665 [Duiker Introduction] This passage from The Dream of the Red Chamber is characteristic of the historical detail of the novel. It describes a country cousin's visit to the elegant mansion of her city relatives and the comic scene that she provokes by her naiveté. Such writing brings to life the wealth and luxury of the Qing dynasty and show that Europeans were not the only people who had trouble with chopsticks. As soon as Old Dame Liu was seated, she picked up the chopsticks which were uncannily heavy and hard to manage. It was because Phoenix and Mandarin Duck had previously plotted to give her a pair of old-fashioned, angular-shaped ivory chopsticks gilded with gold. Looking at them, Old Dame Liu remarked: "These fork-like things are even heavier than our iron prongs. How can one hold them up!" Everyone laughed. By this time a woman servant had brought in a tiny food box and, as she stood there, another maid came forward to lift the lid. Inside were two bowls of food. Li Huan (Pao-yu's elder brother's widow) took one bowl and placed it on the Matriarch's table as Phoenix picked up a bowl of pigeon eggs to place it on Old Dame Liu's table. Just as the Matriarch had finished saying, "Please eat, "Old Dame Liu rose from her seat and said aloud. "Old Liu, Old Liu, her appetite as big as a cow! She eats like an old sow withou lifting her' head." Having said her piece, with her cheeks puffed out she looked straight ahead without uttering another word. At first all those present were astonished, but upon a moment's reflection, all burst out laughing at the same time. Unable to restrain herself, River Cloud (Matriarch's grandniece) spluttered out a mouthful of tea; Black Jade was choked with laughter and leaning on the table, could only cry and groan, "Ai-ya" Pao-yu rolled down into the Matriarch's lap; joyously she hugged him and cried out, "Oh, my heart! my liver!" Madame Wang (Pao-yu's mother) also laughed, then pointed her finger at Phoenix, but could not utter one word. Aunt Hsueh (Precious Clasp's mother) unable to control herself, spurted out her mouthful of tea on the skirt of Quest Spring (she and the other ".Spring" girls were all Pao- yu's cousins and sisters), whose teacup fell on the body of Greeting Spring. Compassion Spring left her seat and pulling the wet nurse to her, asked her to rub her belly. None among the servants did not twist her waist or bend her back as they giggled. Some slipped out to have a good laugh while squatting down and others, having stopped laughing by now, came forward to change the dresses for the girls. Only Phoenix and Mandarin Duck controlled themselves and kept urging Old Dame Liu to eat. Old Dame Liu lifted up the chopsticks but they were hardly manageable. Looking at the bowl in front of her, she remarked: "Well, well, even your hens are smarter than ours! They lay such tiny delicate eggs, very dainty indeed. Let me try one'" A11 the people had just stopped laughing but they burst out again upon hearing these words. The Matriarch laughed so much that tears dropped down; she just couldn't stop them and Amber (Matriarch's maidservant) had to pound her back to relieve her. The Matriarch said "This must have been the work of that sly, impish Phoenix. Don't listen to her." Old Dame Liu was still exclaiming about how tiny and dainty the eggs were when Phoenix said jocularly to her: "They cost an ounce of silver apiece, You had better hurry up and taste one before they get cold." Old Dame Liu then stretched out her chopsticks to seize the eggs with both ends, but how could she pick them up? After having chased them all over the howl, she finally captured one with no little effort and was about to crane her neck to eat it when lo! it slipped off and fell on the floor. She was going to pick it up herself when a woman servant got it and took it out Old Dame Liu sighed; "An ounce of silver! How it disappears without making a noise!" The Art of Chinese Food and Drink Cooking has occupied a lofty position in Chinese culture throughout history. The great Chinese philosopher Lao Zi once said of the art: "Governing a great nation is much like cooking a small fish." Chinese food can be roughly divided into the Northern and Southern styles of cooking. In general, Northern dishes are relatively oily, and the use of vinegar and garlic tends to be quite popular. Wheat, processed into pasta, also plays an important role in Northern cooking; noodles, ravioli-like dumplings, steamed, stuffed buns, fried meat dumplings, and steamed bread are just a few of the many flour-based treats enjoyed in the North of China. The best known regional variations of Northern Chinese cuisine include those of Beijing, Tianjin, and Shandong. Representative of the Southern cooking styles are Szechwan and Hunan cuisine, famous for their liberal use of chili peppers. Within the whole of Southern cooking, the Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions emphasize freshness and tenderness, while Guangdong cuisine tends to be somewhat sweet and always full of variety. Rice and its bi-products, including noodles, cakes, and congee form the typical foundation for Southern dishes. In Chinese cooking, color, aroma, and flavor share equal importance in the preparation of every dish. Normally, any one entree will combine three to five colors, selected from ingredients that are light green, dark green, red, yellow, white, black, or caramel-colored. Usually, a meat and vegetable dish are prepared from one main ingredient and two to three secondary ingredients of contrasting colors. They are then cooked appropriately, incorporating the proper seasonings and sauce to create an aesthetically attractive dish. A dish with a fragrant aroma will most certainly whet the appetite. Ingredients that contribute to a mouthwatering aroma are scallions, fresh ginger root, garlic, and chili peppers. Other include wine, star anise, stick cinnamon, pepper, sesame oil, and dried Chinese black mushrooms. Of foremost importance in cooking any dish is preserving the fresh, natural flavor of its ingredients, and removing any undesirable fishy or gamey odors. In Western cooking, lemon is often used to remove fishy flavors; in Chinese cooking, scallions and ginger serve a similar function. Soy sauce, sugar, vinegar, and other seasonings add richness to a dish without covering up the natural flavor of the ingredients. A well-prepared Chinese dish should taste rich to those who like strong flavors, but not overspiced to those who seek a milder taste. It should seem sweet to anyone who has a sweet-tooth, and hot to those who like a piquant flavor. A dish that is all of these things to all of these people is a truly successful dish. Color, aroma, and flavor are not the only principles to be followed in Chinese cooking; nutrition is also an important concern. The principle of the þharmonization of foodsþ ( ting nai tþiao ho) can be traced back to the Shang dynasty scholar Yi Yin. He relates the five flavors of sweet, sour bitter, piquant, and salty to the nutritional needs of the five major organ systems of the body (the heart, liver, spleen/pancreas, lungs, and kidneys), and stresses their role in maintaining good physical health. In fact, many of the plants used in Chinese cooking, such as scallions, fresh ginger root, garlic, dried lily buds, tree fungus, and so forth, have properties of preventing and alleviating various illnesses. The Chinese have a traditional belief in the medicinal value of food, and that food and medicine share the same origin. This view could be considered a forerunner of nutritional science in China. Notable in this theory is the concept that correct proportion of meat to vegetable ingredients should be maintained; one-third of meat-based dishes should be vegetable ingredients, and one-third of vegetable dishes should be meat. In preparing soups, the quantity of water used should total seven-tenths the volume of the serving bowl. In short, the correct ingredient proportions must be adhered to in the preparation of each dish or soup in order to ensure full nutritional value. The Chinese have a number of rules and customs associated with eating. For example, meals must be taken while seated; there is a set order of who may be seated first among men, women, old and young; and the main courses must be eaten with chopsticks, and soup with a spoon. Chinese banquets are arranged on a per table basis, with each table usually seating ten to twelve persons. A typical banquet consists of four appetizer dishes, such as cold cut platters or hot hors d'oeuvres; six to eight main courses; then one savory snack-type dish and a dessert. The methods of preparation include stir-frying, stewing, steaming, deep-frying, flash-frying, pan-frying, and so forth. A dish may be savory, sweet, tart, or piquant. The main colors of a dish may include red, yellow, green, white and caramel color. Food garnishes, such as cut or sculptured tomatoes, Chinese white radishes, cucumbers, and so forth, may be used to add to the visual appeal of a dish. All of these elements contribute to making Chinese food a true feast for the eyes and nostrils as well as the tastebuds. In this cosmopolitan world, Chinese food is available in practically all major þ and many not-so-major þ cities of the globe. However, experts tends to agree that Taipei is the one place in the world where you can find the genuine version of just about any kind of the Chinese food imaginable. In fact, in any large city or little village in Taiwan, you do not have to walk very far to find a small rest; a few more steps will take you to a large and elaborate one. Even in home cooking, whether for everyday family meals or entertaining guests, food is a prepared with sophistication and variety. Northern style dishes may include Peking duck, smoked chicken, chafing dish with sliced lamb, fish slices in sauce, beef with green pepper, and dried scallops with Chinese white radish balls. Representative of the Southern style of cooking are duck smoked with camphor and tea, chicken baked in salt, honey glazed ham, flash-fried shrimp, eggplant in soy sauce, Szechwan style beancurd ... the variety is endless. With the rapid expansion of industry and commerce, a new twist has been added to traditional Chinese food: Chinese fast food franchises. At the same time, restaurants serving foods from all over the world have been springing up everywhere in Taipei: American hamburgers, Italian pizza, Japanese sashimi, German beer, and Swiss cheese are easily found in practically any part of the city. A visit to Taipei is a culinary experience not easily forgotten! \3 Dim Sum Dumplings list and Yum Cha meals The Dim Sum Dumpling Book. Eileen Yin-Fei Lo. Macmillan, 1955 Crown, 1982. Dine in a group to get a variety of flavors. The more diners the more dishes. Dishes are not served by volume. Diners eat communially rather than individually, ergo order one dish from a group as fish, meat, soup, etc. Always try at least one dish never tried before. Whenever tea is served (especially in Asia), drink the tea (without sugar) never the water. The tea is water, that has been BOILED. Entr‚es: Soups: Wintermelon, Seaweed, Watercress with meat. Meat: Sucking pig, Tongue. Fowl dishes: Peking duck, Salt baked chicken, Squab. Seafood dishes: Steamed fresh oysters, Knife clams. Stir fried clams or snails, Steamed fish of the day. Vegetables: Steamed Chinese broccoli. One dish meals (for eating alone): Noodles: Barbecued meat in a bowl of noodles with broth. Double fried noodles without broth: Yang chow wor mein. Rice: A barbecued meat over rice. Alphabetical by Name: * Button mushrooms turned upside down and stuffed. Name: Bak far siu mai Eng: Stuffed mushrooms * The nests of these sea swallows have been used for centuries throughout SE Asia in a delicious soup. Name: Bird's Nest Soup Eng: Swift, Collocalia esculenta * Broiled in slabs, a piece of (barbecued) roast pork sliced and served to order. Not usually ordered by a single person. Name: Char siu Eng: Roast pork * A white steamed bun with roast pork. Served for breakfast or brunch. Name: Char siu bau Eng: Steamed bun with roast pork * Iron Buddah tea, sharks fin soup, soya goose, snails, bird's nest, cold crabs with ginger. Name: Chiu Chow Eng: Chinese region * Chinese deep fried spring rolls popularly known as egg rolls. Name: Chun guen Eng: Spring rolls * A Shanghai delicacy. Name: Chun yau bang Eng: Scallion pancake * A large white puffy steamed bun with pork, chicken, egg, and a piece of sausage. Good enough for a child's breakfast. Name: Dai Bau Eng: Big Bun * A vegetarian dumpling of young shoots of snow peas. Name: Dau miu gau Eng: Snow pea shoot dumpling * Little round custard tarts made with egg found on the desert cart or in a pastery shop. Can be bite size or larger. Name: Don kot Eng: Egg tart Name: Fa sui mai Eng: Flower dumplings * Looks like a slice of fruit with a filling of mixed ingredients of ground pork and shrimp. Name: Fun guor Eng: Rice noodle fruit * A dumpling with filling of shrimp. Name: Fung ngan gau Eng: Phoenix eyes * Looks like an upside down bonnet filled with pork meat and steamed with curry flavor. Name: Gah lei siu mai Eng: Curried dumpling * Small bun with flavored chicken meat inside. Name: Gai bau Eng: Chicken bun Name: Gai bien gau Eng: Shanghai street dumplings * Shaped like a cockscomb and filled with pork, shrimp, water chestnut, and bamboo shoot. It was created to celebrate the year of the rooster. Name: Gai gun gau Eng: Cockscomb dumplings * Dumplings are served without broth and a few drops of oil. Name: Gai yuk sui gau Eng: Chicken dumpling * A vegetarian dumpling with filling of chives. Name: Gau choi gau Eng: Chive dumpling * These buns have a brown toasted look as opposed to the steamed ones which are puffy white. Both have a piece of paper on the bottom used to keep the bun from sticking to pan and is peeled off before eating. These buns can be meat (yuk) chicken (gai) etc. Name: Guk bau Eng: Baked bun * Really croquetts wrapped around the outside of a crab claw with its own meat still inside. The claw serves as a handle. Name: Hai kim, Yung Eng: Stuffed crab claws * Popular with everybody everywhere. Dip in soy sauce and eat. Name: Har gau Eng: Shrimp dumplings * So popular and common as to be found anywhere there is Dim Sum. Name: Har yuen Eng: Shrimp balls * The red hot chili oil comes from Szechuan. Filling is bok choi and beef. Name: Hung yau sui gau Eng: Red oil dumplings * Steamed asian black mushrooms with garlic and scallions. Name: Jing dung gu Eng: Steamed mushrooms * Another meal akin to western sandwich. A bowl of congee is made by boiling a little rice in a lot of water. Anything (meat, vegteable, egg, etc.) can be added to it. Asians eat it for breakfast, snack, or when sick as it is not heavy, easily digestable, and nutricous. It is eaten with a spoon. Ngau yook jook, beef congee. Yue jook, fish congee. Pei dan sau yook jook, preserved egg and pork, very common and tasty. Name: Jook Eng: Congee, porridge * Steamed bun with lotus seed filling. A vegetarian bun for the monks, nuns, and other vegetarians. Name: Lin yung bau Eng: Lotus seed bun * This is steamed chinese sausage (like a Vienna sausage) wrapped in a bun much like a small hot dog. Name: Lop Cheung Guen Eng: Steamed sausage * These are tasty little square patties grilled on a cart that circulate around the resturant. They can also be found on a street corner or in a night market. Name: Lor bok goo Eng: Turnip cake * A monk's vegetarian dish of water chestnuts, bamboo shoots, bok choi, peas, mushrooms, cabbage, bean curd, seseme seeds, etc. all sauteed together. Name: Lor horn jai Eng: (Monk's) Vegetarian dish * Steamed tripe, best dipped in hot sauce. Name: Ngau bak yip Eng: Tripe * Usually rare in china but more common as one goes west. Name: Ngau jai yuk siu mai Eng: Veal dumpling * A bowl of flavored beef innards. Doesn't sound good but very tasty and filling. Name: Ngow jap Eng: Tripe * A bowl of noodles with broth and flavored beef innards on top. Very cheep tasty and filling. A favorite at night market stalls. Name: Ngow jap tong mein Eng: Noodles with tripe in broth * Glutinous (sticky) rice wrapped in leaf and steamed, a meal in itself. Name: Nor mai fan Eng: Sticky rice * A puffy steamed white bun with pork filling. Name: Sang yuk bau Eng: Meat bun * A vegatarian Shanghai dumpling, also found in Taiwan. Name: Seut choi gau Eng: Snow cabbage dumpling * Name: Sharks fin soup Eng: Yu' chi * A bun Name: Siu loon bau Eng: * Looks like an upside down bonnet filled with pork meat and steamed. Name: Siu mai Eng: Popular common meat dumpling * Hot meat fill dumplings, usually served from a pot that circulates around the resturant and laddled out into a dish with broth when ordered. Name: Sui gau Eng: Water dumplings * Hot chicken meat filled dumplings usually served from a pot that circulates around the resturant and laddled out into a dish with broth when ordered. Name: Sui gau, gai yuk Eng: Chicken meat water dumplings * Hot dumplings filled with shrimp, usually served from a pot that circulates around the resturant and laddled out into a dish with broth when ordered. Name: Sui gau, har yuk Eng: Shrimp water dumplings * A three tier dish of cured ham, cabbage, and chicken. Name: Wan tui guen Eng: Yunnan ham roll * A one bowl meal of dumplings in broth with a choice of meat as; chicken, duck, or roast pork. Good for lunch or snack. Name: Wonton noodles * A hot dumpling from Shanghai commonly called potstickers. This is often served from a cart circulating around the resturant. Name: Wor teep Eng: Grilled dumpling * A square bean curd patty cut diagonally and stuffed then steamed. Nutricous. Name: Yeung dou foo Eng: Stuffed bean curd * A cross section slice of bitter mellon and stuffed with pork then steamed. Nutricous. Bitter mellon is a small cylindrical bumpy green vegatable. Name: Yeung foo guar Eng: Stuffed bitter mellon * Stuffing on a piece of green bell pepper served in a dish of three or heated in a cart that moves around the restaurant. Often you can see them in stalls at night markets throughout Asia. Name: Yeung lat chiu Eng: Stuffed bell peppers In Hong Kong, yumcha as a pervasive form of eating in the public has become an institution which epitomises the diversity and inclusiveness that Hong Kong people think are quintessential to the civility and economic achievement of the metropolis. It stands out particularly as a practice that has come to represent both locally and overseas a Hong Kong culture which has previously been characterised as residual of `Chinese tradition' and `Western customs', and hence is virtually non-existent. This paper looks at the consumption of metropolitaneity and the culturalisation of the heunggongyan or Hong Kong personal identity in the form, content and social relations involved in yumcha. It points to the significance of yumcha as a key to understanding a collective identity which has become more and more apparent as Hong Kong people vehemently try to establish a city with its own culture, first against the colonial grip and then the return of sovereignty to China in 1997. Introduction This paper(n1) examines the consumption of metropolitaneity and culturalisation of the heunggongyan or Hong Kong personal identity through the practice of yumcha.(n2) It proposes that yumcha manifests the value placed upon diversity and inclusiveness, and change and adaptability which are considered by the people of Hong Kong to be integral components of the social ethos and represent their society and its civility as a metropolis. Data are drawn mainly from fieldwork during 1995 and 1996, including participant observation in various Chinese teahouses, restaurants and families, questionnaire interviews done by student assistants on family food consumption patterns during Christmas 1995 and Lunar New Year 1996, as well as interviews with restaurateurs and food columnists. In the physical consumption of the wide variety of food in yumcha, which they do every day, Hong Kong people devour a metropolitaneity that they experience as an almost natural part of their life. Dimsum, the small appetisers eaten at yumcha, reproduces physically and most vividly the variety of choice and desire for change. It thus carries special meaning and constitutes a powerful symbol of the spirit of the Hong Kong person. Syncretism or inclusion of things foreign are not only a matter of lifestyle in Hong Kong; they exist as part of the self ascription of heunggongyan.(n3) But yumcha is more than an analogy of this identity. It serves as the medium in which the identity is lived out in praxis and reinforced in everyday life. The subjectivisation of yumcha as such contributes to a collective identity in a culture-searching process. In a colonial milieu it on the one hand displays the pride Hong Kong people have in their achievement in the building up of an international city by hardworking individuals who thrive with adaptability yet with roots firmly grounded in `five thousand years of Chinese civilisation'. But on the other hand the fact that the identification of a modern, metropolitan community has to resort to a remote dynastic Chinese custom itself exhibits a self-consciousness of political impotence as a colony. In a way, the choice of a so-called traditional foodway in a Westernised colony has perfectly suited the `powerful discourse of "East meets West", and the "modern world meets Chinese tradition'" (Evans and Tam 1997:5) as it is politically unthreatening yet culturally assuring to both indigenous Anglophiles and expatriate Sinophiles. The diversity and inclusiveness embodied in yumcha would only point to the success of the city. Yet underpinning this sense of pride must be a sense of limitation or even helplessness as a colonised community brought about by the political reality. As a powerful discourse of cross-fertilisation of customs, yumcha may well be a discourse of power in praxis. Interestingly, yumcha has been constructed as a representative of Hong Kong culture both locally and overseas in a historical period in which Hong Kong people feel an urgency to reconstruct a politico-economic existence and a cultural identity. In tourist brochures, yumcha is always central to the construction of a `gourmet's paradise', as competitive prices in Hong Kong's Southeast Asian neighbours have snatched away its `shopper's paradise' title. Hence spring rolls beside a pair of chopsticks and bamboo baskets of shrimp dumplings are constant images in booklets distributed by the Hong Kong Tourist Association, a semi-government organisation. But yumcha features just as prominently in local Chinese newspapers, where elaborated reports are written on `new trends' of yumcha and rejuvenation of `traditional' dimsum. Perhaps more obviously using the yumcha analogy as a social idiom is the comedian Chow Sing Chi who epitomises a new generation of post-modern popular culture with his moleitau (illogical) style. His now famous quotation `chodai yum bui cha, sik gor bau' (`Let's sit down, drink a cup of tea, eat a bun')(n4) which literally means to talk over things slowly, highlights yumcha's pervasiveness and symbolic power in everyday life. Undoubtedly yumcha is the way of eating that occupies both the stomach and imagination of the Hong Kong people. This sense of cultural need for identification was felt all the more keenly as 1997 approached, when the British colonial administration would give way to Chinese rule. The prospective relations with China in the post-colonial period called for the verification of a distinct Hong Kong culture in order to ensure continued survival. The emergence of gongsik yumcha, or Hong Kong style yumcha as opposed to its prototype guangsik yumcha, Guangzhou style yumcha, clearly accented the effort in drawing a boundary between mainland Chinese and Hong Kong Chinese. This cultural cleavage was ironically perpetuated by the globalisation of gongsik yumcha via the Hong Kong diaspora which was in effect a vote of no confidence for the impending Chinese rule. Eating as a channel to Hong Kong culture With and without the actors' conscious design, the ways in which eating is signified, practiced and legitimated manifest the social ethos of the society in which they are found. Numerous scholars have discussed the importance of food as a window to understanding culture. Douglas for example discusses meals as systems of codes to be deciphered (Douglas 1972); Chang pioneers the study of Chinese culture via its foodways (Chang 1977); and Appadurai finds cookbooks indicative of Indian national identities (Appadurai 1988). In a recent book Mintz reminds us that `food and eating afford us a remarkable arena in which to watch how the human species invests a basic activity with social meaning--indeed, with so much meaning that the activity itself can almost be lost sight of' (Mintz 1996). In Hong Kong, indeed, as in other cultures, food is heavily laden with social and cultural meanings. With a total of 7,434 eating places registered with the Regional and Urban Councils in 1996 (Regional Services Department October 1996, and Urban Services Department June 1996), the landscape of the industry is constructed and perceived to be international, smart, up-to-date, but without losing local flavour and Chinese tradition. A good example of this kind of thought about eating, is a place called Lan Kwai Fong in Hong Kong's central business district. Within the two blocks congested with office buildings, high brow boutiques, florists, and a shrine for the neighbourhood deity, there are restaurants of all sorts--an American steak house, a Japanese sushi bar, a French cafe, an Indian tandoori place, and a Vietnamese rice noodles stall, comfortably mixing with a Chinese herbal tea shop and numerous pubs, discotheques and expensive European restaurants. The ecology of this cultural microcosm deserves more discussion, but here we shall concentrate on the phenomenon of yumcha. For even within Central District where the choice and availability of cuisines are taken for granted, the favourite for the lunch pilgrims is still the Cantonese restaurants where yumcha is served. Mok estimates that in 1992 Chinese eateries took up 68% of the total consumption on food, and families on the average spent 56% of their money on food eating out, mainly for lunch (Mok 1992). Although it is impossible to tease out the spending on yumcha from the statistics, interviews with both restaurateurs and local families point to the fact that yumcha is the most popular choice when local Hong Kong people dine out. The pervasiveness of yumcha in Hong Kong's everyday life is obvious even to the casual observer. Among the thousands of Chinese restaurants, there are regional, temporal and hierarchical variations, but the practice of yumcha stands out as the Hong Kong way of eating. Not only has it maintained a hard-core Cantonese identity, but it has also had its influence diffused to non-Cantonese Chinese restaurants, and to food businesses categorised by the government as `Western' and `other' (Urban Services Department ] 996), which includes such varied enterprises as karaoke bars, pubs, open-air food stalls, fast-food restaurants and convenience stores. From Guangzhou to Hong Kong Most local historians agree that old yumcha practices in Hong Kong generally followed those of Guangzhou (Canton), historically the political and commercial centre of the Pearl River Delta of which Hong Kong is part. Today, terms such as yuet choi (Cantonese cuisine) and yeungsing mei dim (delicate dimsum of the City of Rams) are still used in everyday speech, reminding us of Guangzhou city's centrality in the food culture of South China. Whether in practices of commerce or in consumption habits, Guangzhou's merchant culture had heavily influenced that of Hong Kong. According to Kan (1985), in old Guangzhou those who had the leisure to yumcha were typically merchants. Guangzhou people used to have meals twice daily around 11 a.m. and 6 p.m., and bosses normally ate with their employees on the shop floor. When business was less busy, the bosses would go to teahouses to drink tea at a leisurely pace. There were different types of teahouses, such as chasat, chagui, and chalau. These teahouses were perceived as distinct categories according to the food served, the atmosphere, the pricing, and the social status of their patrons, but invariably merchants and traders enjoyed themselves in these teahouses by `savouring tea at a leisurely pace' or, in Cantonese, tan cha. These occasions would never substitute for main meals, and, equally true, they were often not simply occasions of leisure. In a commercial centre such as Guangzhou, these were occasions of information exchange and business negotiations (see for example, Kan 1985, Chen et al. 1990). The teahouses may be better considered a second office and yumcha as regular albeit informal business meetings. The two most important concepts in relation to yumcha in old Guangzhou are yat chung leung kin and dimsum. Dimsum (literally `touch heart') is a generic term for a variety of small food items which are usually savoury or sweet, and are consumed together with Chinese tea. The phrase yat chung leung kin literally means one cup [of tea] and two pieces [of dimsum]. In the teahouses, while the customers drank tea, they were served two pieces of delicately made dimsum. The purpose of eating dimsum was not to fill the stomach. The eating complemented the drinking. It allowed a balance of taste and substance, in accordance with the conventional philosophy of the human body system based on a Taoist worldview. To provide variety in tea drinking, dimsum were made in bite-sizes, that were appealing to the senses, and were judged accordingly in three aspects: look, smell, and taste (sik, heung, mei). As dimsum should complement rather than take precedence over tea, the types of dimsum in old teahouses were limited to a few. The most common ones were hargau (shrimp dumpling), siumai (pork dumpling), and funguo (meat and vegetable dumpling). They were commodities of leisure, and sometimes of luxury. It was when competition became fierce that teahouses began to expand the kinds of dimsum served, with the more expensive teahouses changing their dimsum menu weekly to offer the best seasonal items (Dak 1989:45). Increasingly, the quality and variety of dimsum became an important concern, and dimsum took a more central role in yumcha. This description is a gross generalisation of the yumcha culture in Gunagzhou and is more about up-scale teahouses. Certainly socio-economic factors, significantly class and gender, were important determinants of who went where and how. Among the earlier teahouses, those that catered for the working class were called yileigun (roughly translated as `two lei pub') where tea was sold at two lei a cup. One lei was a bit less than one-third of a cent in today's Hong Kong currency. Dimsum sold in the yileigun were considerably bigger in size, and rice and noodles were also available. These lower-range teahouses also served lunch. But dimsum were not, and to a large extent still are not, considered a proper meal. The following incident illustrates this point. In 1996, three students and I went to Sheung Hei Lau (Double Happiness Teahouse) for a field excursion. This was the only remaining old-style teahouse (chalau) on Hong Kong Island. It has catered for the working class in the older district of Wanchai since 1949, and, according to a food columnist, its business style has remained the same in more than four decades (Tou 1995). When we were there during lunch time, we found that the mostly male staff, as usual, were carrying trays of food around the teahouse yelling out the name of the dish as they walked. There was not much variety. In fact there was little available other than rice with different types of meat on it. We asked one of the staff whether there would be more dimsum coming. To this he answered, `It is lunch time (ngsi) now. We don't sell dimsum.' Hence yumcha as a form of food consumption can best be understood in contrast to a meal. A meal is considered to be proper, official, elaborate; it involves a fixed schedule with dishes served according to an established program, and it always includes a staple such as rice. Yumcha is considered to be casual and unofficial, and staples are not necessarily involved. Whereas meals are served by someone such as a waiter, yumcha involves more `self-help' behaviour. In the past, dimsum were placed on trays and carried by older men using a strap which was attached to the tray and went around the back over the shoulder. As the carriers walked around the teahouse they announced the names of the items by calling out loudly. If a customer wanted the dimsum he (usually a he) would call the carrier to come to the table. Today the trays have been replaced by carts pushed around the restaurant, often with the names of the dimsum written in front of the cart. The customer reads the words and waves his/her hand as a signal. The `self-help' element is even more obvious now as many restaurants offer dimsum `buffet'. This involves placing a variety of prepared or semi-prepared dimsum and other foods on a long table, buffet style. Customers come to the long table, choose the food (to be cooked by an employee if necessary) and bring it back to their own table. Despite these differences, there are commonalities between yumcha and a meal, and the most obvious is their use in creating social congeniality, and reinforcing social relations and positions. Many of the above practices can still be observed in both Hong Kong and Guangzhou today. Yet since the fifties the centre of food culture in South China has shifted from Guangzhou to Hong Kong. As the commercial developments in Guangzhou slowed down after 1949 while those of Hong Kong greatly expanded, Hong Kong assumed for itself the title `heaven of delicacies' (meisik tintong) and took over Guangzhou's central place by saying it is now sik choi heunggong (to eat, go to Hong Kong) whereas the old saying was sik choi guangchow (to eat, go to Guangzhou). While in the past Guangzhou set the standards for yumcha, now Hong Kong does. At the same time in everyday speech the term guangsik (Guangzhou style) yumcha has been substituted by gongsik (Hong Kong style) yumcha. In a Taiwan newspaper article entitled `Irresistible temptation: gourmet food from Hong Kong--yumcha', the author describes how restaurants in Taiwan in the past few years have closely imitated Hong Kong style yumcha. Targets of imitation include such areas as the use of a small dish for discarding bones, and the expansion of the menu to include real delicacies. She goes on to advise Taiwanese to avoid eating too extravagantly during yumcha (such as ordering whole roasted piglets and whole sharks fin), because such behaviour will be considered country-bumpkin by the Cantonese (Hu n.d.). In Sydney's Chinese magazines, too, it is a common sight to see restaurant advertisements that use gongsik yumcha to identify themselves as serving authentic Cantonese cuisine. Clearly gongsik is the new standard for the food consumption behaviour called yumcha. Hong Kong style yumcha Restaurateurs in Hong Kong are fully aware of these developments overseas and do not hesitate to assume a global leadership role in the Chinese food industry. In the area of yumcha, restaurateurs strive to maintain their status by ever-expanding their dimsum menu and grafting Hong Kong practices onto their overseas branches. In an interview, Mr. Wong of Heichinrou Restaurant, for example, tells us that their new restaurant in Ginza, Tokyo, will be modelled after their restaurant in Hong Kong, complete `with dimsum carts, . . . there is no precedent in Japan'. In a restaurant of medium to large size, the average number of kinds of dimsum served daily is 150-200. Savoury and sweet, hot and cold, steamed and deep fried, meat, seafood and vegetarian--the sheer variety of dimsum indicates the significance of this kind of food and its popularity. There is a consensus that dimsum should be eaten in restaurants because only then will it be `full of the energy of the wok' (gauwokhei) which is an essential element in Cantonese cuisine. However, this does not lead to the restaurants' monopoly over the sale of these tidbits. Interestingly, as the mainstay of yumcha, dimsum has managed to conquer not only Chinese teahouses and restaurants proper, but also karaoke bars, taipaitong (open-air food stalls), and even convenience stores. For instance, Seven-Eleven, the biggest 24-hour convenience store chain in Hong Kong, has as part of its regular shop installation a refrigerated shelf of dimsum next to a microwave oven. It is common to see young people nibbling away at such delicacies as hargau and chicken feet with plastic fork in one hand, and a giant paper cup of Coca-Cola in the other. Dimsum is also served in many cafeteria-style eating places that aim to provide meals for staff and workers. In the Chinese University of Hong Kong where I teach, nine out of the sixteen staff and student cafeterias on campus serve dimsum for breakfast, lunch, and/or afternoon tea. Four others have done so in the past, while in another two that serve `Western-style' food occasionally dimsum is found on the buffet table. There are more examples. Three of the biggest fast-food chains in Hong Kong, Maxim's, Fairwood and Cafe de Coral, all serve dimsum in the morning besides the regular Western menu. The choices of dimsum, however, are much more limited than those found in teahouses and put a bigger emphasis on staples such as rice and wheat. A local newspaper featured a report comparing the `Big Three's' breakfast menu, entitled `Eat and run--Chinese breakfast report' (Apple Daily, 22 November 1995). It is obvious that as a meal the breakfast dimsum served in all three restaurants have a big proportion of staples. All three restaurants invariably use dimsum made of rice: juk (congee), normaigai (glutinous rice with chicken wrapped in lotus leaves), lorbakgou (turnip cake), cheungfun (meat rolled in rice sheets) and maifun (vermicelli). The two selling points of these dimsum, according to this report, are speed ('eat and run') and stomach-filling capability. In great contrast to the original leisurely pace and `touch on the heart' traditions of yumcha, dimsum on its own has become part of everyday meals, and instant meals in particular. In line with this development, it is interesting to speculate how long before fastfood restaurants like McDonald's and Hardee's also find it necessary to follow suit, after teriyaki burger (called 'The Shogun') was served at the former, and sauteed mushroom rice in a styrofoam bowl (interestingly called `Western country style' rice) at the latter. Dimsum and yumcha, however closely related, are understood to be separate categories. For instance, during a discussion session, Winnie and Jenny who are both college students, were adamant that dimsum is not equal to yumcha. Yumcha has to take place in a commercial eating place, outside of the home. It is not yumcha if one purchases frozen siumai from a supermarket and consume it at home. Nor will it be considered yumcha if one goes to Seven Eleven, pays for a packet of hargau at the cashier, microwaves it hot and eats it at the condiments bench. According to these young people, such forms of behaviour are considered `just eating'. By the same token, Chinese restaurants' take-away service will not allow their customers to yumcha at home. Yumcha, then, requires a certain content, a certain form, a certain atmosphere, and certain relations--not only among the customers themselves, but also between the consumers and service providers. In short, one needs to eat in a certain context, arousing certain social meanings, for the action to be qualified gongsik yumcha, or Hong Kong style yumcha. Gongsik yumcha: globalised identity Teahouses in Hong Kong have been in business for one and a half centuries. Although yumcha is made to conjure up a `traditional Chinese' image especially by institutions like the Hong Kong Tourist Association, a semi-government organisation, the practice of yumcha itself has been redefined and reinvented over time. It has never been short of `new life' given by innovative chefs, the result of which is `classiness' and `delicatisation'. These continuities and changes can be summed up as a process of globalisation. The first aspect of globalisation is seen in the constant change of form and content in dimsum and the consumeristic fanfare that surrounds it. The second aspect is the spread of yumcha across the globe as part of a neo-Cantonese culture that accompanies the Hongkong diaspora. Over and over again the words `diversity', `syncretism' and `variety' are used to characterise Hong Kong society and its achievements. Heunggongyan are not shy in showing their pride in the inclusiveness and hybridity of their lifestyle. And it is most obvious in yumcha. On the restaurant shop floor, imported items such as `Japanese sashimi', `Thai-style chicken feet', and `Western fresh cream cakes' are placed side by side on dimsum carts. Whether these are authentic nobody really questions. One also finds on the same dimsum cart recent creations like `mango-sago mix' as well as unmistakably old Canton traditionals such as charleung (a savoury long doughout wrapped in steamed rice sheet). A dimsum order sheet from a local restaurant will illustrate this inclusiveness. There are a total of 61 items on this order form, a conspicuous mixture of food originating from many different places. There are, for example, non-Cantonese Chinese items such as `Szechuan clams', `Xiamen vermicelli rolls', `Beijing pan-fired red-bean cake', and `fried Shanghai dumpling'. From the Southeast Asian region, there are `Singapore black glutinous rice sweet soup with coconut milk', and `Malaysian lotus-seed cake'. East Asia is represented by `Japanese style salmon salad' and marinated baby octopus; the West by baked puddings and pastries. All these are ranked into categories of `small', `medium', `large', `extra large' and `ultra large', not in terms of size but the price, and are carefully balanced so that every customer may find something that they like or can afford. These items may well be authentic, or may simply be adaptations, combinations or even inventions by the chefs. They are not grouped on this dimsum sheet according to their places of origin, but rather each is considered a full-fledged dimsum on its own right. What divides them is related to the production method such as steaming, frying and baking, whether they are a cold or hot dish, and whether they are a `dry' food such as a dumpling, or `wet' as in congee or soup. The lesson, if you will, is that these items, vastly different in style, taste and form, are all eclectically placed together to achieve a sense of completeness through diversity. Globalisation in terms of incorporating non-Chinese elements is manifested not only in the content of food items but also in how they are served to the consumers. The more expensive restaurants promote their Western style internal decorations and atmosphere. The Heichinrou Restaurants, which originated in Japan, have a grand piano right in the middle of each of their shops, while gold-plated porcelain plates in the Zen Restaurants remind their patrons of European fine dining. The uniform worn by waiters are predominantly a black Western suit, white shirt and black bow tie. To be classy, or to have good taste (read Western, modern) in terms of one's lifestyle, is a distinguished index of the Hong Kong sense of metropolitaneity. To digress a bit, one only needs to look at the many real estate advertisements that overwhelmingly sell not the apts (with names such as Royal Ascot, Miami Beach Towers, and California Gardens) but the lifestyle that they supposedly represent. Globalisation in terms of incorporating non-Chinese elements is manifested not only in the content of food items but also in how they are served to the consumers. The more expensive restaurants promote their Western style internal decorations and atmosphere. The Heichinrou Restaurants, which originated in Japan, have a grand piano right in the middle of each of their shops, while gold-plated porcelain plates in the Zen Restaurants remind their patrons of European fine dining. The uniform worn by waiters are predominantly a black Western suit, white shirt and black bow tie. To be classy, or to have good taste (read Western, modern) in terms of one's lifestyle, is a distinguished index of the Hong Kong sense of metropolitaneity. - To come back to yumcha, classiness is related to delicateness and price. Hargau (shrimp dumpling), one of the core dimsum, has recently been made in the shape of a cute little rabbit complete with tiny eyes made of carrots, sitting on a bed of shredded lettuce--and sold for three times the normal price. One also finds sharks fin, scallops or crab roe now decorating the top of pork dumplings, whereas it used to be a slab of pork liver. Another change in yumcha is the emphasis placed on efficiency. If yumcha has been an occasion of leisure in the past, today it has become part of a globalised instant, fast-food culture. The fast-pace lifestyle that has grown with Hong Kong's economic development has undoubtedly helped to legitimise this `traditional' form of eating as an instant food. But more so because Hong Kong people believe that to be efficient is one of the requirements to be modern, metropolitan and indeed to be heunggongyan. Hence unlike old-style teahouses, Chinese restaurants now serve dimsum together with numerous kinds of staples such as rice and noodles. During lunch time, these are prepared in small portions and pushed around in carts, allowing customers to quickly pick something to eat and go. So it is common to see in Chinese restaurants mothers feeding their children with dimsum before or after the children's half-day school. Groups of white collar workers pack the Chinese restaurants in business districts, each downs a few dishes of dimsum and rice and hurries back to the office. Despite these changes, however, the core Cantonese authenticity of yumcha is never allowed to be lost. Patrons are reminded that after all yumcha is a very Cantonese affair as they are greeted at the entrance by the host dressed in ankle-length red cheungsam (P: chipoo), or by the smell of pigs knuckles and ginger stewed in sweet red vinegar, which is normally cooked at home for new mothers but now sold as dimsum by the bowl, pushed around in thermos pots on a dimsum cart. Over the past decade the increasing use of cheap ingredients such as beef tripe and chicken feet in dimsum has been obvious. These relatively cheap dishes are delicatised and promoted in the guise of hometown styles (garheung fungmei). Thus `classiness' in yumcha is Janus-faced. As in other rapidly developing economies, it coincides with a simultaneous identification with the modern and a nostalgic yearning for the traditional. Another aspect of globalisation of yumcha is its spread outside of Hong Kong. With its economic success since the Second World War, the Hong Kong lifestyle has become a target of imitation particularly within the South China circle. The practice of yumcha as a distinctively Hong Kong practice has been adopted by Chinese in Taiwan and mainland China. The label gongsik yumcha commands a disproportionately high price and is indicative of high social status. At the same time, in the past 15 years more and more Hong Kong people have emigrated, motivated by anxieties surrounding the Sino-British talks of 1984 and the Tiananmen incident of 1989. With this new wave of diaspora comes the global spread of a heunggongyan identity. Many of these migrants, who used to be highly paid professionals in Hong Kong, find it difficult to settle into a relatively low-pay and low status job, and an unexciting lifestyle in the host countries. Like other heunggongyan, they are fiercely proud of their Hongkong identity, and a feeling of forced departure calls for a reproduction of another Hong Kong in another time-space. What better choice than the multi-purpose yumcha which is loaded with social meanings and whose familiarity brings a sense of security and friendly understanding in a hostile immigrant life. Going to yumcha Hong Kong style in a foreign country is like going to a church meeting or returning to one's natal home for a family gathering. Uncle Mak, an elderly man who emigrated to Vancouver with his son's nuclear family, religiously went to yumcha every Sunday at Maxim's Restaurant in a shopping mall called Tsimshatsui East (the name of a shopping district in Hong Kong) in the middle of Richmond. There he was greeted by Cantonese-speaking waiters, and was able to order his favourite tea just as he used to in Hong Kong. This repertoire of dimsum enjoyed by Uncle Mak is the same that other Hong Kong immigrants find in Chinese restaurants in Toronto, Sydney, Brisbane, London, San Francisco and various other cities where the Hong Kong diaspora has mainly spread. Together with a Hong Kong based popular culture involving video-taped TV serial melodrama and sword epic fiction, Canto-pop CDs and concerts, and lately satellite transmitted TV news, yumcha contributes to the construction of a neo-Cantonese culture across the surface of the globe. The consumption and subjectivisation of these materials have created a new collective, the transnational heunggongyan community. Culturalising metropolitaneity Until the late sixties, Hong Kong has been portrayed as an economic outpost of the British Empire, culturally residual of Chinese civilisation, and a political void. After the Second World War, when Hong Kong had become an important entrepot as well as a commercial and industrial centre, administrators and the intelligentsia alike were still of the view that Hong Kong was a city without culture. With a nickname such as `cultural desert', the city's local traditions whether in the area of performing arts, literature or cuisine, had been subjugated under elite forms of European-American or Chinese origin. In fact history textbooks portrayed Hong Kong as having virtually no history before 1842 when it became a British colony. Likewise, Chinese traditions meant only those that came from the centre of this civilization--the mainland. Hong Kong people thus were told that they had had no identity of their own as a collective. The idea that Hong Kong people were purely economic beings who happened to be in the right place at the right time to harvest the gains from the rapid socio-economic development of Hong Kong since the fifties, was a widely circulated and accepted characterisation. Hong Kong was constituted as `a transient place where one passes through' (Siu 1996: 178) and issues of identity were never really raised as everyone living in the colony was thought to be just Chinese, or British, or wherever one's place of origin happened to be. Indeed, Hong Kong was said to have acquired an `identity by default--as "what it is not"' (Naquin, quoted in Siu 1996:178). With a sojourner mentality and physical requirements in a colonial society in which the fit survived, Hong Kong society was perceived as a pragmatic collection of refugee labor and refugee capital. These were supposed to explain the lack of public and community participation among Hong Kong Chinese. In a frequently quoted article, Lau (1981) portrayed the Chinese people of Hong Kong as politically apathetic individuals, who remained aloof because of the value they placed upon `utilitarianistic families'. According to this argument, these family networks provided essential resources for individuals to survive, but at the same time limited them in their willingness and ability to explore outside the family structure. Non-participation contributed to non-identity as a community. However, it is clear that a Hong Kong identity was beginning to take shape since the early seventies and demanded a revision of how Hong Kong culture was constituted. A series of socio-political disturbances in the late sixties and early seventies, including the 1967 riots, the anti-corruption demonstrations, the movement demanding that Chinese be accepted as an official language, and the protests over Diaoyutai's sovereignty, all pointed to anything but political apathy among Hong Kong people. Given the geo-political location of Hong Kong, a totally Chinese identity could be dangerous. Henceforth the people of Hong Kong were told that Hong Kong was their home and they should be proud of it. Numerous activities such as the `Clean Hong Kong' campaigns, the various `Hong Kong Festivals' and `Hong Kong Art Festivals', the `Miss Hong Kong Pageants' and the promotion of the Mutual Aid Committees in public housing estates all helped to foster a sense of belonging and communitas. Popular culture played an important role, albeit unintended, with locally produced Cantonese movies taking over the market from Mandarin and English films. Popular songs sung in Cantonese, or Canto-pops as they were called, became the vogue. Novels, tabloids, and even movie subtitles became written in the vernacular. These helped immensely in elevating Cantonese, the lingua franca in Hong Kong, from the status of a dialect to that of a language, and consequently in establishing a Hong Kong culture based on this language. Like Cantonese, which no longer relegated itself to Mandarin as a dialect of the official language, popular culture moved Hong Kong away from the periphery of Chinese civilisation, to the centre of a neo-Cantonese culture. Indeed, as Chan (1994) points out, popular culture was `the key dynamic' of this culturalisation project. But, at the same time he argues that, for want of a state and its high culture that would anchor it in the modern world, Hong Kong's popular culture based identity could only be ephemeral. But, unlike generations of Chinese intelligentsia, what the heunggongyan identity tries to defy is exactly this subjugation of the local under the central. During the seventies and eighties, this pride of being heunggongyan or Hong Kong person was particularly reinforced by the relative wealth that Hong Kong people were able to demonstrate as they undertook their annual wuiheung (return to hometown) trip to China. The economic discrepancy between the miracle economy in Hong Kong and the poverty in pre-liberalisation China further bolstered the reversed role in the cultural hierarchy.(n5) The Sino-British talks in the early eighties over the reversion of sovereignty of Hong Kong ushered in serious rethinking about a collective future--continuous economic prosperity, civil liberties and political autonomy--and eventually about a cultural distinctiveness that would allow the metropolis to remain as it was. Fears of being `swallowed whole by China' were a common undertone of everyday popular discourse, and these became a catalyst for heunggongyan to recognise a Hong Kong culture that will allow the city to exist as an entity within but separate from the People's Republic of China. This culture cannot be only Chinese, for it will render Hong Kong just another Chinese city, an identity that will lead Hong Kong into a politico-economic cul de sac that will annul its function as China's door to the international market. And though as a society Hong Kong has adopted some British customs such as the morning tea and bright red double decker buses, and has largely accepted English as the language of government and education, the people themselves have not been proud British subjects. Politically too, it would be unwise to insist on a British linkage after the handover especially since Chris Patten, the last governor of Hong Kong, angered Beijing by drastically changing the political structure soon after he assumed governorship in 1992. To maintain a distinct character, Hong Kong's culture has to be simultaneously Chinese and Western; and more importantly it must go beyond, to be firmly international and cosmopolitan. The culturisation of the Hong Kong metropolis with such idiosyncrasy and inclusiveness can be seen in many aspects of Hong Kong society. A conspicuous example is the new promotional package produced by the Hong Kong Tourist Association. One of the more wide-reaching tactics in this package is a TV commercial aired several times a day that project Hong Kong as a super metropolis, `a place above all else'. It boasts of the various world's firsts: (busiest container wharf and longest suspension bridge of its kind etc.), and its quick-flicking images show off the city's sophisticated, high-tech infrastructure, its diverse array of cuisines and consumer goods, and its hard-working and festival-loving people. Hong Kong is defined as a place of (Chinese) traditions and (Western) modernity, a place of contrasts. But it is no longer satisfied with being a place where `East meets West'; rather it is the place where East and West are successfully integrated. Diversity and inclusiveness are definitive traits of the Hong Kong lifestyle, and an obvious sense of pride and confidence emerges from this portrayal. The praxis of this sense of pride and confidence varies in different aspects of daily life. Lilley's discussion of the performing arts in Hong Kong, for example, shows artists submitting to European and American standards while treading precariously to manipulate `Chinese tradition' to create a sense of local identity though they are never quite able to define such identity (Lilley 1991). In the arena of food, however, Hong Kong chefs show a lot more confidence. In the self-assuredness evident in the organisation of eating, the Hong Kong identity is continuously made sense of and acted out. Heunggongyan: who am I The term heunggongyan, as Hong Kong people like to call themselves, is quite untranslatable. In general it refers to the people of Hong Kong, their lifestyle, their entrepreneurial spirit. But more importantly it is an identity ascription that highlights a sense of pride of the adaptive self-made person, a feeling of sophistication grown out of metropolitan experience, and a particular brand of regional chauvinism which mocks a centre that is perceived to be backward. It conjures up such `modern' values as efficiency, rationality, liberal-mindedness and tolerance for difference and change. The identity is readily subscribed to by different regional groups and obviously involves a hybrid culture of mainly Chinese--Cantonese, Shanghainese, Hakka, Chiuchowese, or Fukienese--then add to it a bit of American and Japanese, plus a touch of British/European, Indian and Korean. Yet even the pride in achieving such multiculturalism cannot dispel a sense of liminality that has sprung from the realisation that the local culture is not any of the above per se. One good example is a recently published and well received anthology of short essays by a group of college students (Liang et al. 1996). These essays are accounts of feelings after a visit to the Hong Kong Museum of History's permanent exhibition titled `Hong Kong Story'. From this visit the authors talk about their life experience. A strikingly common theme that comes through is the process of acquiring a Hong Kong identity by the authors. And, more importantly, it implies the reality that these young people feel that they need an identity that is not Chinese or Western. Most of the authors were born in Hong Kong, and a small minority in mainland China. But whether they perceive themselves to have originated from Hong Kong or not, their sense of belonging to Hong Kong the cosmopolis is unmistakable. The title of the book is symbolic--yincha qingin, or in Cantonese: yumcha ching chun, meaning `to yumcha, please come in'. The photograph on the book cover, however, does not show anything related to yumcha such as a teahouse or dimsum and the like. Rather it shows an old man sitting in a corner outside a Hong Kong style cafe (chachanteng) reading newspapers, a common sight in the streets of Hong Kong. A more careful look at the cafe storefront's glass panel on one side of the entrance, we are led to see loaves of bread, trays of cupcakes and bottles of fresh milk. On the other side is a big board on which a menu of different kinds of rice is written, in Chinese, equally prominently displayed. To the authors, this picture of the ordinary folk represents a Hong Kong lifestyle that is familiar to them. Yumcha is a metaphor for Hong Kong's hybrid culture. To be local is to be both Chinese and Western (how these are defined never really mattered), as well as to be non-Chinese and non-Western. Like the chachanteng cafe which is so specifically Hong Kong, the college students see themselves as from and of Hong Kong the metropolis, something they are so proud of, yet simultaneously not without regret--that they are neither Chinese nor Western. It is a sense of being helplessly international. The book captures such a mood of being both proud yet suffering from a sense of loss. It opens with a section entitled `Your presence is welcome' (foonying guanglam), indicative of the openness and inclusiveness of a Hong Kong culture built up by migrants, and ends with the section entitled `Hong Kong Story. I was once here' (hongkong gusi. doe chi yat yau)(n6) They have come a long way to become heunggongyan, but where are they heading now? For the populace, this existential question carries a realistic twist. What happens after the communists take over? How will the social-economic-political structure achieve the slogan-like objectives of `stability and prosperity' (onding fanwing) and `smooth transition' (shunlei guoduo)? Despite all the promises for civil liberties and nonintervention from Beijing, will Hong Kong be another Shanghai after liberation? Within popular discourse responses are mixed, indicative of the complicated, or even conflicting, feelings heunggongyan have as they anticipate the change. Some answer with a patriotic rebuttal that any questions asked of the resumption of Chinese rule contradicts the oiguok oigong (`love country, love Hong Kong') principle and should be condemned. On the contrary, some believe the Hong Kong issue must be internationalised on all possible levels in order that Central intervention is minimised and the yatguok leungchai, gongyan chigong promise (one country two systems, Hong Kong people govern Hong Kong) can be materialised. Others maintain a nationalistic stand while simultaneously insisting that heunggongyan must be not be blindly patriotic, but rather should be assertive in the installation of a democratic political structure. Still others think that if they adhere to a hosui butfan chengsui (`river water will not bother well water') attitude, all will be well and life will go on as usual. Some, remembering the post-liberation nightmares of the fifties, `vote with their feet' and choose to emigrate. Others, having secured a foreign citizenship, `return with the tide' (wuilau). Whatever the response one chooses or is forced to take, for all the heunggongyan it is a time of unprecedented change. Some liken it to a gambling table where different players put in their best bet, calculating the chips they have--you win some, you lose some. To others it is a Sunday family yumcha lunch that one cannot refuse to attend, but where each participant is allowed to eat what she/he likes, thus preserving individuality in collectivity. Whatever attitude they hold on to and whichever action they ultimately take, all of them take pride in what they have chosen and show, as one interviewee put it, `the adaptability and confidence of a heunggongyan'. The general sense is a cautious optimism and a superiority complex when heunggongyan relate to all other Chinese and may be even the world. In another paper I have discussed this theme in an extremely popular cassette tape/CD production called `I'm the Best' (ngo tsi lek) by Chan Bak Cheung.(n7) A brief reiteration will illustrate the point. This 1995 production starts with the Canto-pop `I'm the Best' which is basically a series of slogans that projects an almost omnipotent heunggongyan image. The great handover then comes on stage as the singer chants `Horse-racing Will Continue' which is a pun on the promise made by Beijing leaders that everything will remain undisturbed after 1997--you can keep on racing horses, dancing dances (in nightclubs) and speculating in stocks and shares' (machiupau, mochiutiu, guchiuchau). Despite all the glamour and optimism, however, there is an inevitable, helpless lament of changing times as Chan sings oldies (in English) like `Unchained Melody', `Smoke Gets in Your Eyes', and `Yesterday Once More'. With this pessimistic note, heunggongyan return to what they perceive as the inevitable reality and more and more people are beginning to ascribe themselves as `Hong Kong Chinese'. Like the cultural grouping it signifies, it is a result of hybridity. On the one hand it cues Hong Kong's `return to the bosom of the motherland', but at the same time it separates them by distinguishing heunggongyan from other Chinese. Obviously heunggongyan are aware that uniqueness and autonomy are essential to survival, both as an economy and as a socio-cultural community. The new identity label may be a declaration of regionalism, but undoubtedly a first step towards re-unification. It signifies the shifting identities of Hong Kong people as they add new meanings to post-colonial relationships, and highlights a felt need among Hong Kong people to maintain their cultural autonomy, albeit only a self-sanctioned one, for to the mainland Chinese, heunggongyan are at best heunggong tungbau (P: xianggang tongbao) or (younger, never equal) siblings. Conclusion In this paper I have looked at the social and cultural meanings of yumcha, a most popular form of eating out in Hong Kong, and how they coincide with the city's ethos of inclusiveness and syncretism. The sense of pride and confidence of heunggongyan was dampened by 1997-related uncertainties and anxieties, but in the process of locating themselves in new relations with China, Hong Kong people have recognised a collective identity in the culturalisation of metropolitaneity which is readily consumed in daily life--through yumcha. Although the meanings of yumcha in the colonial environment tend to romanticise the idea of a Chinese tradition, the celebration of self-made success and the anticipation of post-colonial autonomy usher in new interpretations of being, that of the metropolitan heunggongyan. It is in this subjectivisation of a transient material process as food consumption that the identity of a distinct heunggongyan community becomes reified and relived every day. (n1.) Parts of this paper were presented at the International Food Conference on Changing Diet and Foodways in Chinese Culture, Chinese University of Hong Kong, June 1996, and the Anthropology Colloquium, Macquarie University, April 1997. I am grateful for the comments received at these occasions and have incorporated some of them in this current version. All transliterations in the paper are based on Cantonese (C) unless when pinyin (P) is used. In such cases these words are indicated by (P:). Place names follow the conventional usage, for example, Hong Kong is used rather than Heunggong (C) or Xianggang (P). All names are pseudonyms to ensure informants' privacy. (n2.) It is in order here to make a distinction between two practices, both of which may be referred to as yumcha. Yumcha, which is the focus of this paper, is the practice to eat various hot and cold foods, in a restaurant, when Chinese tea is served. The term can also be translated literally as `drink tea'. Although it has the same phonemes as yumcha, `drink tea' is another custom altogether and is better known as changai (pronounced as cha ngai) locally. Meaning `the art of tea', it involves the knowledge of tea categorisation, appreciation of tea according to its look, smell and taste, as well as curating the various kinds of utensils used in containing, preparing and drinking tea. More importantly, eating is not involved in changai which I believe is closer to wine tasting in European based culinary cultures. This paper will focus only on the practice known as yumcha by the local Hong Kong people, in which eating is a central and necessary component. (n3.) G. Mathews (1996) has pointed out, for example, that though his informants may use their English names for different purposes in different circumstances such as in identity shifting, they indeed considered their English names part of their `self just as their Chinese names were. (n4.) This is an expression allegedly started by a comedian duo called yuen ngang tinsi, `the soft and hard celestial masters', whose illogical style brought them immediate fame and popularity among the youth. The expression was further popularised by the comedian Chow Sing Chi in his Cantonese films, for a time the favourite among movie goers. (n5.) For a discussion of a generation who started to identify themselves as heunggongyan (Hong Kong persons) see H. Siu's article (1996) on the post WWII baby boomers who became the cite bureaucrats and professionals. (n6.) Doe chi yat you, literally translated as `[I] came and visited', is a classic Chinese tourist graffito. (n7.) I have discussed the identity confusion felt by the younger generation born and raised in the seventies in `Youth in Hong Kong: re-rooting of an identity', a paper presented at the Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting, Honolulu, 1996. References Chan, H.M. 1994. Culture and Identity. In H.M. Chan (ed.) The Other Hong Kong Report. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press. Chang, K.C. (ed.) 1977. Food in Chinese Culture. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Dak, K.G.D. 1989. The Roots of Cantonese Cuisine (in Chinese) Hong Kong: Yumsektindei. Douglas, M. 1972. Deciphering a meal. Daedalus 101:61-82. Evans, G. and S.M. Tam (eds), 1997. Hong Kong: The Anthropology of a Chinese Metropolis. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Australian Journal of Anthropology, 1997 EATING METROPOLITANEITY: HONG KONG IDENTITY IN YUMCHA By Siumi Maria Tam, Anthropology The Chinese Univ of HKG. \4 Ceremonies of Food That the consumption of food is an essential part of the chemical process we call life, is obvious. But food is more than just vital to our continued physical existence. Food comforts, as well as sustains us, and there are few events or situations marking a person’s life that fail to involve eating. In most cultures, food is pivotal to ceremonies involving the living and the dead; birth and death are often accompanied by food rituals and superstitions. For the Chinese, these particular events are marked with the preparation and consumption of special foods with symbolic, and often punning, meanings. Food semantics offer a fruitful inquiry into the Chinese social system. Birth and Birthday Celebrations Even before the birth of a child, the celebration of his life begins. In many western cultures, a party or “baby shower” is given to help the new family. Gifts for the baby are given in order to assist the parents in clothing, protecting, and caring for the newborn infant. After the birth of the child, relatives and friends often prepare and deliver meals while the parents adapt to the routine of an infant. In China, numerous special foods and dishes attended confinement and childbirth. Most frequently friends would send stalks of grain called man-t’ou which meant “share the pain.” During the month following the baby’s birth, the mother will traditionally eat at least 1 poahhed egg a day, as well as some chicken or chicken soup with her meals. A variety of other internal animal organs, such as liver, kidney, brain, stomach and intestines are valued and desirable foods. After the birth of the baby, especially a son, the mother’s family will send over gifts of expensive foods such as wheat flour, wheat flour noodles, chickens and eggs. These are primarily intended for the new mother in order for her to regain her strength. The father’s family makes a number of red-dyed eggs and distributes them to relatives and neighbors, much like the giving of cigars in America. In Judeo-Christian cultures, there are religious ceremonies that traditionally take place within one year of the baby’s birth. For Christians, the baby is baptized. In the Jewish faith, if the child is male, a bris (circumcision) is performed. Following both of these ceremonies, it is common for the parents to host a party honoring these rituals. At the very least cake and punch is served; however, there is often a more formal affair in which heavy hors d’oeuvres or a buffet and champagne are served. In China, babies are traditionally not bathed for three days. On the third day, relatives are invited to view the newest family member. When the baby is thirty days old, an official celebration is held when friends join in the festivities. These are called “First Moon Parties.” Each visitor brings the baby a gift of a brightly colored and often elaborately decorated egg. Parents also present red eggs to guests that symbolize life and joy. Good luck charms, necklaces, and lockets are also frequently given. Tigers are a popular theme as they are symbols of strength and courage and the giver hopes the baby will grow up to be as strong and brave. The western custom of giving parties on birthdays goes back to the days when people believed that good and evil spirits appeared at the time of a child’s birth and influenced him throughout his life. Birthdays were believed to be filled with unknown dangers because they marked a time change from one year to the next. Having a party surrounded the child with good friends and relatives who shower him with good wishes, scaring away evil spirits so they could not get close enough to do him harm. On the first birthday of a Chinese baby, a party is held. The baby is dressed in brightly colored new clothes with a round hat. These clothes will often be embroidered in gold and silver threads. At the party, the baby is placed in the middle of a table on which many objects are placed. Whichever object the baby reaches for first is thought to show his future. For example, if the child reaches for a book, he will be a scholar; if the object first sought is an abacus, he may become a businessman. At both the First Moon Party and the First Birthday Party, many delicious foods are served. The more elaborate and expensive the dishes, the more prestigious for the family. Chicken, duck, fish and vegetables are common. Noodles are always served at any Chinese birthday dinner as they signify a long life. And because it takes many noodles to fill a bowl, they also mean “many happy returns of the day.” Another custom is the serving of pastries molded and baked in the shape of peaches painted red. These symbolize an ancient Chinese legend about an immortal lady with her “magic” fruit and wish the child a long life. Death Rituals The Chinese have a deep belief and many superstitions surrounding ancestor worship. Included as a large part of this worship was the ritual feeding of the dead. People offered food to their ancestors in the belief of keeping “hungry ghosts” happy. This showed the livings’ continued respect as well as ensuring that the departed would watch over and protect them in this world. In ancient China a poem related in the Li Yun section of the Li Chi states: When one died, they (the living) went up on the housetop and called out his name saying, “Come back, So-and-So.” After this they filled the mouth (of the dead) with uncooked rice, and set forth (as offerings to him) packets of cooked flesh. Archeological remains at burial sites indicate that a large number of graves contained pottery serving vessels. At two particular sites of the Chou (Zhou) period (771 - 256 BC), one near Sian and the other near Loyang, the overwhelming majority of graves contained vessels that served the whole range of foods. These were in sets in individual burial graves, including vessels for cooking and serving grain (li and kui), vessels for serving meat dishes (tou) and vessels for drinking (hu and kuan). The Chinese have clear and elaborate customs for the ritual use of food in mourning. Food offered for death-day sacrifices (on an altar) is essentially the same food as common fare although it may be richer in meat. Chopsticks and bowls are always provided. After these offerings are made, the family and their guests eat the same food. On the third day after burial, the ceremony called “returning to the mountain” is performed. Four bowls of meat are offered along with a pair of chopsticks, a jar of wine, and a wineglass. It is on this day that the deceased returns to its former home seeking daylight. An egg is prepared for him and placed in a bowl with a single chopstick in which to detain him (the concept being that it is difficult to eat an egg with only one chopstick). When the expected visit is over, the egg is given to a child in order to increase their courage. This is an example of the symbolic pun in Chinese culture: Tan-tze ta (the egg offering) is a pun on the word Tan - egg and Tan - gall which is considered the seat of courage in China. Food presented at graves, though potentially edible, are generally not soaked, seasoned or cooked. These offerings consist of twelve small bowls of foodstuffs, including dry mushrooms, fish, meat, noodles, and bean curd. Although death ceremonies today are generally more spartan, ancient ceremonial trappings are making a reappearance. These include fiery offerings to the dead, i.e., if a man liked good food and drink, cardboard and paper imitations may be burned at his funeral as a reminder to the gods to cater to his needs. The Chinese people are preoccupied with food, and food is at the center of, or at least accompanies or symbolizes, many social interactions. The role of food as social language is determined by the occasion of the act and the status of the interacting parties. A meal is a common opportunity for getting together with family, relatives and friends but the food that is served can also wish long life and best wishes, convey sorrow at a loss, and show respect. Whether a husband makes wined-chicken for his wife who just gave birth, or a mother composes a special noodle dish for her child’s first birthday, or a woman prepares her deceased father’s favorite meal for his grave, words of affection are being delivered. In this respect the Chinese are no different from any other people, but it is the specific food used and the rituals used in preparing them that make the Chinese stand apart. Properly understood, eating attunes the Chinese to the greater order of life through ritualistic preparation and consumption. These are an integral part of Chinese culture and the Chinese believe they ensure good societal health and long life. By: drake E-mail: ddrake3914@aol.com \5 Indian Food Glossary of English to Hindi Terms English * Hindi * Legend(type) Almond Badam Dry Fruit Aloe Kuar Gundhal Essence Alum Phitkari Basic Kitchen Item Amla Indian gooseberry Aniseed Saunf Seeds Apple Sabe Fruit Apricot Khumani Dry Fruit Arhar Pigeonpea, redgram pulses Asafoetida Hing Spices Ash Gourd Petha Vegetable Banana Kela Fruit Basil Tulsi Herb Bay leaf Tejpan Herb Bengal gram Chana Dal Bengal gram leaves Chaney ki bhaji (Hummus) Vegetable Bhang Hemp essence Bhat Soyabean Bitter gourd Karela Vegetable Black pepper Kali mirch Spices Black salt Kala namak Masala Butter Makhan Prepareditem Butter Milk Chaas Prepared item Cabbage Patha gobi Vegetable Capsicum Bell Pepper Simla Mirch Vegetable Cardomom Ilaichi S pices Caraway Seeds Shajeer or Black Cumin Seeds Spices Carrot Gajar V egetable Cashewnut Kaju D ry Fruit Catechu Katha Bark ground Cauliflower Phool gobi Vegetable Chacundar Beetroot Chakothra Pomelo fruit Chalguza Filbertnut N uts Chauli, havleri Amaranth Vegetable Chichonda Snakegourd Chilli Mirchi V egetable Chironji, piyala, Charoli Cudpahnut Nuts Chota akhrot Chestnut Nuts Chukka bhaji Red sorrel Vegetable Cinnamon Dalchini Spices Citric acid Nimboo sat Acid Clarified butter Ghee Prepared item Clove Lavang Spices Cluster Beans Gowaar Phali Vegetable Coconut Narial Vegetable Coconut Oil Khopre /Narial Ka Tel Oil Colocasia Arbi V egetable Coriander Cilantro Dhania Vegetable Corn cobs Bhutta Vegetable Corn kernel Makai Vegetable Cottage cheese Paneer Prepared ingredient Cowpea Lobia Vegetable Cream Malai F at Cucumber Kakdi V egetable Cumin seed Jeera Seeds Curd Dahi P repared item Currants Kishmish D ry Fruit Curry leaves Kadipatha Herb Dillweed Suvabhaji V egetable Dates Khajoor D ry Fruit Dried Mango powder Amchoor Masala Dried whole milk Milk Thickened Khoya, mawa Prepared Ingredient Dry fenugreek leaves Kasoori methi Herb Erandi Castor oil Fenugreek seeds Methi Seeds Flaked, Beaten rice Poha, Chiwda Rice Family Flour Atta Flour French Beans Flas Beans Vegetable Ganna, Ooos Sugarcane Stem Garlic Lasan Spices Ghia turai Calabash cucumber Gherkins Kunthroo, Goli, Tondli Vegetable Ginger Soonth, Adrak Spices Gram dal Chana dal Dal Gram flour Besan Flour Grapes Angoor Fruit Green cardomom Chhoti ilaichi Spices Green chilli Hari mirch Vegetable Groundnuts Moongfali Fruits Groundnut Oil Singdana / Kalekai Tel Oil Gulsuchal Salad leaves, endives Vegetable Guavas Amrood Fruit Harfi Star gooseberry Halim Gardencress Vegetable Horse gram Kulthi Grams and dals Honey Shahad Liquid Horsebean Urad Cereal Jaee Oats cereal Jackfruit Kathal Fruit Jaggery, Molasses Gud Basic Kitchen Item Jamoon jambul fruit fruit Jao Barley millet Jowar Sorghum millet Kali rai Sinapis spice Kali seim ki Phalli Broad Beans Kangani Italian millet millet Kapas Cottonseed o il Kardi,kusumbar Safflower oil Kasmisaag Lettuce Vegetable Kewra Screwpine e ssence Khatti bhaji Indian sorrel Vegetable Kidney beans Rajma Seeds Leafy greens Patha bhaji Vegetable Yellow Lentil Masoor dal Dal Lime or Lemon Limbu Vegetable Lichee Fruit, litchie fruit Long grain rice Basmati Rice Family Lotus Stem Kamal Kakadior, Bhien Vegetable Pearl Millet Bajri Bajra Food grains Masoor bhaji Khesari leaves Vegetable Makhanphal Avocado, butterfruit vegetable Mace Javitri M asala Mango Aam Fruit Margosa Neem Herb Mashmelon Kharbooja F ruit Milk Doodh L iquid Mint Pudina H erb Moong Green gram pulses Mustard seeds Rai Seeds Musli Asparagus V egetable Muranka bhaji Drumstick leaves Vegetable Mustard Oil Sarson Ka Tel Oil Mushrooms Goochi V egetable Muskmelon Cantalope Kharbooja Fruit Myrtle Henna H erb Nilgiri Eucalyptus o il Nigella/Onion seeds Kalonji Seeds Nutmeg Jaiphal Seeds Oil Tel Fat Olive Oil Zetoon Ka Tel Oil Olives Zetoon / Zaitoon Vegetable Onion Kanda Pyaaz Vegetable Buy Online Orange Santra Fruit Oregano, Thyme/ Carom seeds Ajwain Spices Buy Online Paniphal, Tikora Arrowroot Root Paan Betel leaves, piper betel Leaf Parsley Ajmoda, ajmud Spices Papaya Papeeta Fruit Peas Matar Vegetable Pear Nashpati Fruit Pickle Achaar Prepared Ingredient Buy Online Pineapple Ananas Fruit Pistachio pista Dry Fruit Buy Online Plain flour Flour Refines Maida Flour Buy Online Plum Aloobukara Fruit Pomegranate Anar Fruit Pomegranate seeds Anardhana Seeds Poppy Seeds Khuskhus Seeds Buy Online Potato Aloo Vegetable Buy Online Pumpkin Kadhu Vegetable Pulse Toordal Dal Buy Online Puffed Rice Mumurae Rice Family Buy Online Ragi, nachni Elucine coracana millet Radish Mooli Vegetable Raisins Kishmish Dry Fruits Buy Online Red chilli Lal mirch Spices Buy Online Rice Chawal Rice Family Buy Online Rock salt Sinda namak Prepared Ingredient Rose Gulab Flower Buy Online Rose Water Gulab Jal Essence Buy Online Star anise Dagad Phool Spice Lotus seeds Spring onions Kandey Ke Patthey Vegetable Saffron Kesar Spices Buy Online Sabja Canna edulus Seeds Shehtooth Mulberry fruit Surajmukhi Sunflower oil Salt Namak Basic Kitchen Item Screwpine Kewra Essence Semolina Sooji, Rava Flour Buy Online Sesame Til Seeds Buy Online Silver Leaves Varak Herb Spinach Palak Vegetable Buy Online Split green gram Moong dal Dal Buy Online Split horse bean Urad dal Dal Buy Online Sugar Cheeni Basic Kitchen Item Sweet potato Shakarkand Vegetable Talwarphalli Swordbeans Tapioca Simla Aloo Vegetable Tamarind Imli Basic Kitchen Item Thymol Ajwain ke phool spice Turmeric Haldi Spices Vaal Fieldbean pulses Vegetable oil Vanaspati Fat Vegetables Sabji Vegetable Vermicelli Seviyan Prepared Ingredient Buy Online Vinegar Sirka Liquid Walnut Akrot Dry Fruit Watermelon Tarbooj, Kalingad Fruit Water Chestnuts Shingara Vegetable White goose-foot Bathua Vegetable Whole Wheat flour Gehu atta Flour Buy Online Yam Suran Vegetable Yeast Khameer Prepared Ingredient Zizyphus Ber, bor fruit \6 GUIDE TO INDIAN FOOD Although there is considerable regional variation in Indian cuisine, the day-to-day diet of most Indians lacks variety. Depending on income, two or three meals generally are consumed. The bulk of almost all meals is whatever the regional staple might be: rice throughout most of the east and south, flat wheat bread (chapati) in the north and northwest, or bread made from pearl millet (bajra) in Maharashtra. This is usually supplemented with the puree of a legume (called dal), a few vegetables, and, for those who can afford it, a small bowl of yogurt. Chilies and other spices add zest to this simple fare. For most Indians, meat is a rarity, except on festive occasions; fish, fresh milk, and fruits and vegetables, however, are more widely consumed, subject to regional and seasonal availability. In general, tea is the preferred beverage in northern and eastern India, while coffee is more common in the south. The unforgettable aroma of India is not just the heavy scent of jasmin and roses on the warm air. It is also the fragrance of spices so important to Indian cooking - especially to preparing curry. The world "curry" is an English derivative of "kari", meaning soice sauce, but curry does nit, in India, come as a powder. It is the subtle and delicate blending of spices such as turmeric, cardamon, ginger, coriander, nutmeg and poppy seed. Like an artist's palette of oil paints, the Indian cook has some twentyfive spices (freshly ground as required) with which to mix the recognised combinations or "marsalas". Many of these spices are also noted for their medicinal properties. They, like the basic ingredient, vary from region to region. Although not all Hindus are vegetarians, you will probably eat more vegetable dishes than is common in Europe, particularly in South India. Indian vegetables are cheap, varied and plentiful - and superbly cooked. Broadly speaking, meat dishes are more common in the north, notably, Rogan Josh (curried lamb), Gushtaba (spicey meat balls in voghurt), and the delicious Biriyani (chicken or lamb in orange flavoured rice, sprinkled with sugar and rode water). Mughlai cuisine is rich, creamly, deliciously spiced and liberally sprinkled with nuts and saffron. The ever popular Tandoori cooking (chicken, meat or fish marinated in herbs and baked in a clay oven) and kebabs are also northern cuisine. In the south, curries are mainly vegetable and inclined to be more hot. Specialities to look out for are Bhujia (vegetable curry), Dosa, Idli and Samba (rice pancakes, dumplings with pickles and vegetable and lentil curry), and Raitas (yoghurt with grated cucumber and mint). Coconut is a major ingredient of South Indian cooking. On the West coast there is a wide choice of fish and shellfish; Bombay duck (curried or fried bomnloe fish) and pomfret (Indian salmon) are just two. Another speciality is the Pharsi Dhan Sak (lamb or chicken cooked with curried lentils) and Vinaloo vinegar marinade. Fish is also a feature of Bengali cooking as in Dahi Maach (curried fish in yoghurt flavoured with turmeric and ginger) and Mailai (curried prawn with coconut). One regional distinction is that whereas in the south rice is the staple food, in the north this is supplemented and sometimes substituted by a wide range of flat breads, such as Pooris, Chappatis and Nan. Common throughout Inda is Dhal (crushed lentil soup with various additional vegetables), and Dhai, the curd or yoghurt which accompanies the curry. Besides being tasty, it is a good "cooler"; more effective than liquids when things get too hot. Sweets are principally milk based puddings, pastries and pancakes. Available throughout India is Kulfi, the Indian ice cream, Rasgullas (cream cheese balls flavoured with rose water), Gulab Jamuns (flour, yoghurt and ground almonds), and Jalebi (pancakes in syrup). Besides a splendid choice of sweets and sweetmeats, there is an abundance of fruit, both tropical - mangoes, pomegranates and melons and temperate - apricots, apples and strawberries. Western confectionery is available in major centres. It is common to finish the meal by chewing Pan as a digestive. Pan is a betel leaf in which are wrapped spices such as aniseed and cardamon. Another custom is to eat with your fingers - but remember - only of the right hand ...Besides the main dishes, there are also countless irresistable snacks available on every street corner, such as samosa, fritters, dosa and vada. For the more conservative visitor, western cooking can always be found. Indeed, the best styles of cooking from throughout the world can be experienced in the major centres in India.Tea is India's favourite drink and many of the varieties are famous the world over. It will often come ready brewed with milk and sugar unless "tray tea" is specified. Coffee is increasingly popular. Nimbu Pani (lemon drink), Lassi (iced buttermilk) and coconut milk straight from the nut are cool and refreshing. Soft drinks (usually sweet) and bottled water are widely available, as are Western alcoholic drinks. Indian beer and gin are comparable with the world's best, and are not expensive. Note that Liquor Permits are required in Tamil Nadu and Gujarat.The variety of Indian cooking is immense, it is colourful and aromatic, it can be fiery or not as desired and it is inexpensive even at the top class hotels. No wonder then that it is now the third most popular cuisine in the world - nor will it be any more surprising when it becomes the first. The food available in India is as diverse as its culture, its racial structure, its geography and its climate. The essence of good Indian cooking revolves around the appropriate use of aromatic spices. The skill lies in the subtle blending of a variety of spices to enhance rather than overwhelm the basic flavor of a particular dish. These spices are also used as appetisers and digestives. Besides spices, the other main ingredients of Indian cooking and Indian meals are milk products like ghee (used as a cooking medium) and curd or dahi. Lentils or dals are also common across the country and regional preferences and availability determine the actual use in a particular area. Vegetables naturally differ across regions and with seasons. The style of cooking vegetables is dependent upon the main dish or cereal with which they are served. Whereas the Sarson ka saag (made with mustard leaves) is a perfect complement for the Makke ki Roti (maize bread) eaten in Punjab, the sambhar (lentil) and rice of Tamil Nadu taste best eaten with deep-fried vegetables. Although a number of religions exist in India, the two cultures that have influenced Indian cooking and food habits are the Hindu and the Muslim traditions. Each new wave of settlers brought with them their own culinary practices. However, over time they adopted a lot of specialties and cooking methods from the Indian cuisine and blended the two to perfection. The Portuguese, the Persians and the British made important contributions to the Indian culinary scene. It was the British who started the commercial cultivation of tea in India. The Hindu vegetarian tradition is widespread in India, although many Hindus eat meat now. The Muslim tradition is most evident in the cooking of meats. Mughlai food, kababs, rich Kormas (curries) and nargisi koftas (meat-balls), the biryani (a layered rice and meat preparation), rogan josh, and preparations from the clay oven or tandoor like tandoori rotis and tandoori chicken are all important contributions made by the Muslim settlers in India. A typical North-Indian meal would consist of chapatis or rotis (unleavened bread baked on a griddle) or parathas (unleavened bread fried on a griddle), rice and an assortment of accessories like dals, fried vegetables, curries, curd, chutney, and pickles. For dessert one could choose from the wide array of sweetmeats from Bengal like rasagulla, sandesh, rasamalai and gulab-jamuns. North Indian desserts are very similar in taste as they are derived from a milk pudding or rice base and are usually soaked in syrup. Kheer a form of rice pudding, shahi tukra or bread pudding and kulfi, a nutty ice-cream are other common northern desserts. South Indian food is largely non-greasy, roasted and steamed. Rice is the staple diet and forms the basis of every meal. It is usually served with sambhar, rasam (a thin soup), dry and curried vegetables and a curd preparation called pachadi. Coconut is an important ingredient in all South Indian food. The South Indian dosa (rice pancakes), idli (steamed rice cakes) and vada, which is made of fermented rice and dal, are now popular throughout the country. The popular dishes from Kerala are appams (a rice pancake) and thick stews. Desserts from the south include the Mysore pak and the creamy payasum. A meal is rounded off with the after-dinner paan or betel leaf which holds an assortment of digestive spices like aniseed, cloves, arecanut, and cardamom. FOOD IN INDIA Food, its value, its joys and its preparation, has considerable mention in the Hindu sacred books, the Vedas, the Upanishads and the Shastras.Stringent rules concerning food, its preparation and eating, especially in regard to hygiene, were laid down. So many generations of Hindus have followed these tenets that they have become part of the Hindu religion. The vast majority of Indians are vegetarian, but food habits change from caste to caste and province to province. Although there are four main castes, there are some three thousand subcastes and almost every Hindu has his own idea of what constitutes vegetarianism. In addition to the accepted refusal of meatand poultry, some add eggs to the list, for there is life in embryo. Many vegetarians do not eat cheese because of its rennet basis. Besides, religious and caste restrictions, the weather, geography and the impact of foreigners too have affected the eating habits of the Indians.Where the sun and the climate together produces an abundance there is a relaxation of the rules to enable the Indians to avail themselves of this bounty.For example, fish is eaten by theBengalis and the Brahmins along the Malabar Coast, suggesting commonsense rather than religious tutelage. In the south where the soil is not so fertile and the rainfall spasmodic there is less variety of produce than in Punjab. So the southern Indians were, generally speaking, orthodox and have remained that way. It is hot all the year round so that it is no great privation to abstain from meat-eating - even Westerners and Indian Christians find it too hot to eat meat all the time. In the north, the home of the sturdy Punjabi, the weather varies from a dry scorching heat to intense cold but favoured with winter rains. Here the food is much heavier and richer. Here, too, the Muslims have penetrated, bringing with them their meat-eating habits, their rice dishes of pilaus and biryani, stuffed sheep and goats, so that today all this is thepart of the Punjabi diet. Because also the quality of food in this northern region is good, much less use is made of chilies and spices. In principle, food is divided into two main groups:pukka (good) which means certain foods cooked in pure ghee (clarified butter) or in curd. The second category is kutcha or `poor' food, which means the meat of most animals and the birds of the jungle. The pucca category is sub-divided into Satawik and Rajsik foods. The former is intended for the Brahmans and allied castes and classified as condusive to health and spirituality. It includes parched grains, fruit and most vegetables but not onions, garlic or mushrooms and several of the root vegetables. Rajasik food is much more liberal and allows the eating of almost everything except beef and garlic. This exclusion of garlic is odd but the earnest compilers of the Sastras considered that this vegetable, beloved of the Latins and Asians alike, roused men's passions and baser instincts. Over the centuries this edict has beenforgotten for there is a lot of garlic in Indian cooking today. But the Rajasik diet was wise and well conceived. It was designed for the temporal leaders of the people, the warriors and princes (Kshatriyas) whose requirements were aimed at manhood, strength and power. Their diet included meat, wild boar, etc. Cooking is an ancient art and many of the Indian dishes require skill and considerable patience to prepare. For many official dishes cooks must spend all day cutting up vegetables, simmering milk or pounding rice and spices on a square stone slab or sitting patiently over a fire for hours on end. On the other hand there are some simple dishes for daily eating. There are many varieties of kabab,some fried food, some grilled, some stuffed with nuts and others with cream. Equally popular the quoormas, a sort of heavily spiced dry ragout. In Hyderabad there is superb Muslim cooking, all of which adds to the richness of Indian food. A Northern dish which almost all foreigners favour is tandoori chicken which takes its name from the oven in which it is cooked. The plucked chicken is rubbed in curd and spices, left for several hours then roasted inside the tandur, a primitive clay oven with a wood fire burning fiercely beneath. Eating from a thali, a round tray, has not changed over the centuries, although the gold and silver has been replaced by cheaper metals. Sometimes the thali is placed on a low table and one sits cross-legged on the ground in front of it, shoes removed and feet tucked away. In the south both the thali and the flat shining green banana leaf takes place of the western plate. The latter is thrown away afterwards thus saving washing up. Around the inside rim of the thali are arranged small bowls, each filled with a different sort of spiced, vegetarian food. One bowl holds a thin curry sauce, another thick curd, yet another a sweet concoction. In the centre of the thali is placed a heap of rice, a number of Indian pickles and chutneys, often a banana and some dried chillies. Because Indians prefer to eat with their fingers they always wash their hands immediately before and after eating. Eating with a fork and a knife is unsuited to Indian food and there are piping hot puris (fritters) or chapatis to scoop up the more liquid food. At the end of most Indian meals pan is served. Pan consists of a dark green leaf smeared with a lime or crushed rose petal paste wrapped around crushed betel nut and a variety of spices such as cloves, aniseed and cardamom, as well as grated coconut. For special occassions a coating of silver leaf is added. When neither the thali nor the banana leaf is used then eating is basically Western style.There will be a platter of rice with a number of curries, chutneys, curd and pickle. In Punjab, cooking is done mostly in ghee or butter. The Punjabi meal usually consists of meat dishes and curries which include a cheese called panir. There are splendid pilaus garnished with fried onions, sliced hard boiled eggs and toasted nuts and finally topped with shimmering gold or silver leaf - for festive occassions also scattered with rose petals. Another Punjabi speciality is khoya, a cream so thick that it can be grated. Justly renowned are Punjabi stuffed parathas, and their roasts skewered dishes and finest lentils. The Bengali food includes a variety of fish dishes - one of the most successful fish dishes in Bengal is the hilsa, fish delicately spiced and wrapped in pumpkin leaves for cooking. To achieve variety the Bengali cook goes to the flowers and unusual fruits, and one of their specialities is a curry of bamboo shoots. In the South Indian food, almost every dish contains something from the coconut palm. The food is generally cooked in coconut oil. A South Indian mostly uses coconut grated and in chunks, drinks vast quantities of neera or coconut water and considers no religious ceremony complete without a piece of fresh coconut as an offering. Cooking in the south is almost entirely vegetarian, with a meal starting and ending with rice. In Bombay the food more often seems to be a happy combination of east and west. Both rice and wheat are included in their diet and although most Maharashtrians and Gujaratis are vegetarians there are many who include meat, eggs and fish in their diet.Fish are plentiful along the coastline. Bombay prawn curry is something to remember, so is their pomfret. Further down the coast is a Portuguese influence with sweet-sour dishes like vindaloo, sophisticated curries like duck bafad and mild ones such as the egg or chicken moolie. Most of the spices used in Indian cooking were chosen originally for their medicinal qualities for their medicinal qualities rather than any thought for flavour. Many of them such as cloves and cardamoms are very antiseptic, others like ginger, are carminative and good for the digestion. Turmeric, is splendid against skin diseases, bruises and leach bites; neem leaves, are used to guard against smallpox, while singers chew tamarind leaves to sweeten their voices. The connoisseur of curries knows that in each curry go different spices, and few cooks use the same quantity or variety as another. Therefore, no two curries taste the same. So, after all the historical and ritual side of Indian cooking, the differences between north and south, east and west, the vegetarian and non-vegetarian, it is the very complexities of the rules and regional differences which make Indian food so fascinating. Those who approach Indian food without prejudice will find it delightful and unusual, and worthy of the adage: `There are three great kitchens of the world, the French, the Chinese and the Indian. Indian Cuisine Spices are a distinctive feature of the cooking of India and Indonesia. In India, every good cook prepares a curry--a mixture of such fragrant powdered spices as cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, cumin, nutmeg, and turmeric. The spice blend is kept in a jar in the kitchen and is used to season all sorts of foods. The Hindus of India have developed what is perhaps the world's greatest vegetarian cuisine. They use cereals, pulses (lentils, peas, and beans), and rice with great imagination to produce a widely varied but generally meatless cuisine. Indian cooks prepare delicious chutneys, highly seasoned vegetables and fruits used as side dishes that must be fresh to be fully appreciated. They also make little delicacies such as idlis, cakes of rice and lentils that are cooked by steaming; pakoras, vegetables fried in chickpea batter; and jalebis, pretzel-like tidbits made by soaking a deep-fried batter of wheat and chickpea flour in a sweet syrup. Raytas, yogurt with fruits or vegetables, are another favourite. Other specialties include biryani, a family of complicated rice dishes cooked with meats or shrimp; samosa, a flaky, stuffed, deep-fried pastry; korma, lamb curry made with a thick sauce using crushed nuts and yogurt; masala, the dry or wet base for curry; and a great variety of breads and hot wafers, including naan, pappadam, parathas, and chapatis. In southern India and especially in the historical region of Telingana, or Andhra, the food is seasoned with fresh chili peppers and can be fiery hot. Lamb is the most important meat served in northern India. It is prepared in hundreds of different ways as kabobs, curries, roasts, and in rice dishes. In pre-independence days the Mughal cuisine there ranked among the most lavish in the world. The Mughal cuisine developed during the Muslim empire of the great Mughal kingdom. It is based, mostly because of religious and geographic limitations, on lamb. The preparations are mostly roasted, barbecued dishes, also kabobs and the so-called dry curries, versus the stew-type cooking of the south. In India festivals and holidays are marked by feasting and revelry. Among the more prominent festivals are Onam, a rice harvest celebration; Diwali, which marks the beginning of the Hindu New Year; Dashera, which marks the triumph of the good prince Rama over evil; and Holi, the festival of lights, which honours Lord Krishna, an incarnation of the god Vishnu. Feasting and the offering of food to gods and friends are a highlight of these festivals. India's people are Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, Sikh, Moslem, Zoroastrian, and Jewish. The gulfs between her classes are substantial. Eating prohibitions determining the sacred and the profane are taken very seriously. Hindus and Sikhs won't eat the sacred cow. Strictly vegetarian Brahmins and Jains refuse even the spices associated with the preparation of meat, such as onions and garlic. The Parsees were originally Persian Zoroastrians who gave up beef as a gesture of thanks to the Hindu ruler who gave them asylum around Calcutta and Bombay in the middle of the 7th century. The Turkish Moghuls of Delhi and Punjab, being Muslim, refuse pork, but are great experts in the preparation of meats. Likewise, the Jews of Calcutta, who claim descendants from among the Babylonian diaspora over two millennia past, are prohibited from eating pork. Now, where to begin? With spices, of course. Indian cooks, one and all, are masters of the spice. It is this knowledge, and its varied and subtle employment that unites Indian cooking into a cuisine. Where so much of the country is vegetarian, and so much poor, flavoring has evolved to a high art. What any average Indian cook can do with a bowl of boiled and mashed lentils will stagger the imagination. Each of the many spices in the Indian kitchen is known and understood intimately. Each has a function: some spices tenderize, others add heat, some color, others cool, some thicken, others bring a necessary tartness, others curb flatulence. Like colors on a palette they are combined for beauty and harmony and, the further south you go, for a heat that would take paint off a Buick. There is a long short-list of spices that go into Indian recipes: coriander , cumin, turmeric, red pepper, nutmeg, mustard, saffron, cinnamon, cardamom, ginger powder, amchoor (green mango powder), paprika, mace. Other flavors are garlic, onion, and ginger, tamarind, pomegra- nate, and chile. Don't think that because the chile is listed last, it is so in the spice mix. Indian food, especially in the tropical south, can be explosively hot. The chile's heat helps cool the body, preserve the food, and some say it enhances the other flavors. Curry seems to be a name granted by the British to any food that was spicy in an Indian-sort-of-way. It probably is a corruption of kari, which names both a leaf used in cooking and a particular method of cooking in the south. Curry powders sold outside of India tend to combine turmeric, cumin, coriander, red pepper, fenugreek, mustard seed, cinnamon, and cloves, all roasted dry and ground together. More "authentic" Indian spice blends (masala) are garam masala (cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, and black pepper), mughal garam masala, sambaar podi, tandoori masala, vendaloo masala. Each is associated with various modes of cooking or regions, seasons, and foods. Some are hot, others cool. Some are wet, that is, they are in paste form, others are dry. The Indian meal is made up of a main course, a side dish, and a central starch, which is the main source of calories. In the north, the starch is bread such as chapati (a flat griddle bread) or nan (a leavened bread cooked in a tandoor -- a brick oven ); in the south, it is a huge mound of basmati rice. Relishes, wafers, chutneys, and other "tongue-touchers" are served in small bowls around the main dishes. Traditionally, food is eaten by hand, though forks and spoons are also popular. Northern dishes tend to be drier, as soupy sauces are difficult to eat with bread, while southern recipes have sauces that soak into the rice. If there is a meat, it will be the main course. As so many cannot eat beef, the most common meats are lamb, goat and seafood. Dals - puries of lentils, chickpeas, mung beans, or kidney beans - can be of varying consistencies and accompany nearly every meal. Dal is served in a small bowl alongside the meal, and is accompanied by a spoon if it is especially liquid. Appetizers are a very modern addition to the meal, and are not widely served, but a sweet rice-basedpudding may end a traditional meal. Savory and sweet (really sweet) snacks are extremely popular but are unattached to mealtimes. Indians don't normally drink alcohol with their food; ice water or a yogurt or fruit drink are common. Food Culture and History - India's cuisine is as rich and diverse as her people. The spectrum of Indian cuisine can be said to lie between two dietary extremes: vegetari- anism and meat-eating. India is well-known for its tradition of vegetarianism which has a history spanning more than two millenia. However, this was not always the case. During the Vedic period (1500-500 BC), the priestly castes sacrificed animals to appease and gain boons from the gods, after which the flesh was consumed. But the trend of meat-eating shifted with the times. The anti-meat eating sentiment was already felt at the end of the Vedic period. This period also saw the rise of Budd- hism and Jainism, the founders of which abhorred the practice of sacrificing and eating the flesh of animals, preaching the principle of ahimsa or "non-harming". To win back these converts into their fold, the Hindu priests advocated against killing, their public appeal beginning around the Ist century BC. They embraced ahimsa and followed a vegetarian diet, regarding it as superior to the Brahminical ideas of sacrifice. Advocating this new doctrine, however, did not meet with great opposition from meat lovers as there had already been a religious attitude towards animals since Vedic times. In fact, only the meat of a sacrificed animal was considered food. Among the animals that were sacrificed in Vedic times was the cow, which is virtually deified in the Hinduism of today. In the Atharvaveda, beef-eating was prohibited as it was likened to committing a sin against one's ances- tors. But at the beginning of the Epic period (c.l000- 800 BC), this meat was said to be common food that added vigour not only to the body but also to the mind. The tables were turned in the 5th century BC in favour of the cow. When it was discovered at this time that the cattle population was decreasing at an alarming rate, people began to realise that a live cow was a greater asset than its carcass. Since ghee (clarified butter), milk and yoghurt were vital for temple rituals, this animal began to enjoy a greater prominence and thus, its flesh became a prohibited meat. This was the start of the taboo of eating beef which has become a long-standing feature in Hinduism. But vegetarianism goes one step further than the avoidance of beef. Throughout India's history, there are occurrences of vegetarianism being practised. For example, there is evidence that in 800 BC, people began to eat more vegetables, pulses, cereals and fruit, as a consequence of the growing distaste for meat. Even the priestly castes of some areas that took to vegetarianism began to offer vegetarian foods to the gods. That kings such as Ashoka (c. 322-183 13C) forbade the killing of animals further contributed to the development of vegetarianism. But the adherence to vegetarianism or a sattvik diet was not restricted to the Brahmins. From northern India, orthodox Brahminical values and hence vegetarianism made its way beyond the Vindhya Mountains establishing itself in the south. Here, it gained immense popularity even amongst the non-Brahmins who deemed it as leading a meritorious lifestyle. The Brahmins continued their vegetarian fare for different reasons, excepting garlic and onions which were thought to arouse passions. A vegetarian diet for them meant that their minds would be pure to conduct the necessary rituals. However not all Brahmins are vegetarians. A classic example would be the Kashmiri Brahminss who continue to pride themselves on their mutton dishes. There are also the Brahmins of Bengal who eat fish. Thus vegie-ism became more linked with the cuisines of south India rather than the north. This general demarcation in food patterns persists in present-day India and can be explained. As India has been the crossroads of many peoples and cultures over centuries, foreign elements have invariably seeped into its culinary culture, sometin1es displacing or modifying local cuisines. One such foreign influence was the Muslims from western Asia whose culture swept across much of northern India in the 16th century. The invasion brought changes in many aspects of everyday life in India, including the palates of the Indian people which became tempered by a foreign taste. Muslim infiltration into the subcontinent caused a gastronomic revolution. In fact, it created a marriage between the non-vegetarian fare of the Middle East and the rich gravies that were indigenous to India, creating what is known as Mughlai cuisine. Spices were added to cream and butter, rice was cooked with meat, and dishes were garnished with almonds, pistachios, cashews and raisins. India was also introduced to kebabs and pilafs (or pulaos). There was a variety of sweetmeats; the idea of ending the meal with a dessert being of Arabic origin. Most of these sweets were made of almonds, rice, wheat flour or coconut, sweetened with sugar and scented with rose-water. The Mughal Emperors were of course great patrons of this style of cooking. Lavish dishes were prepared especially during the reigns of Jahangir (1605-27) and Shah Jahan (1627-58). In miniature paintings of this period it can be seen that the vessels used in court banquets included ones of jade, silver and Chinese porcelain. Relations between Muslims and Hindus were cordial especially during the early Mughal period. Converts to Islam changed their diet but the majority of the Hindus tended to be vegetarian excepting the Kshatriya castes and royal families who relished meat. Besides being vegetarian, the Hindus also prepared their foods differently. While the Muslims enjoyed naans cooked in an oven and chapatis prepared on griddles, the breads of the Hindus consisted of puris (made from wholewheat flour and oil) and bhaturas (made from white flour, yeast and oil). The latter were deep-fried in a pot resembling a wok called the karhai. Ideally such breads were deep-fried in ghee as it was a pucca or pure food. But ghee was only used by the rich; the poor had to be content with using sesamum or mustard oil. Dhal curry or sambar, was popular and has survived to this day. In the areas where rice was a predominant cereal, pancakes called dhosakas or dosas were made. Styles of eating differed between the Hindus and the Muslims. In contrast to the Muslims, the Hindus usually took their meals individually, a feature that may have developed as a result of rules regulating eating practices across castes. The Muslim stress on brotherhood spilled into the dietary arena as communal eating was the norm. A dastur khan consisting of a fine white calico cloth was spread on the floor, over which was placed the various dishes of the meal. It was customary to eat with the fingers which were washed in a sailabchi before and after eating. But for serving and carving, there were spoons and knives. To end a hearty meal, the Muslims, like their Hindu countrymen, chewed paan or the betel quid. This postprandial habit symbolises hospitality extended by the hosts to the guests. Although the Mughals did not sustain power for long, their food habits have continued to this day. Mughlai cuisine, although emphasising meat, co-exists with vegetarianism. Like all other facets of life, India's culinary tradition is constantly changing in relation to vegetarianism and non-vegetarianism whereby adherence to a specific food habit becomes a powerful symbol of caste, ethnic group and religious orientation. Building a tandoor: http://members.tripod.co.uk/tandoor/index.html \7 dangers in preparing food and BBQs cancer wash hands well before handling food. Beware of using cross contaminated utensils and work areas. Wash dishes and utensils with soap after using them. Cooked food can become contaminated and spoiled if left out in open. Cooking spoiled food will not make them safe. Once food spoils, disease causing bacteria or toxins have multiplied so much that reheating even to 165 degrees won't destroy them The height of the barbecue season is not when anyone wants to hear about the hazards of eating meat with a nicely blackened crust hot off the grill. But scientists have long known that substances created when meat and poultry are cooked at high heat can cause cancer in animals and that there is some evidence that they may have the same effect on humans. While health professionals still recommend cutting back on overall meat consumption, recent research suggests that there are more appealing ways to make grilled meat less hazardous. Some are common-sensical, like eating it rare (though this is not recommended for chicken or hamburger) or medium instead of well done, or cooking it at lower temperatures for shorter periods. But others are more startling, like sprinkling meat with tea powder, or mixing ground meat with cherries, or just marinating meat before cooking. Clearly, scientists are now so aware of the potential risks that they are looking into every corner of the kitchen for solutions. But their research is in its earliest stages, so they are not really sure how or why some of these techniques work. "It's hard for scientists to say we don't know," said Dr. Mark G. Knize, a member of the Biology and Biotechnology Research Program at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif., who is conducting some of the research on the effects of marinades. For whatever reason, though, he and other scientists have found that one of the most promising techniques for meat and poultry is marination. Done even briefly, it reduces the cancer-causing compounds called heterocyclic amines, or HCA's, formed when creatine in muscle meats reacts with amino acids at high temperatures. (Fish is much less a problem than meat or poultry.) But marination does nothing to reduce the level of other carcinogens that arise when fat falls on a fire and causes smoke. Scientists have not yet deconstructed all their marinade ingredients to pinpoint the anti-cancer agents. They suspect that the antioxidants in certain foods like garlic, onions, chives, turmeric, thyme, rosemary and oregano, as well as vitamins C and E, are responsible. In studies last year at the Cancer Research Center of Hawaii in Honolulu, three different sauces were used to marinate steaks overnight. One was a teriyaki sauce, another contained turmeric and garlic powder and the third was a commercial sauce made of honey, high-fructose corn syrup, vinegar, concentrated tomato juice, modified food starch, salt and seasonings. Four-ounce pieces of marinated and unmarinated steak were cooked on a propane gas grill for varying times at varying temperatures. The marinades were not reapplied during cooking. The shorter the cooking time and the lower the heat, the lower the levels of the suspect amines in meats marinated in the teriyaki and turmeric sauces, compared with unmar- inated meat. Steaks marinated in the commercial sauce and cooked similarly had much higher levels of the amines than the other marinated meats; the researchers said this may have been partly because the corn syrup and honey caused the steaks to burn and char faster and more exten- sively. I conducted taste tests on the teriyaki and turmeric sauces. The turmeric marinade adds flavor to tender but otherwise tasteless steak, while the teriyaki makes meat slightly sweet, although the brown sugar it contains causes the meat to burn faster. In a 1997 study at Lawrence Livermore, researchers marinated chicken breasts in a mixture including garlic, salt, citrus juice and olive oil that also contained considerable sugar, and they concluded that the sugar was probably responsible for an increase in one of the amines. Using sweet commercial barbecue sauces may be just the wrong thing. Other researchers are looking into other antidotes. Dr. John Weisburger, director emeritus of the nonprofit American Health Foundation in New York, has done studies indicating that sprinkling tea powder, either green or black, on meat before grilling could help reduce the formation of the amines. He surmises that it might even help to drink very strong tea while eating grilled meat. Tea, of course, is a powerful antioxidant. (Powdered tea is available in specialty and Asian markets.) And then there is the cherry solution, devised in 1999 in Michigan, a big cherry producer. It substitutes ground fresh cherries for 11.5% of the ground beef for hambur- gers. J. Ian Gray, a food scientist at Michigan State Univ in East Lansing who worked on the study, said that there was nothing magical about cherries and that many tree fruits, like plums, would also reduce the amines because they contain similar antioxidants. (I found that adding cherries made hamburger very soft, almost mushy.) He suggested that mixing 40 mg of vit-E from a gelatin capsule into a pound of ground beef might also do the trick. All these findings are still quite preliminary, of course, as is the data linking heterocyclic amines with cancer in humans. Dr Eliz G. Snyderwine, a specialist in chemical carcinogenesis at the National Cancer Inst in Bethesda, Md, said that research on animals certainly supported the notion that the amines "are potential human carcinogens and further studies are needed to determine the human risk," especially for breast, colon and pros- tate cancers. But she added that different individuals might react differently to the amines. Several recent studies have established a connection between human cancer and meat that has been well cooked, as it is usually done on a grill. Dr Rashimi Sinha, a researcher at the National Cancer Inst, said, "We found a twofold risk of breast cancer in women who consumed very-well-done red meat as compared to rare or medium." In another study, at the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health in Baltimore, researchers found that women who regularly ate flame-broiled (charred) meat also had an increased risk of breast cancer. But Sinha cautioned that "these are just two studies, and in epidemiological studies you need more than two small studies to make a definitive statement." "In three to five years," she added, "there will be a lot of studies showing whether the association is real or not. At this point there is no consensus." She said that eating an occasional well-cooked steak is not harmful but that, even though the research is still preliminary, "eating well-cooked meat four times a week from the grill is a little scary." Sinha, Snyderwine and Knize offered other suggestions to reduce exposure to carcinogens from high-heat cooking like grilling. One is to cook chicken with its skin on and then discard the charred skin. With all meat, avoid eating the charred surfaces. Precook meat or chicken in an oven or a microwave oven until it is half done to get rid of some juices that contain the precursors of the carcinogens and to minimize the grilling time. Remove fat from steaks before cooking. (As the fat drips onto a fire or coals it causes flare- ups and smoke, which contain other carcinogens.) Keep flames from lapping meat and charring it. And if possible use the indirect method of grilling, with the heat source off to the side instead of directly beneath the food. And then there is the more-is-better approach: serve a salad of green leafy vegetables with grilled meat. Certain components of many fruits and vegetables may mitigate the effect of the carcinogens. Tea? Turmeric? The Quest for Safer Barbecue By MARIAN BURROS \8 British Irish Fare Favourites among the English are roast beef with Yorkshire pudding, an accompaniment similar in texture to a popover; steak and kidney pie; and veal and ham pie. Fish is served often--plaice (a type of flounder), haddock, mackerel, and smoked kipper--and especially popular are fish-and-chips (deep-fried fish and potatoes). Jellies, jams, marmalade, hot cross buns, crumpets, and scones are served frequently with tea. Traditional fare in the British Isles would include beef tea (a beef extract), whitebait (miniature fish, fried and eaten as snacks), boxty (Irish potato pancakes), brawn (aspic made with pork bits), cockaleekie (Scottish hen and leek soup), bubble and squeak (chopped, fried leftover meat and vegetables), angels on horseback (grilled oysters wrapped in bacon), kedgeree (a casserole of smoked fish, rice, and eggs), shepherd's pie (ground lamb and beef with onion and topped with mashed potatoes), crumpets, banbury cake (a spiced flat cake made with dried fruits), fool (a fruit custard), and syllabub (a dessert made with whipped cream, lemon, wine, and sugar). Scotch egg: Hard boiled egg wrapped in sausage meat and fried. Found in pubs. Food and fantasy, the twin pillars of many an enjoyable dining experience, meet agreeably at the British Bankers' Club, a meticulously reconstructed monument to England's Edwardian past. How did the British get that reputation for understatement, anyway? The flip side of all that cool reserve is the glorious excess of a place like the BBC, with its gaming trophies on the walls, colored glass windows in the doors and on the ceiling, beaten copper table tops, hanging lamps twisted in a variety of designs, and a reproduction of Tutankhamen's sarcophagus (a relic from England's Egyptomania phase) looming over one of the tables in the dining area. By contrast, the food is the same old plodding British fare that many of us regard with a kind of rueful affection. Nothing fancy here, but that's what it means to re-create the Anglo eating experience. The staples of everyday food in Britain--shepherd's pie, bangers and mash, chicken and chestnut pot pie, fish and chips--that comprise the major part of the menu won't light any gastronomic fires, but when well-prepared can be enormously satisfying, especially on a cold, rainy day. From my travels in Europe, I still recall a certain Eng breakfast with gratitude. Eaten at the start of a long, grueling day spent on trains and buses, it carried me through a subsequently foodless 24 hours. The Eng lang, a philosophy of governance and a good breakfast--these are the big three of our Brit heritage as I see it. The British Bankers' Club honors this brilliant tradition with some very good breakfasts of its own. My husband ordered the bangers and eggs with mustard ($8.95), which came with mashed potatoes and vegs. What sets this dish apart from an ordinarily well-prepared breakfast are the pork sausages, aka bangers, large, luscious and juicy. The accompanying horseradish-mustard sauce enlivens the meal greatly for horseradish fans and gives it a distinctive twist. Of course, most of us don't eat mashed potatoes with our breakfasts, but BBC's excellent treatment of this simple item should make us rethink our prejudices. I found my order of shepherd's pie ($7.50) somewhat less successful. On the plus side, it was made with ground sirloin and generously studded with mushrooms. The tomato base was too strong, however, for both the size and balance of this dish. There was a smallish amount of food for the price, and the meaty, rich flavor of the meat was drowned out by the tomato sauce. Even the top hat of mashed potatoes did little to tone down its insistent voice. On the other hand, our order of garlic bread was great, a near-model of what this great side dish should be. The bread was first-rate, chewy and substantial, with a golden, bubbling crust of warm garlicky butter. If this isn't authentic pub food, it could be, with its ability to underline the contrast between the cold, rainy outside and the creature comforts that lie within. But when it comes to fixing what ails you, the ales have it at the BBC. The excellent and extensive list includes Double Diamond, Taunton Blackthorn Cider, Bass, Watney's, and Newcastle's, to give just a hint of the various pleasures that await. Speaking of beverages, someone has to tell the good publicans at the BBC that tea does not come in the form of a tea bag floating on lukewarm water. I am well aware that most people don't frequent the BBC for the tea (not with that great bar, and one of the better-known happy hours to distinguish the Peninsula), but still! Come on, guys, at least make the water hot. It would make an otherwise "authentic" experience that much more pleasurable. Bangers: Various greasy sausages. Friday Feb 10, 1995 Restaurant Review: Some bangers and mash, old chap? The glorious excesses of the British Bankers' Club by Kathleen Grant British Cuisine There is no cuisine in the world about which there are as many jokes as there are about British cooking. Particularly the French are great in making jokes about British cuisine. For example, according to one French comic, hell is a place where the cooks are British. Or did you know why the British serve mint sauce with lamb? According to French food critics, mint must be the only plant not eaten by sheep. Of course, these all are exaggerations. The British bear them with their superior sense of humor. And probably it's their preference for understatements why they haven't cracked similar jokes about French cuisine. It's granted that British cuisine cannot present as wide an array of internationally renowned dishes as does French cuisine. But British cuisine has contributed a lot to the world's steak culture, and there are a number of inventions in British cuisine which are even adopted by the French - as for example the creation of sandwiches. As for steaks, that has in the past been so British that British elite troops were referred to as beefeaters. And the term Porterhouse for a special large kind of steak cuts has nothing to do with porters or luggage carriers but originates from British pubs where a special brand of dark beer, Porter beer, was served, and where a snack consisted of a steak some 2 lbs (about 900 grams) by weight - a single portion for a single man. Talking about snacks: the first association is a sandwich, and the origin is as British as it could be. The name refers to the Earl of Sandwich who lived 1718 to 1792. The British have always been betting and gambling buffs. It's in accordance with their idea of sports and sportsmanship - basically a British philosophy. But the Earl of Sandwich overdid it even by British standards. During his gambling days, taking meals was considered by him as highly unwelcome interruptions. He therefore invented a kind of meal not requiring him to exchange the gambling table for the dinning table: sandwiches. It's a character trait of the British not to be overly proud of their cuisine. This is a state of mind that makes one open to learn. In the case of their foods and drinks, the British did learn quite a bit from the colonies conquered by the beefeaters all around the world. From East Asia (China) they adopted tea (and reexported the habit to India), and from India they adopted curry-style spicing. However, they didn't just copy these food and drink habits but combined them with their own foodstuffs: tea with milk, and curry with pastry (to make curried pies) \9 Korean cuisine Kimchi: Spicy pungent korean condiment of fermented vege- tables usually pickled cabbage or turnips. Found in asian mkts and keeps indefinately in the refrigerator. Kom Tang: Beef Bone Soup. On Myon: Hot Noodle Soup Sin Seon lo: Hot Pot Yukgeh Jang: Shreded Beef/Noodle Soup Bi Bim Bop: One dish meal, Bowl topped with bean sprouts, bluebell root, blanched fern, spinich, fried egg, and chilly sauce on the side. Bulgo Ki: Broiled marinated beef slices. Kalbi Gui: Broiled Rib Steak Kalbi Jjim: Marinated braised/grilled Short Ribs If Americans know anything about Korea, it is that it's bisected by the 38th parallel, it contains the city of Seoul, and that, judging from M*A*S*H, the whole country looks a lot like southern California. But there is more to this beautiful country, and its cuisine is not the least of its charms. Descended from Mongolians, Koreans were governed by imperial dynasties on a feudal system since before the Common Era. And despite persistent troubles with Japan, Korea remained independent until 1910, when it became a Japanese protectorate. As a result, Korean cooking has a distinct national identity that, in its contemporary, form combines dishes and techniques from both peasant diets and royal palace foods. Korea is surrounded on four sides by water -- so, beside rice, seafood is the staple food. The markets overflow with fish, shrimp, crabs, clams, oysters, squid, and octopus, which are eaten dried, pickled, crushed into paste or sauce, stewed, steamed, and grilled. Fish is even stirred into a common breakfast porridge. As in Japan, rice, pickles and fish are the basis of the diet. Food is flavored with various combinations of garlic, ginger, soy sauce, rice vinegar, sesame oil, dried anchovies and one of the many delicious spice pastes (changs or jangs) that Koreans build from a base of fermented soy beans. dejan paste, fermented soybean paste, and gochu Jang, a hot, fermented chile paste are much like Japanese miso. Koreans also eat meat; northerners eat more pork, while southerners prefer beef, and the cooks are unafraid to mix meat, fish, chicken, and pork. Anything goes. Koreans eat a medium-grain "sticky" rice (as distinguished from long-grain and short-grain, or glutinous, varieties) which is also common in Japan. Rice is sometimes mixed with barley or soybeans for flavor and nutrition. Unlike the crops grown in Korea's tropical neighbors to the south, these grains and rices are more amenable to the colder weather, longer days, and shorter growing season of Korea. Both grain and rice are often made into noodles, which play a central role in Korean cooking. Soups, which come in a wondrous variety, are often noodle-based, and buckwheat noodles are distinctively local. Much Korean cooking is done in a clay stewing pot known as a tukbaege. These produce gorgeous casseroles and stews that might combine fish or meat with potatoes (sweet and white), eggplant, seaweed, fiddleheads, or tofu. Street carts and restaurants all over Korea serve up pancakes made on a griddle and fritters made from scallions, oysters, buckwheat, meat, and most anything else. The wok, too, is common. At dinner time, a Korean family sits on the floor around a low table. A meal is built around a mound of plain, steamed rice, which is eaten with thin chopsticks. A grilled or stir-fried main course is supplemented by a soup and perhaps a salad, along with an array of sauces, pickles, and other condiments. Kimchi is the most famous of these. Kimchi is the name given to any one of hundreds of spicy pickles. It is a part of nearly every meal, and its production is an ancient and revered art. The most famous kind of kimchi is made with napa cabbage, but Koreans make it from radishes, fish, squid, cucumber, eggplant, radish greens, fruit -- the list could go on and on. The vegetables or fish is pickled in a mixture that may include, among other things, coarse salt, chile, ginger, garlic, fish sauce, and water. The whole is sealed into an earthenware pot or jar to ferment until ready to eat. Korean food is often extremely spicy, for in the 16th century, Korean cooks were seduced by the chile, which the Portuguese introduced. In many aspects Korean cuisine is a combination of Japanese and Chinese techniques in preparing food. If compared to Japanese cuisine, it relies less on fish and seafood; if compared to Chinese, it relies less on oil. The staple food of course is rice (in Korean: bap). Rice noodles (in Korean: chapche) and bean curd (in Korean: duboo) are common starch substitutes or additions. Korean foods tend to be spicier than either Japanese or Chinese dishes. The hotness comes chiefly from chili. Other common spices are sesame and ginger. Most peculiar about Korean cuisine, however, is its way of pickling instead of cooking vegetables. Pickled vegetables in Korean is kimchi, a term anyone visiting Korean restaurants will learn fast. Literally kimchi is just the word for vegetables; but pickling is so predominant that even for the Koreans, kimchi also means pickled vegetables and they only specify the preparation if it is other than pickled. Koreans are likely to eat pickled vegetables every day of the year, commonly for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. In the cold Korean winter kimchi can last for many months. However, in the tropical Thai climate kimchi should be and is prepared only several days before consumption. The pickling process takes about 12-14 hours. Almost all avail vegs can be pickled but the most common in Korea are cabbage, turnip, and cucumber. The seasoning is chili, garlic, onion, ginger, oyster sauce, fish sauce, and salt. During the fermenting process the vegetables loose much of their natural flavor and instead adopt the flavor of the seasoning. The difference in texture, however, is enhanced. Even as kimchi is most peculiar to Korean cuisine, it's rather the Korean habit of preparing meat as barbecue (in Korean: bulgogi) that has appealed to a large number of gourmets around the world. As the Koreans use chopsticks meats are chopped into bite size before being cooked. And like in Chinese dining, dishes (except rice) are served family style with food placed in the middle of the table where every diner picks a piece of this or that. The Koreans pay particular attention to the arrangement of the food on the plates and the dishes on the table, a similarity to first-class Thai cuisine. Foods are supposed to be placed neatly in concentric circles or parallel linear columns and never in a disorderly fashion. But that's not enough. Also the colors of the foods should alternate in a regular manner. Korean Culture, Food Guide. Korean society is based on the tenets of Confucianism, a system of ethics developed in China around 500 BC. Confucianism is big on devotion and respect - for parents, family, friends and those in positions of authority. Confucius also emphasised justice, peace, education, reform and humanitarianism. Many Koreans attribute their country's remarkable success in recent decades to this attitude. In modern Korean society, Confucianism is most noticeable in relations between people. The Five Relationships prescribe behaviour between ruler and subject, father and son, husband and wife, old and young, and between friends. If you fall outside any of these relationships, you do not, effectively, exist. Many travellers to Korea find the locals rude: they're probably not, chances are they just haven't noticed you. Once you're introduced to someone, you'll fall within the rules for friends and things will start looking up. The South Koreans have turned their hand to just about any artform you can name. Traditional music is similar to that of Japan and China, with an emphasis on strings. The two main forms are stately chongak and folksier minsogak. Among the folk dances are drum dances (sungmu - a hectic, lively dance where the participants wear drums around their necks), mask dances (t'alchum) and solo dances (salpuri - these are usually improvised). The most important work of Korean literature is Samguk Yusa, written in the 12th century by the monk Illyon. Recent literature has had a dissident twist to it, with lots of work being produced by student protesters and Taoist-style ecologists. Koreans also consider their language an artform, and are particularly proud of their script, han'gul. Korea is also strong in the visual arts. Traditional painting has strong Chinese and calligraphic elements, with the brush line being the most important feature. Most traditional sculpture is Buddhist, and includes statues and pagodas - one of the best Buddhas is at Sokkuram. Shamanists do a great line in wood carving. Seoul has several art sculpture parks, where modern sculptors show their works. Seoul is also a showpiece of modern and traditional architecture, including the city gates and the Chosun-era Kyongbokkung Palace. The mainstay of Korean cuisine is kimch'i - grated vegetables mixed with chilli, garlic and ginger and left to ferment. Whatever you order, kimch'i will probably arrive with it. The national dish is pulgogi, or fire beef. Strips of beef are marinated in soy sauce, sesame oil, garlic and chilli and cooked on a hotplate at the table. The most popular street food is pancakes, including p'ajon (green onion pancakes) and pindaeddok (pancake with bean sprouts and pork). Korea's social life revolves around tea and coffee rooms, and while you're here you should definitely try some of the country's famous herbal teas. If you're keen for something harder, keep an eye out for makkoli jip, the Korean version of the local pub. Korean Food Guide For centries,the Koreans have eaten the the products of the sea,the field, and the moutain because of the features of Korean peninsula and a distinguish climate makes Korean food more abundant.Korean foods are very special,exotic,and particular. The most distingushing feature of the Korean food is the spiceness. The basic seasonings-red pepper,green onion,soysauce,bean paste, garlic,ginger,sesame,mustard,vinegar,wine have been combined in various ways to enhance Korean foods. Korean food has various side dish. Favorite side dishes are beanpaste soup, broiled beef,fish,cabbage "kimchi", and steamed vegetables. "the full course Korean meal "is called "Hanjoungshik".It is composed of grilled fish, steamed short ribs, and other meat and vegetable dishes with steamed rice,soup,and"kimchi". "Kimchi" is the best known Korean food. It is vegetable dish, highly seasoned with pepper,garlic,etc. It is served with every kinds of Korean meals and it stimulates the appetite like pickles. Large quantities of "kimchi" are usually made in late fall or early winter for the winter. the making at this time is called "kimchang". "kimchi" contains amounts of good nutritions such as vitamin C,and fiber. Koreans also like meat dishes. "pulgoki" is one of the famous dish to Westerners. "pulgoki" is generally called "Korean barbecue". It is marinated in a sause made with soysauce,garlic,sugar,sesame oil ,and other seasonings, and cooked over a fire in front of table. For the other special food, "kalbi", the short ribs of beef or pork is also good.The recipe is similar to "pulgoki". Soups ,"guk" and "cchigue" in Korean vary in taste and potency. Through the history, the soup culture was developed because of the famine or cold weather.When our ancestors were short of food, they made soup with small amount of vegetables and beef bones. Also the hot soup could play a role in protecting the cold . "maeuntang" is spicy,hot seafood soup that includes white fish,vegetables,boybean curd,redpepper powder. "twoenjang-guk" is a fermented soybean paste soup with baby clams in its broth. For the soups, there are other kinds of soups such as "miyok-guk","kimchi-cchigue". Vegetable dishes are also popular in Korea. We, Korean traditionally eat more vegetables with rice in main meal than meats and the vegetable dishes are various in kinds and tastes. Korean call dishes made with only vegetables "namool".There are two kinds of which are "saengche" , cold and raw "namool" and "saengche" , warm and steamed "namool". Korean table settings are classified into the 3-"chop",the 5-"chop", the 7-"chop",9-"chop",12-"chop" setting according to the number of side dishes served except rice,soup, and"kimchi". The average family takes three or four side dishes. When a family holds celebrations or a party ,a dozon or more delightful dishes are served. Korean food is shared by diners in one table,except rice and soup. All the dishes but hot soups are set at one time on a low table at which diners sit to eat. Chopstick and spoons are used for eating. Different from Japanese and Chinese,Korean use more thin chopstick made by metal,not wood. Generally, the Korean diet uses much grains and vegetables which add fiber and protain from both vegetables (bean curd, beansprouts,bean paste, ,soy sauce) and meats.Korean food has moderate calories and low fat and sweet taste- very healthy and well-balanced. The Korean diet is changing and the Korean food industry is developing as fast as the speed of train. Even though the Western style and fast food diet are more and more famous in Korea in terms of curiosity and conveinence, the basic diet remains. http://www.asiatour.com/x-librar/dining/korean.htm http://seasianfood.about.com/food/seasianfood/gi/dynamic/ offsite.htm?site=http%3A%2F%2Fasiarecipe.com%2Freligion. html Korean Food: Just Waiting to Be Discovered Korean Food: Just Waiting to Be Discovered By FLORENCE FABRICANT N a city that emphatically embraces Thai, Japanese and Indian food, as well as Chinese dishes from a dizzying number of regions, there is still one major Asian cuisine so unknown to many New Yorkers that it's as if it were meant to be a secret. And it almost is. Korean food -- bold, healthful, a treasure for the adventurous -- has almost been reserved for Koreans, whose restaurants have made little effort to reach beyond their traditional clientele. Koreans often ask themselves why Americans haven't discovered their cooking, said Namji Steinmann, the vice president for education of the Asia Society. "The main reason is that the food is not marketed to non-Koreans," she said. And the neighborhoods where it can be found are few. Mostly, they are near the garment district and in Flushing, Queens. But that is slowly changing. Some wonderful dishes are emerging from their cloisters: delicious fried dumplings, crisp potato and scallion pancakes, hearty noodle soups and barbecued beef, sweetly charred along the edges. There is kimchi, the fiery condiment made from salted and fermented vegetables, which enlivens so many dishes. And then there's bibimbop, the colorful, satisfying bowl of rice and vegetables topped with meat or fish. One way to discover them is to go directly to one of the traditional enclaves like Koreatown, the bustling West 30's between Fifth Avenue and Broadway, where meats barbecued on tabletop grills are a mainstay. But unlike Chinese restaurants or even Italian restaurants, which have long accommodated American tastes by serving the soup first, or by accepting the notion that pasta can be a main course, these Korean restaurants serve strictly Korean style: no matter what you order, it's all put on the table at once. And often, with little or no explanation. "They expect you'll eat and scoot out, not linger," Ms. Steinmann said. But as a new, more expansive generation of Korean-Americans comes to the forefront, new ways to experience their cuisine are emerging. Jenny Kwak was 19 six years ago, when she opened Dok Suni's with her mother, Myung Ja Kwak. It was the first of the hip little downtown places, and Ms. Kwak stressed setting and service. "For Americans, Koreatown's food is good, but the atmosphere is not there," she said. "I grew up in the Village, so I wanted a place that was cozier and darker and where people might go on a date." At Dok Suni's and at a new Korean restaurant, Clay, also downtown, the menu is fairly limited and organized to be easily understood by Westerners. The food is served course by course. "We've been criticized by Koreans for how we serve," Ms. Kwak said. When Anita Lo started cooking at Mirezi, a Korean-influenced Asian restaurant in Greenwich Village that was well received but that closed last fall, she said she was not afraid to prepare traditional dishes, but the menu had to be simplified and divided into appetizers, main courses and desserts. "The problem is Americans do not know how to navigate the cuisine, how to put a meal together," said Brad Kelley, the owner of Bop, which opened on the Bowery last year. "Korean food seems foreign until you break it down. Koreatown can be pretty intimidating to Americans, and it's often their first association with Korean food." Bop, which started as a tiny experiment in SoHo before moving to its present site, also has a limited selection of classic and updated dishes, including stir-fried glass noodles and clams steamed with ginger, garlic and sake. Some more challenging dishes served in Koreatown, like beef tripe broiled at the table or cold tofu with Spam and cucumber, have been edited out. Even though the dishes on the menus at most of the Koreatown restaurants come with an English translation, and may be put into categories like "starters," "hot pots" and "chef's specialties," Americans often do not know what to expect, especially when there are 50 or more choices. Korean waiters who do not speak English are unable to communicate well, while Westerners do not want to appear foolish about not understanding the food and how it's meant to be eaten. It's an unfortunate standoff. One exception is Hangawi, a serene Buddhist vegetarian restaurant on East 32d Street, where the servers go out of their way to explain the menu, which is offered entirely in English, and to make suggestions about the food, which is served on fine pottery in a succession of courses. The food, including grilled codonopsis (mountain root with ginger soy sauce) and acorn noodles with fresh vegetables, seems more exotic and refined than what is served in the barbecue places down the block. In general, however, Korean is not a subtle cuisine. It is bold, rustic and often vibrantly spiced. There is great variety, but chili and garlic are the dominant flavors. Herbs like cilantro, common in other Asian cuisines, are rare. The pickles and vinegar add a cleansing note. The delicate artistry of the Japanese table or of some Chinese cuisines, especially Cantonese, is not easy to find in Korean restaurants. But if anything, the robust and forthright seasonings should add to its attraction for Americans. Rocco DiSpirito, who serves Asian-influenced food at Union Pacific in the Flatiron district, called it the "Southern Italian cooking of Asia." "It's rich and garlicky," he said. "Peasant fare. When I want to use an Asian treatment for meat, I look to Korea." He prepares Kobe beef marinated Korean style in soy and ginger. He has also served cod seasoned with kimchi, the ubiquitous pickled cabbage. This pickle, the soul of Korean food, may be familiar to New Yorkers from salad bars. But there are hundreds of versions, made with everything from radishes to cucumbers and fermented fish to fresh pears. It is also used as an ingredient, to season soups, pancakes, dumplings, rice, noodle dishes and stir-fries. Koreans even eat it for breakfast. Aside from spicy kimchi, Korean food has other appeals, including crowd pleasers like jap chae (stir-fried noodles with vegetables and beef) and mandoo gui (fried dumplings). Though there is little or no chicken on Korean menus, the cuisine is long on vegetables. Even the ubiquitous beef barbecue is not eaten plain but is piled with scallions and other vegetable condiments and wrapped in frilly lettuce leaves. In most Korean restaurants, dishes like beef grilled in the center of the table are meant to be shared, a concept that Americans have embraced when they dine on Chinese, Indian and Thai food (to say nothing of desserts served at a table for four in a place like Le Cirque 2000). "Koreans like to sample a lot of tastes, not fill up on one thing," Ms. Kwak of Dok Suni's said. In fact, Namhee Kong, the librarian at the Korean Cultural Service in Manhattan, said that what elevates a Korean restaurant meal from an everyday bowl of soup and dish of rice at home is not the number of courses but the array and elaborateness of the kimchi and other spicy, tangy and soothing little side dishes. There might be three or four accompaniments at home, but 20 or 30 could cover the table for a banquet. That's an extreme, but having given some New Yorkers a brief sampling of Korean food, Ms. Kwak and her mother now have a broader menu in mind. Come summer, they plan to open Do Hwa, a larger, more elaborate restaurant than Dok Suni's, on Carmine Street in Greenwich Village. "I don't want to lose the new things I've done, but I also want to show more of the traditions," Ms. Kwak said. "I think Americans might be ready." Beyond Kimchi: A Glossary of Korean Food HERE are some of the classic dishes of Korean cuisine. Keep in mind that there are no standard transliterations, so spelling varies from menu to menu. BIBIMBOP -- The paella of Korea. A casserole of vegetables and seaweed slivers over sticky rice, often with meat or fish and a fried egg on top. Bibim means mixture and bop means rice, and it's meant to be eaten all mixed together. BULGOGI -- Marinated paper-thin slices of boneless rib-eye steak, which diners barbecue at the table. Forget medium rare; let the meat become darkly seared on the edges for a hint of caramelized sweetness. Then dip it into a soy-based sauce and wrap it in a lettuce leaf with scallion salad. HAE MOOL JUNGOL -- Seafood hot pot fueled with chili and garlic, which is cooked on a table burner. Jungol means hot pot, and hae mool is seafood. Definitely main-course material. JAP CHAE -- A stir-fry of vermicelli, usually with carrots, onions, peppers, spinach and beef in a rich soy-based sauce. An excellent introduction to Korean cuisine. It is often listed as a starter but should be shared. Otherwise, consider it a main dish. Rice and kimchi are essential alongside. KALBI -- Beef short ribs. Thin, cross-cut slices, including the bone, marinated and barbecued at the table. Kalbi tang is a soup with meltingly tender short ribs. KIMCHI -- The ubiquitous condiment of fermented pickles laced with chilies, which sparks the appetite. Any dish with kimchi as part of its name will be aglow with it. MANDOO -- Half-circle dumplings, filled with pork and vegetables, or just vegetables. They are fried (mandoo gui), steamed (mandoo jhim) or served in soup (mandoo gook), and they come with a soy and vinegar dipping sauce. NAJ-JI BOK-GUM -- Octopus stir-fried with vegetables and noodles in a moderately fiery sauce. Bok-gum dishes are stir-fried or sauteed, and served in heaping platters to be eaten with rice. NYENG MYUN -- A refreshing casserole of cold buckwheat vermicelli in a light beef broth with sliced beef and a hard-cooked egg. It is eaten with rice and can take additional seasoning, like mustard powder. Dishes called myun are noodle-based. PA JUN -- A crispy rice-flour pancake often made with seafood and scallions. It may be the size of a dinner plate and enough to feed four as an appetizer. PANCHAN -- Four or more little dishes offered free at the beginning of a meal as nibbles and condiments. In the new-wave places, they are optional, and cost extra. SOON DOO-BOO JI-GAE -- A casserole with tofu, often spicy. Doo-boo means tofu, and ji-gae is a casserole. SUL LONG TANG -- A bland, milky looking broth of long-simmered beef and bones, with rice, noodles and pieces of brisket. A meal in itself. Add scallions and salt and pepper. KIMCHI FRIED RICE Adapted from "The Book of Kimchi" by Chun Ja Lee, Hye Won Park and Kwi Young Kim (Korean Overseas Cultural and Information Service, 1998) Time: 35 minutes 1 cup long-grain rice 1/2 cup cabbage kimchi (see note) 2 tablespoons soybean or peanut oil 4 ounces boneless steak, sliced thin and cut in slivers 1 tablespoon soy sauce 2 teaspoons Asian sesame oil 1 teaspoon toasted sesame seeds 2 scallions, trimmed and minced 1 garlic clove, minced. 1. Place rice in a saucepan, add 1 1/2 cups cold water, bring to a boil, turn heat to very low, cover and cook until water is absorbed and rice is tender, about 17 minutes. Set aside, covered. 2. Place kimchi in several thickness of paper towel, and squeeze out excess juice. Chop it fine. Place 1 teaspoon oil in a wok or skillet over high heat, add kimchi and sear briefly. Remove kimchi from pan. Add 1 tablespoon oil to pan, add beef and sear until it loses redness. Stir in soy sauce, sesame oil, sesame seeds, scallions and garlic. Cook a few seconds; remove mixture from pan. 3. Add remaining oil to pan, stir in rice, fry briefly, then fold in kimchi and beef mixture. Cook a few minutes, stirring; serve. Yield: 2 to 4 servings. Note: Good sources for kimchi include Han Ah Reum, 25 West 32d Street; Sam Bok Oriental Grocery, 127 West 43d Street; Assi Plaza, formerly Korea Town Plaza, 131-01 39th Avenue, Flushing, Queens; Foodmart International, 100 14th Street, Jersey City. SAUTEED VERMICELLI WITH VEGETABLES (JAP CHAE) Adapted from "Dok Suni: Recipes From My Mother's Kitchen" by Jenny Kwak with Liz Fried (St. Martin's Press, 1998) Time: 30 minutes 1 pound glass noodles (Asian vermicelli) 1/2 pound spinach 8 thin scallions, trimmed and cut in 1-inch lengths 2 carrots, peeled and julienned 1 medium onion, julienned 3 ounces button mushrooms, coarsely chopped 1 1/2 tablespoons soy sauce 1 tablespoon Asian sesame oil 2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed 3 tablespoons light brown sugar 1/2 teaspoon sesame seeds. 1. Soak vermicelli in hot water 15 minutes, then coarsely chop or cut with kitchen shears. Bring a pot of water to a boil, and blanch spinach for 30 seconds. Drain, and chop coarsely. 2. Place vermicelli, scallions, carrots, onion and mushrooms in a skillet. Add soy sauce, sesame oil, garlic and brown sugar. Saute over medium heat about 5 minutes. Remove from heat, mix in spinach, sprinkle with sesame seeds and serve. Yield: 2 to 4 servings. SPINACH AND CLAM SOUP (CHO-GAE TANG) Adapted from "Dok Suni: Recipes From My Mother's Kitchen" Time: 30 minutes 18 littleneck clams, scrubbed Salt 1 pound fresh spinach, rinsed, heavy stems removed 1/4 teaspoon Korean dashida beef stock (sold in Korean markets), or beef bouillon cube or powder 1 1/2 tablespoons white miso, preferably Korean 1 bunch scallions, trimmed and cut in 1-inch lengths 1 garlic clove, crushed. 1. Soak littleneck clams in salted water 20 minutes. 2. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Discard heavy stems from spinach and plunge spinach into boiling water for 30 seconds. Drain and rinse in cold water. Chop coarsely. 3. In a 4-quart saucepan, mix beef stock and miso and gradually stir in 6 cups of water, whisking mixture well to dissolve ingredients. Add the clams and bring to a boil. Add spinach, scallions and garlic, and cook just until clams open. Serve at once. Yield: 4 servings. \10 Cuban Food Havana's Not for Eating, but Eating Can Be Fun By MARIAN BURROS NYT August 5, 2001. PSSST! Want to go to my mother's restaurant?" Havana is the only city I have ever visited where going out to dinner sometimes takes on the cloak and dagger trappings of meeting with dissidents in Myanmar. Tourists are often approached on the streets around mealtime by local touts asking, sotto voce, if they would like to try the marvelous food at certain restaurants. These restaurants pay the touts a fee for every customer they bring to the door. Most of the exchanges between tout and tourist are quick, because the ubiquitous police are ready to swoop down. But on our first afternoon in Havana, on a weeklong trip in February, a middle-aged couple who spoke impeccable English started what seemed like a friendly conversation with me and my two traveling companions before suggesting an excellent restaurant. We demurred because we had previous plans and, in our naïveté, suggested they tell us the name of the restaurant so we could try it the next evening. No, they said, because they would make nothing if they did not show up with us. In other countries choosing a restaurant based on information from a stranger on the street doesn't seem like a smart idea. In Cuba your chances of getting a decent meal at one of these often illegal private restaurants are better than what you will find in most state-run establishments, where the service tends to be indifferent and the food often barely edible. But it is best to stick with the private restaurants, called paladares, that are recommended by guidebooks and local guides, rather than those touted by someone on the street. Since 1995 it has been legal to run restaurants in private homes, and they spring up daily. These restaurants are heavily taxed by the state and subject to rigorous restrictions as to size and menu, restrictions that are generally observed in the breach, and they continue to flourish. They are a way for Cubans to earn dollars and make a much better living than they otherwise would. In any case, tourists don't go to Cuba to eat (or to shop). The food supply is limited and there are not a lot of good cooks. Generally simple is best. But prices are low ($15 to $20 for dinner), service is pleasant, and wine — mostly Chilean and Spanish, perfectly drinkable — and beer are always available. If, like everybody else, you go to Cuba for reasons other than the food, even the meals can be fascinating. And eating in paladares provides an opportunity to visit neighborhoods in Havana you would be unlikely to see on a tour and visit homes that would not otherwise be open to tourists. Some of the houses are so large and elaborately furnished that you will marvel at these signs of financial success in an otherwise very poor country. Two of the paladares we tried, La Cocina de Lilliam and La Guarida, are a cut above the rest, and very popular; both require reservations. The food in all these restaurants reflects Spanish and African influences. There are no hot spices; garlic and onions are the seasonings of choice. La Cocina de Lilliam One of the most beautiful garden restaurants in Havana, La Cocina also has some of the best food. Lilliam Domínquez, a former dress designer, is the cook; her husband, Luis Ulloa, a former chemical engineer, is the manager. They have lived in the 65-year-old house since 1987 and have turned the grounds into a lush, romantically lighted garden where diners sit on comfortable wrought-iron chairs. By 9:30, when we arrived, some of the items on the menu were gone — tourists seem to dine early — but we still had a very satisfactory meal. We began with a savory dish of garbanzo beans and ham with red and green peppers and onions. Salads are generally tomatoes and cucumber but here they added beets; the tomatoes were ripe and juicy. A chicken breast with fresh pineapple was moist and flavorful; the ropa vieja, a traditional Cuban dish, literally "old clothes," which we had nowhere else, was well prepared with onions and peppers. Traditionally it is made with beef simmered so long it falls into shreds, but because paladares are not permitted to serve beef (it is reserved for state-run restaurants), this was made with lamb. The snapper, served often in Cuba, was nicely done here; even the mashed potatoes were creamy and moist. White cheese is frequently served with guava paste but here there was an excellent guava purée instead. The chocolate ice cream was another good choice. The house has been lovingly and tastefully furnished and if you ask you will be given a tour. La Guarida - Up three long flights of poorly lighted stairs in an old beauty of a building is the most famous of Havana's paladares. La Guarida was the setting for several scenes in the Oscar-nominated Cuban film "Fresa y Chocolate." Housed in what was once a three-room apartment, the restaurant looks like a set design because it is. Artistically arranged bits and pieces — a stained-glass screen, pictures of movie stars, an enamel sink filled with plants, tables lighted with dripping red candles — together create an ambience that recalls the Havana of the 1920's. The night we were there the diners included members of the Spanish royal family, who had a room to themselves; glamorous young Cuban girls in slip dresses with older men and, at the end of the evening, a group of prosperous Cubans, the men in heavy gold bracelets and chains. Having a look inside this fabulous Old Havana building, with its marble walls and floors, its grandly decorated facade and 30-foot ceilings, all just short of crumbling, tells you a lot about the magnificence of parts of the city pre-Castro and its present state. The scene was endlessly intriguing and even if the food was incidental, there were some things to admire: a delicious mix of eggplant caviar with red pepper coulis, nicely fried squid, pleasant gazpacho, well fried sweet potato slices and a tasty dish of red snapper with white wine sauce. Restaurante Gringo Viejo - Hidden behind an iron gate is a quirky little place called Gringo Viejo, featuring a large movie poster of the Old Gringo himself, Gregory Peck. Don't ask; just eat. Done up in plastic vines, colored lights and vast quantities of stained glass, the place looks like a speakeasy. And Gringo Viejo has good food. We started off with another wonderfully seasoned dish of garbanzos that included chorizo and ham, tomato, green peppers and onions. A fricasseed chicken dish with ham and olive had delightful undertones of red wine. A flavorful, if somewhat salty, piece of smoked ham came in a sauce of almonds, olives, capers and red wine. Moros y cristianos (Moors and Christians), the famous black beans and rice dish of Cuba, was well seasoned with onion and diced green pepper. French fries were hot and crispy. The guava and white cheese was particularly good and the flan had just the right amount of sweetness and creamy texture. Doña Maricela Despite the plates of unripe pink tomatoes that were, on request, replaced with red ones, Doña Maricela has much to recommend it beyond its setting in yet another grand old house with granite floors and high ceilings. There was a good reason that it was more expensively furnished than any of the other private homes in which we had eaten: we were told that it belongs to the widow of a Spanish industrialist. Several Spanish-speaking families were having lunch, although I only got a shrug when I asked if they were Cuban. The freshly fried chicharrones — pork rinds — were very crisp and greaseless. There were two well-done variations on red snapper, one served with shrimp, the other in a sauce of tomatoes, onions and green peppers. The chicken asado, oven baked and tender, tasted the way chicken used to before chickens were raised in factories. The lamb steak was nicely seasoned and tender. The flan, with its deeply caramel flavor, was the best we had and a dish of candied grapefruit with white cheese was a pleasant change from guava. Restaurante Capitolio - The owner of Capitolio, Julio Echevarría, a professor and lawyer, found that feeding some 100 people a day in his home provided a far better living than teaching or practicing law. When we arrived at noon for lunch, young children were scrubbing the tile outside the 1925 house that would be right at home in Southern California, and putting the finishing touches on the morning cleanup. We were served the simplest food: generous portions of nicely grilled lobster tail seasoned with butter, salt and pepper; a crispy smoky pork chop; shrimp in tomato, red pepper and onion sauce and a pickled salad of cabbage, carrots and tomatoes. Sometimes the restaurant serves barbecued lamb and rabbit but neither was on the menu the day we were there. Mr. Echevarría said that he had inherited the house from his grandmother. Clearly his was once a family of means. La Casa - Ignore the misspelled chicken cordon bleau, which is served with ketchup at La Casa. Instead admire the paladar for what it does best: provide a peek at a modish 1950's house with its expansive use of glass, lush tropical plantings and an indoor-outdoor patio with waterfalls and pools in which turtles drowse contentedly. It is a wonderful example of the "new" Cuban architecture in a neighborhood called Nuevo Vedado, filled with similar houses. Built in 1957 by the grandparents of the present owners, La Casa is thriving. Though Silvia Cardoso Sánchez, the mother of one of the restaurant's owners, says that the family regrets its loss of privacy, they are not complaining. The service is friendly and warm; there is a pleasant hum of conversation, almost all of it from Spanish- speaking tourists and some locals. The food is predictable and unexciting; stick with the savory grilled fish, fine black beans and rice, and a rather nice flan. \11 Pasta & Noodles Probably originated in central asia c1000 BC and co-existed in Europe and Asia independently. Many cultures have a form of pasta, German SPAETZLE, Polish PIEROGI and Asian noodles. Pasta is the a paste made from wheat dough SEMOLINA. Noodles usually have some egg. Foreign pasta is considered better than the american stuff because it is made from semolina which doesn't aborb much water and tastes better when cooked al dente. Italian pasta is made of semolina, a hard durum wheat flour. American is made from softer wheat with less gluten and more starch. Best brands: De Cecco, Del Verde. Fresh stuff sucks. Pasta, food product made from dried dough that forms the basis of much Italian cuisine, as well as Chinese, Japs, Korean, and Southeast Asian cuisines. It is popularly believed that Marco Polo, the 13th-cen Venetian explorer, introduced pasta to Europe from China. But there are earlier references to pasta in Sicily during the period of Arab (Saracen) rule of the island (AD 827-1061). Further, scholars now believe that the Chinese were eating noodles as early as the 1st century. Italian pastas, as spaghetti and macaroni are tradition- ally made from semolina flour derived from durum wheat. Stuffed pastas are made from all-purpose flour. Many pastas are made with eggs. Asian pastas, usually called noodles, may contain buckwheat, rice, mung bean starch, or whole wheat flour. Cooks making homemade pasta usually use ordinary or hard-wheat flours for their pasta. Pasta dough is prepared by kneading the semolina or flour with water. Other ingredients may be added for flavor and color, such as egg yolk (golden-yellow pasta), spinach (green pasta), tomato paste (red pasta), squid ink (black pasta), and sometimes milk. The dough is either rolled out and cut into the desired shape, or forced through a pierced plate to form solid or hollow cylinders. It is partly dried in hot air, then more slowly out in the open air. Completely dry pasta can be stored for a consider- able time without any loss of quality; fresh pasta has more water and keeps for only a week or so unless frozen. Pasta may be added to soups; boiled and served with a sauce; served cold with other ingredients in a salad; stuffed with meat, cheese, or vegetables and then boiled and baked. There are dozens of varieties of Italian pasta, and they are usually named for their sizes and shapes. Pasta can be classified further based on how it is formed. Straight and stuffed pastas are usually cut, by hand or by machine, from sheets of pasta that have been rolled out. Various tubular pastas, generally called macaroni, are extruded from machines. Capelli d'angelo (angel hair) is the finest of the cut pastas, less than 0.16 cm (0.0625 in) in diameter. Vermicelli (little worms), which looks like thin spaghetti, is about 0.07 cm (0.02 in) in diameter, while spaghetti (string, cord), one of the more widely known Italian pastas, is about 0.2 cm (0.08 in) in diameter. Larger straight pastas are in the form of flat noodles in varying widths. Linguini (little tongues) is about 0.32 cm (0.125 in) wide and fettuccini (little slices) is about 0.85 cm (0.33 in) wide. Straight pastas may be coiled, twisted, or formed into various shapes to produce still more pastas. Lasagna is a sheet pasta, usually about 10 cm (4 in) wide and about twice as long. Stuffed pastas are small packets of different shapes containing a variety of fillings, such as meat, seafood, cheese, or vegetables. Ravioli is a square, pillow-shaped pasta. Tortelloni is a cushion-shaped pasta with scalloped edges. Tortellini has curled-up edges and is hat-shaped. The most familiar tubular pasta, macaroni, can be either smooth or ribbed, and comes in short or medium lengths. Rigatoni is a short, large-ribbed tube. Penne is a short to medium length macaroni that has diagonally cut ends. Chinese noodles are made with a variety of ingredients. Those made from mung-bean flour, also called peastarch, are glistening white and are called bean threads, cellophane noodles, powdered silk noodles, shining noodles, or transparent noodles. Noodles made from seaweed are also called cellophane noodles. These types of noodles are very thin and hairlike. Japanese noodles are divided into two main types: soba, made from buckwheat and udon, made from wheat. Soba noodles are about the same diameter as spaghetti and are brownish-gray. Udon noodles are flat or round and are a pale beige that is almost white. Soba noodles can be eaten either hot or cold, while udon noodles are nearly always eaten hot. Both are usually served in a broth. Pasta, in all its forms, is a highly nutritious food. A 56-gram (2-oz) serving of pasta has less than 1 gram (0.04 oz) of fat, no sodium, no cholesterol, and only about 210 calories. It is high in complex carbohydrates, which help provide energy. Many pastas now come in enriched forms in which protein-rich soy flour replaces some of the semolina. Pastas are also further enriched by adding B-vitamins and iron. What's the proper way to cook pasta? What does spaghetti mean? Which pasta cut goes with which sauce? What’s the difference between fresh and dried pasta? Are all dried pastas the same? If you already know the answers to these questions, congratulations (we're impressed). If you don't, you've come to the right place. Not only will you be a pasta expert after you've read this, but we think you'll appreciate Italy's most famous culinary contribution a whole lot more. If you're looking for a particular pasta cut, click on the cut below. Otherwise, read on. But beware, we're pretty sure you'll be craving a bowl of pasta by the time you get to the end of the page. What's the proper way to cook pasta? Slinging a string of spaghetti at the wall to see if it sticks is probably not the most effective way to check for doneness. Neither is relying on your kitchen timer. The best way to see if your pasta is ready to eat is to spear a piece of it while it's still boiling and taste it. There should be a slight crunchiness on your tooth, called al dente, when the pasta is ready. Here's the method our chef Gianluca Guglielmi suggests for pasta perfection: Bring 5 to 6 quarts water of water to a rolling boil. Add 1/4 cup of salt along with a pound of your favorite pasta. Stir to ensure that all pasta is in the water and that the pieces are separated. Cook 7 to 8 minutes for long cuts like spaghetti, 8 to 10 minutes for short cuts like penne. A minute or two before your pasta is supposed to be ready, remove a piece of pasta from the water and bite through the pasta to see if it's done. Keep tasting until the pasta is al dente. When it's ready, drain the pasta in a colander and serve immediately with your favorite sauce. What do all those pasta names mean? There are a staggering number of pasta cuts in Italy -- hundreds of them, with names as perplexing as strozzapreti ("priest stranglers") and as diminutive as orecchiette ("little ears"). Most of them are named for the shapes they resemble. Some seem to have significance only to the regions that named them. A few of them were created specifically for a particular type of sauce. Whatever their origins, they all have one thing in common: They’re fun to eat. Amore Corkscrew-like twists with a hole in the middle. Bucatini Hollow, spaghetti-like strands. Cavatelli A short, folded pasta typical of Puglia. Cavaturi A narrow, folded cut typical of Puglia. Chitarra As in spaghetti alla chitarra. A chitarra is a special guitar-like tool used to make pasta. With a rolling pin, fresh dough is pushed through the chitarra's wooden frame and stretched steel wires to produce a squarish cut. Conchiglie Small, ridged "seashells." Conchigliette "Tiny seashells." Farfalle Literally "butterfly." Also known as bowtie pasta. Fusilli "Spirals" or corkscrew-shaped twists. Fusilli Bucati Thick corkscrew-like twists with a hole in the middle. Gnocchi Romani Small, ridged seashells. Lingue di Pasero Lingue means "tongue." This flat, wide pasta is like to fettucine. Maccheroni Ridged, slightly rounded tubes. Maccheroncini Similar to maccheroni, but narrower and cut into short pieces. Orecchiette Literally "little ears." Pappardelle A wide egg noodle. A traditional pasta shape from Tuscany. Penne Tubular pasta cut at an angle to look like quill pens. Penne Rigate Penne with rigate, "ridges." Pennette A smaller version of penne. Pipe Small U-shaped pipes. Rigatoni Large, ridged tubes with square-cut ends. Sedani Ridged, slightly bent tubes. Spaghetti Literally "a length of cord." Strozzapreti Small pasta squares folded like an S, meaning "priest stranglers." Tagliarini A flat, wide pasta similar to fettucine. Tagliatelle Classic thin egg noodle from Emilia-Romagna. Tofe Medium sized seashells. Trenette Long, flat pasta sometimes called linguine. Tubetti Rigati Tiny, ridged tubes. Vermicelli Like spaghetti, but slightly thicker. Which pasta cuts go best with which sauces? There are no hard and fast rules about which cuts match which sauces. If you’re partial to a particular cut, you should toss it with whatever sauce you like. There are, however, some cuts that show off a sauce better than others. Vegetable Sauces If you have a chunky vegetable sauce, look for pasta cuts with lots of nooks and crannies or deep crevices to catch and hold the vegetables. Suggestions: fusilli, orecchiette, conchiglie. Cheese Sauces Cheese sauces adhere best to small pastas cuts with lots of surface area. Suggestions: fusilli, farfalle, maccheroni, penne, shells. Butter Sauces Noodles just beg for butter. A little bit of sauce goes a long way to coat them evenly. Suggestions: linguine, fettucine. Oil-Based Sauces Pesto, and other oil-based sauces, are just right for keeping long, thin cuts from clumping together. They also coat noodles more evenly than they would smaller pasta with lots of crevices. Suggestions: bucatini, spaghetti, trenette. Meat sauce Two completely different pasta cuts are commonly used with meat ragu. In Northern Italy, wide, fresh egg noodles are traditionally paired with meat sauce, while in Southern Italy small cuts of dried pasta are used. Neither will steer you wrong. Suggestions: maccheroni, fusilli, pappardelle, tagliatelle. Soups Nearly any small cut will pair deliciously with soup. The size you choose all depends on how many pieces of pasta you prefer in each spoonful. Suggestions: tubetti, maccheroncini. What's the difference between fresh pasta and dried pasta? Many people assume dried pasta is just fresh pasta that's been set out to dry. Although it certainly seems reasonable to think so, it’s not the case. Fresh pasta, which is traditionally made in Northern and Central Italy, is almost always made with eggs. Eggs are highly perishable, so fresh pasta must be eaten within a few days of its preparation. Dried pasta, a Southern Italian trademark, almost never contains eggs. Because it’s usually just semolina flour, water and salt, dried pasta can last almost indefinitely without refrigeration. (To read more about the regions of Italy.) Fresh pasta can be made with a wide variety of flours, including semolina flour (a derivative of durum wheat), chestnut flour and wheat flour. But it’s most often made with the more delicate bread flour, which is easier to roll and shape by hand. Dried pasta, on the other hand, depends on semolina flour almost exclusively. When mixed with water, coarse semolina flour forms a tough dough that’s more often forced through perforated dies than shaped by hand. (For more about dried pasta, see below.) Another key difference between fresh and dried pasta? Fresh pasta takes only a few minutes to cook whereas dried pastas can take up to half an hour. Are all dried pastas the same? Of course not. (We wouldn’t have posed the question if they were.) Think of pasta as if it were wine. All wineries use the same general process to produce wine, right? But each wine tastes different. Why? The quality of the grape differs from winery to winery; the aging process is different; the production process varies, depending on the volume of wine being produced. Pasta is the same way. The quality of any pasta is hugely dependent on the quality of the grain used to make it, the time it takes to dry the pasta, and the method used to produce it. There are two basic types of pasta production: Artisanal Pasta Pasta artigiani is made with great care, skill and patience. There’s usually a highly experienced pasta maker (or family of pasta makers) who oversees all aspects of the production process. That pasta maker either grows his own wheat or selects the best wheat available from an outside source. After the hard durum wheat flour has been milled and the dough kneaded, it’s pushed through a bronze dye to produce a wide variety of pasta shapes. And here’s where the difference among pasta makers really becomes apparent: Bronze dyes (as opposed to teflon dyes) are rough, so they create a rough-surfaced pasta. This imperfect texture is what makes artisan pasta so adept at absorbing the flavors of your favorite sauce. After the pasta has been cut, it’s set out to dry for as few as several hours or as long as several days. The longer and more naturally a pasta has been dried, the more nutrients it retains, resulting in a richer, more flavorful dish of pasta. Pasta that has been dried naturally also holds its shape better. All of A.G. Ferrari’s pastas are artisanally produced. Industrial Pasta As pasta gained popularity in Italy, and internationally, producers began to develop faster, cheaper and more efficient ways to produce it. Out went the slow, heavy bronze dyes and in came slick teflon dyes, which sped up the process considerably. The tradeoff is a pasta surface so smooth that it almost repels sauce. The other key difference between artisanal and industrial pasta is the drying method. Whereas artisanal producers usually let their pasta dry in its own good time, industrial producers use heating methods that dry pasta in as few as 20 minutes. Thanks to increasingly sophisticated drying techniques, some industrial producers mimic the effects of air drying surprisingly well. Others actually "precook" the pasta, turning it to mush before it even wends its way into your pot of boiling water. That same pasta also tends to fall apart on your plate. This is not to say that industrially produced pastas are bad. They’re just a different taste experience. We invite you to try both types and decide for yourself. Pasta: 1000 years and more of history The beginning of pasta date back to times of yore. The first hint we have of pasta comes from the tools used for making and cooking pasta found in an Etruscan tomb. Shortly after the birth of Christ, a chef named Apicius mentions something which sounds a lot like lasagna in his book of recipes. Around the year 1000, we have the first documented recipe for pasta in the book "De arte Coquinaria per vermicelli e maccaroni siciliani", (The Art of Cooking Sicilian macaroni and Vermicelli) written by Martino Corno, chef to the powerful Patriarch of Aquileia. Pasta was certainly well known in Arab countries, where still today they speak of "makkaroni". From these countries it spread to Greece and Sicily (then an Arab colony). In fact, Palermo was the first historical capital of pasta, because it is here that we have the first historical sources referring to the production of dried pasta in what seems like a small-scale industrial enterprise. In 1150, Arab geographer Al-Idrisi reports that at Trabia, about 30 km. from Palermo, "they produce an abundance of pasta in the shape of strings ("tria" in Arabic) which are exported everywhere, in Calabria and in many Muslim and Christian countries, even by ship." 1279... "a basket of macaroni" The first "official" mention of pasta: a notary's inventory of an inheritance speaks of "a bariscela (basket) full of macaronis." A document from 1244 and another from 1316 testify to the production of dried pasta in Liguria as well. Between 1400 and 1500, the production by craftsmen of "fidei" (pasta in the local dialect) became quite widespread in Liguria, as demonstrated by the founding of the Corporation of Pasta-Makers in 1574 in Genoa. Three years later, the "Regolazione dell'Arte dei Maestri Fidelari" (Rules for the Pasta-Masters' Art Corporation) were drawn up in Savona. The 17th cen: a mechanical press In Naples, pop growth was aggravating the problems of food accessibility, until a small technological revolution (the spread of the kneading machine and the invention of the mechanical press) made it possible to produce pasta at a much lower price. Pasta thus became the food of the people. Naples's vicinity to the sea (as was the case of Liguria and Sicily) facilitated drying, a process which allowed pasta to be conserved for an extended period of time. The 18th cen: how was pasta made? In Naples, pasta was made by mixing semolina dough by foot. The pasta maker sat on a long bench and used his feet to mix and knead the dough. The king of Naples, Ferdinando II, was not happy with this method of pasta-making and hired a famous engineer (Cesare Spadaccini) to improve the procedure. The new system consisted of adding boiling water to freshly-ground flour, and kneading by foot was replaced by a machine made of bronze that perfectly imitated the work done by man. In 1740, the city of Venice issued Paolo Adami a license to open the first pasta factory. The machinery was simple enough. It consisted of an iron press, powered by several young boys. In 1763, the Duke of Parma, Don Ferdinando of Bourbon, gave Stefano Lucciardi of Sarzana the right to a 10 year-monopoly for the production of dried pasta - "Genoa-style" - in the city of Parma. \12 Raw Sophistication FIRE, they say, is the enemy. They are a small, but increasingly influential group of culinary zealots (mostly in California, of course, but traveling a lot and proselytizing along the way), who have become so extreme in their vegetarianism that they refuse to eat food touched by heat — for fear of destroying the nutrients. They challenge conventional science with the power of their conviction and a gift for persuading even vegetarians that there is still more wrong with food than anyone might have thought. And their persuasiveness is leading some of the best chefs in the country to turn off their stoves. As these sophisticated cooks are dragged toward the fringes of food preparation, often complaining bitterly, they are managing to turn raw vegetables into some of the most beguiling creations in the culinary world. We're not talking about crudités here; we're talking about true refinement. In Chicago, Charlie Trotter is producing 10-course raw menus filled with wildly inventive dishes like okra cured in sea salt with Thai squash and pear sauce, and jicama "packages" filled with preserved eggplant, broccoli rape flowers and tiny kohlrabi. Up in the Napa Valley, Thomas Keller sculptures "gnocchi" out of avocados, and down in Miami, Norman Van Aken makes what he calls elephant garlic in vapors, a six-hour production that involves suspending thin shavings of garlic over a pot of barely warm water. Every element of every dish is raw, organic and vegan — no meat, fish, eggs or dairy products. And now, the food is evolving into a cuisine with its own rules (no heat above 118 degrees) and its own equipment (Vita- Mix blender, Green Life juicer, food dehydrator). The philosophy is inspiring new cookbooks and even new restaurants dedicated exclusively to raw food. Mr. Trotter, in fact, is writing a book of 200 "sensually satisfying" raw recipes that is to be published next year. "My goal is to serve this food to someone and not have her realize it's raw until she's four or five courses into the menu," he said. It's a challenge. "To be successful, you obviously need to start with exquisitely fresh, seasonal, organic produce," said Mr. Trotter, who uses fine-cutting techniques to break down fiber and enriches dishes with raw nuts (soaked in water overnight), avocado and olive oil. "There are ways to make this food explode with flavor, using notes from Asian and Indian cooking — ginger, galanga, lemon grass — along with raw garlic and citrus juice." Other hallmark ingredients are curry spices and the watery milk from baby Thai coconuts (also called "jelly coconuts" because of their soft meat) sold at Asian markets. To compensate for a raw dish's lack of aroma — "one of the things that's so enjoyable about eating," Mr. Trotter said — he serves dishes at room temperature (never chilled) on plates that have been warmed in the oven, so that the flavor "blooms a little." Like other raw cooks, he finds a dehydrator essential to concentrate flavors, and to give the exterior of some foods a crispy "crust." A juicer is essential too, sometimes in unexpected ways like homogenizing nuts and seeds into dough. A good imagination is also useful: one has to be willing to accept thin-sliced zucchini as sheets of pasta in a "lasagna" or dehydrated carrot cubes as "croutons" on top of a "soup" of puréed raw tomatoes. And so is patience. Depending on your point of view, elevating raw vegetables to the level of haute cuisine is a labor of love, or insanity. "People think raw vegetables are easy," said Mr. Keller, the chef at the French Laundry in Napa Valley. "But when you cook something, the oven does the work for you. With raw food, you're doing all the work. You can't just take a bulb of fennel and put it on a plate and say, `Here, chew on this.' " No, you have to throw away the outer part and use only the tender center, slice it thin and, to keep it from oxidizing, prepare it à la minute. Another of Mr. Keller's raw dishes — "vermicelli" of sweet peppers with garden mint, 30-year-old balsamic vinegar, "panzanella" salad and sweet red pepper sorbet — is an undertaking that requires 27 ingredients and untold hours. "There's all this processing, versus just braising or roasting a piece of fennel," Mr. Keller said, with a hint of frustration. Or as Mr. Van Aken, the creator of the six- hour garlic, put it: "Do you know how long it takes to not cook food?" Mr. Keller noted that his restaurant is not set up for large-scale raw production. "It's like trying to make Chevrolet cars in a Dodge factory," he said. Mr. Van Aken, the chef and owner of Norman's in Coral Gables, was also quick to point out that his isn't a raw food restaurant. So why try it? First, there is the creative challenge posed by diners who have gone "raw," but are tired of nuts and berries. Mr. Trotter, already known for his (cooked) vegetable tasting menu, prepares raw menus for guests like Prince Isiel Ben- Israel, the international ambassador for the African Hebrew Israelites, who lives part time in Chicago, and for Roxanne and Michael Klein, who are among the most outspoken proponents of the diet. The couple first encountered raw cuisine 4 1/2 years ago at a spa in Thailand with their friends Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead and the actor Woody Harrelson, a longtime raw fooder. Michael Klein, 45, former chairman of the Rainforest Action Network, and Roxanne Klein, 37, grow their own produce on their estate in Marin County and have adopted the raw regimen. The Kleins, perhaps more than anyone else, have made it a mission to introduce great cooks to noncooking. When the couple asked Mr. Van Aken to make dinner for them, he was stumped. "I researched raw- food ingredients on the Internet," he said. He bought kimchi and dehydrated raw-carrot "crackers" from a local grower called Glaser Farms, and devised his vapor technique: "Place thin, translucent slices of garlic on a sheet of plastic wrap on top of a pot of water warmed to 100 degrees. Drizzle them with truffle oil, add another layer of plastic wrap, and let them warm for about six hours. The resulting melted garlic tastes roasted but isn't." Like other raw advocates, Roxanne Klein believes that heating food above 118 degrees destroys enzymes, the catalysts for all metabolic processes. But unlike most, Ms. Klein is a trained chef. She has worked at restaurants like Stars in San Francisco, and quickly saw culinary potential in raw food. "To be frank, there's lot of raw hippie food out there, oat cakes that taste like hockey pucks," she said. "I for one have got to enjoy eating." She added, "Michael and I have been vegans for 10 years, but only when we went raw did we gain a lot of energy." She plans to open a raw restaurant in August in Larkspur called Roxanne's, and is collaborating with Mr. Trotter on his book. A book may be the closest thing to serious raw food that most of the world can afford, since the tasting menus that the Kleins are so fond of can easily cost $200 per person, "and that's not counting the '64 Pétrus and the '55 Latour that we order," Ms. Klein said. (The reason, one chef said privately, he was game about a raw menu.) Or course, there are other ways to experience raw cuisine. One of the most popular in California is the rave-style dinners given by the raw-food guru Juliano, the author of "Raw: The Uncook Book" (ReganBooks, 1999). For the last three months, the blond, tanned 27-year-old has taught "uncooking" classes twice a week in a rented studio on Pico Boulevard in Santa Monica. Celebrities like Alicia Silverstone, K. D. Lang and Lisa Bonet have chopped veggies at his Wednesday night dinners, which are strictly word of mouth. "We're hard to find and we don't advertise, but we're really busy, because people are sick of that cooked dead stuff out there, all that angry oven food," he said. On a recent evening, a crowd of 71 stood around the studio waiting to eat the meal the students had prepared: salad with ginger- garlic dressing, nut-loaf burgers on sprouted buckwheat "bread" (dried in the sun for 10 hours) and spread with "mustard" (ground mustard seed and horseradish) and "ketchup" (fresh and sun-dried tomatoes, dates, basil, garlic ginger and onion). For dessert, there were almond-carob-African vanilla bean-date balls. All for $20. Techno music pounded in the background and chlorophyll scented the air as a man who called himself "the wheat grass messiah" fed parsley, red chard, beets and alfalfa sprouts into a Green Life juice extractor. Still, there weren't many takers for cups of the dark green foamy liquid. In a corner, a fellow punched holes into those young Thai coconuts while volunteer waitresses handed them out with straws. In about six weeks, Juliano plans to let the public in on the party at Raw L.A., a restaurant he is opening in Santa Monica. If his nut-loaf burger was any indication, there should be a crowd: the patty was a crunchy concoction of chopped sunflower seeds, walnuts and almonds bound with fresh onion, red bell pepper, mushrooms, rosemary and parsley. Layered with lettuce and tomato and spread with the wacky condiments, the "burger" actually did burst with flavor. But do the raw fooders feel good because what they are eating contains "live" enzymes or because it happens to be fresh, nourishing and expertly spiced? Dickson Despommier, a professor at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, said that "cooking denatures the shape of the enzyme molecule." "But," he added, "the point is, who cares? Enzymes are proteins that are inactivated the moment they hit your stomach, where powerful acids destroy them and break them down into amino acids. It's ridiculous to say that you don't get the full benefit of enzymes by cooking them." Still, he found the idea of "good, clean, washed and sanitized vegetables from a recognized source" an appealing one. The wide variety of foods in the raw vegan diet also passed muster with a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association. "Plant-based products like nuts, seeds, beans, grains and vegetables have protein in them, so you can get your protein needs met," said the spokeswoman, Leslie Bonci, who is also the director of sports nutrition for the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. "The only issue is that with some vegetables, cooking unleashes more of the carotenoids — the plant chemicals — for the body to absorb. So if you're eating an exclusively raw diet, you're not necessarily getting the full range of nutrients." Tell that to the raw fooders. A dinner guest of the Kleins, Steve Braman of West Palm Beach, called Norman's the following week to order raw gazpacho and kimchi to go for eight people. (Mr. Van Aken said, "You've got to be kidding," but obliged.) And Mr. Trotter predicts that, like it or not, chefs will have to get used to it. "Ten years from now, all competent chefs will offer raw vegetable dishes on the menu," he said, "because more and more people will be eating this way." \13 Malaysian Cuisine Malaysia is a multicultural society, with Malays, Chinese and Indians living side by side. The Malays are the largest community. They are Muslims, speak Bahasa and are largely responsible for the political fortunes of the country. The Chinese comprise about a third of the population. They are Buddhists and Taoists, speak Hokkein, Hakka and Cantonese, and are dominant in the business community. The Indians account for about 10% of the population. They are mainly Hindu Tamils from southern India, they speak Tamil, Malayalam, and some Hindi, and live mainly in the larger towns on the west coast of the peninsula. There is also a sizeable Sikh community. Eurasians and indigenous tribes make up the remaining population. Despite Bahasa Malaysia being the official language, when members of these different communities talk to each other, they generally speak English, which was recently reinstated as the language of instruction in tertiary education. The main indigenous tribe is the Iban of Sarawak, who number 395,000. They are largely longhouse dwellers and live along the Rejang and Baram rivers. The Bidayuh (107,000) are concentrated on Sarawak's Skrang River. The Orang Asli (80,000) live in small scattered groups in Peninsular Malaysia. Traditionally nomadic agricultura- lists, many have been absorbed into modern Malaysia. Malaysian music is heavily influenced by Chinese and Islamic forms. The music is based largely around the gendang (drum), but includes percussion instruments (some made of shells), flutes, trumpets and gongs. The country has a strong tradition of dance and dance dramas, some of Thai, Indian and Portuguese origin. Other artistic forms include wayang kulit (shadow-puppets), silat (a stylised martial art) and crafts such as batik, weaving and silver and brasswork. It's not easy to find authentic Malay food in Malaysian restaurants, though you can take your pick of Chinese, Nyonya (a local variation on Chinese and Malay food - Chinese ingredients, local spices), Indian, Indonesian or (sometimes) Western cuisines. Satays (meat kebabs in spicy peanut sauce) are a Malaysian creation and they're found everywhere. Other dishes include fried soybean curd in peanut sauce, sour tamarind fish curry, fiery curry prawns and spiced curried meat in coconut marinade. Muslim Indian dishes have developed a distinctly Malaysian style. The variety of wonderful tropical fruits and fruit juices available is huge, and strange sweet concoctions include cendol (sugar syrup, coconut milk and green noodles) and ais kacang (beans and jellies topped with shaved ice, syrups and condensed milk). Ah Balling is stuffed dumpling made of glutinous rice flour served in soup boiled with pandan leaf. You can have a choice of either grind peanuts, red bean or sesame as stuffing or one of everything. The texture must be smooth and not too sticky, otherwise it will stuck on your teeth. "Bak Chang" or rice dumpling is traditionally served during the Dragon Boat Festival to commemorate the heroic act of patriotic poet — Qu Yuan. However, "Bak Chang" can now be eaten all year round, thanks to the astuteness of some businessmen who turn making "Bak Chang" into a viable and production-like business. One can now find many varieties to this traditional snack including Nonya, Hokkien, Cantonese, Teochew and "Kee Chang". "Bak Chor" in Teochew means minced pork. Lean pork and a little bit of fat are used to create the minced pork, the fat is necessary to create the bouncy and smooth texture. The teochew style will have dumplings and "ti-poh" (dried fish) as ingredient besides the usual sliced mushroom, meatball or fishball, sliced fishcake and bean sprouts. Although you can have it either dry or soup, but it will taste better if you eat it dry with those home-made chilli, lard and vinegar. Beef Guo Tiao: Whether you prefer the Hong Kong style Fried Beef Guo Tiao or simply Beef Guo Tiao Soup, the most important ingredient used in these two dishes is beef. Although you won't find the most tender Kobe beef in these dishes, some of the best stalls in Singapore are still capable of whipping up delicious Beef Guo Tiao by paying attention to the slicing of the beef and using only good tender beef from other alternative sources. "Chao Guo Tiao" or the frying of flat rice noodle create a special aroma that hungry patrons can not resist. In the old days when most of us are still not very health conscious, lard were used to fry the rice noodle and the aroma created then was so irresistible and so much better than the cooking oil used today. Traditionally, bean sprouts and cockles are common ingredients of "Chao Guo Tiao", but others offered vegetables, Chinese sausage and even prawn. chicken mee: You can either try the soya sauce chicken mee or curry chicken mee. The soya sauce type is a much simplier affair. The noodle is served with cut soya sauce braised chicken, so it all depends on the cook's skill to braise the birds to perfection just like preparing chicken rice. On the other hand, the ingredients used to prepare curry chicken mee is extravagant. Chicken wings or drumstick, cut potato and dried bean curd are the main ingredients. These ingredients have to be cooked and soaked in the curry gravy for a prolong period in order for the curry taste to penetrate. "Chwee Kueh" is actually rice flour pudding and is traditionally a Teochew's snack. "Chwee Kueh" by itself is plain and tasteless and so you have to eat it with shredded preserved radish toppings cook with vegetable oil to bring out the fragrant of rice flour. A liitle bit of home made chilli will add some spice to an otherwise simple snack. Claypot Rice: The duration and degree of cooking is important for churning out good Claypot Rice that will make one slobber. Rice is usually place in the claypot and cook over slow charcoal fire. When the rice is cooked, the claypot is remove from the fire and chicken meat, chinese sausage, salted fish, vegetables, lard or black sauce is then added into the claypot and covered. The heat in the claypot will blend the fragrant of these ingredients with the rice to perfection. Fish soup: The order of the day is the freshness of fish used and the other ingredients that goes into the soup. The natural sweetness of the fresh sliced fish meat, laver, a bit of salt and salted vegetable, spring onion, local parsley and lettuce make this a very delicious and healthy dish. There is no need to add monosodium. You can eat this traditional Teochew fish soup with rice cooked together (also known as fish porridge) or eat it separately. Only fresh sliced Dorab and Threadfin fish meat are used for this dish. Another Cantonese favourite which is more bone than meat. But the deep-fried chopped up pieces of fish head, usually snake head yield a milky broth that is wonderfully sweet. A few sliced of ginger will take away the fishiness, a popular trick every Cantonese housewife knows. This dish can be very "fulfilling" for someone who is hungry. Noodles and Bee Hoon (a type of rice noodle) are fried thoroughly before other ingredients, typically prawns, squids, eggs and sliced pork are added. During the process of frying, stock made by boiling prawn's head and pork bone are also added to provide the sweetness and flavour. Don't forget to ask for some really good home-made chilli to add some spice. Another of those cook-it-yourself dishes, reminiscent of a steamboat where raw ingredients are dropped into a boiling broth. As the name implies, the raw ingredients are mostly fish related and the good one will use sliced Dorab fish meat, roe and vegetables. In some outlets, you can even order "Yu Sheng" (raw sliced fish meat) and other side dishes. "Goreng Pisang": This is a traditional local snack. "Goreng Pisang" is a Malay words meaning deep-fry banana. Banana is first cut into two halfs and dipped inside flour paste before putting into boiling-hot oil to deep-fry until the skin is golden brown and crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. Herbal soup: Chicken Soup was once used to help one to recuperate faster from a minor sickness. As the saying goes, "Preventive is better than cure", so more and more people are taking herbal soup as a regular diet to improve one's vigorous. Chicken meat is no longer the only ingredient used, many have insisted that Chinese herbs to be used when boiling these healty soup. Although the name Hum Chin Peng in local dialect suggest that they are selling deep-fried salted dough but this is far from true. There are different type of Hum Chin Peng, you can choose to have the traditional plain salted or plain sweet type of Hum Chin Peng, or have red-bean paste as stuffing Murtabak is the "inflated" version of Roti Prata with shredded mutton or beef or chicken, onion and egg as the fillings. The skin is made of flour and the prata man usually flip the dough in the air until it is paper-thin before adding all the ingredients and fry the Murtabak to perfection where it is crispy on the outside and about cooked on the inside. Roti Prata reminds one of the crispy pizza without the toppings. The pleasure of this dish comes before the consumption when the prata man flips the dough in the air until it is paper-thin. The prata man will then fry the roti prata until it is crispy before serving the dish with some curry gravy. You can also order roti prata with onion, eggs or even banana as fillings and the fragrant of mixing flour with these ingredients is so wonderful that you will scream for more. Soya Bean have many use. It can be used to make soya bean milk, bean curd (Tau Huay), soya bean oil and soya bean sauce. Soya bean milk and bean curd can either eat cold or hot, sweet or salty. Good soya bean milk are thick and full of soya bean fragrant while good bean curd should be soft and smooth. "Teochew Muay" or Teochew Porridge is somewhat different from Cantonese Congee in that the rice grains are boiled lightly and remain whole in a watery broth. This is an excellent dish during hot and warm weather. The usual side dishes served include Teochew style steam Fish, rectangular shape meat ball, fried vegetables, salted eggs, braised bean curd and braised duck. Turtle Soup: Although the soft-shelled turtle is not yet an endangered species, the animals protection movement may not be too happy that these turtles are being killed to satisfy one's appetite. Turtle meat and Chinese herbs placed in handless cup are skewed for few hous before serving. The soup are usually spiced lightly with some sliced of fresh ginger. Savour the dish for its medicinal qualities. Yung dou foo: Plenty of varieties to choose from, including seafood, vegetables and bean curd skin with smash fish meat stuffing, eggs and fishballs. You can either have it in soup or dry, with "Bee Hoon" (rice noodle) or without, the choice is yours. A satisfying "Yong Tau Foo" meal will not be complete without the chilli sauce and sweet sauce especially if you want to eat it dry. Some stalls even throw in minced pork with your regular "Yong Tau Foo" while the Ampang type is deep-fried. Only Yellow Tail Fursilier fish meat is used to make the stuffing because the fish meat can stick better. http://eat.hypermart.net/sg_hawker/murtabak.htm