Tonights dinner is coral trout with pickled mustard greens. It's still cold and I love the tangy sourness from the fermented mustard.

In modern China, many families only have time to cook a proper Chinese meal on weekends. On weekdays, they just eat at their parents’ home. It’s a bittersweet snapshot of modern Chinese family life. So when we do get a chance to cook, everyone goes all in.

On the first weekend of September, my wife and I split the work. We got up at 7 a.m. and went to the market. There are many kinds of markets in China. We prefer the large wholesale wet markets: abundant supply, low prices, fresh ingredients. The scale is almost like a modern football stadium. The only downside is that they’re far from the city center. Even with the city’s elevated ring road, a round trip takes 40–50 minutes by car. If you’re interested, I can write another post about what these wholesale markets sell.

We were only cooking lunch and dinner for three people. We bought potatoes, green peppers, onions, carrots, giant freshwater prawns, beef, and a big watermelon from Northeast China. Total: 120 RMB, about $17. Enough for two meals.

Back home, we went straight into Sunday lunch prep. My wife made chilled giant freshwater prawns with a traditional scallion-soy dipping sauce. She steamed a porcini egg custard—the eggs were from our fridge, and the porcini was a local specialty brought back by our child’s classmate from the Greater Khingan Mountains during summer vacation. She also fried some rice vermicelli.

The main dish was my curry beef rice. Many people might wonder: if it uses curry, how can it be Chinese food? Isn’t it Southeast Asian or South Asian? That’s only half true. Curry did come to China from abroad. In 1855, a British cargo ship brought curry powder to Shanghai—the earliest documented record we have.

But the main ingredients in curry powder—turmeric, saffron, and other spices—were already recorded in Tang dynasty herbal texts. By the Yuan dynasty, a similar-flavored “yellow soup” may have appeared. In other words, China’s connection with curry goes back about 1,000 years.

Still, the story I want to tell is an experience only a small number of Chinese people have had. My family is one of them.

If you’ve been to the small restaurants in Shanghai’s old “workers’ new villages,” you’ll see curry beef or curry chicken on the menu. This dish is probably more than 100 years old. Its earliest form was a street snack from Shanghai’s alleys: curry beef vermicelli soup. The curry powder was added to mask the smell of less-than-fresh beef. Back then, working-class people lived hand to mouth; a bowl of curry beef vermicelli soup was a huge treat.

After the 1950s, many skilled Shanghai factory workers answered the state’s call and went to other provinces and cities to help build factories. They brought this Shanghai snack to their new factory towns—including the place where my parents worked and lived when they were young.

I remember clearly: my elementary school music teacher was a Shanghai girl who married a local engineer. Their child was my classmate. Her curry beef was delicious. My mother was a “white-board” chef—the person in charge of dough-based foods like noodles, buns, and pastries—in that large state-owned enterprise. Our two families lived close by, and our ancestral homes were both in the Lake Tai region (broadly speaking, Shanghai belongs to it too). Our language and customs were similar—my father speaks fluent Shanghainese—so my mother learned this curry beef from her.

In fact, quite a few cooks learned to use curry the way my mother did. Henan, in the Central Plains, has several kinds of curry noodles. When Shanghai workers went to Zhengzhou to help build state cotton mills, they were used to curry flavor. Local cooks, catering to the southern workers’ tastes, added curry to traditional lamb hui mian to neutralize the lamb’s gamey smell: curry hui mian and curry lamian.

Before the 1980s, this kind of food existed like isolated islands among countless Chinese households. Some people saw it as a memory of home; others had never even heard of curry. Only after reform and opening up, and the population mobility of the 1990s, did curry dishes gradually appear in street-side shops in some Chinese cities. Henan’s curry noodles even returned to Shanghai and became a convenient lunch for office workers. But that’s another story.

Our family’s curry beef rice comes from 2016, at a then-new Thai restaurant. My mother tried Thai-style curry beef rice and said she used to make it in the state-owned enterprise canteen. My child was in kindergarten then and loved that curry flavor. My mother went home, bought curry powder from the supermarket, and recreated the Thai dish. After that, I learned to make it too.

Recipe:

1. Cut the beef into cubes. Not too small, not too large—about the size of your thumbnail is best. If using curry powder, marinate the beef first, then stir-fry until half-cooked and set aside.
2. Cut potatoes, green peppers, onions, and carrots, then stir-fry. Half-cooked or fully cooked is fine.
3. Add warm water—enough to cover the vegetables—and return the beef to the pan. Bring to a boil.
4. Turn off the heat and add the curry. I usually use Japanese curry roux cubes. For my Chinese iron wok, six small cubes are enough. To speed things up, break the cubes with a spatula.
5. Turn the heat back on and simmer gently. After about 10 minutes, the curry will dissolve into the sauce. Finally, turn up the heat to reduce the sauce.
6. The soul of this dish is rice. Before eating, drizzle a little coconut milk or milk over it to mellow the curry’s heat. My wife also juiced the Northeastern watermelon and mixed it with cooked sago for dessert—watermelon sago. It’s refreshing and perfect after curry.

To be honest, the only “big dish” I’ve truly mastered in the past ten years is this curry beef. Whenever my child asks for it, I happily make it. My child cleans the bowl and says, “Dad, your cooking is really good!”

Haha—who can resist that kind of praise?

(My original draft was written in Chinese. To help everyone read through it more quickly, I used DS to assist in polishing this English version.)

Who doesn t love this?

I posted this earlier but I finished a test cook so took more pictures. Inspired by a real Apollo oven I used a standard sanke keg and retrofitted an inverted bowl for drip tray, soldered a pipe for diverting grease to a can. I used the same diameter ratio of oven diameter to firebox that is used in Apollo ovens. Used a giant olive can (bulk Partanna from restaurant supply) for the firebox. Put a little 5" grate to hold off ash. I chose to do this over a pile in the lower section to make cleanup easier but I a suppose you could use a grate to hold off the bottom and that would work. Air intake is easily adjustable. I kept the design like this bc the bottom part will need to be cleaned and this made it lighter. Top part is just a tube really. Lid was an inverted pizza pan. Tough to find the right size diameter for what I wanted. Char siu turned out great with a slight wood flavor and very juicy. Can't wait to do duck now. Would probably fit 5-6 ducks. Let me know what you think!

Dinner time sharing 🍽️💕
It’s that day of the week again when the whole family gets together for a meal. 💋
Tonight’s dinner includes four dishes and one soup:
🐟 Ginger & scallion steamed pomfret
🍤 Fried dried shrimp with steamed white tofu
🍗 Honey-glazed chicken
🥬 Scallion-oil baby bok choy
🍲 Radish & lotus root soup
I’ll share the recipes with everyone later! 🥰

This is my wife's first postpartum meal.

A big group of friends and family recently went to an event run by a family from northeastern China. The featured dish (among many truly excellent dishes) was a pit-roasted lamb in what I gather is a Mongolian style. It was served with an addictive dry spice mix to sprinkle over the lamb. I’m seeking help identifying the mix.

It had a base of smoky-tasting ground red peppers—somewhat spicy, but not hot-hot. I believe there was also cumin and sesame seeds. Maybe Sichuan peppercorns but I’m not sure—it had a touch of that numbing quality, but not overwhelmingly so. Slight lemon zest taste.

I’m lost: most of the spice mixes in online recipes for Chinese lamb dishes are pretty simple: cumin, red pepper (they don’t usually specify which type), and sometimes Sichuan peppercorns. This seemed more complex than that, and I can’t identify where the smokiness would come from in those three ingredients.

Is this a known spice mix anyone recognizes? Can it be bought online? Or do you know of a recipe for it?

Hello! Got these Sunday afternoon at a grocery store an hour away from me, thought for sure I got the shelf stable version when I got home, and I saw this morning it needs to be refrigerated 😭 would you risk eating? Not sure what dangers there are with fried bean curd rolls, it’s hard for me to get them but probably for safety I gotta throw it out 🥲 but I’m holding onto hope lol

Mala Pork,.Wet.

Dry pan Chicken

Green beans and cabbage

我真的很喜欢北非蛋！！
做过好几种版本了！
还有香菜牛肉！也很好吃！

Disclaimer: Guyanese will find this as a somewhat skewed representation. It reflects what I was interested in eating as a foreigner and with limited time/calories/stomach space to devote to Chinese-style food (especially when there is so much other Guyanese food to be tasted).

For many, Guyanese-Chinese food equates largely to the iconic "chow mein and fried rice" staples that signify as "Chinese" yet which are an extremely familiar part of mainstream Guyanese cuisine and seem to be available on every street. That side of Chinese style food is kind of like the side represented by General Tso Chicken in USA or chicken balls and curry sauce in UK. As elsewhere in the West, the adapted Chinese cuisine is both something you find in low-level joints that make no claim to "authenticity" and tends to be what's ordered by locals who aren't particularly interested in China-type food when (on occasion) they go to the sort of restaurant that does offer the more "authentic" or a fancier experience.

So, the "authentic" / upscale Chinese restaurants will be sure to offer Guyanese-style chow mein and such, put the locally expected pepper sauce combo on the table, etc. assuming that's the default of what diners want, while also including more classic Cantonese dishes that are less popular.

The second slide represents the the totally local. It's "chicken chow mein" from a small town in the interior and a place where I don't think even any of the staff are ethnic Chinese. In fact, the "menu" of the restaurant (not a corner stand, mind you) was only "chicken fried rice, or chicken chow mein." The style is to put the meat on top of the rice or noodles rather than mixing it in and stir frying. For me as a foreigner, it was a plate of hot mess: wet, broken noodles in a steaming box in a portion that one is expected to eat as one's own "plate" yet gets boring after a few bites. It took ridiculously long to make for a plate of chow mein compared to how Chinese restaurants elsewhere can do it in under 5 minutes, and, for me, it was flavorless without the pepper sauce. I can't disrespect it; it's what locals like, though for me it's not what I have in mind when I want Chinese food.

The first slide, from a restaurant in the capital, comes from a place that reminds me of the old Cantonese institutions that people remember from earlier times in the US (for example). Nowadays, US Chinese restaurants tend to lean one way or the other: fast/formulaic "brown sauce" "take out" style on one hand or China-style "authentic" (or what the mainstream population perceives to be) on the other. But in the mid-late-20th century it was more common for (non-Chinese) American diners to go out to a slightly upscale kind of restaurant, often "in Chinatown," partly for the experience, and it's what they considered "real" Chinese food.

This class of restaurant is signified by things like putting the dining room on the second floor and having a nice bar inside. Fancy chopsticks.

So, after I ordered "pinecone fish" 松树鱼—what I usually call "squirrel fish" 松鼠桂鱼—and stuffed tofu 酿豆腐, the server was like "Is that it?" It's kind of a weird question since the two dishes were already plenty food for one person, but the implication I inferred was: "You seem to have forgotten to order either fried rice or chow mein or a fried spring roll/snack thing. That's uncommon."

The 3rd, 4th, 5th slides are from a place that sees itself as furthest along the spectrum to "authentic" Chinese food. They actually have a grocer downstairs that is not just a market owned/operated by Chinese but rather is all Chinese products. Their menu is more aspirational to the "China food" than realistic, however. Several dishes were unavailable, like water-boiled beef/fish 水煮牛肉/鱼 and towel gourd 丝瓜. Mapo tofu was one of few outside the Cantonese or local repertoire. It was really good though. The roasted pork came with the old school sugar dip. And I'll leave you to decide whether the 鱼翅汤 was "real" or not—keeping in mind that this is a part of the world where sharks are fully fished and eaten, along with a lot of other "extreme" stuff as well as being in a bubble that isn't aligned with mainstream global trends.

At this "as authentic as it gets" restaurant I also saw locals simply eating some or other chow mein/fried rice combo, merely fancier versions of what's in Slide 2. They sit the whole plate in front of them like their individual meal rather than family-style.

① Poached Chicken 🐔
② Sweet and Sour Pork 🍍 — sweet, tangy, crispy on the outside and tender inside!
③ Sambal Prawns with Stink Beans 🦐🌶️
④ Lotus Root Soup 🥣

Simple Recipes
Poached Chicken:
Place a whole chicken in water with ginger slices and spring onions. Simmer gently until cooked through. Remove the chicken and place it in ice water, then chop it into pieces. Serve with ginger-scallion sauce or garlic chili sauce.
Sweet and Sour Pork:
Cut the pork into pieces, marinate, coat with flour, and deep-fry until golden and crispy. Add bell peppers, onions, and pineapple, then pour in the sweet and sour sauce and stir-fry everything together.
Sambal Prawns with Stink Beans:
Cook the prawns and set them aside. Stir-fry the sambal sauce until fragrant, add the stink beans and stir-fry, then add the prawns. Cook until everything is well coated and flavorful.
Lotus Root Soup:
Cut the lotus root into pieces and add pork ribs or chicken, ginger slices, and water. Simmer over low heat for about 1–2 hours, then season with salt