Weiqi Gao's Observations - food tag

Saturday Recipe: Rice Congee

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 00:15:13 GMT

Wikipedia calls it rice congee. I call it xifan (稀饭). You don't usually find them in Chinese restaurants in the United States. It's super easy to make:

¾ cup long grain white rice
7½ cups of cold water

(My rice measuring cup is ¾ cup big. So for me it's 1 cup rice and 10 cups water.)

Put on high heat in a stockpot for 10 minutes or till the water boils. Reduce the heat to medium-high (8 on my dial) and let it simmer for 20 minutes. Stir every so often (especially during the minutes before the water boils) to prevent the rice from sticking to the bottom of the pot and get burned.

This is what I would make when I don't want to have a big dinner:

"What do you want for dinner?"
"We had a big lunch. I'm not hungry. Let's have xifan."

It goes well with any kind of seasoning. When I'm lazy, I'll just have xifan with pickled cucumber from the jar.

But I do remember having xifan with crushed roasted sesame seeds, salt, and sugar as a little boy.

Jiaozi: A Chinese Favorite

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 03:48:16 GMT

(Via Ruan YiFeng's Blog.)

Ahead of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, the Beijing Tourist Bureau announced a draft of new guidelines for the English translation of 2753 names of Chinese foods.

Although Chinese restaurants are numerous in the United States, the names of Chinese food items are sometimes awkward. Unlike the Italians, who call a pizza a pizza, or the Japanese, who call sushi sushi, or the Indians, who call a naan a naan, or the Koreans, who call kimchi kimchi, the Chinese seem too eager to abandon the original Chinese name of their food items and go with something that's easier to understand.

(The same phenomenon happens the other way around too. Guess what "foreign persimmon" is in China?)

A chief example is Chinese dumplings, which encompass a whole category of foods, each item with a distinct original Chinese name. The new draft addresses this problem by adopting the different Chinese names in their pinyin form. Thus we have jiaozi (Chinese dumplings) and guotie (fried Chinese dumpling).

Although the guidelines is meant only for restaurants in Beijing, I hope the proper Chinese name will spread worldwide.

When Good Math Meets Fresh Fish...

Sun, 20 Jan 2008 16:35:49 GMT

... you get a great dish.

Good Sunday morning. This blog entry is completely off topic. If you are looking for the usual Tech stuff, go read Eric's latest piece on MapReduce.

Still with me? Good. Where was I? Oh, yeah, Good Math and Good Food. Today, I'm thrilled to announce Weiqi Gao's Observation's endorsement for Friday Recipe: Cantonese Steam Fish.

I started following Good Math, Bad Math since I read its Abacus series (and put out my responses) 474 days ago.

I've noticed MarkCC's Friday Recipe series for quite some time now. But this Friday's recipe struck a chord because steamed fish is something I cook regularly and has always been something that my daughter liked the most, right up there with Jiaozi (or Chinese Dumplings as they are popularly known in the United States).

As I explained to Brian Gilstrap about Jiaozi, the Chinese are non-precise recipe writers. If we write our recipes down at all, it will be full of "a little bit" of this, "a dash" of that, "frying for a little while" or "cook until done".

So I'm really glad to see this recipe being written down to the point where a non-Chinese person can follow.

And on my way to pick up my daughter from the university to spend the long weekend at home, I went to the Olive Farmer's Market at 8041 Olive Blvd in University City and picked up a stripe bass. I steamed it for dinner.

As is the case with most recipes, I did not follow it completely. I used my big stainless steel steamer instead of a bamboo steamer. I substituted scallions by green onions. And I used regular cooking wine instead of Vodka.

It's delicious!