A Bite of China

Last year, China Central Television (CCTV) featured a seven-episode documentary series about the history and cooking of China. I have collections on food videos like Anthony Bourdain, Food Unwrapped, Two Greedy Italians and Heston Blumental and I have learned a lot that can be very useful to my profession as a food writer.

If you love to cook, you can access information that would improve your skills in the kitchen at a minimum expense. A long time ago, I was wondering on how to add seasonings to the intact crab until I saw the video of a Chef in Madagascar boring a small hole on the shell of the crab. Using an oil dispenser, he poured an emulsion of spices through the hole. Simple, isn’t it?

A friend gave me a copy of the series: A Gift of Nature, Story of Staple Foods, Inspiration of Transformation, Taste of Time, Secrets of the Kitchen, Balancing the Five Tastes and Our Rural Heritage.

The first episode, A Gift of Nature featured harvesting matsutake mushroom (Shangri-la) and ham production (Nuodeng Mountain) in Yunnan Province, digging lotus roots in Zhen Lake in Jiayu, Hubei and fishing in a frozen lake called Chagan Lake in Jilin.

A dish of roasted matsutake mushroom costs about 1,600 China Yuan (11,500 pesos) and you have to climb a mountain and get one mushroom (20-50 grams) in every kilometer of forest. Good exercise for some of my overweight friends! Ham making is less effort but more patience because you have to make the salt in the Nuodeng Mountain and wait 3 years before you can eat the ham.

Harvesting lotus root is a contender for Ironman competition because you dig the roots by hand in the thick gluey mud in Zhen Lake without breaking it (contamination sets in), 14 hours a day for six months. It is so difficult to feed my vegan friends! Fishes like the bighead carp from Chagan Lake is another gift from nature but you have to catch it first in a frozen lake and you have to wear winter clothes including a hat made from dog fur.

Episode number two is The Story of Staple Food and it states that 2,000 years ago, there were five staples; rice, wheat, beans, millet and broomcorn millet. The latter is a variety of sorghum (Sorghum vulgare  var.  technicum) and today, there are only three staples left: rice, wheat and corn. By the way, 65 percent of China consumes rice.

The Huang couple living in Ding Village, Xiangfen County in Shanxi, produces Yellow Steamed Buns made from glutinous millet. It takes three days to make a bun (grinding, kneading & fermentation) working from 3 am to 9 pm, selling price is 1 Yuan/bun. They make 15,000 buns every winter season. No wonder their two children have left, excuse me, to work in the city and this must be happening to many agricultural communities in China today.

Zongzi (called ba-chang here) is added here because there is a factory worker in Zhejiang who can wrap 3,000 zongzi in a day (7 per minute) and the factory produces one million ba-chang every day.

The third video I viewed is Inspiration for Transformation and it features the charcoal cooking of tofu balls, production of hairy tofu using “self made” sour juice and the making of Jinhua Ham (said to be the best ham from China) in Jinhua City, Zhejiiang. I have seen these before but I did not know that modern equipment was imported from Europe to produce these Jinhua Hams.

We have discussed three of the seven videos of the documentary and your favorite food columnist wish and pray that his beloved readers can get copies of this series of A Bite of China.

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