not haute cuisine
so I had a few people over for dinner the other night. thought I’d give a few students a taste of western food, more specifically pasta. cheese is out, so I went with a red sauce. even had the spices I needed, basically. slow simmer sauce, real italian pasta, fake up some bread and butter, cucumber salad with oil and vinegar dressing, plenty of salt and balck pepper. not half bad for a girl with a wok. end result? cold food is cold food no matter what kind of vinegar you use, and the meal they claim tasted like a noodle dish I can’t remember the name of. tasted pretty much like western food to me. poor kids, they’d expected something unexpected. though I suppose if you look at it one way that’s exactly what they got.
I’m gonna try a different tach with the next bunch. phili steak sandwiches, pasta salad, mashed potatoes, corn apple cucumber salad, mango salsa and chips. it’ll prolly taste just like chinese sandwiches, but I know with all the chopstick action over here at least the mashed potatoes will feel, if not taste, different.
after may break a few of the foreign teachers and I are going to attempt a bbq. basic stuff, hamburgers and hot dogs, salads. if anyone has any ideas on how to rig a makeshift grill comment it, I’m scrounging already.
chicken. thanks to kfc everyone I’ve met thinks a hamburger’s made with chicken. sigh.
they say your culinary taste’s the last thing to go when you live in another country, you might not miss much but you’ll always miss the food. I can’t say that much applies to me, as I ate almost as much chinese food (rather, the americanized version thereof) back home and I only miss sandwiches and cereal when I’m too lazy to cook, but none the less I feel a bizarre, almost instinctual need to introduce a non-mcVersion of american cooking to the unsuspecting masses in the general vicinity of my academic institution.
this is gonna be fun.
filed under :: home base :: annie carr @ 11:36 am
Wow, reading that made me really hungry for home-cooked food.
I think you’re definitely doing a good thing introducing authentic Western cuisine. One time when I was a teaching in Hangzhou my school coerced me into cooking “Western food” for their food festival. I’m no cook, and I couldn’t get the ingredients for most of the things I knew how to make. I ended up making grilled cheese, but I was not used to making it using a gas stove, so my first attempt burned. In front of everyone. ARGH.
Comment by John — May 1, 2005 @ 1:09 am
I’ve hooked my girlfriend on pasta. Not terribly good for our waistlines, but it makes justifying the 30 RMB that all the ingredients cost at Auchan a little easier.
Mashed potatoes are common in north China (土豆泥, tudou ni), but apparently nowhere else.
Comment by John B — May 1, 2005 @ 11:05 am
Mashed potatoes CAN be eaten with chopsticks, albiet very easily.
As for pasta, you can use 拉面, better than spaghetti in my books.
Steak, mmm. You can go to the butcher early in the morning and buy the best cuts off a freshly slaughtered beast. Beats going to the supermarket to buy the green, tough, and expensive substitute for steak.
BTW where are you in China?
Comment by matt — May 5, 2005 @ 1:23 pm
also…you can get your local metalshop dude to make up a small grill to order, just be very specific about dimensions. Model it on the local kebab guy’s box.
Comment by matt — May 5, 2005 @ 4:04 pm
I’m not sure what I’d do with a giant metal thingy after the bbq (think a couple hundred people at least) but it’s worth a query, might have to go that route if it’s not too much nosh. not exactly overfunded here, so this will be out of pocket.
I’m still not sure of the logistics about feeding this many people all at one time. sous chef is not exactly on my list of prior emplolyment. john, if you swing by again, did you do the sandwiches a couple at a time or recruit extra hands? not that anything can be really planned, but…
matt, I’m with you on the mian, but for pasta salads and things I like the twirlies. holds the sauce better. they’re more expensive, but not by much. I’m in tianshui (gansu), so it’s not like I’m buying quality italian or anything ; )
why is it the produce and meat at the street vendors and little shops is so much nicer than the supermarket…
Comment by the manangement — May 8, 2005 @ 6:53 pm