liuzhou

Lay's China seems to be on a roll. I spotted these today. Never seen them before. Rich Chestnut Flavor This one baffles me. It reads 'Mouthwatering Chinese Bayberry Flavor', and the red berries portrayed are bayberries, but berry chips? I love bayberries in season - sweet but also slightly sour. Didn't buy these. Rich Sea Salt and Black Pepper Flavor Another oddity. The nearest I can translate is 'Flower Steeped Rice Wine Flavor. No thanks! Refreshing Lime Flavor.

Indeed, but I'll just add that the paper itself admits its data is flawed.

Yes, the link you provided is not to a Chinese source, but where did they get it? As they say Everything about the paper (language, layout etc. ) tells me it is Chinese in origin. In fact, the study was funded by a Chinese dairy company and carried out at Chinese universities.

I started the other topic in the vain hope that people putting posts here (and elewhere) about children's food choices might go there instead of a topic which is supposedly about non-dessert dishes which might be mistaken for desserts. In one centralised topic, future members wishing to search for a discussion on children's choices have a better chance of finding it. Few, I suspect, would think, "I want to find a forum about fussy eaters; I'll search for 'not dessert'.

Normal.

That is typical. Hedge your bets! I'd be very careful with 'academic papers' from Chinese sources. About a decade ago, the Party decreed that all members must produce such papers and have them published or risk being passed over for promotion. This lead to the setting up of 'paper farms' which churn out these papers for a sutable fee. People buy them then 'publish' them in magazines set up just for the puurpose. The 'writers' of the papers pay to have them published, too. They are not peer-reviewed; they are only cash reviewed. I know of no western universities who accept them. They are notorious in academic circles. I am frequently asked to 'help' translate these papers. The so-called authors are required to have a brief summary in English, but many hope to have 'their' papers published in western publications. Extra points for that! So they offer me money to translate them and send me samples to see if I am willing to do the job. These usually arrive still on the farms' headed notepaper. Most of those I see are from medical staff in the local hospital. I am no medic (often neither are they) but even I can see they are nonsense which has no chance of being accepted by any serious academic journal. I always find that I am "too busy" at the time to help and so, decline. Now, I'm not saying that the one @Anna Nhas linked to is necessarily of that genre; I'm just saying be very wary.

Yeah, but I've overdone that Lao gan ma! I prefer a different dressing on my lice, these days.

I may give that a miss! 🤣

Oh dear. I guess you know how to cook chicken. Do you serve and eat it the same way every time? I also know how to cook potatoes. I certainly don't always serve them the same way every time, either.

No, I don't. They are both long established descriptors. Calling them 'brats' would be. Also, 'fussy' or 'picky' do not include the parents. Yes. The poorer classes dont tend to hang around restaurants much.

Thanks, but perhaps I should have been clearer. I know how to prepare and cook it. I was more looking for what to do with it thereafter.

No one said it was better. It was just used as an example. I see no overtones of morality or judgement other than as noted below. I already said, this was only my personal observations and there may well be fussy eaters, but in England I know many - usually regarding vegetables, especially greens. Also. anecdotally in most western countries. Isn't it surprising that I've never met one in 25 years in China? And children are most certainly taken to restaurants. I seriously doubt any fussy eaters are left behind at home to fend for themselves. Ha! Now who is being judgemental? It's my fault for not noticing that child lurking in the corner? If a child were to do so, and I'm pretty observant, the bowl of rice or noodles wouldn't have come from a children's menu! That was my only point there - they don't have children's menus.

Please don't misunderstand me. Despite the stupid, racist saying that the Chinese eat everything on legs except the table, many Chinese people are very conservative about eating foods they have never seen before. But that's as adults. I've never seen children with the same reaction. They still pile into KFC and McDonalds', but also still eat the greens and pig's tongue and goose intestines that their parents eat.

I've happily eaten pork tongue many times in restaurants and friends' homes here, but never cooked it. Today, on a whim, I bought one. Obviously, I can and will ask those friends for suggestions as to how to use it, but I'd also like to read what suggestions people here may have. My friends are all going to give me Chinese ideas. There must be others! Thanks!

11C. Balti + More, not Baltimore Two dishes often said to be British innovations are among the most popular in Indian restaurants in Britain. Let's have a look. Balti, also known as balti gohst (Urdu: بالٹی گوشت‎, Hindi: बाल्टी गोश्त) is often said to have been invented by Bangladeshi chefs in what is now known as the Balti Triangle in Birmingham, England, sometime in the 1970s. Even the city government promotes the city by unequivocally sloganeering that “Birmingham is the original home of the Balti”. Given that balti has been known and eaten in northern India and Pakistan for many years longer, that seems unlikely. It is more likely to have arrived in Britain in the 1970s. Balti Gosht The word ‘balti' , found in several of the Indian subcontinent's languages seems to have originated in the Portuguese balde, meaning a bucket or pail. This was transferred to refer to type of deep cooking pot, resembling the Chinese wok. This was then transferred to a dish cooked in said pot, not an unlikely scenario when you consider that many dishes across the world’s cuisines are so named – casserole, tagine and paella leap to mind. Pat Chapman, founder of The Curry Club in the UK, who writes about Indian restaurant food, sees a link between balti and Baltistan, the Kashmiri state (administered by Pakistan), bordering China. Other writers dismiss this, pointing out the dish balti bears no resemblance to any food traditionally eaten there. Balti as served in Pakistan Whatever the origin of the dish, by the 1990s it had spread from a small area of Birmingham, across Britain and Ireland, then to places such as New Zealand and Australia. I’ve seen it on menus in Indian restaurants in Hong Kong. It is now even sold in British supermarkets in a do-it-yourself version. There is (or was) even a brand of Balti Wine, supposed to marry well with south Asian food, especially balti. It is/was made from Argentinian grapes, but developed in 2004 in Manchester, England by a Pakistani entrepreneur. It should not be confused with Bălți, the Moldovan wine region. Note: I have been unable to determine if this wine is still available. The company’s website is dead and the domain up for sale at ₤1,795 (~ $2,530 USD) So what is a balti, the dish? Basically, it is general type of curry, using customer chosen meats and vegetables, but instead of being slowly stewed like most Indian preparations, balti is quick fried using a stir-fry technique like that of Chinese cooking. It also tends to use vegetable oil as the frying medium rather than the ghee (clarified butter) used in most of the subcontinent. _____________________________________________________________________________________ And so I come to Britain’s National dish (according to Robin Cook (1946 – 2005), the late British government foreign secretary who praised the dish in a 2001 speech on Britain’s multi-ethnicity). Chicken Tikka Masala Chicken Tikka Masala According to the legends, in 1971, someone, said by some to have been a bus driver, somewhere in Britain, ordered the well-established dish, Chicken Tikka which originated in the Mughal Dynasty (c. 1526 to 1857). It is a dish of meat or paneer (a type of Indian soft cheese) marinated in yoghurt and spices then baked in a tandoor, a traditional clay oven (although today they may be made from steel.) The fabled bus driver found the dish too dry for his taste, so asked for it to be dressed in a curry sauce. A chef added some masala sauce and Chicken Tikka Masala was born! He spread the word more and more people requested the dish, so it was added to the menu increasing its popularity and other restaurants began to copy it. By the mid-1980s it was the nation’s favourite curry, if not quite a National Dish. It took another decade to cement that reputation. So much for legends. The first problem is that no one has ever definitively identified that restaurant where the genesis supposedly took place. Various claims have been made across the country from “near London” to Glasgow in Scotland. The modern-day pundits are very divided, with a few backing the bus driver theory to an Indian journalist suggesting a link to a dish from the Punjab region in the north of India bordering Pakistan. The most common, and in my opinion most likely, view is that it was invented by Bangladeshi chefs some time in the 1960s and lay dormant until awakened when discovered in the early 1970s. Many writers have noted its similarity to murgh makhani aka butter chicken, a dish of chicken in a spiced tomato, butter and cream sauce. This dish is known to have been invented in Delhi, India in the 1950s by the chef owner of the Moti Mahal restaurant. It is said the dish was invented accidentally when tandoor-cooked chicken was mixed with tomato gravy, rich in butter and cream. Sound familiar? Bizarrely, one writer also claims that Hannah Glasse’s 1747 recipe for curry which I referenced above is also similar to butter chicken, although how she copied a recipe created 200 years later goes unexplained. There is only a vague resemblance that I can see, in that they both use chicken and Glasse does fry her meat in butter, as did most cooks then. In the later version of her recipe, she also adds cream. She probably had no access to tomatoes, which were only then beginning to be eaten in Britain, despite having been introduced much earlier. The ‘fusion’ origins of the dish gain weight from the name, which itself is a fusion of different languages, tikka being from the Hindi or Punjabi टिका ṭikka, which in itself came from the Turkic word tikkü, meaning "piece" or "chunk", and masala from the Urdu ماسالا masala meaning “spice mix”. Whatever the origins, the dish has become Britain’s favourite curry and one of the nation’s top dishes.It is even said to be the second favourite 'foreign' dish for home cooking, but as the top favourite is Chinese stir-fry which isn't just one dish (actually more of a cooking technique), I'd call chicken tikka masala number one. From Britain, the dish has spread around the world, even being found today in India’s own trendy restaurants. Outrageous cultural appropriation, I say! 😂 Image Credits: 1. Balti Gosht - Image by ayes - licenced under CC BY 2.0 2. Balti Gosht in Pakistan - Image by Miansari66 - Public Domain 3. Chicken Tikka Masala - Image by Michael Hays -licenced under CC BY 2.0

I think I've mentioned this before, and everything I'm about to repeat or say is purely based on my own observations of acquaintances, lovers, friends and enemies alike. Please take as you find it and don’t complain to me that it is unscientific – I know, thanks. Yet, I am sure what I have to say is valid. In my quarter of a century in China and even more in Asia, I have never once come across what we call fussy or picky children when it comes to food. I have questioned knowledgeable friends and parents, but they didn’t even understand my question – the concept was beyond them. Regularly, I eat in restaurants from the small noodle joints to lavish banqueting rooms, and have seen children pick out the vegetables to eat first. I’ve seen recently weaned children happily eat their greens, but be more hesitant about the proteins before getting there. I’ve spent my life working in universities around the world, seeing college students eating in canteens. Only here in China have I seen every student eating healthy fresh vegetables, rather than the burgers or pizzas I always saw in British universities. The typical lunch the students select here consists of two dishes plus rice. One dish is always vegetables – usually green. A dish without some green vegetables is almost unthinkable. I’ve never seen a restaurant in China with a separate children’s menu or children’s section on the main menu. Children eat what everyone else is eating. With famine and hunger still a living memory for many people, children are brought up to respect food and eat (to use a famous Chinese phrase) ‘every grain of rice”. Wasting food is seen as sinful. Beyond that, I am not qualified to venture as to reasons for the difference betwen cultures and I’m not going to guess, but given how often the topic comes up, usually in threads about something completely unrelated, I thought it may benefit from a topic of its own. I look forward to everyone’s thoughts and stories.

Well, I'm in the 'of course they aren't desserts' camp, too. I would never have thought that. They aren't new, either. My mother made tarts identical to these some 60 years ago or more! Didn't need a Robot Coupe, either.

I wouldn't go that far. Gary Rhodes had a great impact and I know many people in the UK who still use his books regularly, including my daughter. She was very upset when he died in November 2019 at such a young age. Madjur Jaffrey also. She got a lot of of people cooking Indian food at home, to the extent that most supermarket now stock the requisite spices and ingredients which weren't previously easy to find nationwide. One noticable absence from the list is the now deeply untrendy Delia Smith who had a much bigger influence that any of those on the list. I can't stand the woman but won't deny that almost everyone I know has their sauce stained copy of her Complete Cookery Course (eG-friendly Amazon.com link). Even I have one somewhere back in England.

11b. A sample of Indian dishes or maybe not. Never order anything labelled ‘curry’ in a British ‘Indian’ restaurant. The term is never used that way in India. The word comes from the Tamil word ‘ கறி - kari’ which means sauce or a relish for rice. Generic curry in poorer quality curry restaurants is made by preparing a huge vat of vaguely spicy master gravy (or even buying it in pre-prepared from a factory) which is poured over whichever meat or vegetables the customer requests. Chicken, beef, lamb, prawns*, etc. All taste the same, and it isn’t a good taste. Good restaurants individually match the sauces to the protein and list the dishes by name. There are many lists of ‘curries’ on the internet, as well as in magazines and newspapers purporting to list curries by mildest to hottest. They all disagree and the reason is very simple – it depends on the chef and restaurant. Where they indicate level of spiciness, the menus disagree, too. Also, the same dish in one restaurant may even look very different from that in another. That said, it is possible to generalise. Here are a very few dishes from the classic Indian restaurant menu. ‘Kormas’ are always mild, creamy and virtually un-spiced. I have heard them referred to as ‘the curry to order if you don’t like curry’. They are authentically Indian, though, having originated as part of Mughal cuisine in the 16th century in north India and what is now Pakistan. A popular choice is ‘dhansak’, a dish of meat or prawns cooked with lentils and vegetables Some places in Britain sweeten it with tinned pineapple. If you find that in your dhansak, run! You have entered a palace of debauchery and sin – and not the fun kind! Dhansak is usually classed as medium hot, which when you think about it doesn’t tell you much. A ‘bhuna’ is a Bengali dish of fried spices (ভাত - bhuna is Bengali for ‘fried’) and meat cooked in its own juices. It originated in the Bangladeshi city of Chittagong. These are usually dry curries and are classed as medium to hot. ‘Dopiaza’ is my favourite. Meaning ‘double onions’, this Hyderabad dish is prepared using onions twice. They appear in the dish’s sauce and also as a garnish. A sour taste is usually added to the dish using tamarind, or in many restaurants, lemon. Again medium to hot. ‘Rogan Josh’ (Urdu: روجن جاش) is a mutton dish from Kashmir in the north of India. It is sometimes erroneously called ‘rogan gosht’. The dish should be a rich red colour, which in Kashmir comes from the local chillies, but in Britain is often achieved using tomatoes and/or red bell peppers. This dish is normally hot. ‘Madras’ dishes have nothing to do with Madras, now known as Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu State in south India. This rich and hot dish was invented in Britain by Bengali chefs. One of the hottest offerings in British Indian restaurants is ‘vindaloo’, which actually originated in Portugal then entered India via Goa, which was a Portuguese colony from 1510 until as recently as 1961. The Portuguese dish, carne de vinha d'alhos, which means ‘meat with wine vinegar and garlic’ was introduced to the area and then adapted by adding local spices. The name, vindaloo is a probably derived from a mishearing or misunderstanding of ‘vinha d'alhos’, which was also confused with ‘आलू - aloo’ the Hindi word for ‘potato’. This probably accounts for the many British restaurants now including potato in the dish. India has one thing to be grateful for though - it was the Portuguese who introduced chillis to the subcontinent. The hottest dish on British menus is ‘phal’ (which also comes in various alternative spellings). This dish was invented by Bengali chefs in the famous Indian city of Birmingham in England! It was done so to satisfy the drunken idiots who wanted to show off their manly credentials by eating the hottest thing imaginable, no doubt to make up for inadequacies elsewhere. It has nothing to do with India, whatsoever. It is basically meat in a tomato sauce laden with ludicrous amounts of dried chillies, or with samples of the planet’s hottest freak cultivars. The restaurants came to regret coming up with the dish, as I will explain later. Astute readers and those who know British Indian food better will realise I’ve missed two of Britain’s most famous ‘curries’, including its most popular. Don’t worry, they are coming. They require more elaborate explanation than this brief summary. * I use ‘prawns’, rather than ‘shrimp’, deliberately. British English differentiates between the two. You will never see what we call shrimp in a British Indian restaurant.

Goose liver fried rice. Mise: Clockwise from top: Baby wild matsutake, Chinese chives, The holy trinity (garlic, ginger and chilli), soy sauce stewed goose liver, fresh summer bamboo shoots, Chinese celery. You don't need me to show you the cooked rice leftover from yesterday, so you?

I'm sorry you had a bad time, but I wasn't recommending the place. As I said I've never been there. I only included it because it's the oldest surviving Indian restaurant and I was writing about the history of such places in Britain.

Cherries.

You couldn't see it was lager? Funnily enough, I am in the process of writing the next instalment which features curry and lager, a 'traditional' pairing in Britain dating all the way back to the 1980s. I've never eaten at Veeraswamy's so can't comment on your experience, but I have London friends who like it a lot.

I started this topic five years ago, when I received an unexpected gift of 1.5 kg and 'complained' that it was too many for just me. Today 5 kg turned up! These ones are from Yantai in northern China, an area known for its cherries.

Just arrived from a client. 5 kg of cherries from Yantai in northern China, famous for its high-quality cherries. The image shows half of them; there is another box. How I'll ever get through them, I'll never know.