茄子
The characters above mean eggplant. Aubergine also means eggplant, though that's nearly as foreign to us American-English speakers, am I right!? Ha! But I digress. This is about Chinese food and an eggplant dish I made that took me right back to the days of living in the 'jing.
This post is dedicated to all those with whom I shared wonderful meals in China. 干杯!
I've been lucky enough to live in, work in, study in and travel around China. The deepest experiences I had were during my year there as a teacher in 2004-2005. It was my first job out of college, a long time away from home and a long way away. I was also a (relatively) new vegetarian. Being a vegetarian in China is a double-edged sword as it's easy to find vegetable dishes, but not as easy to convey that a dish that is 90% vegetable and 10% pork does not make it vegetarian. For sure intentions were always good and I was able to eat well.
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| view from Jingshan Park, overlooking the Forbidden City |
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| restaurant neon |
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| the Great Wall on an unusually clear and sparkly day |
A meal in China can be a full-on event, a celebration of nothing in particular, lasting hours and hours. All around China, in big cities and small towns, the same sort of restaurant can be found in the thousands. This restaurant (which I'll refer to singularly because describing one describes them all) is a large room filled with round tables to seat 10 or 12 people. Thin plastic sheaths cover white tablecloths and the place settings consist of a small plate, a small bowl, chopsticks, a tea cup and a small glass. Waiters and waitresses with soft black shoes and endless amounts of patience scurry about. There are usually a few red lanterns or flags hanging about and maybe some fake green plants. But trust me, shabby décor is a good sign. Dinner starts with tea pots on the table and large bottles of beer, served warm. Well, room-temperature, but room-temperature beer is warm beer, isn't it? Small plates of cold dishes come out quickly. Boiled spicy peanuts, pickled cabbage, sesame cucumbers, sliced lotus root soon fill the large lazy susan in the middle of the table. Dinner continues, family style, with plates passed around as you take portions onto your personal dish. I don't have the will to delve deeply into Chinese cuisine here but it is truly a nonstop parade of smells and tastes. Beer sloshes from cups, greasy plates are left where heaps of food used to be, faces redden and voices rise. Typically, the last to come is a large plate of fruit. Sliced honeydew, dragonrfruit and watermelon to cool our energies and our mouths.
During my time as a teacher in Beijing I ate many meals alone, takeout style, from the cafeteria or local restaurants enjoying (or disdaining) a 10 for $1 bootleg DVD. (Is it redundant to say that a 10cent movie is bootlegged?) But the warmest fuzzies come from those long raucous meals with students and friends. After that year I returned to the states and was a very picky Chinese food eater. One time I was with a few friends in NYC for lunch and I dragged them around Chinatown for an hour inspecting menus. It wasn't that I had become a snob about the food itself, rather, I was looking for that specific kind of Beijing food that would bring me back to the tastes and feelings from my time there. This recipe did just that.
Spicy eggplant with seitan and noodles
Mods: I used regular eggplant. Didn't have Sichuan peppercorn. Added homemade seitan to the mix. Yes you heard me right. Homemade. So much veggie street cred. Seitan recipe here: http://www.theppk.com/2009/11/homemade-seitan/
Served over whole wheat noodles. Definitely have a repeater here! Definitely have a repeater here!
Comments
And great photos, too!