Adventures with Kake

First of all, apologies for the lack of a second dish post last week — I seem to have seriously overcommitted myself this month and am scrambling to keep up with things.

Because of this, I've decided to halt my dim sum month here. I don't want to put up scrappily-written and under-researched posts just for the sake of sticking to the schedule; I'd rather take a break for a couple of weeks, and leave the rest of the dim sum posts I'd planned until the next time.

So! This blog will resume at some point in September. I'm not yet sure exactly when in September, but hopefully not before too long.

(People having dim sum with me this Friday — don't worry, I'm not cancelling that!)

[Image: Three pieces of dim sum in a bamboo steamer basket: siu mai (燒賣) and har gow (蝦餃) in the foreground, and cha siu bao (叉燒包) in the background.]

Hello! I've finished moving house and so am back to blogging again. That means it's dim sum time! As previously mentioned, throughout August I'll be posting on two dim sum dishes per week, along with my regular character posts (concept posts are temporarily suspended and will return in September).

Dim sum month is not just for reading and writing about dim sum, though — it's also about eating dim sum. I already have lunches lined up with various people, but if you're not among those people, and you'd like to eat dim sum with me in London this month, please let me know! There's still room in my calendar.

For a quick refresher on how dim sum works, see my dim sum post from last year; and for a list of dim sum dishes I've already posted about, see my dish index.

First off: I'm taking July off blogging. bob and I have bought a house, and now we need to move into it, so I thought it was probably best to remove distractions for a while.

I'll be back on August 1st with the start of another dim sum month, since last year's went so well. My plan is to temporarily halt my concept posts, and instead post two dim sum dishes per week, along with the regular Wednesday character posts (which will move to Mondays for the month). I also plan to eat a lot of dim sum, preferably with lots of lovely people. If you're within reach of London during August, and you'd like to eat some dim sum with me, please get in touch!

I'm not saying anything new in today's post, but I want to highlight something that I think is really important for learning anything. That is, to keep plugging away at it. I have a lot of other commitments, but I still try to do something every day towards my goal of understanding things written in Chinese. Some days I get to spend an hour or two on this, other days less than ten minutes, but every little bit of contact with the language helps to cement my existing knowledge.

Here's what I try to do every day, though I don't always manage it:

• Transcribe something. A few lines from a menu, or a list of Chinese dish names from a cookbook. Anything that gets me looking at Chinese characters, figuring out what they are, and typing them into my computer.
• Five minutes or so on Skritter. I've posted about Skritter before; this is an online tool that lets you specify lists of Chinese characters that you'd like to learn to write, and uses spaced repetition theory to test you at the optimal time for remembering.
• Work through anything due on Anki. I've posted about Anki before as well; this is a flashcard program that again uses spaced repetition to work out when to test you. When I learn a new character or dish name, I enter it into Anki, and Anki takes care of making sure I don't forget it.
• Do some LiveMocha. I haven't posted about LiveMocha yet, but I will do at some point. It's a community-based language-learning site that gives you basic lessons in your chosen language, and lets you submit written and spoken exercises for assessment by native speakers. It's not at all useful for learning menu vocabulary, but I'm learning some very basic Mandarin grammar from it which I hope will eventually be useful in letting me read Chinese-language cookbooks and so on.
• Watch an episode of 天天飲食. This is a daily cookery programme shown on China Central Television; it's around 8 minutes long, in Mandarin, and subtitled in simplified Chinese characters. I find it helpful on multiple levels; it shows me how a particular dish is made, it shows me various preparation and cooking techniques, it gets me used to hearing the sounds of Mandarin, and it gets me used to seeing sentences of written Chinese. I can't get the channel here, but fans of the programme upload episodes on YouTube, and I watch it there.

If you've got any suggestions for anything else I should be doing, I'd love to hear them.

Today is the anniversary of my very first post in the Chinese menu project!

Over the past year, I've noticed a welcome trend among London's regional Chinese restaurants: more and more of them are providing translations of at least part of their Chinese-only menus. When I first visited Sanxia Renjia in June last year, the interesting menu was entirely in Chinese; on my latest visit a month ago, it was entirely bilingual (and illustrated too). Similarly, Royal Palace now has an illustrated English translation of part of their Chinese menu[see footnote 0], and it's a decent enough selection that on my latest visit we ordered almost exclusively from this.

However, even if this trend continues and spreads, I still think it's worth being able to read the Chinese names of dishes. For one thing, the translated/bilingual menu is often only a selection of the full menu; similarly, specials boards are usually Chinese-only. Also, the Chinese name of a dish often gives you more information than the English name. "Noodles with pork", for example: is that 炸醬麵/zhà jiàng miàn, 擔擔麵/dān dān miàn, or even 螞蟻上樹/mǎ yǐ shàng shù? (As an aside, bob mentioned to me the other week that he has a similar advantage when reading bilingual English/Spanish menus.)

On a more personal note, I am very pleased (and slightly surprised) that I've managed to keep this project going for so long. Thank you, thank you, thank you, to everyone who's encouraged me, whether by commenting here or in email, by sending me useful links, by telling me in person that you enjoy reading the posts, or by coming out for yet another Chinese meal with me and being patient while I photograph the menu and interrogate the waitstaff.

I do have a couple of requests today. First of all, is there any way I can make my posts more accessible to you? I try to strike a balance between overexplaining and underexplaining, and between avoiding too much repetition and assuming all readers have read all posts. I also try to use informative alt texts for images (would people prefer to see that in the main text as well/instead?), and to provide transcripts or at least precis of videos that are in English (I don't speak Chinese, yet, so can't transcribe those). In short, I want to do my best not to exclude anyone from being able to read my posts — so if you have any suggestions, I am listening.

Relatedly, is there anything you particularly like or dislike about the way I structure these posts? Do you like (and indeed had you noticed) the model of concept on Monday, character on Wednesday, dish on Friday, vague theme running throughout the three? Do I post too often for you to keep up? And so on[see footnote 1].

Finally, if there's anything you'd like to ask me, anything at all, this is a good time! You can leave a comment, or email me if you prefer (kake@earth.li). Or if you'd just like to say hello, there is a handy tickybox below (should work for both Dreamwidth users and OpenID users).

Footnote 0: There is actually a faint possibility that my frequent visits and requests for the Chinese menu despite not being Chinese had something to do with this, though I haven't asked.

Footnote 1: Before I saw how popular last Friday's post was, I was also going to ask if people would prefer the Friday posts to have more of a focus on restaurants and less on home cooking...

I'm sorry I've taken so long to do this, because I know people have been wanting it for a while, but here, finally, is an index of the posts I've made on individual Chinese characters. I did have rather grander ambitions for this, which is why it's been a while coming, but I had to scale back a bit in the end. Anyway! Here it is.

Also, you may have noticed that I've started putting a little infobox at the bottom of each character post, in which I give the character, its pinyin, its radical, and links to its entry in three dictionaries: CantoDict, MandarinTools, and YellowBridge. I'm happy to consider linking to other dictionaries too, if anyone has any suggestions, though I don't want the infobox to get too wide.

Here are the characters arranged by radical and number of strokes:

And here they are in alphabetical order of pinyin:

I'm back from my month off, and have lots of interesting things to post about — but for today, I'm just going to put up this index of all the dishes I've posted about so far, to go with the subject index I posted a month or so ago. Please do let me know if you think there's a better way to organise it.

I'll be keeping this up to date as I write about more dishes, and it's also linked in the sidebar.

Skip to: dishes by main ingredient | dishes by other interesting ingredients | cold dishes | dim sum | vegan and veganisable dishes | specific cooking techniques | dishes not otherwise categorised.

Dishes by main ingredient

• Beancurd (tofu):
  • Hot-and-sour "flower" beancurd (酸辣豆花/suān là dòu huā)
  • Mapo tofu (麻婆豆腐/má pó dòu fu)
  • Tofu with preserved egg (皮蛋豆腐/pí dàn dòu fu)
• Eggs:
  • Oyster omelette (蠔煎/háo jiān)
  • Stirfried eggs with tomatoes (蕃茄炒蛋/fān qié chǎo dàn)
• Fish:
  • Fish soup with pickled greens (酸菜魚/suān cài yú)
  • Raw fish salad (魚生/yú shēng)
  • Steamed fish with chopped salted chillies (剁椒蒸魚/duò jiāo zhēng yú)
• Flour:
  • Cha siu bao (叉燒包/chā shāo bāo)
  • Steamed sponge cake/ma lai goh (馬來糕/mǎ lái gāo)
• Meat:
  • Beef:
    • Cumin beef (孜然牛肉/zī rán niú ròu)
    • Married couple's lung slices (夫妻肺片/fū qī fèi piàn)
    • Water-cooked beef (水煮牛肉/shuǐ zhǔ niú ròu)
  • Chicken:
    • Big-plate chicken (大盤雞/dà pán jī)
    • Chicken with chillies (辣子雞/là zi jī)
    • Jellyfish salad (涼拌海蜇/liáng bàn hǎi zhé)
    • Mouthwatering chicken (口水雞/kǒu shuǐ jī)
  • Pork:
    • Cha siu bao (叉燒包/chā shāo bāo)
    • Crispy roast pork belly/siu yuk (燒肉/shāo ròu)
    • Dongpo pork (東坡肉/Dōngpō ròu)
    • Noodles with pork and fermented bean sauce (炸醬麵/zhà jiàng miàn)
    • Pork with mashed garlic (蒜泥白肉/suàn ní bái ròu)
    • Red-cooked pork (紅燒肉/hóng shāo ròu)
    • Siu mai (燒賣/shāo mài)
    • Vietnamese-style spring rolls (越式炸春卷/yuè shì zhà chūn juǎn
• Noodles:
  • Ants climbing a tree (螞蟻上樹/mǎ yǐ shàng shù)
  • Cheung fun (腸粉/cháng fěn)
  • Dan dan noodles (擔擔麵/dān dān miàn)
  • Dongbei lapi (東北拉皮/Dōngběi lā pí)
  • Noodles with pork and fermented bean sauce (炸醬麵/zhà jiàng miàn)
  • Three-sliver salad (涼拌三絲/liáng bàn sān sī)
• Offal:
  • Ears:
    • Pig's ears with chilli oil (紅油豬耳/hóng yóu zhū ěr)
  • Kidneys:
    • Fire-exploded kidney flowers (火爆腰花/huǒ bào yāo huā)
  • Tripe:
    • Beef tripe with ginger and spring onions (姜蔥牛柏葉/jiāng cōng niú bǎi yè)
    • Married couple's lung slices (夫妻肺片/fū qī fèi piàn)
• Rice:
  • Congee with lean pork and preserved egg (皮蛋瘦肉粥/pí dàn shòu ròu zhǒu)
  • Rice with chicken in lotus leaf/lo mai gai (糯米雞/nuò mǐ jī)
  • Zongzi (粽子/zòng zi)
• Seafood:
  • Jellyfish:
    • Jellyfish salad (涼拌海蜇/liáng bàn hǎi zhé)
  • Oysters:
    • Oyster omelette (蠔煎/háo jiān)
  • Prawns:
    • Har gao/prawn dumplings (蝦餃/xiā jiǎo)
    • Paper-wrapped prawns (紙包蝦/zhǐ bāo xiā)
• Vegetables:
  • Aubergine (eggplant):
    • Fish-fragrant aubergine (魚香茄子/yú xiāng qié zi)
    • Mashed steamed aubergine (擂蒸茄子/lēi zhēng qié zi)
    • Three fresh things from the earth (地三鮮/dì sān xiān)
  • Cucumber:
    • Cucumber salad (涼拌黃瓜/liáng bàn huáng guā)
    • Jellyfish salad (涼拌海蜇/liáng bàn hǎi zhé)
  • Daikon (mooli/Chinese radish):
    • Deep-fried shredded turnip puffs (蘿蔔絲酥餅/luó bo sī sū bǐng)
    • Pan-fried turnip cake/lo bak goh (蘿蔔糕/luó bo gāo)
  • Edible fungus:
    • Wood ear salad (涼拌木耳/liáng bàn mù ěr)
  • Green beans:
    • Dry-fried green beans (乾煸四季豆/gān biān sì jì dòu)
  • Greens (cabbage, Chinese leaf, pea shoots, etc):
    • Hand-torn cabbage (手撕包菜/shǒu sī bāo cài)
    • Mangetout leaves in a rich stock (上湯豆苗/shàng tāng dòu miáo)
    • Vinegar-glazed Chinese cabbage (醋溜白菜/cù liù bái cài)
    • Water spinach with fermented beancurd (腐乳炒空心菜/fǔ rǔ chǎo kōng xīn cài)
  • Mushrooms (dried or fresh):
    • Tea tree mushrooms with Chinese ham (茶樹菇炒臘肉/chá shù gū chǎo là ròu)
  • Potato:
    • Shredded potatoes (土豆絲/tǔ dòu sī)
    • Three fresh things from the earth (地三鮮/dì sān xiān)
  • Sweetcorn:
    • Sweetcorn with salted egg yolk (鹹蛋黃玉米粉/xián dàn huáng yù mǐ fěn)
  • Taro:
    • Crispy deep-fried taro croquettes (蜂巢炸芋角/fēng cháo zhà yù jiǎo)
  • Tomatoes:
    • Stirfried eggs with tomatoes (蕃茄炒蛋/fān qié chǎo dàn)
  • Winter melon:
    • Winter melon with dried prawns (海米冬瓜/hǎi mǐ dōng guā)

Dishes using other interesting ingredients

• Century eggs/thousand-year-old eggs/preserved eggs (皮蛋/pí dàn):
  • Congee with lean pork and preserved egg (皮蛋瘦肉粥/pí dàn shòu ròu zhǒu)
  • Tofu with preserved egg (皮蛋豆腐/pí dàn dòu fu)
• Chilli bean paste (豆瓣醬/dòu bàn jiàng):
  • Ants climbing a tree (螞蟻上樹/mǎ yǐ shàng shù)
  • Big-plate chicken (大盤雞/dà pán jī)
  • Fish-fragrant aubergine (魚香茄子/yú xiāng qié zi)
  • Mapo tofu (麻婆豆腐/má pó dòu fu)
  • Noodles with pork and fermented bean sauce (炸醬麵/zhà jiàng miàn)
  • Water-cooked beef (水煮牛肉/shuǐ zhǔ niú ròu)
• Chinese ham/Chinese bacon (臘肉/là ròu):
  • Tea tree mushrooms with Chinese ham (茶樹菇炒臘肉/chá shù gū chǎo là ròu)
• Dried prawns:
  • Winter melon with dried prawns (海米冬瓜/hǎi mǐ dōng guā)
• Dried scallops:
  • Mangetout leaves in rich stock (上湯豆苗/shàng tāng dòu miáo)
• Fermented beancurd:
  • Buddha's delight/monk's vegetables (羅漢齋/luó hàn zhāi)
  • Water spinach with fermented beancurd (腐乳炒空心菜/fǔ rǔ chǎo kōng xīn cài)
• Hunanese chopped salted chillies (剁椒/duò jiāo):
  • Steamed fish with chopped salted chillies (剁椒蒸魚/duò jiāo zhēng yú)
• Pickled mustard greens (酸菜/suān cài):
  • Fish soup with pickled greens (酸菜魚/suān cài yú)
• Salted egg yolks (鹹蛋黃/xián dàn huáng):
  • Sweetcorn with salted egg yolk (鹹蛋黃玉米粉/xián dàn huáng yù mǐ fěn)
• Sichuan peppercorns (花椒/huā jiāo):
  • Chicken with chillies (辣子雞/là zi jī)
  • Dan dan noodles (擔擔麵/dān dān miàn)
  • Dry-fried green beans (乾煸四季豆/gān biān sì jì dòu)
  • Hot-and-sour "flower" beancurd (酸辣豆花/suān là dòu huā)
  • Mouthwatering chicken (口水雞/kǒu shui jī)
  • Mapo tofu (麻婆豆腐/má pó dòu fu)
  • Married couple's lung slices (夫妻肺片/fū qī fèi piàn)
  • Three-sliver salad (涼拌三絲/liáng bàn sān sī)
  • Water-cooked beef (水煮牛肉/shuǐ zhǔ niú ròu)
• Sichuan preserved vegetable (榨菜/zhà cài):
  • Dan dan noodles (擔擔麵/dān dān miàn)
  • Dry-fried green beans (乾煸四季豆/gān biān sì jì dòu)
  • Hot-and-sour "flower" beancurd (酸辣豆花/suān là dòu huā)
• Superior stock (上湯/shàng tāng):
  • Mangetout leaves in a rich stock (上湯豆苗/shàng tāng dòu miáo)

Cold dishes (涼菜/liáng cài)

• About cold dishes
• Cucumber salad (涼拌黃瓜/liáng bàn huáng guā)
• Dongbei lapi (東北拉皮/Dōngběi lā pí)
• Jellyfish salad (涼拌海蜇/liáng bàn hǎi zhé)
• Married couple's lung slices (夫妻肺片/fū qī fèi piàn)
• Mouthwatering chicken (口水雞/kǒu shui jī)
• Pig's ears with chilli oil (紅油豬耳/hóng yóu zhū ěr)
• Pork with mashed garlic (蒜泥白肉/suàn ní bái ròu)
• Shredded potatoes (土豆絲/tǔ dòu sī)
• Three-sliver salad (涼拌三絲/liáng bàn sān sī)
• Tofu with preserved egg (皮蛋豆腐/pí dàn dòu fu)
• Wood ear salad (涼拌木耳/liáng bàn mù ěr)

Dim sum (點心/diǎn xīn)

• Dim sum overview
• Fried dim sum (煎炸點心/jiān zhà diǎn xīn):
  • Crispy deep-fried taro croquettes (蜂巢炸芋角/fēng cháo zhà yù jiǎo)
  • Deep-fried shredded turnip puffs (蘿蔔絲酥餅/luó bo sī sū bǐng)
  • Pan-fried turnip cake/lo bak goh (蘿蔔糕/luó bo gāo)
  • Paper-wrapped prawns (紙包蝦/zhǐ bāo xiā)
  • Vietnamese-style spring rolls (越式炸春卷/yuè shì zhà chūn juǎn
• Steamed dim sum (蒸點心/zhēng diǎn xīn):
  • Beef tripe with ginger and spring onions (姜蔥牛柏葉/jiāng cōng niú bǎi yè)
  • Cha siu bao (叉燒包/chā shāo bāo)
  • Fishballs with pig skin and daikon (魚蛋豬皮蘿蔔/yú dàn zhū pí luó bo)
  • Har gao/prawn dumplings (蝦餃/xiā jiǎo)
  • Rice with chicken in lotus leaf/lo mai gai (糯米雞/nuò mǐ jī)
  • Steamed sponge cake/ma lai goh (馬來糕/mǎ lái gāo)
  • Siu mai (燒賣/shāo mài)
• Other dim sum:
  • Cheung fun (腸粉/cháng fěn)
  • Congee with lean pork and preserved egg (皮蛋瘦肉粥/pí dàn shòu ròu zhǒu)
  • Crispy roast pork belly/siu yuk (燒肉/shāo ròu)

Vegan and veganisable dishes

Note that I've only included here dishes that I think are just as good in the vegan versions as they are in the meaty ones. For example, I don't feel that 擔擔麵 actually needs the pork mince, but 乾煸四季豆 wouldn't be the same without it. Obviously, this is subjective. Another point worth noting is that you will need a good (preferably home-made) vegetable stock to use in place of the chicken/pork stock that flavours many of these dishes, and you may find that the texture is more watery than it should be due to lack of gelatin — this latter point also applies to the meaty versions, if you're using e.g. stock cubes instead of proper stock.

• Ants climbing a tree (螞蟻上樹/mǎ yǐ shàng shù)
• Buddha's delight/monk's vegetables (羅漢齋/luó hàn zhāi)
• Cucumber salad (涼拌黃瓜/liáng bàn huáng guā)
• Dan dan noodles (擔擔麵/dān dān miàn)
• Fish-fragrant aubergine (魚香茄子/yú xiāng qié zi)
• Hand-torn cabbage (手撕包菜/shǒu sī bāo cài)
• Hot-and-sour "flower" beancurd (酸辣豆花/suān là dòu huā)
• Mapo tofu (麻婆豆腐/má pó dòu fu)
• Mashed steamed aubergine (擂蒸茄子/lēi zhēng qié zi)
• Shredded potatoes (土豆絲/tǔ dòu sī)
• Three fresh things from the earth (地三鮮/dì sān xiān)
• Three-sliver salad (涼拌三絲/liáng bàn sān sī)
• Vinegar-glazed Chinese cabbage (醋溜白菜/cù liù bái cài)
• Water spinach with fermented beancurd (腐乳炒空心菜/fǔ rǔ chǎo kōng xīn cài)
• Wood ear salad (涼拌木耳/liáng bàn mù ěr)

Posts which mention specific cooking techniques

• Blanching meat: Red-cooked pork (紅燒肉/hóng shāo ròu)
• Fire-exploding: Fire-exploded kidney flowers (火爆腰花/huǒ bào yāo huā)
• Fish-fragrance/sea-spice: Fish-fragrant aubergine (魚香茄子/yú xiāng qié zi)
• Red-cooking: Red-cooked pork (紅燒肉/hóng shāo ròu)
• Roasting meat: Crispy roast pork belly/siu yuk (燒肉/shāo ròu)
• Steaming fish: Steamed fish with chopped salted chillies (剁椒蒸魚/duò jiāo zhēng yú)
• Water-cooking (poaching): Water-cooked beef (水煮牛肉/shuǐ zhǔ niú ròu)

Dish posts not otherwise categorised

• Hotpot (火鍋/huǒ guō)
• Mooncakes (月餅/yuè bǐng)
• Tea (茶/chá)

So, that's the end of August and the end of my dim sum extravaganza. I hope you all enjoyed it! Especially those of you who came and ate dim sum with me in real life :)

Here's a list of all the dim sum posts, in case anyone missed some:

• Concepts: 點心 — diǎn xīn — dim sum
• Characters: 點心 — diǎn xīn — dim sum
• 姜蔥牛柏葉 — jiāng cōng niú bǎi yè — beef tripe with ginger/spring onions
• 蘿蔔糕 — luó bo gāo — lo bak goh — pan-fried turnip cake
• 燒賣 — shāo mài — siu mai
• 燒肉 — shāo ròu — siu yuk — crispy roast pork belly
• 腸粉 — cháng fěn — cheung fun
• 蘿蔔絲酥餅 — luó bo sī sū bǐng — deep-fried shredded turnip puffs
• 糯米雞 — nuò mǐ jī — lo mai gai — rice in lotus leaf
• 馬來糕 — mǎ lái gāo — ma lai goh — steamed sponge cake

I think I will do this again next year! So please let me know which of your favourite dim sum items I didn't cover this time, and I'll do my very best to fit them in.

And I mean that — I want to hear from you! Yes, you! Even you lurkers thinking "nah, she doesn't mean me!" If you have trouble leaving a comment, just email me and let me know.

The lovely Dreamwidth developers added a new feature in their latest code push — search boxes for journal sidebars — so there's now a convenient way to search through all my posts. TwoThree caveats:

• The search doesn't work properly for Chinese characters. Dreamwidth are aware of this but I don't know when it will be resolved. In the meantime, it's best to search in English or pinyin (you don't need to include the accents for the pinyin).
• It searches all my posts, not just the ones about Chinese menus. You can get around this to some extent by adding "chinese menu" to your search term.
• Because resources to run the search are currently a bit limited, the search is only available to logged-in users (and hence the search box will only appear for logged-in users). However, you don't need a Dreamwidth account to log in to the site — you can do it via OpenID, and I've confirmed that the search works fine for OpenID users.

While I'm posting, I thought I should mention that although all my recent posts have been about Chinese menus, I may from time to time use this journal for other kinds of posts. If you're only interested in the Chinese menu stuff, just follow my "chinese menu" tag and the other stuff will be filtered out: web, RSS, Atom.