On February 24, The New York Times published an opinion piece , “Why Did the Coronavirus Outbreak Start in China? Let’s Talk about the Cultural Causes of This Epidemic.” Its author, Yi-Zheng Lian, blamed the recent epidemic on the scholarly Chinese medical tradition. For millennia, elite writers supposedly implanted misguided ideas about health and virility into the “Chinese collective consciousness.” Such ideas, Lian charged, have come at a high cost to global health. The op-ed is a study in fuzzy thinking. In case you’re wondering, Lian is an American-educated economist, not an expert on Asian history or epidemiology. His grasp of the Chinese medical tradition is shaky, too. That tradition doesn’t encourage folks to consume either pangolin or civet for sexual gratification. So what do Chinese do with wild animals like pangolin and civet? According to Lian, they purchase these animals in order to fill the energy void. “For men,” he writes, “it is most important to fill the energy void, which is related to virility and sexual prowess; for women, the stress is on replacing blood, which improves beauty and fertility.” Curious whether Chinese medicine doctors use pangolin, I checked the standard classics of Chinese pharmacology. My search turned up no sex or skin care applications. I also consulted professional Chinese medicine healers. Guess what? Lian is wrong. To be sure, some physicians used pangolin products up until a few decades ago, but not to improve male potency. (The ancients, incidentally, had fixes for erectile dysfunction , a real condition, and I translated some of them with Yang Yong.) Instead, they used small amounts of pangolin scales to treat serious conditions like abscesses, or female disorders like amenorrhea and problems with nursing. So what about the dreadful civet, Lian’s choice of clickbait? Civet is the small mammal suspected of being the source of the original SARs outbreak. It’s also the fruit-eater that poops out half-digested coffee beans for Western coffee connoisseurs . You can buy the cage-free variety on Amazon for a premium. Civet © Trustees of the British Museum The Chinese medicine doctors I asked drew a blank. My own search through databases turned up no formulas made with civet. Admittedly, some old books on diet mentioned the life-giving properties of the mammal. They also did the same for everyday ingredients like rice and wheat. Instead, the Chinese have long valued the quadruped for its soft texture and jade-white flesh. The great Song-dynasty poet, gourmand, and official, Su Shi (1037-1101) was once a fan. He left a famous poem about eating the tropical mammal while in exile. Su Shi was not alone in his esteem for civet. Foodies adored its meat pickled or coated in sticky rice and cooking beer, served with scallions and numbing peppercorns. Civet remained popular into the twentieth century. There are other problems with Lian’s treatment of Chinese medicine. He has a habit of bringing everything in Chinese medicine back to sex: “virility and sexual prowess, “penises of bulls or horses,” and “erections.” Needless to say, this leaves the impression that Chinese medicine is just about men having sex. This is like claiming that the American healthcare system exists solely to sustain erections. Viagra does generate 640 million dollars a year in revenue. But our doctors also heal bones, deliver babies, and treat cancer. Lian is also off the mark about Chinese medical philosophy. He acts as if “filling the energy void” ( jinbu 進補) is the main concern. The “void” here is Lian’s rather creative – or sophomoric – rendering of the Chinese. Jinbu simply means “to take food as a supplement.” But doctors did not just supplement deficiencies in the body. They also addressed problems of excess and circulation . At the end of the day, Lian and I can agree about some things. Wildlife consumption needs to be strictly regulated, and endangered species must be protected. And some Chinese folk remedies, such as diet tea, should be retired. Then again, a well-trained Chinese doctor knows better than to prescribe lethal amounts of mahuang (ephedra). But I disagree with Lian about Chinese medicine. In reducing a complex healing tradition to a handful of bedroom and beauty hacks, he paints a distorted picture of an effective healthcare system used by millions around the world each year. 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

Over the last couple of weeks, we have tackled the role of colonialism in Asian food history. Since the sun is finally out and the weather has warmed up, it's time to change our tune and leave behind this sad history. As Linh Trinh pointed out on Thursday, it would be a mistake to chalk up everything in Asian food to European imperialism! I wholeheartedly agree! This week and next, we'll look at how human migration has done its part to make Asian food a lot yummier. This is a subject obviously close to my heart. I am the daughter of a Chinese immigrant, whose ancestors had been part of the historic flow of southern Chinese into Southeast Asia. Unfortunately, that flow gets little of the attention that it deserves. As we will see, it not only reshaped the DNA of Southeast Asia, but also altered the culinary landscape. A food lab from a happier time Our subject matter: We all know its charms: chewy rice noodles line the plastic takeout box, drenched in sweet and sour goodness. There’s a touch of tang, usually delivered in a light pink sauce. Maybe a few slices of chicken or prawn, paired with scrambled eggs. Then comes the crunch: raw mung bean sprouts topped with toasted peanuts and a wedge of lime. I like to say that Pad Thai is to millennials what sweet-n'-sour pork was for my generation. But I may be wrong. You Gen Z also look upon it as comfort food . If you believe Quartz ’s Roberto Ferdman, pad Thai deserves to be sold at a restaurant called No Thai, Ann Arbor’s favorite chain. That’s because the dish really isn’t Thai -- even if we Yankees associate the 12,000+ Thai restaurants around the world with it. The fried noodles, Ferdman asserts, are actually Chinese. Our favorite food turns out to be an imposter. Hence the cringeworthy title, “The Strange and Potentially Stolen Origins of Pad Thai.” (Yes, I get it: it's clickbait, but still....) But should we regard pad Thai as illegitimate? Did Thai cooks really just steal the recipe from the Chinese and pass it off as their own? This begs the question what it means for something (or someone) to be Thai, or Chinese -- or, for that matter, really anything. It's a question that we have wrestled with *a lot* this term. We've seen it with vindaloo , tempura , and ketchup . The conundrum has also come up with curry , biryani , noodles , and dumpling s . One of you recently posted about it on YellowDig. You asked: at what point does a variant of a dish become its own thing? An answer will proceed less from the facts than in their interpretation. The origins of the dish are clear enough from the name and the star ingredient. The Thai name for pad Thai, kway teow pad, makes no bones about its Chinese origins. Kway Teow is a Chinese loan word , based on the southern Chinese [Hokkein] pronunciation of guǒtiáo 粿條 (strips of rice cakes). According to Mr. Ferdman, the name matches the reality. There’s really nothing Thai about the dish: not the rice noodles and certainly not the preserved radish. Only the chilis are truly “Thai,” Ferdman says without a hint of irony. If you are in my class, please laugh: you really should be thinking, Columbian Exchange . But the reporter must be forgiven. He has not taken ASIAN 258, so I do not yet haunt his every meal. So what did the Chinese contribute to the dish? Quartz is not entirely wrong. Rice noodles are, in fact, a common feature of Southern Chinese cooking. Made by grinding dried rice into flour, rice noodles represented the southern Chinese solution to wheat shortages. Wheat does not grow well in hot and humid climates (for which sub-tropical South China does not lack). So cooks made noodles from what was readily available in a classic example of local adaptation (i.e., tweaking recipes or culinary products to reflect the local palate, resources, or cultural matrix ). But rice noodles involve a more laborious process than their wheat-based counterparts. You first have to make a batter, then you steam that batter in thin layers, cut those layers into strips, and dry. Rice noodles represents an art form in Southern China. In the Southwest province of Yunnan, they go by different names: fine vermicelli are mixian 米線 (“rice threads”), whereas the thicker, chunkier ones are erkuai 餌块. In the Canton area, rice noodles come in different forms. Flat noodles shaped like fettuccine go by hefen 河粉 . The tender rolls encasing pork and shrimp have a strange name: changfen 腸粉 (“intestine powder”). Ignore: they are heavenly when seasoned with roasted sesame paste: a legacy of the Silk Road. Rice noodles (microwave edition) So how did a Southern Chinese rice noodle make it to Thailand? For the better part of a millennium, southern Chinese men have been leaving China. Rich men. Poor men. Pirates. Merchants. Traders. Political refugees. Curious men. Daredevils. Some crossed the Pacific, setting up shop in California, Mexico , and Peru . Others stayed closer to home. Large Chinese communities sprung up in the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, as well as Vietnam and Thailand. We know that the largest waves of migration took place in the last few centuries, especially in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when China was poor, overcrowded, and war-torn. My grandfather was part of that migration into Southeast Asia. Thailand was a popular destination for Chinese migrants. Less than fifteen percent of Thais call themselves Chinese today. But scholars estimate that up to forty percent of the Thai population is of Chinese heritage. This would make Thailand the home of one of the world’s largest and most powerful Chinese diasporas. The founder of the Thai royal family was part Chinese. So are many members of the Thai business and political elite. This includes the stunning Yingluck Shinawatra (the prime minister ousted by a military junta in 2017 and now a proud citizen of Serbia). But don’t forget Plaek Pibulsonggram, or Phibun. Phibun is today best known as the fascist prime minister who championed pad Thai during World War II. He designated the stir-fried noodles the national dish of Thailand, encouraging street vendors to make the noodles and going so far as to issue a standard recipe. But Phibun was a curious figure; he put into place a number of anti-Chinese policies. His grandpa was like mine; he too was Cantonese. Cantonese family overseas (find my mamma!) Given the heavy layer of Chinese genes in the region, Thai cuisine is naturally full of influences from the Middle Kingdom. Pad Thai may be the most famous, but it is only one example of the phenomenon. The now-defunct foodie mag, Lucky Peach , ran a photo spread with gorgeous shots of Thai noodle plates a few years ago. They are mostly rice based, but not all: Kuay Tiaw Phat Puu Koi See Mee Pad Mee Hong Kong Pad Macaroni (I dare you to click on this link ) Rat Na (a chicken-based dish, see below) Pad See Ew. The last, Pad Se Ew, in fact, is a dead ringer for a classic Chinese takeout staple: beef chow fun. (I tell this to my husband, but he insists on ordering this every time he goes to No Thai). This brings us to pad Thai: is it just a crypto-Chinese dish? Well… up to a point. If we compare the Thai version to its Cantonese ancestor , a different story emerges. The Chinese inspiration cooked with dark soy sauce, scallions, bean sprouts, ginger, and beef. The Thai version , however, sports a very different set of flavoring agents. The soy sauce, for one thing, is MIA – the umami, in fact, comes from fish sauce ( nam pla ), the amber juice that left sixteenth-century Persian visitors dumb struck. This is not the only sign that Thai cooks remade the dish to their taste. If we look carefully at the ingredient list, it becomes clear that Thai cooks relied on other staples of their kitchens to produce complexity and depth. Cooks add whole dried shrimp (Chef Ryan adds dried shrimp powder). For tang, they relied upon ingredients uncommon to the Chinese kitchen: kaffir limes ( the name needs to be changed), galangal, and tamarind paste. All of these should ring a bell. Remember my blog on Thai curries ! At the end of the day, I don’t think it’s fair to call pad Thai just another Chinese dish. This is like saying that my daughter Sofi is a Chinese person. Sure, pad Thai has Chinese roots. But stir-fried rice noodles are like biological organisms. They mutate, mix, and multiply as they move across time and space; along the way, they also pick up new culinary influences. Some of them have different ideas about their identities. Those layers of influence tell much about the resources, palates, and cultural matrixes that the dish encountered on its journey around the world. Pad Thai, furthermore, is also not done evolving. From Bangkok to San Francisco to Mexico City to Shanghai and back to Canton : The dish is a little different in every place. Sometimes, the distinction comes marked in the noodles. I found the rice noodles elusive in Mexico City , hiding under a bed of sprouts. Other times, it is the flavoring. The pad Thai sauce we find at the grocery store is far more corn syrup than tamarind. Other times, however, it is the source of umami. Many Americans choose to ditch the fish sauce. Regardless of how you make it, one thing is for certain. Pad Thai’s a globe trotter, a shape shifter, a time capsule of layered influence , and ultimately an American sensation. Views about pad Thai? Ideas about how to talk about it? What do you want me to say to Ferdman? See ya on YellowDig! Further Resources of Chinese Foodways in Southeast Asia: Sidney Cheung ed., The Globalization of Chinese Food (Curzon, 2002). Andrew Tam, “ Singapore Hawker Centers: Origins, Identity, Authenticity, and Distinction ,” Gastronomica 17.1 (2017): 44-55. David Y. H. Wu and Tan Chee-beng eds., Changing Chinese Foodways in Asia (The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 2001). Chef Ryan Waddell’s Recipe for Phat Thai 4 ounces dried rice stick noodles 3 tablespoons grated palm sugar or dark brown sugar 2 tablespoons tamarind concentrate 2 tablespoons fish sauce 5 tablespoons peanut oil 1 large shallot in small dice 2 large cloves of garlic finely minced ¼ cup preserved shredded radish 6 ounces extra firm tofu diced ½ tablespoon dried shrimp powder 8 ounces large shrimp deveined or sliced chicken breast 2 eggs beaten 6 chives finely sliced 4 ounces bean sprouts For the garnish: Lime wedges White sugar Red chili powder Crushed roasted peanuts Yield: about 2 servings Method: Soak the rice noodles in warm water for about 30 minutes; they are done when you can wrap the noodle around a finger. Drain the noodles and cut into 6” lengths. Mix the palm sugar, tamarind concentrate, and fish sauce and set aside. Heat 3 tablespoons oil in a pan until hot under medium to high heat. Add the noodles to the pan and stir to coat the noodles. Add the sauce and stir to coat the noodles. Move the noodles to the outside of the pan. To the open area of the pan add the shallots, radish, shrimp, and tofu, and cook until the shrimp are about half cooked; move aside. Stir the noodles but keep separate. Add to the open area of the pan the beaten eggs and cook until nearly dry. At this point if the noodles are not cooked enough you can add some water and cook until desired softness is achieved. Now mix half the bean sprouts and chives along with the egg, noodles, and shrimp mixture off the heat. Garnish with the remaining ingredients that can be mixed on the plate 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

Dear ASIAN 258 students: I’m sad that we didn’t get to do our dessert lab. So I thought I would pass along a very easy mochi recipe, which you can make in ten minutes. I have adapted the recipe by Namiko Chen . The key to mochi is the texture. Good mochi is soft, not stiff. It should melt in your mouth, but still be a little chewy but not rubbery. It’s best to make mochi in small batches and consume it right away. Mochi stiffens in the refrigerator. For this recipe, you just need: 1. Glutinous Rice Flour Asian market rice flour (cheaper) 2. Water 3. Sugar (I got brown sugar to work, too) 4. Filling. Typically, this is made with red bean paste. But my husband hates sweet red beans. So I substitute peanut butter mixed with a little maple syrup, or kaya (Singaporean coconut jam). 5. Starch. I prefer potato starch, but corn starch will do just fine. So how much mochi to make at a single sitting? I have discovered that 1/3 cup of glutinous rice flour will yield four pieces of mochi. You first measure out your flour, then add the sugar. Recipes vary in their proportions. Some cooks insist on 2:1 sugar to rice flour. Others go as little as 1:4 sugar to rice flour. I have opted for the middle path: 1:3 sugar to rice flour. I typically use water. Equal parts rice flour, water. But I sometimes add a little almond milk if it’s lying around or a half teaspoon of coconut milk powder. If you do use almond milk, add an extra half teaspoon or teaspoon of water to thin out the batter. The key now is to mix everything with a spoon to produce an even batter. Then pour it into a *shallow* bowl and cover. Stick it in the microwave and zap on high for 30 seconds. Then take it out and stir. I repeat this process at least two more times. By 1:30, you should have a white dough. Getting there... Stir one more time and return to the microwave for 15 seconds. Check. If there are still some liquid parts to the dough, stir with a fork and return to the microwave, heating for 10 seconds at a time and checking. I almost never have to heat the mochi dough for more than 2 minutes from beginning to end. You can also steam your mochi in the Instant Pot. This will produce a more even dough that glistens. If you elect to spend the extra time, stick the mochi in a heat-resistant bowl like a Pyrex and steam on high for 15 minutes. The next part is the trickiest. Now, take a decent amount of potato or corn starch and pour it onto a surface. I often line my countertops with silicon mats, but any clean surface will do. You should use about ¼ cup of the starch. Coat your fingers with the stuff and don’t be stingy. While the mochi is cooling slightly, take out your bean paste or peanut butter. Scoop out a teaspoon of the stuff and place it in the palm of your hand. Roll it into a ball and reserve, close to your rolling surface. Take the hot mochi and put it on the starch-dusted surface. Using a silicon spatula or a big spoon (dusted, of course, with starch), flatten out the mochi into something like a square. Dust the top of the mochi with more starch. Cut the square into four even pieces. Add the filling in the middle of the square. There are different ways of folding. I typically fold the mochi on one side and then press down the three other ends to seal. Or you can first try bringing two ends of the mochi squares together diagonally. Then bring the other two edges together. Seal by pinching. Make sure you have enough starch on your fingers and on the surface. Take the mochi and roll it gently on the dusted surface to make a ball. If there are any loose ends, pinch to seal. Serve it on a plate lightly dusted with starch. Questions? Wanna do this in real time? Let me know. 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

We continue our ruminations on the impact of Chinese migration on Asian eating. But instead of merely calling attention to this phenomenon, I would like to bring the discussion back to a larger problem that we touched upon earlier in the term. Can we talk about a cuisine having an "essence"? Are there drawbacks to thinking about cuisines as being "owned" by particular cultures? How do we demarcate the boundaries of a culture in a world where people move and recipes are shared? These were the issues a number of you raised a few weeks ago on YellowDig as we probed the history of Massaman curry and the fluid nature of foreign culinary influence: should we think of culture, or cuisines, as discrete, solid entities? Or should we take our clues from watery metaphors and conceptualize culinary influences in terms of waves -- waves that reshape the terrain and leave behind traces? Lumpia from a happier time in ASIAN 258 A few years ago, Filipino food became trendy on the East Coast. A restaurant called F.O.B . opened in Brooklyn, the hipster capital of the world. F.O.B. offered Americans their first taste of Filipino food – and in a cheeky setting, to boot. Some predicted that Filipino food was poised to become the next big thing. So the New York Times ran an article , “Filipino Food Finds a Place in the American Mainstream.” Despite the glowing reviews, Filipino food remains obscure to most Americans. Let’s face it: You’re probably asking yourself now: What’s Filipino food like? Surprisingly enough, this turns out to be a tough question. It’s also a question that goes to the heart of this class. ***** There are two ways of answering the question. One is to think about what makes Filipino food different – or distinct from Chinese, Thai, or Malay. Is it a seasoning, a dish, or perhaps a texture? The other is to do the opposite, to focus on overlapping elements: ingredients, dishes, and techniques that span places. You look at the connections to the Muslim and Malay world, to coastal China, and the Spanish and American empires. The New York Times reporter, Ligaya Mishan , chose the first. She opens her account with an anecdote about José Rizal (1861-1896), the great patriot executed by the Spanish. Before he became a revolutionary martyr, Rizal was just a medical student in Spain. In an attempt to keep a taste of home with him, he brought a jar of bagoong , preserved seafood paste. But it was all for naught. The jar broke during his journey, and the scent overwhelmed the non-Filipino passengers on the boat. This leads Mishan to reflect on what makes Filipino food unlike anything else in the world. She contemplates the pungent fishiness of the bagoong . She muses about the soul-piercing sourness that pervades sinigang , a sour soup, the dipping sauces for lumpia, and palm vinegar . For Mishan, the saltiness and sourness define Filipino cuisine. While I admire Mishan’s storytelling, I can't help but think she's on a fool's errand. She’s looking for something that does not exist -- the essence of Filipino cooking. So why shouldn’t she look for an essence? ***** For a start, the Philippines isn’t really a single place, but rather a collection of seven thousand islands. The 100 million people who call themselves Filipinos are also a diverse bunch. They speak a wide array of tongues, live and work in different places around the world, and follow dissimilar faiths. Yes, more than 90 percent of Filipinos are some kind of “Christian” (as if Pentecostals and Catholics were identical). But there’s also a sizable Muslim minority in the south, with their own foodways . If you have been following the news, there was, until recently, also an insurgency movement. The foodways of the Philippines add to this complex picture. A glance at the dishes that Mishan names in her article reveals a grab bag of culinary influences: native, Chinese, Spanish, South Asian, Japanese, even American. Think of the leche flans , bread rolls , and kesong puti (a soft white cheese made like paneer and queso blanco ). Or Filipino adobo (click here for a cooking video of adobo made by Kevin Kwok, UC Irvine undergrad). At this point, you should be having flashbacks of Goa , another long-time Iberian colony. Then picture banana ketchup. Yes, it’s sweet and closer to American ketchup than to the fishy stuff. But how do you think it got there? We occupied the Philippines for almost five decades (1898–1946). Chicken Adobo (Dish & Photo by Kevin Kwok) Shellfish in Pampanga (Photo by Marcos Calo Medina) Buffalo Milk Flan in Pampanga (Photo by Macros Calo Medina) Cooking in Pampanga (Photo by Marcos Calo Medina) Mudfish in Pampanga (Marcos Calo Medina) Pork in Pampanga (Marcos Calo Medina) Meat Stew (Marcos Calo Medina) Hot Chocolate (Marcos Calo Medina) ***** But let’s rewind and go back to the lumpia, which Mishan mentions only in passing. She calls it the “cousin” of the spring roll and overlooks the clues it offers. Lumpia in Pampanga, Photo by Marcos Calo Medina) In a nutshell, lumpia is a Southeast Asian spring roll. Its name is a loan word, borrowed from the southern Chinese dialect in Xiamen. We have already done a virtual tour of Xiamen . It’s the coastal city in Fujian formerly known as Amoy. Remember the fishy ketchup ? If I were a betting woman, I’d guess that Rizal ate far more than bagoong . Like many Filipinos, he probably also consumed lumpia. He had Chinese ancestors on both sides of his family. Immigrants from Fujian brought lumpia to the Philippines. By the time that Rizal faced the firing squad, Chinese had been in the Philippines for centuries. Some say they began coming in the ninth century. Others insist it was the eleventh century. But one thing is clear. Beginning in the seventeenth century, Southern Fujian supplied a steady stream of immigrants to the Philippines. This is something acknowledged (advertised?) by the Philippines' controversial current president, Rodrigo Duterte , who has been both an ally and at adversary of China. The Chinese community in the archipelago was large. At one point, Chinese immigrants and their descendants outnumbered the Spanish by a significant factor. Relations with the Spanish -- and the natives -- could be tense . Other times, they could also be amicable. Many of these immigrants started families with native women. Scholars estimate that 15-25 percent of the population has some Chinese blood. ***** Lumpia was not the only food that made its way from coastal China to the Philippines. Southern Chinese also brought fried wheat noodles, tofu, filled buns, dumplings, wontons, and even bird’s nest. They also taught the natives to carve up the pig in special ways. The Tagalog words for the different cuts of pork derive from Chinese. Obviously, lumpia did not stay the same after reaching the Philippines. Like most foods with legs, lumpia morphed and multiplied. Like stir-fried rice noodles , it too was subject to the forces of local adaptation . Take Lumpia Ubod , a fresh spring roll. The recipe features ubod, or the heart of palm. This is naturally an ingredient abundant in the Philippines. Or ponder turon . Ignore the Spanish name. It’s another variant of the spring roll, but sweet. Saba bananas are plentiful in the Philippines and find their way into the ketchup. You make turon by dredging sugar on the bananas or sometimes jackfruit. Roll the sweetened fruit pieces into a spring roll wrapper and deep fry. Another version of lumpia is still more intriguing (check the notes to the recipe). Take coarsely pounded peanuts, wansoy leaves, bihon noodles, and dried nori. Chop to make the filling. In case you’re wondering, wansoy is a loan word from Chinese. It’s the Chinese word for coriander ( yansui 芫荽). Bihon are rice or starch vermicelli, also originally from the Middle Kingdom. The peanuts? Well, you should be thinking of the Columbian Exchange and the Manilla galleon. Then there’s the nori. That’s probably Japanese influence, but when exactly? The Japanese occupied the Philippines during the Second World War. But this was not the first, or last, time that Japanese cooking turned up on the archipelago. Japanese came to the Philippines before the 1940s. Halo halo is one clear case of borrowing. If you’re curious, Anthony Bourdain did an episode on it. ***** So why did Mishan downplay external influences in her article? I suspect that this is not a simple case of ignorance. It has to do with the way people look at Chinese cooking in the Philippines. As Doreen Fernandez points out, these elements have been around so long in the Philippines that they are no longer “foreign.” In this regard, they are a bit like hamburgers. When was the last time you thought “German” when you grabbed a Blimpy burger ? Lumpia confounds the search for a Filipino essence. Then again, most food systems are composites, too. Next time you eat, I dare you to inspect your instant ramen or frozen samosa, or the ketchup. Is there really any food that hails from one place? Take a bite and you’ll find a bit of lumpia in all of it. Thoughts about Filipino food? Opinions about essences, or understanding cuisine outside of the framework of 'culture'? See ya all on YellowDig! Recipe resources: I got addicted to Filipino cuisine about 15 years ago, after eating papaya chicken soup at the home of my former colleague Esperanza Ramirez-Christensen. I bought a book of Filipino recipes and got in the habit of making the dish (in those days, one still had to buy books, but today you can just check out Panlasang Pinoy ) . Then I invited Professor Ramirez-Christensen (a.k.a. ERC) over for dinner and watched nervously as she took her first bite of papaya chicken soup. Since the recipe is solid, I thought I would share: Further reading: The Philippines has yet to receive the attention it deserves -- especially from Americans (who colonized the archipelago). Predictably, the study of Filipino foodways is in its infancy, even though the United States has a sizable population of Filipino immigrants. Besides the Fernandez article hyperlinked above, I offer some resources below, which will be useful for thinking about Filipino foodways and Southeast Asian cuisine(s) more generally. My friend Marcos Calo Medina recommends Memories of Philippine Kitchens by Amy Besa, Romy Dorotan, and Neal Oshima (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 2014). Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and Doreen G. Fernandez, "Culture Ingested: On the Indigenization of Philippine Food." Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Winter 2003), pp. 58-71. [UM library access] Shirley Geok-lin Lim, "Identifying Foods, Identifying Selves," The Massachusetts Review , Vol. 45, No. 3, Food Matters (Autumn, 2004), pp. 297-305. 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

This is a no-frills recipe. You need just three ingredients: flour, salt, and water. Special equipment is also superfluous. A knife, cutting board, rolling pin (or can), and pot are all that’s required. 1. Start with the flour. Measure out 200 grams (a cup of all-purpose is 125 grams. Gold Medal brand is slightly heavier, about 130 grams per cup). 2. Add 2 grams of salt and mix in a bowl (you’re safe with 1/8 teaspoon). 3. Measure out 100 ml of tap water (this is just under a half cup). It should be at room temperature (in winter, you can make it a little warmer). 4. Now the critical step: Slowly add a little of the water to the flour. Use your fingers to incorporate. Then add a bit more of the water. Use only as much water as you need to make a ball. By the time you are done adding the water, there should be little or no flour sticking to the side of the mixing bowl. 5. The dough will still be a little hard and dry. That’s fine. As long as the ball sticks together, it’s ready to be kneaded for a few minutes. This should soften the dough and make it shinier. Wrap it tightly in plastic wrap and set aside for 30 minutes. After a half hour, the dough should be squishier. If it’s still pretty hard, let it sit for another 15 minutes. After the dough has rested for 30 minutes 6. Once the dough is ready, start a pot of water, sprinkling in a little salt. Knead the dough on a clean surface for a few minutes. Then cut the dough into halves. While you are working with one half, wrap the other to prevent drying. 7. Take the first half and roll it on a clean surface dusted with flour (or corn starch). I find it easiest to roll it out with the small Chinese rolling pins. They’re available on Amazon for a couple dollars. My husband, however, has had luck with a regular rolling pin. You’ll want to roll out the dough thin. This is probably where experience matters. After a few turns, you'll know how thin you like it. 8. After rolling out the dough, dust the top with starch or more flour. Don’t be stingy! You don’t want the dough to stick at the next stage. Now roll the dough like a loose cigar. Move the rolled dough to a cutting board and slice. I like to make it a little thicker than fettuccine or broad rice noodles. 9. Unroll the strands one by one. You’ll want to keep them on a dusted surface or in a pan lined with parchment paper. Add corn starch to prevent the strands from getting glued to each other. You can also hang them on the back of a chair or a cheap pasta drying rack. Hanging pasta (Sofia's toy is on the floor) 10. Once the water boils, put the noodles into the pot. Cooking time will vary. I usually go about 1-2 minutes depending on the thickness. I don’t eat mine al dente, but it’s good to keep a little firmness in the noodles (you don’t want mush). 11. Drain the noodles. If you are frying them, rinse in cold water. But if you are eating them right away, put them straight into a bowl with soy sauce, spices, and minced scallions. The recipe serves two moderate eaters, or one voracious one. 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 question is a real one. It was something that the Japanese government actually considered only a few years ago. In 2006, the Japanese government decided it had to act. The number of Japanese restaurants overseas had swelled, reaching in the tens of thousands. Some officials were thrilled (what a great opportunity, they thought, to exercise "soft" power). Others were alarmed. On their travels abroad, Japanese officials discovered that the "Japanese" food often looked and tasted wrong. They investigated. Much to their horror, they discovered that there were few Japanese cooks in "Japanese restaurants" across the globe. A roll made by Professor Juhn Ahn (J. Ahn) Japanese Sushi (E. Brightwell) Then someone came up with a brilliant proposal: Why not certify “genuine” Japanese restaurants overseas? The benefits were obvious. A certification system would help the consumer, who otherwise would not know better. Authentic Japanese food would then stand out against the rest. More importantly, the system would protect the national brand. In case you're wondering, this was all for naught. The next year, the Japanese government abandoned the policy and disbanded its army of sushi police. But the proposal to certify Japanese restaurants is still worth considering. At the very least, it offers some food for thought (yes, the pun is intended). More importantly, it raises questions about the meaning of authenticity (our last key word of the term). So what is authentic Japanese food, you ask? Is it food that looks and tastes exactly as it does in Japan? Is it purely Japanese food, food devoid of foreign influence? Or perhaps just food made by Japanese chefs, for Japanese mouths? ---------- The odds are good that you already love sushi. Perhaps you have popped into Totoro for a quick lunch, or gone on a date at the Slurping Turtle? When I was a kid, things were different, however. Sushi was special. It was exotic enough that the world was divided between sushi lovers and sushi virgins. I would have to plead with my dad to go out for sushi. People my grandparents' generation refused to eat the stuff. No seaweed and raw fish for them. But that was thirty years ago. Nowadays, sushi is almost as common as the burrito. You can grab a box of it at Kroger or at the convenience store. CVS sells futomaki. We Victors ™ are not alone in our esteem for sushi. In 2017, there were more than 4,000 sushi joints in the US. Sushi, of course, is far more than an American fad. It's also popular in Europe and Latin America. A billion Chinese also have a craving for the stuff. This is the premise of the anxiety-ridden documentary for today (the full-length feature is on Canvas). ---------- Sushi is washoku 和食, traditional, indigenous Japanese eating. It's important enough that UNESCO made it an Intangible Heritage in 2013. Washoku can be tricky to put your finger on -- even though we have little trouble imagining a traditional Japanese meal. Right now, I bet you can see the raw slices of fish laid out on a bed of steamed rice, the bowl of miso, a serving of seaweed or spinach salad. At least one prime minister has tried to capture the essence of traditional Japanese cooking -- on Youtube . He characterized washoku as a serving of rice and soup, plus three sides. Usually, one of those is fish. ---------- Washoku may be most easily grasped through contrasts -- something facilitated by the Japanese language. Japanese distinguishes washoku from those foods with foreign origins . There’s yōshoku ( foods of recent Western origin). We’ve met it already in class. The American-styled hamburger patty (hambaga) is a classic example. But there’s a lot more. Picture cream stew and sweet Japanese curry . The latter, of course, represents a local Japanese adaptation of the British rendition of a South Asian dish. There’s also pasta with sprinklings of nori, fried chicken or karage , omuraisu (Japanese omelet), and the many faces of pizza . Mayo pizza, cheese and honey pizza, butter soy sauce clam pizza, pizza with marshmallows. Yes, marshmallows. Washoku also stands in contrast to chuka 中華, or Chinese-styled foods. Chuka could be ramen , chahan (fried rice), gyoza , tantan men , and mapo tofu . A number of you have asked about the gyoza: that came to Japan from North China during World War II. The tripartite division, of course, gets muddy upon closer inspection. Picture a bowl of miso soup with small cubes of tofu floating in the broth. The soy, of course, came to Japan from China during the Heian era ( 794-1185) . In those days, people called it “Tang curds,” after the Tang dynasty ( 618-907) . Tempura is also washoku . So too is h ambāgu . I don’t need to tell you where these came from. Go back a week or two. Remember me? (E. Brightwell) Tempura now washoku (E. Brightwell) Then, there’s the matter of sushi, the ultimate washoku experience. It’s easy to imagine that sushi is a timeless Japanese tradition. But it’s not very old. The modern raw fish and rice combination appeared sometime in the late seventeenth century – after tempura. What is more, sushi used to be a pungent fermented fish called narezushi. To make it, cooks buried the fish with rice in the ground for up to 3 years. Raw fish galore (E. Brightwell) Sashimi (E. Brightwell) Guess where this practice of food preservation came from? Sushi has a distant cousin in Shunde, southeast China (here's the recipe ). ----------- The sushi police do have a point. Well, sort of. If you have invested your life in making great sushi, it can be disconcerting to find it in CVS. As one Japanese minister, Matsuoka Toshikazu , put it, “What people need to understand is that real Japanese food is a highly developed art. It involves all the senses; it should be beautifully presented, use genuine ingredients and be made by a trained chef.” What’s more, the sushi on this side of the Pacific diverges from what you find in Japan (at least thirty years ago). Just contemplate the California roll. On the face of things, the avocado and cream cheese doesn’t look like traditional Japanese fare. Because it’s not. Its presence reveals the forces of l ocal adaptation . Sushi chefs working in North America tweaked the recipe to fit with the local palate. Since older Americans have trouble eating raw fish, that had to go. Hence, the popularity of faux crab and cooked eel. But this was not the only change. American sushi became spicier, sweeter, and even healthier. In some places, brown rice replaces the sticky rice. The brown rice ain't delicious, but it is better for your glycemic load. The US, in fact, is the home of many sushi inventions. There’s also Spider, Philadelphia, and Caterpillar. As one might expect, these foods work well with the American palate. They not only have loads of cream cheese and avocado, but also smoked salmon. Americans are not alone in enjoying new kinds of sushi. The Dutch take their sushi with salted herring. Singaporeans demand curry. Mexicans add serrano peppers. Some of these creations are the work of ethnic Japanese chefs. Take the man behind the California roll, Mr. Tojo . Don’t believe the name. The California roll did not originate from California. Tojo was a chef in Vancouver. He came up with the avocado, cream cheese, and faux crab combination because some of his customers had trouble stomaching raw fish. He soon noticed that the roll was especially popular with Californians. The Japanese government has recognized Tojo for his efforts to promote Japanese cuisine abroad. In 2016, they made him a “cultural ambassador.” ----------- Non-Japanese cooks, too, are part of the sushi landscape. But the Japanese government has not showered these chefs with praise. Matsuoka, in fact, denounced them in his statement. “What we are seeing now are restaurants that pretend to offer Japanese cooking, but are really Korean, Chinese, or Filipino.” This led him to conclude, “We must protect our food culture” -- by which he meant, “We must protect our food culture from those people.” Sigh. My cousin, who lives in Boston, is one of those people. Matsuoka’s remarks were insensitive -- at best. But they are still revealing. They tell us that he not only demanded that Japanese food taste the same everywhere, but also imposed a racial requirement. Real Japanese food can only be made by people with Japanese genes. People didn’t care for Matsuoka’s remarks . The media called him out for it. Even I am offended. --------- Hurt feelings aside, the problem remains. What is authentic Japanese sushi? Obviously, you can find chefs who only make their rolls with raw fish, old-fashioned ingredients, and rice. A few years back, I participated in a demo, sponsored by the Japanese consulate. The chef showed us how to make cucumber maki. She explained how she spent several years just perfecting the techniques for producing the sweet, vinegar rice, and getting the texture just right. The woman also showed us how to roll the sushi: which side to spread the rice and how much cucumber to add. Naturally, the demo was eye opening. The subtle flavoring offered a bold contrast to the stuff I could get down the street. Her sushi had no spicy mayo, deep-fried eel, or sweet sauce. Just meticulously prepared rice and a fresh cucumber. Roe Rolls (E. Brightwell) But Japanese consumers eat more than cucumber maki or sashimi these days. California rolls are also popular in Japan. There’s also a market for other examples of “authentic American sushi.” Some restaurants serve Spider, Philadelphia, Caterpillar, Spicy Tuna, and even Sexy. Yes, you heard me right. That’s a thing in Japan. There’s a restaurant called Inside Out Rolls (a reference to the fact that American sushi has rice on the outside and nori on the inside). Then there are the local riffs on the riff. Picture the avocado shrimp, demi-mayo hambagu sushi, sweet and spicy seafood sauce, and corn sushi with Japanese mayo. All of these pay tribute to the global fascination with sushi and Japan’s many culinary influences. As you might expect, corn sushi isn’t much like the stuff you get at CVS. For one thing, it often serves with mayo, and the mayo is different: creamier, eggier, and sweeter than the spread you buy in the states. So what is authentic sushi? It's a bit like the corn sushi: a riddle, a riff on someone else's riff, an endless conveyor belt of sushi interpretations . Warsaw . London. Osaka. See ya on YellowDig! Sources: Rumi Sakamoto & Matthew Allen, " There's something fishy about that sushi: how Japan interprets the global sushi boom." Japan Forum (2011). http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjfo20 Katarzyna Cwiertka and Yasuhara Miho , Branding Japanese Food: From Meibutsu to Washoku (Hawaii, 2020). Ishige Naomichi. The History and Culture of Japanese Food. Taylor and Francis, 2001. Kindle Edition. Chunghao Pio Kuo, "An Untold Story of Raw-Fish Cuisine: Aquatic Environments, Culinary Characteristics, and the Shifting Tastes in Ming–Qing Guangdong." Draft. Rath, Eric. "Some Tasting Notes on Year-Old Sushi: Funazushi , Japan's Most Ancient and Potentially Its Most Up-to-Date Sushi." Gastronomica (2020) 20 (1): 34–41. Podcast Version. https://doi.org/10.1525/gfc.2020.20.1.34 ---- Oishii: The History of Sushi (Reaktion Books, [Forthcoming, 2021). 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

Full disclosure: I did *not* grow up making these. My mother was a southerner: born in Singapore, raised in Canton, schooled in Hong Kong. She would never have made her wheat noodles from scratch. We were a rice family. Learning to make dumplings has been a life goal. I recently succeeded after messing around some more with Sachika's tricks (Sachika taught our dumpling lab). My technique is basic, but it's dummy proofed. Ingredients Dumpling wrappers: Flour, 400 grams Salt, 4 grams Water, 200 grams (room temperature) Cornstarch or flour for dusting Filling: Ground meat, 1 lb Scallions, 2 stalks (minced) Onions, 1/2 cup (minced) Garlic, 3 cloves (minced) Soy sauce, 2 T Salt, 1.5-2 teaspoons (or to taste) Sesame oil, 1 teaspoon Ginger, 2 teaspoons (minced) Cornstarch, 3 T Your choice of vegetables: You can use reconstituted wood-ears, sliced thin and minced (1/2 cup) Spinach, stir-fried until wilted (1/2 cup; frozen fine) Spices: Your choice. I like my food with more spices. Not everyone is a fan. I don't put minced ginger these days because my daughter complains about the spiciness. I like a little Sichuan peppercorn; my daughter objects (so no numbing at my house). For lamb, beef, or goat. I use about a tablespoon of cumin and coriander, then add a handful of minced cilantro. Equipment: Pot Rolling pin (thinner is better) Knife 1. Start by making your filling. Be sure to mince everything well. Mix everything together until incorporated. The corn starch will prevent your filling from getting too wet or leaky. It will also tenderize the meat. Marinate in the fridge for an hour. 2. To make the dumpling, you need to follow the same procedure I outlined in the Simple Noodle Recipe . Measure out the dry ingredients and place them into a bowl. Then very gradually add the water, a little at a time. In many cases, you won't need all of the water. You'll know that you are done when you have a stiff ball, and there's no more flour sticking to the side of the mixing bowl. 3. Knead the dough for 2 minutes. Then cover in plastic wrap. Let it sit for 30 minutes. If the dough is still very stiff after a half hour, you can let it sit for another 15 minutes. 4. Unwrap the dough and knead for another 2 minutes. Then make a ball. Flatten the ball into a disc about 7/10 inches thick, poke a hole right in the middle, and then pinch outwards to make a bagel. Keep pinching and squeezing until the "bagel" has a big hole. 5. Cut the "bagel" on one side. Roll it out to make a thin, long log. You can divide the log into three or four parts (just be sure to cover the ones that you are not using with plastic wrap to prevent drying). 6. Cut the log into small parcels between 9-15 grams (9 for smaller dumplings, 15 for big ones). See the picture. 7. Now the tricky part: Roll the parcels in the palm of your hand to make a small ball. Then press the ball with the palm of your hand to make a disc. Use the rolling pin to create a thin disc about 3.5 cm in diameter. Traditional chefs only roll out the edges of the disc and leave the middle of the dumpling skin a little thicker. Experience will tell you have much you need to roll it out, and how thin you can make it before compromising the integrity of the skin. My impression is that you are going for a skin that is thinner than what a pasta cutter at its lowest setting will give you. 8. Most cooks roll out the parcels first and then fill and fold the dumplings. If you do this, it's important to separate the layers of skins with cornstarch, otherwise the skins will stick. Also cover the skins to prevent drying. 9. Next comes the part that I have struggled with the most: the folding. Start by putting a dumpling in the palm of your non-dominant hand. Then put about 1 tablespoon of the fillings (more if you have bigger dumplings) right in the center of your skin. Use your hand to fold the dumpling in half. Again, experience will tell you how much filling you get into these skins! 10. To see how I seal, check out the pictures here. Basically, you want to create a fold.You'll bring in one of the ends to the middle to create "flaps." Press. Then tuck the other flap away from your body. Repeat on the other side. Press the edge of the dumpling to seal. 11. Store the dumplings on a surface dusted with lots of cornstarch (flour is ok, too). Don't let the dumplings touch each other, otherwise they will stick to each other. 12. You can freeze them at this point. Or cook them right away. Steaming takes about 15 minutes (make sure you have enough water in the pot). To boil, you want the water to come to a full boil. If you have a giant pot, you can put 12 in at a time (be careful not to splash the boiling water!). If you have a smaller pot, stick with about 6. Stir the dumplings to make sure they don't stick together. 13. Let the water return to a medium boil, then add about 6 ounces of cold water. Wait for the water to return to a medium boil. Repeat the same process two more times. 14. Serve with dipping sauce. I use chili, soy sauce, and black vinegar. My daughter consumes these simply with sweet soy sauce; my husbands skips the chili. 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

About twenty years ago, I found myself eavesdropping on a conversation about imperialism. The woman sitting next to me had taken issue with airline regulations. She thought it was outrageous that English was the lingua franca of air traffic control. “American imperialism,” she scoffed. “You Americans impose your culture, your language, your junk food on the rest of the world. You conquer with McDonald’s and KFC.” At the time, I was inclined to agree about the fast food. What caught my attention, however, was her remark about air traffic control. ---------- The arguments should have a familiar ring. Academics have sounded the alarm about McDonald’s and KFC for some time. Some think fast food represents a second wave of Western imperialism. They complain that burgers are destroying the world. Junk food lays waste to native habitats, and eradicates local cultures, languages, religions, and food systems – all the while leaving mediocre American cooking in its wake. Consider the following: “ Just as religious missionaries replace indigenous culture with European culture, now we have Western corporations replacing local culture and regional identity with a homogeneous global identity of Coke and Kit-Kat and pudding. To me, the loss of regional identity is as tragic as the increase in obesity.” ---------- I’m not here to debate about whether “the loss of regional identity” is worse than obesity. Instead, we need to consider a much deeper problem: Should you feel guilty about eating fast food in Asia? Or, to rephrase: Is it OK to order from KFC Beijing after taking ASIAN 258? ---------- I remember the dearth of fast food on my first unsupervised trip to China. In the summer of 1994, Western-styled fast foods were few and far between. KFC opened its first Chinese branch in 198 7. McDonald’s was just celebrating its fourth birthday in the Middle Kingdom. My arrival coincided with the opening of the Hard Rock Café in downtown Beijing. What can I say? Only good things come from getting to know me. Things are different now. The Golden Arches are everywhere, so too is the General. You can get Taco Bell and even P.F. Chang in Shanghai. Food scholars are not thrilled with the situation, to put it mildly. Some of them argue that China has paid a high price for turning its back on the traditional diet and opting for fast food. Diabetes has become an epidemic. Every other adult I know has high-blood pressure or cardiovascular disease. Cancer has reared its ugly head everywhere. And cooking skills have declined. Blame naturally falls on the Westernization of the diet. Picture kids gobbling down junk food in front of the TV or computer screens, the overabundance of refined carbs and fat, loads of processed meat and sugar. Lots of sugar. ---------- Fast food is big business in China. According to one 2019 report by What's on Weibo , the industry witnessed breakneck growth over the last decade. The first half of last year even saw an almost 10 percent increase compared to the previous year. As you might imagine, Western brands top the chart. KFC is number one, with McDonald’s on its heels. Burger King has captured third place. But Asian franchises are making gains. Take the Japanese chain, Yoshinoya. It now has position 10, having squeezed out Subway, In 2013, the American sandwich brand held that position. Ajisen Ramen scored number 8, reflecting the popularity of “Japanese” food with Chinese consumers. Chinese brands are even more popular than these Japanese franchises. There’s Yonghe King (#9), which focuses on noodles. Country Style Cooking (#7) features stir-fry dishes and Kung Pao Chicken. Real Kungfu (#6) is good for rice bowls. Dico’s (#5) is famous for its (Chinese) fried chicken. Home Original Chicken (#4) won fame not for its chicken, but meatballs, fried gluten , and spicy sour fish. Go figure. What does the report tell us? Should we interpret KFC’s preeminent position as a sign that Western fast food will soon displace the traditional Chinese diet? Will global capitalism bring a wholesale transformation of the Chinese food system? Will “we” Americans dominate China by imposing our foodways? ---------- Before we get carried away with these dire predictions, a little historical perspective is in order: When Western franchises first turned up in China in the late 80s, they faced an uphill battle. A market for their goods simply did not exist. The average Chinese had no experience eating at McDonald’s. Instead, what they were used to were collective dining halls, which dished out unappetizing fare. Restaurants were out of reach for most people, being expensive and reserved for the Communist elite (and the occasional foreign guest). The closest analogy to fast food was the boxed lunch for workers, beginning in the 1970s. Think Communist bento. What is more, fast food was pricey. McDonald’s first opened its doors in a prime real estate location, in the Wangfujing district. The only people who could afford McDonald’s were young professionals, members of China’s emerging middle class. They sought out the Golden Arches not for the food, but the ambiance. Most people found burgers uninspiring. But they liked the air conditioning and the fact that they had a place outside of the house to hang out. Besides, the restaurants were “hygienic” or “clean.” They were also a good place to advertise your cosmopolitan credentials. Going to fast foods once signaled that you were moneyed and modern. But the appeal of Western fast food soon faded. Urban incomes rose sharply after the late 1990s and early 2000s. As China prospered, visa restrictions loosened. My friends traveled the world, making a habit of producing food porn everywhere they stopped: Istanbul, Jerusalem, Paris, Mexico City, LA. In short, McDonald's and KFC could no longer rely on a stiff price tag for their cache. People were not eating there anymore because it was expensive. Nor were they turning to fast foods to save money, either. Price comparisons reveals KFC to be in the middle of the pack. ---------- Western franchises survived in China because they adapted. Beginning in the late 1990s, fast-food franchises took one of two approaches. The first was to focus on consistency. McDonald’s exemplified this trend. To be sure, there are some local touches to their products. In Japan, for example, you get silverware. And in India, paneer takes the place of beef in burgers. In China, you can find soy milk, and in Europe, light beer. The adjustments, though, were modest. McDonald’s in those days wanted to ensure that its brand remained consistent. Regardless of where you are in the world, you can expect to have the fries cut to the same length and cooked in the same oil for the same amount of time. KFC, in contrast, tried something else. It altered the menus to fit with prevailing local tastes -- and sometimes radically. KFC here is all about the fried chicken. Hence the name. In China, KFC sells: Bacon Mushroom Chicken Rice Beef and Shrimp Soup Noodles Curry and Rice Braised Pork Belly Egg Custard Tarts The menus, however, were not the only sign that KFC adapted to local tastes and habits. Aware that Chinese workers had a long history of boxed lunches, they focused their efforts on the delivery business. KFC will “send” (song 送) the meal to you. They also played with giving out “freebies” like drinks to consumers, a tactic common in Chinese restaurants. Their marketing team, furthermore, went to lengths to argue eating KFC fit with Chinese culture. Their commercials featured loving grandparents ordering KFC takeout to nourish their families. They also showed children talking to their parents. In one, a young professional told her mother not to worry about her diet. “Mom, I am eating at KFC.” The implication here, of course, was that KFC was like “mom’s cooking.” Healthy, wholesome. The commercials even identified KFC customers with martial art heroes and traditional warriors. KFC’s efforts paid off. The brand rose to the top of the list, largely because its leadership knew that it needed Chinese consumers more than Chinese consumers needed KFC. To survive, KFC aligned its products and services with the Chinese cultural matrix . Not surprisingly, its competitors have fallen in step. Everyone now has the memo: Locally adapt or perish! ---------- I close this blog with an anecdote. About ten years ago, I was doing research in China. It was lunch time, and one of my oldest friends stopped by my hotel. I was in no mood that day for a big lunch: couldn’t handle a lot of meat and baijiu on a hot July afternoon. But my friend was hungry, so I suggested that we go around the corner for a quick bite. “There’s a bakery there,” I told him. “We can grab a light lunch. Maybe a sandwich?” He made a face. “Sandwich?” he asked. “Why not grab a burger at McDonald’s?” The Bay Area food snob in me protested. “Why the hell would I eat that? It’s unhealthy. Gross.” He looked perplexed. “What’s the difference between a sandwich and a burger? Both of them are a piece of meat between two slices of bread. Only the burger is better. It’s hot, not cold. Cold food is bad for you.” The story reveals a lot -- about why my friends refuse to eat sandwiches. About why Subway has been less successful. About why McDonald's has survived despite local competition. Like my mother, these friends have ideas about food that derive from Chinese medicine. For them, there could be nothing less healthy or appetizing than a tuna fish sandwich or a potato salad -- even at the height of summer. Yes, the cultural matrix will survive a trip to McDonald's. Strong feelings about sandwiches or fast food? Stories about the Golden Arches in other countries? See ya on YellowDig! Sources: David Bell and Mary L. Shelman. "KFC’s Radical Approach to China." Harvard Business Review (November 2011 Issue). https://hbr.org/2011/11/kfcs-radical-approach-to-china Colin Campbell, The China Study: Revised and Expanded Edition: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss, and Long-Term Health (BenBella, 2016): “Lessons from China,” 59-100. Manya Koetse, " China’s Best Fast-Food Restaurants: These Are the 11 Most Popular Chains in the PRC These are China’s most popular fast-food chains and the most important trends in the industry." October 24, 2019. https://www.whatsonweibo.com/chinas-best-fast-food-restaurants-these-are-the-11-most-popular-chains-in-the-prc/ Karen von Deneen, Karen; Wei, Qin; Tian, Jie; Liu, Yijun, "Obesity in China: What are the Causes?” Current Pharmaceutical Design 17.12, (April 2011), 1132-1139. Yunxiang Yan, "Of Hamburger and Social Space: Consuming McDonald's in Beijing," in Carole Counihan and Penny Van Esterik eds., Food and Culture: A Reader (Routledge: 2012), 449-71. Further reading: James L. Watson ed., Golden Arches East: McDonald's in East Asia, Second Edition (Stanford, 2006). 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 name of this blog might as well be the title of the class. If there's a time to be upfront, that would be now. The end of the term draws close, and we must square the circle. So what is the orange chicken challenge? You might be imagining two guys sitting at a table eating as much of the stuff as they can keep down in an hour. Or battling chefs, vying to make the most appetizing plate for TV. If that were the challenge, I'd flunk. I am too much of a snob to eat orange chicken, and bad at preparing it. My daughter used to stick her binky back into her mouth after one bite. The orange chicken challenge is as much an emotional exercise as a culinary or academic one. It requires we abandon familiar prejudices and assumptions, finding new ways of evaluating food and loosening our attachment to the hazy concept that has haunted us all term. By which, I mean authenticity . ----------- The challenge was inspired by something on YouTube. By now, you are probably aware that I spend a fair amount of time on line. As it turns out, I was trying to come up with something inspiring to say about Asian American cuisine when I glimpsed, “Chinese People Try Panda Express for the First Time.” A slogan was born. The premise of the video captivated me: Asian American college students offering their grandparents a taste of Panda. In case you are wondering, orange chicken makes an appearance – at the end. Predictably, some of the older folks thought the food was all wrong. Others were more equivocal. Watch the video. The kids, however, were of a different opinion. Panda is just gross, by which they mean American. ----------- Orange chicken does not enjoy much esteem these days. It may be Panda’s most popular offering, but discerning eaters take a dim view of it – and let’s face it, American Chinese food more generally. Munchies ran an episode only a few years ago that summed up these views. The star was Han Jiang, the founder of Han Dynasty , a wildly-popular franchise in Philly. He’s your typically edgy cook. I won't spoil the fun, though. To hear what he can do with F bombs, click on the link. I'll say this, however. Mr. Han may not have the most elegant way of expressing himself, but he cuts straight to the chase. Chinese food in America, in his view, is an insult, a hoax. It came from the old days, when unskilled Chinese laborers had to find a way to make money. So, and I paraphrase, they cooked a bunch of crap and passed it off on white people. ----------- You’ve no doubt heard a version of this story. It’s so old it predates me. When I was a child, my mother would steer clear of some restaurants in San Francisco. She would shake her head at those establishments with tablecloths serving orange chicken. Those are for white people, she would say. They need fancy decorations, not flavor. College in the Bay Area introduced me to more “sophisticated” variations on the theme. Need to know why Chinese food in America is such a degenerate copy, a "distortion" of Chinese cuisine? Just look at the American consumer. He can’t handle "real" Chinese. He needs his sweets, his grease, his MSG -laced chicken. There ain’t much Chinese in American Chinese. It’s American -- in the worst possible sense of the word. ----------- But is American Chinese really all that different from the other foods we have explored this term? On the face of things, it should be. After all, we are in the United States, and we eat it. Besides, 2019 was the year of Chinese Food Controversies . (Yes, that was so 2019.) The season kicked off with the opening of Lucky Lee’s on the Upper East Side, which advertised its selection of “clean Chinese.” Yelp soon had to shut down the comments section on the restaurant’s website. Reviewers attacked the tasteless cooking, the racially-insensitive marketing, and the lack of Chinese people in the kitchen. The Lee in Lucky Lee referred to the first name of one of the owners, a Mr. Lee Haspel. The restaurant has since closed its doors. Undoubtedly, the controversy speaks -- or spoke -- to the times. Asian Americans have become assertive about who should represent them -- and their culinary traditions. For some, the uproar raised philosophical questions about who has the right to make and sell Chinese food. For others, the implications were practical and pressing. When can I eat my orange chicken in peace? ----------- The politics are new, but the controversy is not. Americans have long been anxious consumers of Chinese food. Chinese men began coming to the coastal United States in the mid-nineteenth century. Our history textbooks like to focus on the Gold Rush. But we in ASIAN 258 know better. The men who migrated from Taishan, or Toishan, in Southeast China, were part of a far larger exodus. This was an exodus that brought the world pad Thai and lumpia , chifas or Chinese-styled restaurants in Lima, and cream cheese jalapeno spring rolls in Mexico . It was also the same historical movement that inspired my ancestors to try their luck in British Malaya. My mother’s love of chilis and curry, so atypical of continental Cantonese, testified to that journey. While the first migrants from Asia were not in the restaurant business, it wasn't long before stereotypes about Chinese cooking took hold. American ads played off stereotypes of Chinese workers as rat eaters and bakers of puppy pies (more on this Wednesday). Despite these inauspicious beginnings, Chinese emerged as America’s cooks. But this reversal owed less to the discovery of a venerable culinary tradition than to the Exclusion Act. After its passing in 1882, Chinese immigrants basically had only two choices of profession. They could be laundromat owners or operate restaurants. Many of them chose the latter. Chinese restaurants soon multiplied in twentieth-century US cities. Americans did not like Chinese people and would have objected to intermarrying with them (my great grandmother expressed her disappointment when she learned of my parents’ upcoming nuptials). But Americans could not live without their Chinese cooking. San Franciscans liked the way Chinese cooks prepared steaks and mixed cocktails, two staples of Chinese-run eateries. They also adored chop suey. Really adored. Post-war Americans also appreciated the convenience and low cost of Chinese food. They found the thick brown sauces that went with the egg foo young and stir-fry to their liking. What can I say? It fit with the American cultural matrix. From Tai Ping Koon (an old restaurant in HK specializing in Chinese styled Western food) But questions dogged these mainstays of the American diet. A lawsuit in the early twentieth century confirmed the suspicions of many Americans -- and stereotypes about Chinese people. Americans were also upset to learn that a visiting Chinese dignitary had not heard of chop suey. To them, Chinese cooks had turned out to be disingenuous agents when they had passed off an American invention as a Chinese delicacy. The 70s and 80s brought renewed interest -- and scrutiny -- to Chinese food. By the mid-1960s, the Exclusion Act was retired. Chinese immigrants settled in coastal cities, moving not just from coastal Southeast China but also Taiwan. Like their predecessors, the new immigrants worked and operated restaurants. But this time, those restaurants were for the immigrants, as well as hungry Americans. Americans of my father’s generation soon noticed the difference. The cooking of the newcomers was more varied than the stuff in classic American Chinese diners. Chinese food in America soon got a much-needed face lift. Chop suey gave way to dim sum and pot stickers. But the real lesson came later. Millions of American heartlanders watched with fascination as Nixon took his first bite of Peking duck (and even used chop sticks!) during a state visit to China in 1972. They, too, soon clamored for “Mandarin,” then Szechuan, and Hunan. A generation of Americans like me grew up without a taste of egg foo young and chop suey. The end of the Cold War ushered in the rule of General Tso. ----------- But what to do about the orange chicken? Should we follow Han Jiang’s advice and stick with the “real” stuff? Here, I would have to disagree with Mr. Han. But I would grant him at least one point. Classic American Chinese ain’t much like the stuff in Asia -- at this point in time, at least. You can still find fried and breaded chicken or fish, served with some kind of sweet sauce and fruit. And yes, sweet and sour pork is still a hit with Hong Kongers. But I’m betting that if you need orange chicken, you'll be out of luck-- that is, unless you visit P.F. Chang at the Shanghai airport or one of those American Chinese nostalgia joints. Check out Ho Lee Fook if you are curious. Sweet and sour pork in Hong Kong (Nov 2017) ----------- But why would we expect differently? After all, Chinese food has been a staple of American life for more than a century. If there is one takeaway from this class, it would be Brownie’s Law of Local Adaptation . Any dish will mutate as it moves through space and time. Some people like to talk about inventions, distortions, and things lost in translation. I think about food through the metaphor of my mixed genes. The encounter with new ingredients and consumers will inevitably leave its mark on a dish. There’s a reason why there are marshmallows on Japanese pizzas -- and miso paste in the ramen. If we stop to think about it, orange chicken isn’t dissimilar from ramen. I mean logically, not gastronomically. To be sure, there’s certainly a price differential. I’m waiting for the day when someone sets up a shop in Hell’s Kitchen selling orange chicken. That day may not be too far off, however. Michelin chef Brandon Jew has set up a high-end version of classic American Chinese in San Francisco. But like other foods with legs, orange chicken resulted from a series of encounters. All sorts of encounters: commercial, intimate, and fraught encounters (here, I am thinking about inter-generational strife). It’s easy to imagine that American Chinese was defined, or doomed, by the confrontation with the white American customer. But that is only one part of the story. The consumers -- and makers -- of Chinese food in the Americas have long been all colors. White, red, brown, black. They have existed also outside of restaurants -- in homes, for example. Just as banana lumpia r esulted from the negotiations between native Filipino women and their Chinese husbands, American Chinese cooking also sprung out of more intimate contexts. Immigrant women and their daughters have married out to American husbands at a breakneck pace in the last few generations. This has resulted in modifications. My mother knew better than to pull out the fermented tofu "cheese" at the table. She also prepared a lot of beef at home and ditched the chilis (my dad's stomach could not handle the Singaporean layer of her Cantonese cooking). The modifications have also reflected the struggle between immigrant parents and their American-raised children. Like grocery supplies, offspring have a way of shaping diets. A kid will not only introduce the older generations to new ingredients and recipes, but also demand certain dishes and flavorings over others. The palates of children reflect more than what their parents like. School lunch programs, peers, and general market conditions have left their stamp on Chinese American cooking. You could have asked my mother. I would not eat chicken feet if my life depended on it -- or, for that matter, white rice. Blame vanity and the California cultural matrix. But there’s karma. I now find myself remaking her recipes for a picky third-generation eater. The scallions have since vanished from the pancakes. ----------- At the end of the day, we need to get over it. Han Jiang needs to get over it. I need to get over it. Orange chicken may never satisfy the food snob in you or me, but it isn’t an insult to Chinese cooking. If someone asks you, just tell 'em it's local adaptation. Thoughts about Chinese American food? See ya all on YellowDig! Sources: Andrew Coe, Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States (Oxford, 2009) Yong Chen, Chop Suey, USA: The Story of Chinese Food in America. (Columbia, 2015). John Jung, Sweet and Sour: Life in Chinese Family Restaurants (Yin and Yang, 2010). Haiming Liu, From Canton Restaurant to Panda Express: A history of Chinese food in the United States (Rutgers, 2015). Anne Mendelson. Chow Chop Suey: Food and the Chinese American Journey (Columbia, 2016). 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’ve always been a fan of crystal skin dumplings. They are quite popular in Guangzhou and Hong Kong -- if you have eaten dim sum, you’re already familiar with har gow ( xiajiao 蝦餃 ) and chive dumplings. Variants are also found in other parts of Southeast China -- and in Southeast Asia. I'm looking forward to trying a recipe for a Vietnamese tapioca starch dumpling soon. Start by selecting your starches. You can make the dumplings with a combination of wheat starch and tapioca, or tapioca and potato starch (some versions use sweet potato starch). There are other possibilities. One thing to note: I have had bad luck with food labeling at Asian markets. Sometimes the package says tapioca, but the bag is full of cornstarch ( tai baifen 太白粉). The Chinese word for tapioca is mushu fen 木薯粉. If you don’t read Chinese, you can just order potato starch and tapioca from Amazon.They’re inexpensive and always in stock. As some of you may have noticed, wheat flour can be hard to find these days. So why not try a different source of carbohydrates? If you need gluten-free foods, this can be a good option for you. I’ve played around with a few recipes with varying success, and adapted the recipes below from the woksoflife and cook52. Since I don’t have access to shrimp, I just improvised and used whatever was in the kitchen. You can season ground turkey with spinach that has been wilted in a wok, scallions, garlic, and ginger. For one pound of meat, I add a little cooking wine (about ½ teaspoon), a tablespoon of soy sauce, ½ teaspoon of salt, and 4 T of cornstarch. I’ve also had good luck with wood ears (re-hydrated and minced). Wrapper skin variants: From WoksofLife 1 cup of wheat starch ½ cup of tapioca 1 ¼ cup of boiling water (make sure the water is at a full boil) 1-3 T of cooking oil 1/2 teaspoon salt (my improvisation) From Food52 (this is by weight, but you can translate the values here ). Potato starch, 160 g Tapioca starch 20 g Sugar, 2 t Salt, ½ t Boiling water (100 g/ml) Oil, 1 T Cold Water (30 g or ml) (Note: I didn’t need all of this water.) Mix the starches together evenly in a heat-proof bowl, along with the other dry ingredients. Slowly incorporate the boiling water. As with regular dumplings , you’ll want to add the water little by little while stirring. The goal is to add as little water to produce a ball. Then add the oil. If you are making the potato starch-tapioca version, you can add the cold water here (but be careful, I didn’t need it all, and found myself adding a little starch to offset the sticky dampness). Knead the ball on a dusted surface. If the water isn’t boiling or evenly incorporated, you’ll see lumps or white cracks. The ball should be snow white and glisten. 5. Let the dough rest for 20 minutes, covered in plastic. 6. After the dough has rested, knead it. 7. Cut the dough into three pieces and roll them into logs (just like you do when making wheat dumplings ). Cover the portions that you are not using. 8. Cut the dough into slices (they will look almost like marshmallows). Ideally, they should weigh about 12-14 grams (a little more than the wheat dumplings). The wheat starch recipe suggests making the parcels bigger (dividing the dough into about 18 pieces, or 22 grams a piece). I find these too big. 9. Roll them out gently to a disc about 3.5 inches in diameters. Do not make these too thin. The dough is fragile and not stretchy. 10. Put a dollop of filling right in the middle. If you have a small dumpling, you should add no more than a teaspoon. For a bigger dumpling, you can try 1/2 -3/4 T of filling. You want to go easy here. The dumpling skin is fragile, so be conservative! 11. To fold, bring the two ends gently together to make a half moon. Then make a crease at one end (just as you would when making wheat dumplings ). Carefully tuck and press the ends of the crease. Then fold the side furthest away from you in back. This is exactly the same fold that I use for wheat dumplings. You can find my step-by-step instructions, with arrows here. 12. Dust the bottom of the dumplings with some corn starch. 13. To prevent sticking, I would recommend placing the dumplings on silicon cake pans (these are very cheap), nested in the steaming compartments. You can lightly brush a little oil on the pans. If you don’t have the silicon pans, you can use parchment paper brushed with oil. Some cooks suggest using lettuce. I haven’t done this, and I haven’t had much luck preventing sticking until I started using the silicon pans. Be sure to space your dumplings, otherwise they will glue to each other. 14. Steam the dumplings for about 8 minutes. I would *not* recommend using Instant Pot for this job. The dumplings will lose their shape. 15. For a dipping sauce, I mix a little fish sauce together with the juice of one lime, a teaspoon of soy sauce, and 2 teaspoons of minced scallions. This isn't a traditional Hong Kong relish, but who cares these days? 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 wrote the original version of this blogpost about a year ago, right as the COVID-19 crisis sent us all into lockdown. At the time, anti-Chinese sentiment had already spun out of control. America saw its worst spike in anti-Asian hate crimes in decades. And pictures of bat soup began to circulate on the internet. Then elected officials further stoked the flames of hatred and intolerance. There was first talk of "the Chinese virus" (Donald Trump), followed by racist comments by Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas). Under the circumstances, I felt compelled to respond to current events. Unfortunately, these comments remain as relevant as they did last April. Hate crimes against Asian Americans and Asians have continued to rise in the United States and the rest of the Western world. When I composed this blog, I struggled with finding the right format. I ultimately decided against simply lecturing Cornyn. Instead, I went the biting satirical route. My husband, though, thinks it sounds angry, which is fine. I will be angry about this until the U.S. makes progress on these issues. Dear Senator Cornyn, I am *so* sorry that the nasty liberal media has pounced on you. You were just giving an opinion when you blamed the COVID-19 pandemic on Chinese cultural practices. It's not every day one reads: “People eat bats and snakes and dogs and things like that. These viruses are transmitted from the animal to the people, and that’s why China has been the source of a lot of these viruses.” I am sure you're wondering why people are so "touchy" these days. You're probably thinkin' to yourself, "Who really cares if hate crimes against Asians and Asian Americans have surged recently"? Or: "Why do folks insist on sticking with the facts? Yes, swine flu did come from North America. But facts are annoying." It’s clear that this virus has ruined your day. It must be hard watching your government get heat for its handling of the pandemic. Most of all, I'm truly sorry that Chinese eating habits have made you lose sleep. I have learned from Instagram that you are a real dog lover. It must be difficult staying up at night knowing that those Asians next door (like me!) may have designs on Fido. But you'll take heart in knowing that I am a fan. I'd like to second your call to get tough on zoonotic diseases. You're right. People eat all sorts of unclean things. Yuppies in Michigan hunt and grill deer. Those idiots talk about it being organic and free range. Meanwhile, the limousine liberals of New York and San Francisco order civet coffee from Amazon. There are even people who make sausages out of alligators in Louisiana. If you don't believe me, have your staffers check out exoticmeats.com. They even sell the stuff to liberal bastions like Ann Arbor . And I’ve heard that in Nolan County, Texas there are rattlesnake roundups . Some folks down there even eat the slimy crawlers. I'm sure those people didn't vote for you, however. Since human-animal contact is dangerous, I’m looking forward to reading your proposal to ban all hunting and industrial meat production. You can join forces with Bridget Bardot and other racists who love pets . Your pals at the NRA and in big business will just have to get over it. With regards to your sleep, let me reiterate that I am very, very sorry. Those nineteenth-century stereotypes have no right disrupting your REM cycles. What's more, you have my personal assurance. Your pooch is safe with me and my kind. Besides, my friends and relatives in Greater China have never devoured a pet. There’s now a ban in Shenzhen and Taiwan . The Chinese Communist government wants to curtail personal freedom by paving the way for a blanket ban on dogmeat . The closest thing I have seen to dog meat in Asia is this puppy mousse . By the way, the sharpei mold’s available on Amazon . Americans rave about it. Mousse "Dog" (Nov 2018) I do apologize if these details make your head spin. Things would be simpler if we Asians all thought and ate the same things. Details tend to muddy black and white argumentation, and such fuzzy thinking is best left to universities! But just in case you ever need to defend your comments again, may I offer you, sir, a few tips? Call it insider wisdom. Next time someone attacks you as a racist, just cite a few ancient Chinese texts. Out of context. It will help you establish our "mentality." If you want, I can dig up a recipe for mashed dog à la winter melon. That will supply evidence that all Asians have eaten dog every day since time immemorial. You can ignore the fact that the recipe was from the fifteenth century, or for rich people. No American needs to know that it was supposed to revive tired people on hot summer days before air-conditioning and Starbucks. Your team should also overlook all evidence of opposition in China to dog slaughter. Apparently, some 14th century doctor thought that eating canine meat would make you sick. He also concurred that dogs were man’s best friend. But never mind. After you have de-funded all foreign language study, no one will know the better. Americans don't need to think too hard -- for example, about the bad karma that Chinese Buddhists thought came from devouring dog meat and beef . Our meat industry is looking forward to the Chinese market. But maybe not. After all, you and I are in agreement about the importance of adopting veganism. I would, however, urge you to suppress information. The New York Times did a bad thing recently. Its editors undercut stereotypes about Chinese eating by publishing a video about the Yulin Festival, or the notorious dog and lychee feast in Guizhou. I n late June, out-of-town agitators fly in from Shanghai and Beijing. They are louder than A.O.C., and they don’t even practice social distancing. Some people think these activists learned their tactics from South Korea , where there are memorial services for murdered dogs. I'm happy to refer you to a few websites that the U.S. should close down. This is war, and it’s time to dehumanize! Since we’re friends, you might like a tip about how to undermine NATO. Did you know that people in Alpine nations once ate dog? If you want the details, check out Robert Ji-Song Ku : The Swiss, for example, dry the [dog] meat in varying temperatures for several months to prepare a dish called Gedörrtes Hunderfleisch. 'In fact,' Calvin Schawbe tells us, 'the only two cases of human trichinosis diagnosed in Switzerland in recent years resulted from the patients eating their dogmeat too rarely cooked! 'It has been a traditional European belief,' he reveals in Unmentionable Cuisine , 'that dogmeat is a preventive of tuberculosis.' And less than a century ago widespread dog eating was reported in the German cities of Cassel and Chemnitz, as well as in the streets of Paris. That should help shut up Angela Merkel. Maybe, the French shouldn’t be called frogs. In periods of privation, Parisians stuffed their faces with dog meat and wrote cookbooks for that purpose. No wonder the French have become socialists. They eat dogs and all sorts of things. Frog . Foie gras . Horse. Baguette. You’ll forgive me if I have gone on too long. That woman from Michigan has put us all under house arrest. I haven’t been free to cough on a stranger for almost a month. Sincerely, Miranda Brown Resources on COVID-19 and stereotypes about Chinese eating With Michelle King and Fu-Jia Wendy Chen. "Rumor, Chinese Diets, and COVID-19: Questions and Answers about Chinese Food and Eating Habits." Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies 21.1 (2021): 77-82. 'Chinese food is so entrenched in our lives; COVID-19 can't change that ' The Daily Hunt, April 17, 2020. Michelle King. "Say No to Bat Fried Rice: Changing the Narrative of Coronavirus and Chinese Food," in Food and Foodways 28.3 (Fall 2020), 237-49 Sources: Robert Ji-Song Ku, Dubious Gastronomy: The Cultural Politics of Eating Asian in the USA (University of Hawai’i Press, 2014), “Dog Meat,” 120-155. Vincent Goossaert, "The Beef Taboo and the Sacrificial Structure of Late Imperial Chinese Society." In Of Tripod and Palate: Food, Politics, and Religion in Traditional China . Edited by Roel Sterckx (Palgrave MacMillan, 2005), Chapter 11, 237-48. Jia Ming 賈銘 (Fourteenth Century). N.p. Yinshi xuzhi 飲食須知 (Essential Knowledge About Diet). In Yinzhuan pulu 飮饌譜錄. Edited by Yang Jialuo 楊家駱. Shijie, 1962. Zhu Quan 朱權(1378–1448). Shenyin 神隱. In Siku quanshu cunmu congshu, zibu, daojialei 四庫全書存目叢書, 子部, 道家類, vol. 260. Zhuangyan wenhua, 1995. 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

As the parties awaited the verdict , temperatures soared outside. Not that this would have surprised anyone. It was late July in Taipei. By noon, the thermometer hit ninety-seven degrees, with fifty-four percent humidity -- a perfect time for a tall serving of energizing boba, or bubble tea. Picture the boba. Sweet milky tea poured over cubes of ice, with a generous scoop of black tapioca pearls. Maybe you have a preference for the flavoring -- taro, lychee, even matcha? What about the latest craze: brown sugar ? And how would you like to enjoy your treat? A wide colorful straw -- well, hold on. This was 2019. Taiwan had banned single-use plastic straws at most venues the month before. Sofi's first boba (paranoid mommy editing) But the fuss wasn’t about the straws. The lawsuit raged over something much more lucrative. Two of Taiwan’s most successful franchises had wrangled already for a dozen years. Both parties had traded legal fire for rights to this invention, each claiming to have invented the iconic drink. It's not hard to imagine what was at stake. Boba sales generated billions of dollars last year. But before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s become acquainted with the contestants. Meet Mr. Tu, the proprietor of Hanlin Teahouse, located in the southern city of Tainan. He says he came up with the idea in 1986, after a trip to the wet market. While there, he spotted some white-colored tapioca pearls. A flash of insight followed: Why not add the chewy snack to iced milk tea? Ms. Lin, however, insists she was the one. In 1987, she was then a young lady, working in Pure Water Hall in Taizhong. One day, she experimented with blending milk tea and black-colored tapioca pearls, a favorite sweet in her youth. “Pearl" Milk Tea was born. The court’s verdict, however, left no one the richer – or, for that matter, the wiser. The judges refused to settle on the competing claims of priority. “Anyone, any shop has the right to make the drink. It’s not subject to patent.” There was thus no point in deciding who came up with boba first. ---------- The court’s decision sounds like a cop out, but my feeling is the judges were right. Bubble tea was a group lift and did not arise from any one moment of inspiration. It took shape over many centuries. The drink has many layers and parents. Layer 1: Dairy Meets Caffeine Let’s start with the tea: Where on earth did Taiwanese tea baristas get the idea of adding dairy or sugar to caffeine? Popular wisdom presumes that this was a British invention . Yet nothing could be farther from the truth. Milk -- or better still, creamy -- teas had a long history in Asia. Central Asian Turks have long enjoyed it. My friend Gene Anderson and his collaborator, Paul Buell, suspect they passed on their love of the drink to the Mongols. The Tibetans swore and still swear by it. And yes, so did the Chinese . Once upon a time they craved it, as they do now. The earliest definitive reference to creamy tea dates to thirteenth-century China. It does not appear in a cookbook, but rather in a poem. A rather wild man named Lu You 陸游 (1125–1209) wrote some verse about his daily routine. He was then living in Southern China, in Shaoxing. When he wasn’t drunk, pining for his cousin, or raging against the Song dynasty’s nomadic enemies or the pacifists at court, or writing gory poetry, he was doing a lot of eating and drinking. Apparently, he also took his tea with churned butter. Beautiful Shaoxing (Thanksgiving 2018) Lu You, of course, was an early adopter, but he was not alone. Later cookbooks in Chinese disclose a world of creamy and milky teas. Strong black brews, whisked with butter until fluffy. There was also straight milk and fermented tea, served initially with salt, then sugar. Then something called leicha 擂茶 , or pestle tea, came into fashion. The pestle tea is worth lingering over. I admit that when I first read the recipe, I imagined it would be disgusting. Then I made a Ming-dynasty Chinese rendition and understood the power of beating the fats: Brew a strong brick of tea. Think of something really dense -- pu er, for example. Then blend in liberal amounts of butter or cream, mixed in turn with sesame paste. Let it foam. You have a choice of savory or sweet flavoring. If you are an American, I recommend a liberal hand with the sugar. These milky drinks made a splash in the seventeenth century. The first European traders, who turned up in Fujian and Guangdong, could not get over them. They had drunken matcha in Japan and grasped its commercial value -- as medicine. But the fermented tea and sweet dairy combination was a game changer. Within a century of this revelation, tea became a staple at the English table. Not surprisingly, the French, Dutch, and ultimately the British adopted this way of consuming tea. Over Christmas, I found a Frenchman who even said that Europeans ripped off the formula from China. Who would think? English tea ain’t even English, or French. It’s Chinese. French guy explaining the origins of milk tea Frisian Cream Tea (Dr. Lydia Garver) Layer 2: Tea Meets Thick (Processed) Dairy But how did these creamy drinks make their way to Taiwan? As some of you may know, the original boba combined powdered creamer with tea. This lends the drink a richer flavor. Nowadays, shops advertise their use of fresh milk and some places use condensed milk. Think Hong Kong-styled bubble tea. Here, the historical record is patchy -- at least for the time being. This much can be said, however. Pestle tea came over with some of the immigrants from Southern Fujian. In the eighteenth century, they began settling the island in large numbers. Today, some versions of pestle tea use soy milk , one of the world’s earliest dairy substitutes. At least one rendition, from the 90s, employed cow’s milk. In the old days, I suspect the dairy in pestle tea would have been buffalo milk butter. That's the same buffalo milk used in coastal China to produce brined cheeses. Yes, there were -- and still are -- cheeses in Southern Chin ese cities like Zhangzhou . Apparently, some of the immigrants took the techniques with them when they crossed the straits. Xiamen buffalo cheese (once a thing in Taiwan) But this was probably not the sole inspiration for milk tea. Official reports from the late nineteenth century indicate that the island’s wealthy liked to drink their tea with condensed milk (most likely sweet). Was this a holdover from earlier times? Evidence of European influence, or what food historians call a “return trip”? I don’t know yet. That’s a question for another research trip! The picture gets muddier from the turn of the twentieth century. As you know, colonialism has a way of adding culinary layers to a place. Following the Sino-Japanese War of 1895, Taiwan became a colony of the Japanese empire. (Remember my story about instant ramen ? ). This is why you can buy sushi at Taiwanese night markets, or local versions of oden and tempura . In those days, the Japanese pushed far more than meat on their citizens; they also sought to get their population hooked on milk. Grow tall and strong, and go forth to dominate! Towards this end, the Japanese colonial authorities established a milk industry throughout the empire, including Taiwan, importing modern dairy breeds from the West. The fresh stuff was pricey and geared mostly for Japanese (military) consumption. Now, my own interpretation. The watery milk -- a hallmark of the modern dairy industry - suited the Taiwanese palate even less than the wallet. Taiwanese ideas about milk borrowed from a long tradition of Chinese medicine. In that tradition, doctors classified milk as sweet and rich. It was good for fattening up a kid and making an older person stronger. If we step back for a second, this fits buffalo milk to a T. Chen Yu-jen tells us that while the Japanese used Western dairy breeds, Taiwanese dairy farmers worked mostly with water buffaloes and Chinese yellow cattle. Economics probably played a role in this decision. But I suspect culinary preference were also important. A properly-fed buffalo may not be a prolific lactator, but she squirts out nice milkshakes , at a whopping 8-12 percent fat. The same applied to the native Chinese cattle breed. Her milk averaged between 5 and 8 percent. Puts a new spin on whole milk or 3 percent, eh? For people who could not buy -- let alone refrigerate -- fresh milk, sweet condensed milk was a good option. Better, in fact, than milk powder. The dense stuff was expensive, but a lot cheaper than fresh milk. Plus, it really was the closest thing to buffalo milk or the native varieties of cattle, and you could do a lot with it. You could send it as a gift for sick people. Say you were suffering from a bad case of food aversion or dysentery, a can of the stuff would help. At least theoretically. Yes, that was definitely a thing in early twentieth-century Taiwan. This treatment plan goes back to China, about a thousand years. By the way, that’s one reason why I suspect popular understandings of lactose intolerance are crap (pun intended). On a more appetizing note, condensed milk went easily into desserts. For example, it paired well with shaved ice. Mash taro root and marry it to condensed milk, and you have a hit. The Taiwanese love of condensed dairy made the Japanese scratch their heads. The latter preferred the watery fresh milk Europeans drank by the pint. But Taiwan, I suspect, had a different cultural matrix and preference for richer dairy. Hence, the creamer. ---------- Layer 3: Cream Tea Meets Tapioca All this leaves the bubbles. For many people, the bubbles are the main star. You can skip the cow dairy or even the caffeine. But the bubbles are non-negotiable. The bubbles, of course, are none other than tapioca or cassava pearls. (Please remember the Columbian Exchange !) Tapioca came to Taiwan well before the twentieth century. Early reports reveal that it was a poor man’s food. Farmers planted cassava on thin rocky soil on hills, or places where rice refused to grow. The Taiwanese soon devised a host of culinary applications for the root. Some of them made their new year’s dumpling soup with tapioca starch rather than sticky rice. Others added it to their rice noodles. Chewy fish balls from Xiamen (which has many of the same recipes) In the first half of the twentieth century, Taiwanese also started incorporating their tapioca pearls into sweets. Think of tapioca shaved ice -- with sweet condensed milk, plus red bean and the like. Picture taro or yam tapioca balls. You get my drift: Tapioca was and remains big. It lends sweet and savory foods a nice, squishy but bouncy bite. That’s the Q factor . Homemade sweet potato balls The passion for bubbles can go too far (Jan 2019) ---------- At the end of the day, I think it was inevitable that milk tea met the pearls. After all, Taiwanese were used to taking both their tea and tapioca with dairy. Rich, sweet dairy. What is more, their c ultural matrix did not insist upon rigid distinctions about what makes something either a drink or a food. Thank goodness: caffeine has never been the same. ---------- Brown Sugar Bubble Tea à la Brownie Recently, there have been reports about food adulteration in the bubble tea industry. Much of the anxiety has focused on the tapioca pearls: the preservatives, food coloring, and undeclared substances (!). Rather than waste your money, I suggest you make your own pearls. Serves 2 For the tapioca pearls: Tapioca starch, 6 T Boiling water, 2 T For the brown sugar glaze: Brown sugar, ¾ cup Water, 1 ½ cup Black-strap molasses, 2 T For the milk tea: Black tea, 4 bags Whole milk, 1 cup Half and half, 1/4 cup Note: you can also substitute one 14 oz-can of whole evaporated milk for the fresh dairy Measure out the tapioca starch and put it into a heat-proof mixing boil. Pour 2 T of the boiling water into the starch while stirring to incorporate evenly. Once cool enough to handle, knead the dough with your hands. If necessary add a little extra starch. 3. Shape the dough into a ball and cut into halves. Roll the halves into thin logs. Cover the portions you are not currently using with plastic wrap. 4. Cut the log into small pebbles and roll them into balls. You can make these as big as you would like -- or as small. I prefer to keep them medium large, to reduce work. 5. Boil a small pot of water. Once the water boils, add tapioca pearls and cook for 15 minutes. 6. After 15 minutes, immerse pearls in an ice bath or a bowl of cold water. Stir to prevent clumping. As the pearls cool, they become translucent. 7. Prepare the tea by steeping the tea bags in boiling water for 10 minutes. You will want no more than 8-10 oz of liquid for the whole beverage. 8. Start another pot of water, adding brown sugar. Once the water reaches a boil, stir in the molasses (molasses are a good source not only of coloring, but also rich flavor and minerals like iron). 9. Add the cooled tapioca pearls to the pot and let them simmer for 10 minutes until the liquid has turned into a dark syrup. This will be your brown sugar base. 10. Combine your tea with dairy. 11. Add the tapioca pearls to the tall glasses. Toss in a few ice cubes, then pour in half your dairy tea to each of the glasses. 12. Enjoy! Main Sources: Buell, Paul D. and Eugene N. Anderson, A Soup for the Qan: Chinese Dietary Medicine of the Mongol Era As Seen in Hu Sihui's Yinshan Zhengyao (Sir Henry Wellcome Asian), Revised, Expanded Edition (Brill, 2010). Chen Yuzhen 陳玉箴 [Chen Yu-jen] , "Yinyang lunshu yu zhimin tongzhi: Rizhi shiqi Taiwan de rupin shengchan yu xiaofei 營養論述與殖民統治：日治時期臺灣的乳品生產與消費 ." Taiwan shida lishi xuebao 臺灣師大歷史學報 54 (Dec 2015), 95-148. Crook, Steven and Katy Hui-wen Hung, A Culinary History of Taipei: Beyond Pork and Ponlai (Rowan and Littlefield, 2018). 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