Regional Cuisine

[North] Famous Food

I'll introduce some famous snacks or dishes:

Steamed Bread (Mantou)

The steamed bread or Mantou is a famous kind of bread in the north. As the name suggests, it is steamed. The Mantou is made of flour? and so it is white in colour. It doesn't have any particular flavour.

Peking Duck (Beijing Kao Ya; Bukging tien ap)

This famous dish can be prepared in a few hours.

First the ducks have to be cleaned.
Then air is puffed inside the ducks to make sure that the meat will cook evenly, and the duck can absorb the sauces.
Then the duck is being put into very hot water and taken back up in a very short time.
Then it is being hooked.
The ducks have to be marinated in a sugar and water combination. Then you have to pour melted fat over them, and in other words, basting.
After that the ducks have to be air-dried for 3-4 hours. This is done in order to make the skin crispy and tasty when it is roasted later.
They are then roasted in a barrel-shaped oven, over a charcoal fire for about an hour, until it is cooked.

Then the duck will be sliced into very thin pieces, and served on a plate together with scallions, sweet soy bean paste, and some thin pancakes.

• Then how do we actually eat it?

Place a piece of pancake on your plate. Then, put some duck slices (meat together with its crispy skin), scallions, and the sweet soy bean paste and roll it up into a pocket. Eat it up!

Mongolian Hot Pot

The Mongolian Hot Pot is actually very similar to fondue. It is a favorite Peking dish. A pan is set around a central chimney that holds charcoal. Then, water is poured in the pan to boil. Also set on the table are some sauces and seasonings. You use chopsticks to put some sliced food especially mutton into the boiling water to cook. Other favours are beef, pork, etc. The diners select these and add flavouring sauces to the cooked meat such as

• soy sauce


• chiu (wine)


• sesame oil with soaked chilies


• hot pepper oil


• vinegar

Additional spices are served at the table for those who like hot dishes. When the food is cooked, the diners help themselves to the food or the artistry of the meal, so to speak. At the end, diners can make themselves a special soup from the broth by adding any vegetables they like.

Dumplings

People in Beijing can eat up to 30 dumplings or even more at a meal! They are made from wheat flour dough, rolled out thinly, which wraps a delicious filling:
minced-meat
vegetables
seasonings
Actually, dumpling wrappers are sold in the supermarket nowadays, usually in frozen form. So, people just need to make the filling and wrap up the dumplings.

There are three ways of cooking Chinese dumplings:

1. Boiled Dumplings(Shui Jiao)

This is the most common way to cooking dumplings. Dumplings are cooked in boiling water, or boiling soup over high heat. They are served hot, sometimes together with the soup. People usually dip the dumplings in some hot chili sauce and Chinese vinegar.

2. Fried Dumplings (Guo Tie)

They are longer in size than boiled dumplings. The dumplings are fried in a pan with some oil, and then a little water is added to cook the dumplings. The water would evaporate, and the dumplings are left to cook for a while longer, making the bottom of the dumplings very crispy and golden brown. Serve them on a plate with vinegar and chili sauce with its brown side facing up.

3. Steamed Dumplings (Zheng Jiao)

Steamed Dumplings come in different shapes and a variety of different fillings, which makes it very popular. They are steamed in a steamer, and are very juicy. A lot of steamed dumplings are served as a dim sum. For example, the prawn dumpling (har gaw) which has a translucent wrapping after it is cooked. The filling is prawn and some other vegetables. It is the shape of a pouch.

Regional Cuisine

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