Tieyu and the Magic Powder
My new friend Tieyu is here on an exchange, living in student housing, away from her husband and daughter in China. When she mentioned that she's a good cook, I asked her if she'd like to come to my house and teach me a Chinese dish. I thought it might help her feel at home, and I knew I'd learn something new and interesting.
We started our culinary adventure with a trip to Fubonn. After about an hour wandering the aisles of this Asian food wonderland, me acting like a complete tourist (they have palm sugar! What's palm sugar for? Look at the size of those papayas! Rice gluten! What's that for? Do I need a wok? They have woks...), and Tieyu being very nice about it, we came home with our bounty and started preparing dinner: jiaozi (pork dumplings), cucumber salad, and mung bean porridge.
First we made our own dumpling wrappers. They start with a stiff flour-and-water dough that you pull out into a long rope and break off in little chunks. These you flatten with your palm into a sort of flying-saucer shape.
Using a short rolling stick, you thin the edges into a circle, leaving the middle slightly thicker. A dab of filling goes in the center, then you seal it in by folding and crimping the dough. Tieyu made it look so easy! Mine were all misshapen blobs, one for every dozen or so she made.
Here is Tieyu:
Our filling was ground pork with scrambled eggs, and masses of Chinese chives chopped very finely. This was seasoned with quite a lot of ginger and salt, soy sauce, sesame oil, and...magic powder.
See, Tieyu brought a little packet of brown powder with her from China, and so critical was it to the outcome of our cooking that when she initially forgot it in her apartment, she asked me to circle back for it: hua1 jiao1 mian4, also known as Szechuan pepper or Chinese prickly ash. It isn't really a pepper--not in the chile family at all--but it adds a pungency of the "numbing" variety that's very characteristic of northern Chinese cuisine. It's also got medicinal properties--among other things, it's good for digestion. How handy!
Anyway, a couple of tablespoons of this precious stuff went into the filling.
While we simmered one potful after another of our gorgeous jiaozi, Tieyu had me set a saucepan of mung beans on to boil. Then we julienned some cucumber and carrot and chopped up some transparent noodles, and dressed all this with rice vinegar, sugar and garlic.
The jiaozi were heavenly, with their slippery boiled wrappers and the burst of a dozen rich, steaming, combined flavors when you bit in. We just stood there in the kitchen eating them. A bit later my sister joined us. When we'd all eaten as many dumplings as we could, and scarfed up most of the salad, we had dessert. The mung beans had cooked and cooled, and Tieyu served them to us in little dishes, in their broth, with sugar. They were mild and green-tasting, very refreshing. Tieyu says that mung beans served this way have a cooling effect on the body.
Tieyu gave me the packet of magic powder to keep. She took a dozen dumplings home with her and there were still dozens left. I had cold mung beans for breakfast today, and re-steamed dumplings for lunch and dinner.
The real tasty leftover, however, was this dawning realization: all my life, food has been something to fear, control, limit, distrust, and obsess over. At best, in my culture, it's a hedonistic pleasure, akin to sin. It's always something you need to heal from, work off, undo, burn up. In China, apparently, food is actually viewed as medicine, and a well-prepared meal makes you better, and not just fuller or fatter.
So, thank you, Tieyu and the magic powder. I'm on the road to a whole new learning experience.
We started our culinary adventure with a trip to Fubonn. After about an hour wandering the aisles of this Asian food wonderland, me acting like a complete tourist (they have palm sugar! What's palm sugar for? Look at the size of those papayas! Rice gluten! What's that for? Do I need a wok? They have woks...), and Tieyu being very nice about it, we came home with our bounty and started preparing dinner: jiaozi (pork dumplings), cucumber salad, and mung bean porridge.
First we made our own dumpling wrappers. They start with a stiff flour-and-water dough that you pull out into a long rope and break off in little chunks. These you flatten with your palm into a sort of flying-saucer shape.
Using a short rolling stick, you thin the edges into a circle, leaving the middle slightly thicker. A dab of filling goes in the center, then you seal it in by folding and crimping the dough. Tieyu made it look so easy! Mine were all misshapen blobs, one for every dozen or so she made.
Here is Tieyu:
Our filling was ground pork with scrambled eggs, and masses of Chinese chives chopped very finely. This was seasoned with quite a lot of ginger and salt, soy sauce, sesame oil, and...magic powder.
See, Tieyu brought a little packet of brown powder with her from China, and so critical was it to the outcome of our cooking that when she initially forgot it in her apartment, she asked me to circle back for it: hua1 jiao1 mian4, also known as Szechuan pepper or Chinese prickly ash. It isn't really a pepper--not in the chile family at all--but it adds a pungency of the "numbing" variety that's very characteristic of northern Chinese cuisine. It's also got medicinal properties--among other things, it's good for digestion. How handy!
Anyway, a couple of tablespoons of this precious stuff went into the filling.
While we simmered one potful after another of our gorgeous jiaozi, Tieyu had me set a saucepan of mung beans on to boil. Then we julienned some cucumber and carrot and chopped up some transparent noodles, and dressed all this with rice vinegar, sugar and garlic.
The jiaozi were heavenly, with their slippery boiled wrappers and the burst of a dozen rich, steaming, combined flavors when you bit in. We just stood there in the kitchen eating them. A bit later my sister joined us. When we'd all eaten as many dumplings as we could, and scarfed up most of the salad, we had dessert. The mung beans had cooked and cooled, and Tieyu served them to us in little dishes, in their broth, with sugar. They were mild and green-tasting, very refreshing. Tieyu says that mung beans served this way have a cooling effect on the body.
Tieyu gave me the packet of magic powder to keep. She took a dozen dumplings home with her and there were still dozens left. I had cold mung beans for breakfast today, and re-steamed dumplings for lunch and dinner.
The real tasty leftover, however, was this dawning realization: all my life, food has been something to fear, control, limit, distrust, and obsess over. At best, in my culture, it's a hedonistic pleasure, akin to sin. It's always something you need to heal from, work off, undo, burn up. In China, apparently, food is actually viewed as medicine, and a well-prepared meal makes you better, and not just fuller or fatter.
So, thank you, Tieyu and the magic powder. I'm on the road to a whole new learning experience.