The twelfth century was a rough time for China. In 1127, the Jurchens, a nomadic group from Manchuria, invaded and sacked the capital in Kaifeng. They occupied the north for more than a century. To this day, the invasion conjures up bitter memories in China and with good reason. The conquest was disastrous by most standards. The Song empire lost much of its territory. It also had to pay tremendous sums of money to the enemy in exchange for peace. Tens of thousands of Chinese were displaced by the collapse of the north. Song defeat, finally, inspired talented writers to compose gory poems. Losing the north may have been a blow to Chinese pride, but it enhanced its culinary traditions. Refugees from the north introduced the cuisines of Kaifeng to the new southern capital of Hangzhou. In so doing, they created a rich fusion of regional cooking styles. By the end of the fourteenth century, people in Hangzhou feasted on chewy noodles, steamed buns, mutton stews, flat breads, and fresh cheeses. They also enjoyed buttery cookies. Sesame seeds lightly sprinkled on top of this Chinese cookie The following recipe comes out of a twelfth or thirteenth-century cookbook. The author was a Madame Wu, who lived in the South. Unfortunately, we know little else about her. Her recipes, though, reveal the diffusion of northern food traditions to the south. The lady used butter and sesame. She sometimes baked her pastries. The recipe presented some challenges to make. Madame Wu omitted essential information. For example, I was left wondering how much butter or spiced salt to use. She was also mum about baking time and oven temperature. After some fiddling, I got the recipe to work. My interpretation naturally took liberties with the text. I stirred in some butter, but Madame Wu was probably thinking of clarified butter, similar to ghee. She further instructed her readers to flavor the dough with a little spiced salt, but I dumped in a tablespoon (you can dial it back if you prefer more subtle seasoning). She was also vague about what went into the spiced salt, so I improvised. I heated some black pepper with salt in a wok. After the salt tanned, I added equal parts Five-Spice Powder and blended. The mix gave the pastry a distinctive kick. While Madame Wu’s cookie can’t compete with Yunnan rose pastry or Hong Kong custard bun, the results were not bad. My family devoured three successive batches. As usual, I am eager to know if anyone has suggestions for improvement! Sweet Crispy Cookies Flour, 2 cups Sugar, 1/3 cup Vegetable oil, ¼ cup Ghee or butter (1 T) Spiced salt (1 teaspoon- 1 tablespoon) Cool water, ¾ cup Sesame seeds 1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. 2. Knead together the flour, sugar, and oil. 3. Add the ghee or butter, spiced salt, and cold water. Add as much water as necessary to form a smooth ball. 4. Let the dough rest for 10 minutes (don’t refrigerate). 5. Divide the dough into three batches and shape them into logs. 6. Slice the logs into about 8-10 equal pieces. Roll out the disc into circles and make sure that they are thin. 7. Sprinkle on some sesame seeds. 8. Bake for 15 minutes. Allow the cookies to completely cool before eating. Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. https://thecuriouseater.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page

Do you feel like Instagram is ruining your dinner conversation? Or worry that you pick your entrées not based on how they taste, but how they look on Facebook? If you have these thoughts, you are not alone. The famed man of letters, Yuan Mei made similar observations: People eat to be seen, admired, and envied. Yuan Mei, though, was talking about the eighteenth century. He complained that people no longer savored their food. Instead, they chose pricey but flavorless items so that others would hear about it. Hence, his plea: Eat with the mouth, not the ears! Sea cucumber (pricey, but Yuan thought it overrated). Yuan Mei was probably thinking, in part, about the widespread habit of composing food poetry. Until the early twentieth century, literate Chinese wrote as often about their food as we do. Whereas our writings take the form of Instagram posts or blogs, they composed verse, running as few as four lines. Many of them were about fancy meals: lavish affairs that consumed the better part of evenings and involved exotic delicacies like palm face civet. Others, however, celebrated more quotidian fare. A casual lunch taken on a country road. A snack eaten at home. Or a late breakfast after a night of partying. Matsutake mushroom soup (also pricey) The poems were like modern social media posts. They created virtual communities, circulating through correspondence, manuscript, and print. Some Chinese writers found publishers who printed their work by the thousands. But others approximate present-day bloggers. Aspiring to become “influencers,” they self-published, producing print versions of their thoughts from home. Much like Instagram posts , poems translated the act of chewing into an aesthetic experience. In vivid language, writers conveyed the look of food. These poems engaged not only the eyes but also the ears. Readers chanted or sung them out loud, as well as recited them in their heads. Inspired by a gift of cherries, one poem came with instructions about the melody. The poems were also plays for status. They aimed to wow their audience with their authors’ literary finesse and impeccable taste in booze. They also broadcasted social connections. What was the point of attending a banquet with someone important if no one ever read about it? Yuan Mei carped about self-aggrandizement, but he was as guilty as the next man. A talented poet, he is best remembered today for his treatise on gastronomy, or the Recipes from the Garden of Contentment . Scholars cull the text for clues about cuisine in the eighteenth century, but it offers gossip, too. Yuan Mei told which famous people invited him for meals, where he enjoyed the best tofu, and who made for terrible hosts. (He once begged an acquaintance never to invite him over again.) Yuan Mei did not keep any of this to himself. While his treatise only came out in print after his death, it circulated within his social circle for years. It is easy to point the finger at technology. Yuan Mei, though, reminds us that eating has never just been about the food. The medium has changed, but the impulse to impress remains the same. Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. https://thecuriouseater.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page

If taro-tapioca pudding doesn’t sound like a Chinese food, you’d be right. In my Cantonese mother’s kitchen, it was much more. It was also medicine. At first pass, the purple-hued treat looks like an English pudding. The tapioca is processed from cassava root, a crop native to the New World. The milk used to be condensed milk. It also offers incontrovertible evidence of its presumed foreign origins. A common ingredient in European-styled sweets from colonial Hong Kong and Macau, condensed milk features in the egg custard tart, a dim sum classic. Taro tapioca (with sago) But the recipe was more than an English pudding with mild Chinese flourishes. Taro tapioca may have begun its career as a Western dessert, but Cantonese cooks remade it in the image of a sweet soup ( tangshui 糖水). Towards this end, they added taro root, omitted the eggs, and thinned out the pudding to make it soupy. In South China, sweet soups were not only delicious, but also had medicinal properties . They “cooled” and “replenished” bodies damaged by heat and exhaustion. Each of the recipe’s elements, in fact, had a therapeutic purpose. Take the translucent pearls, or sago ( ximi 西米). Traditionally produced from tropical palm starch, sago was a superfood and a staple in sweet soups. Doctors thought it cured emaciation and weakness in the legs. Sugar, too, had health benefits. It lubricated the lungs. Taro was reportedly good for developing fetuses and cleansing the body. Even the milk fit with this notion of food therapy. Physicians argued that milk saved the old, feeble, or malnourished. In recent years, taro tapioca has returned to its roots as a sweet. It’s available in Chinese restaurants in San Francisco, under the dessert section of the menu. In recent years, cooks in the United States have begun substituting coconut milk for the dairy. In so doing, they have transformed the recipe into a vegan treat, and also re-aligned it with preconceptions about the Chinese diet being dairy-free. From custard pudding to therapeutic soup to vegan dessert, taro tapioca has come full circle. Recipe For the recipe, I used Japanese taro, which is the size of a new potato and has a white-colored flesh. But if you like a deeper purple color, use the large taro. It’s also less starchy. Taro, 2 cups Large tapioca or sago tapioca pearls, ¼ cup Milk, 1 cup (or a combination of dairy or plant-based milk) Sugar, ¼ cup Water, 2 cups 1. Rinse the tapioca pearls and soak them in water overnight (at least seven hours). 2. Peel the taro and cut into cubes. 3. Steam the taro until tender, about 10 minutes in the Instant Pot. 4. Combine taro with milk and blend into a paste (you can omit this step if you like chunks). Let the mixture sit for an hour. 5. Heat the tapioca pearls and the taro-milk over a low flame, taking care not to scald the milk. Simmer the mixture. 6. When the tapioca pearls are translucent (after about 20 minutes), turn off the heat. Allow the mixture to sit for 10 minutes. Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. https://thecuriouseater.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page

Wanna get away from milk, but not sure about soy? There’s good news. I have an ancient Chinese recipe. It tastes better than the almond milk at the grocery store. Soy-milk may well be the most popular and widely-consumed dairy alternative in the world. But it is far from the only plant-based option from China. Centuries before the Chinese made a habit of soy-milk, they sipped buttermilk and yogurt along with their fritters. Fresh milk, however, was a seasonal product in traditional China. In many places, it was scarce. In response, Chinese cooks came up with ingenious workarounds. In the first century AD, someone figured out they could make “yogurt” from apricot kernels. Below, I include a recipe for the plant-based “yogurt,” based on a ninth-century household manual. My source, Mr. Han, was an obscure person with influential relatives. He also had a deep interest in practical matters: agriculture, animal husbandry, food preparation, and medicine. Mr. Han regarded his “yogurt” as more than a sweet treat. He also believed it had medicinal properties. If you add perilla seed and Job’s tear to the “yogurt,” it cures nasty coughs and other respiratory ailments. In its broad outline, the recipe has changed little since Mr. Han’s day. Modern cooks, however, have made tweaks. They replaced the ghee with milk. Or, in some cases, they omitted the dairy altogether. They switched up the rice. Cooks now use the sticky short grain. They often prefer almonds. Almonds look and taste like apricot kernels, but lack the toxins. Modern Chinese also share Mr. Han’s belief that apricot kernel is a therapeutic food. They argue that it improves the skin, lubricates the body, and replenishes the lungs. A plant-based "yogurt" Ingredients Whole almonds (or, if you are brave, sweet apricot kernels, available at Asian grocery stores), 1 cup Sugar or honey, ¼ cup (or to taste) White rice (uncooked), 1/4 cup Water, 3 cups Ghee or butter, 1 teaspoon (optional) 1. Blanch the almonds in hot water for a minute, then rinse and rub off the skins. 2. Soak the almonds and glutinous rice in water overnight (if it is hot, put the mixture in the refrigerator) 3. The next morning, blend the almonds and glutinous rice in a fresh batch of water. 4. Strain the mixture to remove any coarse matter. 5. Add the sugar or honey, then heat the mixture in a pot, simmering until the mixture reduces and thickens (about 20 minutes) 6. Stir in the ghee and allow the mixture to cool just above room temperature. It should have the consistency of a drinkable yogurt. Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. https://thecuriouseater.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page

People in Shanghai were once crazy about dairy. As my recent paper in Gastronomica shows, the eastern seaboard was famous for its butter, clotted creams, and curds between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries. Sixteenth-century foodies loved cheese in particular. They ate it stretched, fresh, and preserved, lightly seasoned, or breaded. They consumed cheese inside their dumplings and pastries, savored it with their pork, fish, and shellfish, and added it to their sweets. The following recipe comes out of Song’s Book of Nourishing Life (1504). The author, a minor official and a descendant of the Song imperial family, apparently took great pride in his mother’s culinary prowess. He not only recorded all of her recipes, but also urged his descendants to preserve her knowledge of gastronomy. The dough is flaky and rich. The Central and Western Asian elements of this pastry are striking. The dough is a phyllo, and there is the sweet nut filling so typical of desserts from the Middle East. The recipe also uses fresh cheese or the rendered fat of cows or sheep to make a dough. But you will not taste the cheese here. The dairy adds richness to the dough and sturdiness to the paper-thin sheets. The recipe is also cooked on a hot oiled griddle. Voilà , layers of flaky pastry! The filling can be adjusted for allergies. Ingredients Flour, 2 cups Hot water (mix a half cup of boiling water with a quarter cup of cold water) Fresh unsalted paneer, ½ cup (follow steps 1-3 of Song’s recipe ) Salt, ¾ teaspoon Honey or sugar Pine nuts, 1/4 cup Walnuts, 1/3 cup Hazelnuts, 1/3 cup 1. Prepare the fresh paneer. You can heat the milk to 190 degrees and then add a little diluted vinegar. Strain the paneer in a cheesecloth. 2. Combine flour and salt. Then add the hot water slowly and incorporate it into the dough. 3. Crumble the fresh paneer and knead it into the dough. Let the dough rest for at least 30 minutes, preferably an hour, until it is soft and malleable. 4. De-skin the walnuts and hazelnuts by blanching them in hot water for a minute. Dry out the nuts in the sun or in a warm oven. Mince the nuts and mix. 5. Divide the dough into small balls and roll them out as thin as possible on a surface dusted with flour. A Chinese rolling pin, which is thinner than its Western counterpart, is best suited for this purpose. The dough should be virtually translucent and paper thin. You can also use a pasta machine. The dough should be almost translucent. 6. Oil a hot pan with a generous serving of vegetable oil or ghee, preferably one with a high smoke point. Wait until the oil is hot, and then carefully place a sheet of the dough on the pan. Leave the sheet on the pan until it has turned golden brown, then flip and repeat the process. Remove from the heat. 7. Add honey or sugar to one side of the sheet and then sprinkle on the nuts. Roll the pastry into a cigar. If you find the pastry too hot to handle, wait a minute or two before doing this. It will still be malleable. Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. https://thecuriouseater.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page

Anyone who has done business in China knows the importance of luxury goods. No banquet is complete without a serving of something expensive: bird’s nest, shark’s fin, fine baijiu , for example. As a regular traveler to China, I have chewed on my share of abalone and even unwittingly ingested the flesh of endangered species. The love of luxury has been constant in China since ancient times. But Chinese views of luxury shift constantly, reflecting changing tastes and the laws of supply and demand. In recent years, people have begun to see abalone and baijiu as blasé. Foreign foods like truffles, which offer a touch of novelty, have displaced old goodies. On my last trip to China, the men at the party were doing shots of solid Spanish reds instead of baijiu . Matsutake mushrooms have supplanted abalone as the highlight of the evening. Long before the mushrooms became a banquet staple, ghee was a coveted luxury product in the eleventh century. The Song elite raved about the stuff: its rich flavor and fragrance. They also went to great lengths to buy ghee, shipping it over long distances. Like most pricey foods, ghee was too good to keep to yourself. Song elites shared their loot with friends and donated it to monasteries. The thank you notes, which took the form of short poems, survive to this day. The best ghee in the Northern Song period hailed from certain places in the north, from Xi’an and further west in Shaanxi and Gansu. Many Chinese believed that the superior flavor of the product owed much to the luxuriant grass that grew on the hills in these places year round. The grass fattened up local cows, producing creamy milk and marbled veal calves. In practical terms, this meant yogurt with loads of milk fat, yogurt that cooks could churn into a cultured butter and then heat to make clarified butter, or ghee. The ghee not only had a deeper flavor than regular butter, but enjoyed a long shelf life. Some of the stuff found its way into the vegetarian delights served in southern monasteries. This recipe offers clues about what Song-dynasty people did with their ghee. A fusion dish, it marries the flavors of the steppes to those of the tropics. The lychee, the other main ingredient, is native to Guangdong and Fujian, in the deep southeast. The sweet, fragrant fruit was popular in the Song dynasty, too. Well-heeled men and women feasted on the stuff. A renowned man of letters composed three hundred different poems about the fruit. Steamed lychee buns My efforts to reproduce the recipe presented mild challenges. Lychees are a seasonal product, available only during the early summer in Michigan. However, the canned product works just fine. Some versions of the recipe combine the lychees with coconut blossoms for a touch of sweetness. My search for the blossoms yielded no results. You can find coconut nectar online, but this may be overkill. Canned lychees, preserved in syrup, require no additional sugar. The ghee sold at grocery stores is moreover different from the Song-dynasty product. Ghee nowadays is synonymous with clarified butter. In medieval China, cooks made ghee by first churning yogurt into butter and then heating that butter. This laborious method survives in rural Turkey and parts of India. But I have yet to successfully replicate it in the modern kitchen. Whole milk is not what it used to be. The fat content of commercial milk is too low to make much butter from yogurt. You can buy true or “traditional” ghee on Amazon, but a six-ounce jar will set you back at least fifty bucks. My recipe is easier on the pocket book and still delicious. Filling Ingredients Lychees (four twelve-ounce cans, or five to six cups of the fresh fruit, peeled) Ghee Cinnamon, powdered ginger 1. Prepare the bun ahead of time with this recipe. 2. If using canned lychees, strain them well. Use a meat presser to squeeze out all of the liquid from the lychees. 3. Heat a wok, adding first the ghee and then the lychees. Sauté the fruit until the liquid evaporates and the fruits caramelize (be careful of hot oil splashes). Sprinkle powdered spices to taste, but go easy! They should add a touch of spice to the fruit, but not overwhelm the palate. Set aside and allow the lychees to cool to room temperature. 4. Prepare the buns in the usual way. Brush a little of the caramelized butter from the pan onto the buns before adding the fruit. Scoop up about two tablespoons of the filling and close the buns. Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. https://thecuriouseater.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page

I get a lot of questions about cheese these days. What do you mean that the Chinese cooked with butter? How do they digest milk products if they are lactose intoleran t? What did Chinese do with cheese? The Chinese actually did a lot with cheese historically. They made stews, sweets , and steamed buns . In fact, they beat Panda Express to the chase, producing cheesy wontons. The recipe below comes from sixteenth-century Shanghai: Mr. Song’s Book of Nourishing Life . As I explain in my recent paper in Gastronomica , Mr. Song recorded all of his mother’s recipes, many of which were for special occasions. This particular recipe turns up in his section on wheat products: noodles, pastries, pancakes, and stuffed pastas. Mr. Song’s family loved fancy noodles, some of which were made with duck eggs and others with cheese. This was one of three options for won tons. By the early sixteenth century, stuffed pastas had been around for more than a millennium. Chinese cooks had gotten in the habit of throwing just about anything into them (think lychees and persimmons ). The cheese reflected the culinary influences of the steppes. You can still find cheese-filled dumplings in Tibet and further west. (A phenomenal recipe for cheese momos appears in Beyond the Great Wall ). The cheese in the recipe is similar to paneer and can be made at home. You should, however, be mindful that our “whole” milk is watery compared to what was available to Mr. Song. The Holstein, the global work “horse” of the dairy industry, produces milk that is on average about 3.25% milk fat. Southern yellow cattle, however, makes milk that is 8% fat . So if cholesterol is not a concern, mix some heavy cream into your milk. It will make a smoother cheese! The poppy seeds present a second prominent element in the recipe. Like cheese, poppy seeds are rare today in southern Chinese cooking. This owes much to its connection to opium, which has a seedy past (pun intended). In fact, this recipe is missing from the 1989 edition of Mr. Song’s Book of Nourishing Life . Political sensitivities undoubtedly played a role in the editor’s decision to exclude the treat. But the Chinese used to consume many poppy products both as food and as medicine, including the seeds and husks, and not just the highly-addictive sap. In some places, they still do. Only a few years ago, police discovered that a cook in Xi’an had been adding poppy husks to enhance his noodle sales. The trick worked! Customers kept coming back for more. Filling Ingredients Whole milk, half gallon Scallions, one bunch (white parts only) Vinegar, ¾ cup mixed with equal parts water Salt (1/2 teaspoon) Cardamom powder (1/8 teaspoon) Sichuan peppercorns powder (1/4 teaspoon) Poppy seeds (2 tablespoons) Soup Ingredients 4 cups water Chicken or vegetable bouillon, 1 cube Scallions, 3 sliced Vinegar, ½ Tablespoon (or to taste) Sichuan peppers (1/8 teaspoon) Chinese dried licorice (2 pieces). If not available, do not substitute for Western licorice (it will overpower your soup). You can use one whole star anise instead. Preparations 1. Make the wonton wrappers according to these directions. You can also use pre-bought egg wrappers to save time. 2. Prepare the fresh cheese by following these directions. (Make sure that you do not heat the milk beyond 160 degrees, otherwise the curds will be grainy and hard to handle.) You can also substitute a creamy ricotta or a mascarpone if you don’t have time to make cheese from scratch. 3. Crumble the cheese and mix with the scallions, Sichuan peppercorns, salt, cardamom, and poppy seeds. 4. Fill the wonton wrappers with the fillings. When ready, boil them in a pot of water. The wontons should be done within 2 minutes (they will float to the top of the water when cooked). Remove from the water and strain. 5. Make the soup by combining the scallions, peppercorns, vinegar, and Chinese licorice with the stock. Add salt to taste. Heat and simmer for 10 minutes. When ready, serve a few wontons with soup. Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. https://thecuriouseater.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page

Westerners were struck by the Chinese penchant for drinking their tea without milk or sugar. The English missionary, William Milne (1815-1863), remarked upon the Chinese way of consuming tea in Real Life in China (1857): “When decocted tea [in China] is drunk without any admixture of milk and sugar. These are used only by foreigners, and probably to mollify the désagrémus of the ‘black draughts’ they are so fond of ‘masking.’ As to sugar and milk, the former is superabundant in China, and used for every imaginable purpose except tea-drinking…” Milne’s remarks resonated with the observations of most Western visitors to China in his time. By the nineteenth century, Chinese rarely mixed black tea with milk or sugar. Things, however, had been different only two centuries before. The Chinese not only once enjoyed their “black draughts,” but Europeans also had their first taste of milk tea in South China. The description of the Dutch traveler, Johannes Nieuhoff, who visited Canton in 1655, defies expectations. Tea, of course, was familiar to him. The Dutch had imported it from Japan already for several decades. But the distinctly Chinese manner of drinking “the Herb” was different enough to merit note: At the beginning of the Dinner there were several Bottles of The or Tea brought to the Table, whereof they drank to the Ambassadors, bidding them welcom. This Drink is made of the Herb The or Cha after this manner: They infuse half a handful of the said Herb in fair Water, boyling it till a third part be consum'd; to which they add warm Milk about a fourth part, with a little Salt, and then drink it as hot as they can well endure. Nieuhoff’s Dutch-language account of China went into print just ten years later, in 1665. A French translation appeared the same year, and an English version followed four years later. Milk tea also turned up in another influential account of China. Representatives of the Dutch East India Company also sipped milk tea in Fuzhou in 1666, which they called “Bean-broth, mixed with warm milk .” The timing of these popular accounts are remarkable. Both appeared before tea became a staple in the English diet. They also circulated prior to the first descriptions of Europeans mixing tea with milk. In 1680, an aristocratic French lady impressed the famous writer La Fontaine when she served tea with milk in her salon. Not long afterwards, English paintings featured jugs of milk for tea. Over the next few decades, tea replaced the breakfast ale and afternoon sherry at the British table . We may never prove that Europeans learned to make milk tea from the Chinese. It is conceivable that they came up with the invention on their own. But tea did not become a popular drink in England until the late seventeenth century. This was decades after Nieuhoff’s influential account of China, begging the question whether the visit with the mandarin sparked an international craze. Chinese Milk Tea Chinese cookbooks contain a surprising number of recipes that marry black tea with dairy. The following recipe is a simple one. But one must get the milk right. Chinese milk in the sixteenth century was far richer than anything that we nowadays drink. In 1917, C.O. Levine and William Cadbury , two dairy scientists, tested the milk of the cattle breeds native to South China. They discovered that while Chinese cows produced little milk, their milk was preternaturally creamy: eight percent fat. The native water buffalo, however, averaged 12% milk fat. Compare this to the 3.25% of today’s whole milk, and you have a virtual milkshake. To achieve the right level of fat, I mixed a quarter cup of light cream with three quarters cup regular whole milk. This brought me closer to the eight percent that Levine and Cadbury described. The flavor was close to evaporated milk, which has about the same amount of fat. Not coincidentally, most shops make milk tea in Hong Kong with evaporated or condensed milk. While the usual explanation is that the use of canned milk reflected the lack of resources or refrigeration, culinary preferences also must have played a role. Milk, of course, is nowadays widely available on the island. Yet people in Hong Kong continue to make their milk tea with the canned product and complain that European milk tea is too watery. Black tea (pu’er or oolong), 1-2 teaspoons Evaporated or condensed milk, ¼- ½ cup Boiling water, 1 cup A pinch of salt or sugar (optional) 1. Steep the tea with the boiling water for 5 minutes. 2. Strain the tea of the loose leaves. 3. Heat the milk gently, until it is hot. Then pour the tea into the heated milk. 4. Add salt or sugar to taste. Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. https://thecuriouseater.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page

In 1897, British diplomat and linguist, Edward Charles Parker (1849-1926), summed up conventional wisdom when he declared that Chinese consumed little milk. He did note, though, a curious exception. “A decoction known as nah-ch’a, or ‘milk-tea,’ is drunk at the Manchu court, and is served on state occasions; but it is merely a survival probably of Mongol rule.” Parker was correct on both counts. The Manchus kept an imperial dairy near Beijing. At the turn of the century, the Chinese also drank little cow’s milk. This, though, was changing: “But of late years the Chinese begun to fancy the sweetened tinned milks of Europe.” What Parker overlooked, however, was a long history of combining black tea with dairy, one predating the Manchu or Mongol invasions of China. People in China, in fact, had been drinking cream tea for centuries. In this regard, they were no different from their counterparts in Central and Inner Asia. Seven centuries before Parker, the famous “patriotic” poet, Lu You 陸游 (1125-1210), sang about infusing his morning brew with cow’s milk, churned into butter. Lu You was not alone in this. Popular Chinese cookbooks from the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries supplied detailed instructions for “pestle” tea ( leicha 擂茶). First pulverize soaked tea leaves with roasted sesame seeds, then add Sichuan peppercorns, salt, butter, and sugar to make a paste. Afterwards, pour in brewed tea and stir until the liquid froths, and warm over heat. You can also add ground chestnuts, pine nuts, and walnuts. If butter is unavailable, substitute dry flour. Dry ingredients for pestle tea Cream tea had a curious hold on the rich and powerful in China, especially in the South. Some versions of the beverage used ground goji berries, cream, and flour. Other versions, however, were simpler, comprising milk fats and black tea. One late sixteenth-century poet from the South urged readers to take a liberal hand with the butter or clotted cream. His point? The more cream, he wrote, the better. And indeed, most recipes specify that the proportion of dairy to tea should be three to one. A variety of recipes survive, too, from the early years of Qing rule (1644-1911). In the seventeenth century, a magistrate from Jiangnan instructed readers about how to prepare milk tea. Use low quality tea. Brew it strong and then beat it with a paddle until it acquires a deep red or brown hue before adding sesame paste and butter. Serve salty or sweet. It isn’t clear when, or if, this tradition died in China. Certainly, Tibetans, including those living in Yunnan, still make the stuff today, with brick tea, salt, and yak butter. Some versions of pestle tea persist in the Chinese-speaking world, albeit without the milk. Hunanese concoct a savory soup with tea, vegetables, and nuts. Hakkas in Taiwan also prepare a version of the drink with the same name. They use matcha green tea or oolong. Ground nuts and rice also go into the beverage. One contemporary rendition hints of its origins as a dairy-based beverage. Cook use soybeans, ground into a thick “milk.” The drink is sweet. Simple Cream Tea (seventeenth-century style) Don’t believe the name. The ‘milk’ ( naizi 奶子) refers *not* to fluid milk here, but to butter or clotted cream. Before refrigeration or canning, butter preserved fresh dairy, which was not only perishable but also seasonal. Heating butter will further extend shelf life. When properly stored, clarified butter, or ghee, will last at least a year, if not longer. People in southwest China still consume churned butter. But in coastal areas, clotted cream became more popular from the Ming dynasty. Foodies in the Shanghai area thought clotted cream went well into strong black tea. The key to making this recipe is blending until the mixture froths. This will ensure a smooth final product, otherwise the tea will have ungainly clumps of fat that float to the surface of your cup. You can do this with a hand-cranked butter churn. But Tibetans nowadays use hand blenders. Pu’er, oolong, or any black tea, 1-2 tsp (or to taste) Butter or clotted cream, 2 tablespoons, room temperature Chinese sesame paste, 1 tablespoon. (Do not substitute tahini, made from raw sesame seeds. If the Chinese product is unavailable, you can toast the sesame seeds yourself and mortar). Hot water, 1 cup Salt or sugar blender or manual butter churn 1. Brew the black tea for at least 5 minutes. It should be very strong. 2. Combine butter and sesame paste, and blend to mix. 3. Add hot tea and blend. 4. Add salt or sugar. Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. https://thecuriouseater.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page

The idea for this post sprung from a run to the store. In 2002, I moved to Detroit Metropolitan and became a frequent visitor to the Arab groceries in the area. On one of my first visits, I encountered ma’amoul , a crumbly pastry with a rich date or nut filling, which reminded me of the mooncakes of my childhood. The wooden mold used to shape the dough also bore an uncanny resemblance to those used for the Chinese product. This inspired me to investigate how much of Chinese cuisine had its roots in the Middle East, and vice versa. Mooncakes would not be the only Chinese pastry with connections to elsewhere in Eurasia. The Manchus, who ruled China between 1644 and 1911, also liked sweets from further West. They introduced the Chinese to chak chak , a syrup-soaked fritter from Central Asia. Now known by its Manchu name, sachima , the pastry features in celebrations of Chinese New Year’s celebrations. Last month, I noticed a seventeenth-century recipe for a “fire roasted rose pastry from the palace.” After some fiddling in the kitchen, I was able to reconstruct the pastry. The mixed nuts spoke to culinary influences from the Middle East. So did the aromatic spices and the use of mint. The rose, the central attraction, is worth lingering over, for it supplies a further connection to the West. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Chinese were mad about roses. They not only baked decadent pastries with them, but also consumed them as candy. Some cooks pounded rose petals with sugar into a paste, while others deep-fried the fragrant petals or used them to make steamed rice cakes. According to botanist Shiu-ying Hu, the rose, or Rosa rugosa, is native to northern China. But the Chinese were hardly alone in devising culinary applications for the flower. People in the Middle East and Central Asia have long baked and cooked with roses. During the Crusades, Europeans picked up the habit from the Middle East and brought it to the Americas. Rosewater, in fact, was an American pantry staple, until someone figured out how to manufacture vanilla cheaply in the early nineteenth century. Unlike Americans, Chinese have never lost their gastronomical appreciation of the flower. Yunnan is famous today for its fresh rose cakes, and rosebud tea remains a popular drink. Oreos even come in rose flavor. Ingredients Dough 1. All-purpose flour, 1 ¼ cup 2. Sesame oil, 3 T 3. Granulated sugar, 3 T 4. Boiling Water, 3/4 cup 5. Salt, pinch Filling 1. Rose jam or candied roses, chopped 2. ¼ cup melon seeds (these are pricey, so you can substitute raw pumpkin seeds) 3. ½ cup of hazelnuts, blanched almonds, and skinned walnuts, coarsely chopped 4. Fresh mint, 3/4 ounces, stems removed, rinsed, and minced 5. Cardamom, ground, 1 teaspoon 6. Fennel seeds, ground, 1 teaspoon 7. White sesame seeds, ¼ cup Preparation 1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and oil a baking sheet. 2. Mix dry ingredients for the dough with the sesame oil. Then add and incorporate the boiling water to make a ball. Cover with plastic wrap to prevent drying. 3. Divide the dough into small balls and roll out on a surface dusted with flour. You will want to make thin discs of about 4 inches in diameter. 4. If using rose jam, brush it on the disc in a circle of about 3 inches in diameter. Do not add too much jam (if using), otherwise it will leak out during the baking process. 5. Sprinkle a little of the mint, fennel, and cardamom on the rose jam. 6. Add about ¾-1 tablespoon of the nuts to the area that has been covered with jam. Be careful not to overload the dough. 7. Bring the edges of the pastry together to seal like one would when making mooncakes or a wife’s cake. I place the pastry seam-side down. 8. Flatten the dough a little and sprinkle sesame seeds on both ends. Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. https://thecuriouseater.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page

If you are looking for a savory brie, you’ll be disappointed. There’s not much cheese in palace “cheese.” The standard English translation not only misses the mark, but also does little justice to the delicate curd. More akin to a flan than a brie, it sports a sweet taste profile. Beer-set curd with osmanthus sugar Nowadays, people regard the curd as a unique Beijing local food, one synonymous with the culinary traditions of the Manchus, China’s rulers during the Qing dynasty (1644-1911). Hence, the palace in the name. What is more, the curds are sold in dairies owned by Muslim Chinese families, who advertise it as a halal food. A Chinese Muslim Dairy, Beijing (2017) The recipe, however, tells a story different from the modern marketing. For it features only three ingredients: milk, a dash of sugar, and fermented glutinous rice ( jiuniang 酒釀). The last is the coagulant. Loaded with a rennet-like enzyme , the juice from the rice transforms warm milk into a smooth curd. Picture the consistency of silken tofu. According to Carolyn Phillips, fermented rice has long been a popular ingredient in Chinese cooking. People in China consume it like pudding or use it to make sweet rice dumplings for New Year's. Young people even add it to their bubble tea. But as I discovered last year in Shaoxing over Thanksgiving, the fermented rice can deliver a buzz. Sweet Boozy Rice (Shaoxing, 2018) The fermented rice is also a byproduct of traditional beer making practices. Crush a ball of Chinese yeast and deposit the powder into a jar of steamed sticky rice. After a couple days, you will get a boozy liquid, which can be consumed as a dessert or used to make curd. Wait a few weeks longer and you’ll have a mild Chinese sake. Shaoxing rice beer, Thanksgiving Day, 2019 Historical sources reveal that Manchus were not alone in appreciating the curd; rich southerners also relished it as early as the seventeenth century. The first mention turns up in the memoirs of a Hangzhou literatus and bon vivant , Zhang Dai (1597–1684). According to this Mr. Zhang, one prepared the treat by “using beer to congeal milk.” A eighteenth-century Yangzhou cookbook similarly notes: “Cow’s milk curdles with beer.” Western visitors to China confirmed that the curd enjoyed popularity in the Pearl River Delta. In 1888, a Scottish travel writer and painter, Constance Gordon-Cumming (1837-1924), came across it in Canton. The lady mistook the rice beer for vinegar, an understandable mistake (rice beer can taste like vinegar when kept too long). Nevertheless, she got the broad outlines right: “[A] preparation of milk and sugar, curdled with vinegar, is so much appreciated, that in South China there are cows’- milk saloons where, on warm summer evenings, epicures may indulge in this luxury.” The beer-set curds have since lost their luster in the eyes of Southern foodies. Present-day Cantonese prefer a distinct, but related, product called “ Ginger Collides with Milk .” As the name announces, the main ingredient is ginger juice and buffalo milk. Like rice brew, ginger contains a rennet-like enzyme. Given its historically broad popularity, it is curious that the curd is now a signature Beijing treat and even an ethnic food. Indeed, the rebranding of dairy products in the twentieth century is a rich topic. But that’s a blog for another day. Ingredients: Whole milk, 200 ml Fermented Glutinous Rice ( jiuniang ), 100 ml (for a homemade recipe by Phillips, click here ) Granulated sugar, 10 ml Equipment: Instant Pot or steamer Four 6-ounce ramekins 1. Measure out the milk and sugar. 2. Take 100 ml of fermented rice. This is the combined weight of the rice and juice, and not just the liquid (too much liquid will result in a curd with holes and an overly alcoholic flavor). 3. Strain out the fermented rice and reserve the juice. Squeeze the rice to get as much liquid as possible. For every 100 ml of the stuff, you get about 60 ml of liquid. 4. Heat the milk and sugar in a pot over a low flame, stirring occasionally. Once a few bubbles form at the surface of the milk, shut off the heat. 5. Let the milk cool to 43° C (110°F ), at which point a skin should form at the surface. The milk will be warm but not scalding hot. 6. Stir the fermented rice juice into the milk. Mix to incorporate evenly. 7. Pour the liquid into the ramekins. The fermented rice liquid tends to settle at the bottom of the pot. To prevent uneven consistency in the curds, try adding a little of the liquid first into each of the ramekins and then add a little more from the bottom of the pot. Stir to mix evenly. 8. Steam the ramekins in the Instant Pot for 20 minutes (high pressure). If using a regular steamer, cover the ramekins with foil and steam them over a medium flame for the same amount of time. 9. Allow the curds to cool before removing. The curd should be soft, with the consistency of a flan. You can add osmanthus syrup, raisins, sunflower seeds, and peanuts, but the curd is also good on its own. Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. https://thecuriouseater.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page

It goes by many names – halva, halawa, marzipan, huasheng sutang . For something that gets around so much, halva’s not much to look at. Unremarkable squares. What makes the sweet memorable, however, is the texture: it teaches the mouth that sugar can be delicious even in a sandy form. Mung bean & sesame halva (NW Yunnan) Like most foods with legs, halva is not only a name changer, but a shapeshifter. In the Mediterranean, it’s made with semolina and has a pudding texture. In the Middle East, it becomes tahini buttressed by syrup. (Zingerman’s sells a Jewish version in dark chocolate). In China, halva is now mostly a crumbly peanut candy, held together with maltose. Halva’s presence in China is startling. Let’s face it, the Middle Kingdom has a reputation for insularity. Halva’s enduring presence in the Chinese-speaking world, however, softens the usual narrative, hinting of an open palate. Our story begins relatively late in Chinese history -- in the fourteenth century. Halva made its debut in a wildly popular almanac, which instructed well-to-do Chinese families on the finer points of good living (for translations and discussion, see Buell's article in the Mongol Empire and its Legacy ). In those days, halva was just a grain-based sweet, akin to present-day Iranian and Greek varieties. The family resemblance is no coincidence, of course. The earliest recipe made no bones about its foreign origin: not only did halva have an exotic-sounding name, but it turned up in the section on “Muslim” recipes. Predictably, halva made its debut while China was still under foreign rule. When the Mongols conquered the land south of the River Huai in 1279, they did far more than reunite people in Shanghai with their brethren up north; they inserted China into a massive Eurasian empire, stretching as far west as Eastern Europe and as far south as Vietnam. Along the way, the Mongols connected China to a wider world of trade and material exchange. Under their rule, Persians, Turks, and Arabs circulated throughout the Chinese world, leaving their mark on the khan’s kitchen in Beijing. (For the eclecticism of the Mongol table, read the magnificent translation of the Essentials of Diet by Paul Buell, Charles Perry, and Gene Anderson). Known as “men with colored eyes,” these Muslim newcomers did far more than trade, translate, and administer a massive realm on behalf of the Mongol khan. They also introduced their foodways to the Chinese-speaking world. The Southern Chinese elite may have distained their Mongol overlords, but this did not stop them from appreciating the fruits of their rule. Chinese cooks not only learned from Muslims how to make halva, but also lamb-stuffed eggplants, Iranian kashk, baklava, and börek. The most popular cookbooks, in fact, boasted of sizable collections of foreign recipes: Jurchen roasts, Tangut innards, and Central Asian pastries. The cosmopolitanism persisted in the Chinese kitchen for centuries – long after the departure of the Mongols. Popular Chinese cookbooks continued printing foreign recipes up until the seventeenth century. Halva's stay in China did not end with the demise of the “Muslim” recipe section. In the seventeenth century, a second kind made a splash in the coastal south. Unlike the medieval variety, the early modern version was a fancy treat. Cooks mixed flour with pine nuts and clotted cream, two pricey ingredients. Pinenut halva (after 17thc recipe) By the seventeenth century, Muslim foods faced competition from Manchu delicacies. Eager to win over their new overlords, Chinese merchants learned the ropes of the Manchu banquet. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the foodways of a new kind of foreign devil began to menace the pages of Chinese cookbooks. Shanghai housewives learned to prepare meat roasts, pork chops, cream soups, and bread in the Anglo-American style. Our subject matter too changed with the times. In the nineteenth century, it retired its foreign-sounding name. It’s been known as “flaky sugar” ever since. Nut halva has moreover spun off into a million, cheap varieties. Peanuts, sesame seeds, and mung bean flour now vie as the recipe’s lead ingredients. Peanuts, of course, enjoy certain advantages over its rivals. The New World legumes grow just fine on poor soil (something for which China does not lack). Today, flaky sugar is just another Chinese food. Eaten during the Lunar New Year, it conjures up memories of hearth and family. In this respect, it is like the pumpkin pies we Yankees consume at Thanksgiving. But things were different several hundred years ago. Long before it reminded my Chinese mother of a distant homeland, halva offered her ancestors a touch of foreign sophistication. Recipe This recipe appears in cookbooks from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Its authors assumed that the reader had a basic understanding of the procedures and omitted relevant cooking information like quantities and cooking times. By looking at several modern recipes with similar elements, I was able to reconstruct the proportions. Pine nuts, 100 grams (you can substitute raw peanuts) Salt, 2 grams Flour, 20 grams Sugar, 30 grams (or maltose, available at Chinese supermarkets) Water 1. Prepare a pan, lined with wax paper and coated generously with unsalted butter (or clotted cream). 2. Toast the nuts over low heat until golden. For peanuts, you can use a toaster oven and bake at 180 degrees F. Three minutes is enough, but if using pine nuts, keep a close watch over them. Pine nuts brown quickly and become bitter if overcooked. 3. Once cool enough to handle, grind the pine nuts with a food processor. If using peanuts, first rub off the skins. If using a food processor, be careful not to over blend, as the oil and nut paste will separate. 4. Toast the flour on a pan until slightly golden (about 10 minutes on low heat). Stir to prevent the top from being under-cooked and the bottom from being burnt. 5. Combine flour and nut paste with salt. 6. Prepare the syrup. If using sugar, mix four parts water to one part sugar. Heat until the sugar reaches 245 degrees F on a candy thermometer. At that point, the syrup will acquire a golden hue and thicken. If using maltose, heat it with a few drops of water in a pan so that it becomes semi-liquid, or microwave the mixture for 10 seconds. Stop after the maltose runs. 7. Incorporate the flour and nut paste into the syrup with a silicone spatula, and pour it into the prepared pan. 8. Allow the mixture to cool until it is slightly warm. Cut the halva into slices before it has cooled to room temperature, otherwise it will break. Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. https://thecuriouseater.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page