At the end of our recent Macau Tamarind Pork recipe, we shared how Steph got the opportunity to do the Chinese translation for Annabel Jackson's excellent "Making of Macau's Fusion Cuisine". And a couple weeks back, she gave a talk together with Annabel on the subject of Macanese cuisine... together with some of the challenges in translating the book.
Annabel gave a great (English language) talk in her own right - I mean, she *is* the pre-eminent scholar today on the subject of Macanese food. But if you know a little Cantonese, definitely check out Steph's chat as well! I'm the definition of biased, but I think she did a great job... and I always feel like her personality comes through a bit more talking in Cantonese than English.
In the linked video, Annabel's chat starts at 2:25, and Steph's at 50:21.
Also, a big thank you to everyone that came out to the talk! I was really only expecting one or two people (especially because we didn't promote it), was blown away to see 13 (!) of you make it, even coming into the island as far away as Guangzhou. I know we didn't get much of a chance to chat after, perhaps one of these days we could organize a small meetup at a bar or restaurant in Hong Kong or Shenzhen.
watch video on watch page
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A lot of us have rather voracious podcast listening habits, I'd imagine. And if you're anything like me, you likely have a small voice in your head - a voice that always imagines getting the chance to sit on the other side of the table, getting interviewed about XYZ by the host of your favorite show.
About a week ago we had the good fortune of being able to swing up to Shaxi and meet the eminent Kaiser Kuo, musician and the long time host of the excellent Sinica podcast. Really great guy, was a lot of fun to cook with (he makes a mean Red Braised Pork), and we also got the chance to satiate that little voice in my head... and sit down and record an episode of Sinica with him.
We felt it'd likely be most interesting for Sinica listeners to focus on the culinary geography of China (as it is a China current events show), discussing the "63 Cuisines of Mainland China" video we released a few months back. But we also discuss the concept of 'Wok Hei' in the context of other regional cuisines, the commercialization of food trends in China, and - for the morbidly curious - how Steph and I met :)
You can find it here: www.sinicapodcast.com/p/chinese-cooking-demystifieā¦
...or here: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sinica-podcast/id112ā¦
... or wherever you get your dose of podcast.
The attached pictures are: (1) the obligatory selfie (2) a dinner the three of us (plus an absurdly talented Sichuanese buddy of us) whipped up at the guesthouse (3) Shaxi, which while a touch on the touristy side is undeniably freakishly gorgeous.
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Calling any Hong Kong old timers - Cantonese or Westerner. Was looking for some information about the old snack shop "Midnight Express" on Lan Kwai Fong, the one featured in Wong Kan-wai's Chungking Express.Ā
A patron asked us a question that's been nagging on me: you can see a clear lineup of sauces in the shot below. What are the sauces?
You can see the same sauce lineup in the second attached picture circa the year ~2000. From what I can tell, Midnight Express was a mixed Western/Indian/General Kebab shop. It was solidly replaced by Ebenezer's as the drunk tank of choice by the time I got to HK, but some of these recognizable to me: mint sauce, chili sauce, garlic sauce. One is obviously ketchup.
But there are a couple viscous, brownish sauces that *really* look like stuff like tianjiang, the 'sweet sauce' used on Cantonese rice noodle rolls.Ā
I cannot seem to find the old menu from googling. Does anyone know what exactly was on offer at Midnight Express? Were there any Cantonese offerings? What exactly were the Western offerings (besides, of course, Chef's Salad)?
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Quick question for y'all, wanted to get an general sense re wok ownership. I think I've got a pretty good sense where you guys are at, but did want to confirm.
Do you own a wok? And... if so, what type?
(Would also be interested to see dimensions/styles people tend to opt for - or reasons why you don't own a wok - if you care to expand in a comment)
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Eight months ago, me and Steph packed up our life in a (relative) hurry, and moved from China to Thailand.
Itās beenā¦ an emotionally exhausting eight months. The other day, me and Steph were contemplating over a beer whether we would do it all again - knowing *everything* that we know now.
Iām not sure if any of you actually care about any of this, but the answer isā¦ probably? Maybe? Weāve got aā¦ complicated array of feelings, if youāve got a hot minute for a read:
1. At the time of the move, things in China were looking increasingly dire, re when and if they were ever going up again. The way the world ends up always looks inevitable with the benefit of hindsight, but itās worth highlighting that it took an almost unprecedented social movement within China to finally force the governmentās hand to end the Zero-COVID policy (though Iām sure some particularly dire looking economic data didnāt hurt). Could we have simply waited seven months for the borders to have opened? Definitely ā if we had known for *certainty* that itād have been just another āseven months of suckinessā, we wouldnāt have pulled that trigger. I meanā¦ we were quite happy in China.
2. One of the great uncertainties of the move was whether Steph would be allowed to leave at all. During Zero-COVID, Chinese citizens were barred from non-essential international travel ā whether the wife of an American moving to Thailand long term counted as āessentialā was definitely a grey area. Itās difficult to describe the roller coaster that was (1) waiting alone for a half an hour outside the Shekou border, as border authorities were figuring whether she could leave (2) hopping on a flight to Bangkok, wondering if and when weād ever be able to go back to China again, followed by (3) landing, getting our life in order, and finally being free of all the Zero-COVID restrictions. No getting tested every 72 hours, no showing codes to get into places, no tirelessly explaining to people that āI know, Iām a foreigner, but I havenāt left the country since 2019ā¦ā
3. But at times, it was definitely a little difficult to edit some of our videos last year. Our āsecret sauceā has always sort of been to travel to some smaller city in China, find some fantastic food that hasnāt made much of a footprint abroad, and attempt to recreate it to the best of our ability. We rely on some of the pictures/videos we take to test the recipes, and we try to splice them into the videos whenever possible (always iPhone footage, but hey). During that time, scrubbing through Shunde footage, Guiyang footage, travel footageā¦ it was kind of rough. Because while you know that youād *likely* be able to swing back in someday (even if you had to quarantine), thereās always that nagging feeling thatā¦ maybe this was it? Maybe you wonāt be able to return? From a global perspective, itās not like thatās unheard ofā¦
4. During that time, a continual source of comfort for us was the Chinese community in Bangkok ā particularly in Huai Khwang (i.e. the newer āFlushing-esqueā Chinese neighborhood here in Bangkok). Now, weāve always been big believers in trying to get out there and experience the local culture wherever you are, to the best of your ability ā whether itās in China, or Thailand. So while the Chinese comfort food offered up here was never a priority per se, on a rough day going over to the Chinese supermarket in Huai Khwang and commiserating with the ownersā¦ gave you a sense that you werenāt experiencing this all alone.
5. But, the last couple months of China opening up again? Itās hard to overstate how much itās been an *enormous* relief to us. I mean, while our respective state apparatuses using our tax dollars on a high stakes game of bloons the last couple weeks doesnāt exactly bode well for geopolitical stability in the future, thatās sort ofā¦ āsame as it ever wasā. The borders are open. Weāre planning a handful of trips back to China this year, which weāre really looking forward to.
6. So then, obvious question ā will we move back? Not in the next couple years, at least. Because while Iāve just dwelled a bit on what made leaving China difficult, coming to Thailandās also beenā¦ incredibly energizing. New country, new language ā makes me feel like Iām in my 20s again, ha. Thereās a real benefit to being jolted outside of your comfort zone. Thereās justā¦ so much to learn.
7. And for the channel? I think getting your feet down into a different soil can also give you a radically different perspective on your home cuisine. Like, before coming, we had the vague idea that we might be able to cover some of the dishes of the Chinese diaspora here in Thailand ā we knew that thereās a ton of Teochew influence, in particular. But once you leave those original bordersā¦ the lines arenāt so clear, and things end up getting jumbled in fascinating ways. Like, where does Thai-Chinese food end, and Thai food begin? In Bangkok, thereās often Som Tam and oyster omelet on the same menu! Or perhaps equally interesting is to see how people in modern Thailand interact with Chinese food in the here and now: like, every day in our neighborhood we see people queuing up for āMala Sukiā ā Sichuan-ish single-person sized hotpot with ingredients going around by conveyor belt. Or just down the road, you could chase that down with some Tom Yum dumplings from our favorite Taiwan-style restaurant. You can start to see how food travels, adapts, and localizes. It's no longer something distant, something you read aboutā¦ it's something vibrant and vivid and happening right in front of your eyes ā and you can taste it.
So yeah. Here is home for now. If you want to know more about that aforementioned ānewer Chinese neighborhoodā here in Bangkok, recently we did a video on the topic together with our good friend Adam. Not going to link it here because the algorithm seems to nerf posts with videos, but itās the most recent video if you swing over to their channel: youtube.com/@OTRontheroad
And as an aside, Adam was actually in a similar position as us, actually ā left China after spending the last decade there (we crashed at his place when we first got in). He was a bar owner and restauranteur in China ā I got to know him quite well because he was one of a handful of close friends thatād always be down to try out X new restaurant or Y regional cuisine. After moving here, he decided to try his hand at making videos instead of jumping right back into the F&B meat grinder. And while Iām pretty much the definition of biased, I do quite like what theyāre doing over there. While in Chinese thereās the formidable A Xing, Iāve always felt that English language YouTubeās always been lacking smart food+travel content. Food geekiness-wise, think of their content as something of the mid-point in between us and Mark Wiens, Iād say. So if youāre in the market, definitely check them out. @OTRontheroad , in case you got lost there.
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Ok, quick little poll so that we can better balance clarity/information density in recipe videos in the future.
For our upcoming video (out tomorrow!), in the narration I say to add (1) toasted (or roasted) chopped peanuts and (2) toasted sesame seeds to the dish. In the past, we used to explicitly show you how to toast peanuts/sesame seeds on camera, but recently we've been skipping over it - figured that these are often purchasable pre-toasted anyhow, and that it's an easy enough thing to look up how to do in case.
But I wanted to see how all of you felt though. One possible middle ground is that we could have a quick little video showing how to toast these things and just link it as a card in the video, though I know that a lot of people dislike having to 'jump in between' a bunch of recipes just to make one 'thing'.
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Just a quick heads up that tomorrowās video isā¦ experimentalā¦ and Iām not sure quite how well it all turned out.
So we were in the USA visiting family, and more or less on a whim we decided we wanted to film a video. See, thereās this cooking-related thought experiment that me and Steph often have, a game that we like to play when we want to get creative in the kitchen:
Imagine a chef or an old grandmother from one culture (say, Italian). Theyāre at their local market, and they bump into a new ingredient from a totally different culture (letās sayā¦ century egg). How would they end up making use of that ingredient according to their instincts, their cooking system?
Itās an interesting idea to play around with, and this time in the USA we realized that we could actually act out our olā thought experiment for real. Because Steph, after all, is Cantonese. And while weāve cooked in America before, it was usually in between Chinatown runs ā Stephās never tried to use American produce to make stuff strictly according to her cooking system. So we felt like itād all be a fun idea for a little quick-hit of a video.
We felt like it was important to not really to any actual testing ā to just go to the supermarket, see what Steph found interesting, and go from there. Our DSLR and fancy microphone were back in Thailand, but we had Stephās iPhone and we usually travel with a lav mic just in case. We made three dishes using three vegetables that you donāt find in Guangdong ā Dandelion greens, Zucchini, and Brussel Sprouts.
And while all the dishes were reasonably tasty, after cutting the video, to me at least the end result winded up feeling prettyā¦ amateurish. Video and audio were what they were, but the big thing that we probably should have done is actually test the dishes that we wound up making, or at least doing a few practice runs refining them.
I donāt know. Maybe youāll enjoy the off the cuff nature of it all? It was a fun video to make regardless. And we'll be back with a proper recipe video next week, promise.
But I was also curious, I guess, to see if any of you liked to do the same or a similar thought experiment? When was the last time you used an ingredient from one culture, and used it in a completely different context in a completely different cuisine? (fish sauce doesnāt count)
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This is a story about how difficult it can be to make recipes for international replication, and why ā when in doubt ā you should always trust your judgement and your senses over a written recipe, even if you otherwise like the source.
As many of you know, we recently moved from China to Thailand. Whenever you move, it always takes a bit of getting used to where and how to buy the ingredients you need ā and that goes double for international moves. Luckily, Bangkok is probably the best place for us to do what we do outside of China ā thereās a fantastic Chinatown, a lot of the produce is quite similar to south China, and when in doubt we can send stuff from Taobao here. Basically, weāve been able to cook here without many snags, which is awesome.
Now, for our recent video on how to use Dried Shiitakes (out a couple days ago), one of the recipes we wanted to include in the video was stuffed shiitake mushrooms. Awesome dish, totally in our wheelhouse ā we barely even left any time to test the recipe because we were just that confident in it. After all, Chinese meat mixtures are something weāve made practically a million times ā they were one of the very first things me and Steph ever learned how to make really *well*, and a recipe featuring a meat mix was even, like, the second video ever on this channel.
So we settled into our first testā¦ hand mincing and vigorously stirring the meat filling like we always do. Itās always a little bit of work going that extra mile, but hey, youāre rewarded with a juicy, bouncy filling in the end. And stuffed shiitakes are one of my absolute favorite dishes in the world, so you canāt help but get a little excited for them.
But after steaming? Theyā¦ sucked. We forgot to marinate the mushrooms (gah, easy thing to forget), but the biggest issue was the pork filling. The filling wasnāt bouncy and juicy ā it was dry and kind ofā¦ mealy. Stuck to your teeth when you bit into it.
In a word, wrong.
So thinking about where things might have gone awry, I thought back to all the musts when it comes to meat emulsions ā fresh meat, cool environment, vigorous mixing. I was a little lazy with the mixing (weāve gotten less obsessive over the years on that front), but I shouldāve still been in the same rough ballpark. Regarding temperature, while Bangkok is hot, itās basically the same as summer in Guangdong, and we usually run the A/C while weāre cooking anyway. That left the pork.
Looking at the bag, it dawned on me that the meat that weād purchased had probably been previously frozen pork. In China, frozen meat stalls are popular at local markets too (cheap meat from USA and Brazil!), but thinking back to our walks through the Khlong Toei wholesale market hereā¦ in Bangkok they seem to like to thaw out the frozen stuff before purchase. Not to mention, the pork that we used was actually from our freezer, so this was actually pork thatād been frozen twice! No wonder!
So this time, I decided to go to the supermarket to pick up some pork. Down the road from us is a Big C, whichās a Thai hypermart thatās owned by Carrefour. And while I *hated* going to Carrefours in China (theyāre designed like a maze, worse than an Ikea), in fairness they always had some quality pork. So I went to Big C (a more pleasant experience by and large), grabbed some of our trusty ham/leg cut of pork, and we tested it againā¦ confident that the filling would come out bouncy and juicy like usual.
Nope. Same problem ā dry, soft, mealy.
Ok. Now we were starting to get a little worried ā Big C pork definitely wasnāt the answer. That said, generally speaking, in China at least itās markets where you get the good stuff, not supermarkets (Carrefour pork and beef aside). So who knows? Maybe the supermarket stuff was actually previously frozen too, and with our beginner-level Thai we just didnāt see it on the label?
So we resolved to go back to the market, but this time I didnāt do it blindly. I scouted out our local market, and if you get there early there definitely *are* shops that sell freshly slaughtered pork ā you can tell from the bottles of fresh blood that they sell on the counters. But to really make sure no stone was left unturned, I decided to enlist the help of our neighbor here, whoās a vendor at the local night market. Thai cooking also has a similar concept for these meat mixtures ā they call it ābouncy porkā (āąø«ąø”ąø¹ą¹ąøą¹ąøā). So between my painfully rudimentary Thai, her slightly better English, and a healthy assist from Google Translateās āconversationā featureā¦ I described to her our problem.
She immediately understood. Waved her hand and told me in English āyes, many market pork is not goodā. She walked with me one morning to the market (as she has to go anyway), and led me to a specific vendor. This was one of the fresh pork vendors that Iād seen earlier ā perfect. The vendor grabbed a cut of the pork and told me that this was the cut that you use to make ąø«ąø”ąø¹ą¹ąøą¹ąø, the bouncy pork. That cut? The ham/leg, same as weād always used in China. Effusively thanked them all, went back to test. *This time* I was confident.
Butā¦ while it was *better*, at its core it still had the same textural issues.
My mind was spinning. This pork was gaslighting me. Tried to search YouTube for Thai bouncy pork recipesā¦ they all used food processors as a base. Maybe that was my problem? Or maybe the Thai bouncy pork justā¦ isnāt as bouncy sans additives? I seemed to remember some of the snacks here didnāt seem to have *that* juicy of a filling. Or maybe this was why all those classic Teochew dishes like Guorou ā in China stuffed with pork ā were stuffed with seafood here? Or maybe itās a breed thing? Or maybe itās a time-from-slaughter-to-market thing? Maybe we should just throw our hands in the air, and accept that we justā¦ *canāt* make juicy Chinese meat fillings here in Thailand?
There was one route left before giving up though.
(continued in pinned comment below)
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So I have a question you all thatās a little awkward to execute in poll form: which cuisines do you consider your kitchen āset upā for?
Let me explain what I mean. The other day I was perusing /r/cooking, and there was a thread there asking whatās become a pretty common question on the forum: which things, in your opinion, are never worth to make at home? And after the usual answers of āpuff pastyā (agree) and ādeep fried anythingā (disagree, but understand), there were a few commenters chiming in with the answer of āStir friesā.
Itās something that weāve definitely heard before ā people trying to follow one of our recipes, bemoaning the fact that theyād need to purchase like fifteen new ingredients from their local Asian supermarket (and potentially even have to fiddle with a portable burner), then throwing their hands up in the air and saying āyeah, not worth making at homeā.
But like, millions of people *do* obviously make Chinese food at home all the time ā the difficulty isnāt something intrinsic to the cuisine, itās because said commenterās kitchen just wasnāt āset upā for making Chinese food.
And thatās obviously ok, right? A channel that I like binging now and then is Obi and Salmaās MiddleEats ā despite the fact that our kitchen is *completely* not set up to make Egyptian food and the like. I was chit chatting with him a bit over on Reddit, and I sort of felt like that stereotypical AllRecipes commenter that changes literally everything about a recipe before giving it five stars:
āHey man, loved your Yellow Rice recipe, it turned out absolutely fantastic. Ended up swapping the Loumi for Cantonese preserved lemonsā
āAwesome to hear, seems like a sensible substitutionā
āI also swapped the butter for lard, cut the tomatoes because I forgot to buy them, swapped the lemon juice for some homemade preserved lemons, hit it with a slug of fish sauce, and added a whole can of chopped up Cantonese fried dace with black beans because I thought itād be delicious. Awesome recipe.ā
āā¦ā
Because our kitchen isnāt set up for Middle Eastern food, I primarily watch their channel for inspiration, tips on technique, and to justā¦ learn stuff. Ditto with something like the always illustrious De mi Rancho a Tu Cocina ā unless we start nixtamalizing our own corn, our kitchen just canāt quite fit in Mexican food (even though we obviously adore the cuisine).
Generally speaking, I think that if you want to make something properly authentic, most peopleās kitchens can probably fit inā¦ two cuisines. Maybe three. For us, our kitchen is set up for (1) Cantonese (2) Southwest China and (3) the American south. For *most* dishes within those three cuisines, we can make do without any special sourcing or expensive trips to the supermarket.
Of course, certain cuisines are also closer to others. If your kitchenās set up for Cantonese food, you can actually make a number of Japanese dishes provided you grab just a small handful of other ingredients. Ditto with American food and, say, France. And obviously thereās a lot of interoperability between different Chinese cuisines as well.
Iām starting to ramble, but the point is ā next week weāre going to have a video on how to āset upā a kitchen to be able to cook Chinese food, so we were curious to see what cuisines yāall were set up to do, and maybe also how many of you might watch us in a similar way that I watch some other international cooking channels (i.e. for inspiration a bit more than instruction).
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So after watching the esteemed Tom Nicholas (rightly) lay into a couple creators we otherwise quite enjoy regarding unethical sponsorships and integrations a few months back, weāve been thinking a little bit about ethics of the whole space ā and how we want to deal with conflicts of interest moving forward.
Maybe I can be a little more concrete. One of Stephās friends from Guangxi comes from a village that makes high quality bamboo baskets for food and cooking. As tends to happen the world over, this sort of artisanship is slowly fading away ā incomeās low, so young people donāt get into the trade. So Stephās friend came to her with an idea: they could export the baskets, the artisans can get a higher income, we let you all know that these cool baskets are available to purchase on Amazon or Etsy or whatever.
I have no idea if this specific idea will come through or not ā thereās always a ton of hurdles to this kind of stuff ā but this is exactly the type of thing that weād be excited to use our platform for. Helping artisans get a better wage? Doing our small, minuscule part in helping to preserve traditions? Introducing people to cool kitchen stuff from China they can buy? Awesome... right?
But we were thinking about this quite a bit, and I do think thereās a bit of a hitch. You see, we make a LOT of product recommendations in our videos: get Juanchengpaiās chili bean paste, donāt get Lee Kum Keeās black bean sauce, Donggu soy sauce is the best cheap soy sauce that you canāt (usually) buy abroad, the entire Lao Gan Ma product line is fantastic except for their sour soup hotpot baseā¦ etc etc. Itās sort of the nature of doing the kind of cooking videos that we do. And I think itās critically important you can *trust* these recommendations, and not worry about whether thereās some ulterior motive (which is unfortunately endemic on a few other platformsā¦)
Because on a fundamental level, I think that praise ā and by extension recommendation ā is ultimately limited by the ability to give true, unfiltered criticism. I feel *very* comfortable recommending Lee Kum Keeās Hoisin sauce, because in the very same breath I can say unequivocally that their black pepper sauce is complete garbage. But if there was, say, a bad batch of bamboo baskets from Guangxiā¦ how comfortable would we be, really, to criticize those artisans? And if Iām uncomfortable criticizing them if they screw up, how could you ever trust our recommendation in the first place?
Soā¦ this is what weāve come up with. I think on YouTube, everyoneās gotten comfortable with (or at least used to) sponsored segments by this point. Adam Ragusea can extol you to buy SkillShare in a sponsored segment, and thereās no ambiguity there ā itās an ad read. So what we think we want to do is this: when thereās a product that we want to support, we will have a very clear, separate sponsored segment (ala the YouTube standard) that weāll label a ācommunity sponsorshipā. Basically, itāll be a free advert for them ā albeit one in our own words. In this way, I think that we can still support people doing stuff we like, without things gettingā¦ ambiguous.
(Note that with this idea - or if we ever do sponsorship-sponsorships in the future, the segment'll be at the END of the video. I personally always am irked by sponsored segments that interrupt a recipe, given that you either have to sit through ads or pay for YouTube Premium anyway)
But yeah. Weāll see how this idea goes. Weāll be giving this ācommunity sponsorā thing a whirl in our next video most likely ā the same friend that was exporting the Husa knife also had some Chinese-style whetstones that we think are cool.
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Learn how to cook real deal, authentic Chinese food! We post recipes every weekend (unless we happen to be travelling) :)
We're Steph and Chris - a food-obsessed couple that lives in Shenzhen, China. Steph is from Guangzhou and loves cooking food from throughout China - you'll usually be watching her behind the wok. Chris is a long-term expat from America that's been living in China and loving it for the last 12 years - you'll be listening to his explanations and recipe details.
This channel is all about learning how to cook the same taste that you'd get in China. Our goal for each video is to give you a recipe that would at least get you close to what's made by some of our favorite restaurants here. Because of that, our recipes are no-holds-barred Chinese when it comes to style and ingredients - but feel free to ask for tips about adaptations and sourcing too!