This is a book about your own favorite dishes, the ones you grew up loving in western Chinese restaurants (and a few you might want to try for the first time without any worry about getting a plate of stir-fried lungfish). But you may be curious about what the Chinese eat at home.
You already know, of course, that the Chinese eat more than Chow Mein and Chop Suey. Our grandfathers didn't know that, and before about 1970 you couldn't find the full variety of Chinese cuisine in most of America. But starting around then, a point of "critical mass" was reached at which young world travelers brought home enough international dining experience to look at home for the vast range of flavors they had found overseas. In addition, with the Nixon-era opening of trade with China, there was suddenly a much greater opportunity for Americans to experience the regional cuisines of that nation. Restaurants here were called upon to start offering more than "Chinese-American" food. At first, the spicy flavors from Szechuan and Hunan provinces proved popular (and they are still the most popular non-Cantonese dishes here). Then the delightfully varied morsels we know as Dim Sum were "discovered" in America. Then we were re-introduced to the subtle, delicate tastes that result from the preparation of Cantonese food with care and skill — yes, Chow Mein can be a plate of barely-edible sludge, or it can be a lightly-cooked dish of fresh ingredients served over freshly-fried noodles.
Actually, though restaurants in China serve many of our familiar western Chinese-restaurant favorites, very few of those dishes are served at home. So what do Chinese really eat when they are not lured into the Beijing McDonald's? Native Chinese food can be roughly divided into Northern and Southern styles.
Northern China is cooler; wheat grows better than rice. Pasta and breads are found in abundance: noodles, dumplings, steamed buns, dumplings and steamed or baked or fried breads are popular. Regional sub-styles include the cuisines of Peking, Tientsin, and Shantung.
Southern cooking styles emphasize rice (including rice noodles, rice cakes, and rice congee) and include diverse regional styles like the spicy cooking of preserved ingredients found in Szechwan and Hunan, and Cantonese food, which (like other regional styles from seaport or coastal areas) emphasizes delicate seasoning of very fresh, lightly-cooked locally-grown ingredients.
The meat and vegetable dishes we think of as the "entrees" of a meal are thought of in China as "side dishes" for the rice or noodles. Rice and wheat are expensive, and less prosperous families often base their meals on millet, sorghum or corn.
In all of Chinese cooking, color and aroma and flavor blend in balance. Normally, any entree will combine one main ingredient and two to three secondary ingredients, which may harmonize or contrast in color and texture. Common ingredients are scallions, fresh ginger root, garlic, chili peppers, wine, star anise, pepper, sesame oil, and dried mushrooms of several varieties. Soy sauce, sugar, rice wine and vinegar add subtle or bold notes to a dish, which may be further adjusted to individual taste by taking more or less of the entree to go with one's rice. Theories of nutrition and aesthetic balance abound (and sometimes conflict), but in general one-third of a meat-based dish should consist of vegetable ingredients, and one-third of a vegetable dish should be meat. Favorite cooking methods include stir-frying, stewing, steaming, deep-frying, flash-frying and pan-frying.
There are many regional variations in mealtime habits, but generally Chinese families gather for three meals a day. It is common to include several different dishes in each meal. Laborers may find time for only two full meals a day, but these are often supplemented with up to three snacks or smaller meals taken at tea houses or bought from street vendors. The Western habit of labeling certain foods as "breakfast dishes" and certain others as "lunch" or "dinner dishes" is present but not as strong in China.
Breakfast foods, generally eaten at home, include congee (also called jook), a watery rice gruel very much like porridge (recipes can be found in the "Soup" chapter.) A variety of seasonings can make this very bland dish sweet or savory, and it often includes meat or vegetables. Noodles with vegetables (fresh or preserved) and/or meat are often found at the breakfast table, as are "zongzi," pyramid-shaped sticky rice wrapped in bamboo or reed leaves and heated by steaming. Other breakfast foods may be bought from the ubiquitous street vendors and hawkers' stands. Crullers, or "fried devils," are twisted strips of fried dough about 12" long, very much like our doughnuts, even more like Mexican churros, and they are eaten dipped in warm congee or in sweet or salty soy milk. The only recipe I could find called for ingredients (alum and ammonium bicarbonate) that I would rather not deal with … I think I'll stick with doughnuts. Spring Onion Pancakes are also popular (recipe in the "Dim Sum" chapter.) The dishes we know as "Dim Sum" and think of as teatime or brunch dishes also can serve for early-morning breakfasts.
Neither beverages nor dessert are commonly served with a meal. People drink tea throughout the day, but at mealtime soup is the only liquid usually served. Wine or liquor may accompany special meals, but pots of tea and glasses of ice water are never seen.
Sweets are not eaten for "dessert," nor are they known for their subtlety. They are usually intensely sweet and are usually associated with celebrations or festivals.
In restaurants, we westerners each often order our favorite entree to eat alone. Chinese order meals with the entire group in mind. The "entrees" are placed in the center of the table, and the diners serve portions for themselves into their individual rice bowls. It is perfectly acceptable to reach across the table to take a morsel from a far-away dish, but it is rude to dig around in search of choice morsels. To accommodate this communal style of eating, tables tend to be square or round, rather than long. Soup is eaten by sipping from the spoon while breathing in, to cool the broth and to better appreciate delicate flavor, producing a slurping noise very unlike the manners we are used to in the West. To eat rice, the bowl is raised to the lips and the diner pushes the grains into his or her mouth with the chopsticks. To leave even a grain uneaten is considered bad manners, a lack of respect for its cost or the labor required to produce it … unless, of course, you're at a banquet, when finishing all (or even most) of your rice is seen as a sign that the host has not provided food in bounteous enough quantities.