Duck blood tofu

Yes, I ate it. I'm not a big fan of blood products, and when confronted with a full English breakfast I'll chuck the blood pudding. Duck blood tofu, on the other hand, is something that I'll put in my mouth. It was mild--I wouldn't have known to be grossed out if my friend Kate hadn't gagged while I ate it.



This is just a piece of beef, but doesn't it look tasty? This was an expensive, high-quality hotpot place in Beijing near Zhichunlu.

Great wall food

Not much to say, I just liked these pictures. They were taken at a little restaurant near the Great Wall at Mutianyu. Despite being so close to a major tourist attraction the food was delicious.

Donghuamen, or the obligatory bugs-on-sticks photos

Wangfujing is one of Beijing's most famous shopping streets. The Donghuamen night market there has a huge, varied collection of street food on street known as "Snack Street." This is the place that visitors to China get some of their most cherished photos, as there are more bugs on sticks than you can shake a, well, stick at.



I consider myself a fairly adventurous eater, but I have no desire to eat bugs--especially the sort of bugs on display here. Eating bugs is basically slumming it, the practice harkens back to famine times and is based more on desperation for nutrition rather than a celebration of great taste. I'm pretty sure that the Chinese feel the same way, because Donghuamen Street was the only place I've seen bugs for dinner so far. They are likely for the benefit of tourists, although they are mostly Chinese tourists.











The skewers above had a sign that said "Sheep Penis" but the minute I aimed my camera at it the man working the booth snatched the sign away in a fluid, practiced move. I'm not sure why he wouldn't want a picture taken of the sign--perhaps it's not really sheep penis and he doesn't want to get caught? Any experts out there, please weigh in. Does that look like a sheep penis to you?

Chinese street pizza

A few years ago the Chinese began to make noises that they had been the ones to invent pizza. The proof was in the street food--Chinese pizza was popping up all over Beijing and Shanghai in small stores and right out on the street. Oddly, though, they didn't mention inventing the stuff until the mid-aughties, long after Pizza Hut already had a toehold in China. No matter. It was called 'Tujia Minority Chinese-style Pizza' and they were sized like the personal pan pizza you can get in America.

Tons of Chinese pizza shops and vendors set up a couple of years ago, and seemingly shut down soon after. Tujia Minority fad food, I guess.



So when I ran across these women slanging what appeared to be fried bread in the Zhichunlu are of Beijing, I had no idea what their game was, but I knew that I wanted in on it.


Painting the bread with a spread that was as mysterious as it was delicious.

It didn't look like the traditional Chinese pizza due to the size--she'd make a giant one and chop it up and serve 4-6 people with each one. The spread was a mystery to me. It didn't taste "Chinese" to me, it had a definite Italian buzz about it. I think it was made with tomatoes and/or eggplant but I'm really not sure. After she took it off grill she topped it with sesame seeds and chopped scallions.


The dough-lady thought it was hilarious that I was taking pictures. Whenever I would walk by for the rest of the week I was there, she'd wave at me.


Liberal oil is what makes it so yummy.


Putting the dough in for another batch. Note the armwarmers.

I liked this stuff so much that I ate it three days in a row. This is also because I find every visit to a (cheap) restaurant in China excruciating. My attempts to communicate in broken Chinese is met with giggles and I usually end up playing charades and acting out what I want for lunch. Street food is easy because they usually only make one or two things and you can just point and say "zhège."

For some reason, probably due to my unusual size and coloring, the woman refused to believe that I wanted just one serving, and every day gave me two. Usually I just pay with a tenner to avoid trying to communicate about how much it costs, and a tenner will always cover street food.


They serve it to you with a skewer to eat it with.

So the first day she gave me 2 bags of pizza and ¥4 back. From this, I deduced that the bags cost ¥3 each ($0.45). The next day I handed her a fiver and made a hand gesture that I thought indicated "small." Apparently it came off as "I want two servings, but in one bag for a fiver." At this point, I realized it was a lost cause. The next day I handed over a fiver and waited for my giant bag of pizza. Instead, she demanded that I give her ¥1 more, and gave me two bags of pizza. The only explanation I can give for the varying sizes and prices is that nothing in China makes any sense, and trying to understand anything is an exercise in futility. It was delicious, regardless.

Hutong Cuisine cooking class, Beijing

In Beijing I took a fantastic cooking class from Zhou Chunyi, who has a cooking school called Hutong Cuisine. Chunyi is remarkably laid back and funny, qualities on which my enjoyment of the classes usually hinge, and that I have found that are that are often lacking in cooking instructors.

She's from the Cantonese-speaking part of China, trained in Sichuan and lives in Beijing, so she's well qualified to teach on China's most popular styles. In the class I took, we made a Cantonese-style dish (said to be sweeter and more delicate), a Beijing dish (said to be heavier and saltier) and a Sichuan-style dish (spicy).



We cooked five dishes:
Stewed chicken with mushrooms
Stir-fried pork with broad bean chili sauce
Stir-fried pork with sweet flour sauce
Tiger skin peppers
Stir-fried cabbage with vinegar and chilis



We had some intense moments on the woks, but I managed to spend the majority of the class taking copious notes (I realize that I am not going to remember any of this by the time I go home) and eating the results of my classmates' labors. Because most Chinese food, especially the stir-fry variety, is meant to be eaten as soon as it is cooked, we were munching continuously throughout the class.





The classes are held inside a traditional Chinese courtyard house in a Beijing hutong. Hutong is the word that is used to describe the tiny little alleyway neighborhoods that are the remnants of old Beijing. The hutongs are picturesque but slightly squalid--many of them only have public restrooms.



The tiger skin peppers were so good. This isn't the sort of dish I'd ever been drawn to cooking on my own but will definitely try again now that I know how easy it is. I felt that way about Chinese food in general--all of the dishes we made were extremely manageable and many were versatile, you can cook many vegetables with vinegar and chilis, for instance, and it will usually end up tasting just fine. I came out of the class feeling like I would be able to recreate the whole menu at home, which isn't always the case.


This is the stewed chicken with mushrooms, which Chunyi says is always better a day later.



A high point of the class is Chunyi shrieking at her adorable dog (in a very affectionate manner) which almost made me homesick. Apparently unlike their sissy American counterparts, Chinese dogs can eat chicken bones without complaint. Chunyi threatened to send him to Korea a few times, which is apparently a new method of obedience training.






Tiger skin peppers (named because of their distinct markings?) cooked and ready to be cooked.



Although this class was most stir-fry, other classes focus on other cooking methods like braising, steaming, etc. My goal before I leave China is to figure out what it is they do to eggplants to make them taste so amazing.


Stir-fried cabbage with vinegar and chilis



If you're looking for a cooking class in Beijing, I'd enthusiastically recommend Hutong Cuisine. It's cheap and it's fun, and the menus appear to be very flexible. She also does private cooking classes if there's something you're dying to learn. If I had known then what I know now (namely, how little I'd actually accomplish in Beijing), I definitely would have scheduled more than one class while I was in town.