Micheal Rubenstein photography

A few great images of seafood from photographer Micheal Rubenstein. These are from the series 'I Love Nippon'. Rubenstein's recent work focuses on portraits and urban landscapes from Mumbai.

Dog food

In response to the problem of abandoned stray lap dogs roaming the countryside, the government has promoted a more humane method of dealing with unwanted pets to coincide with Chinese new year banqueting. Several manufacturers of kitchen appliances have quickly capitalized on this new niche market.

From engrish.com via Tall Karl at chewin in the chung.

Juice

 

Image: Benjamin Siegel via flickr

One of the great things about living in Taiwan is the plethora of fresh juice stands. For 30nt ($0.94) I order up my favorite: carrot-apple-lemon-ginger, hold the sugar. More adventurous drinkers should seek out the bitter melon-cucumber-celery-carrot-honey. If you're looking for something more substantial, check out the avocado or papaya milk (hold the sugar). A straight watermelon is perfect for a screaming hot summer day. Another hot weather favorite of mine is the Bing Sha or blended fruit ice. Try the cantaloupe, mango, or lemon (half sugar).

Here's Jim Carry pre-megafame, expostulating the benefits of juice from when he was a regular on the ground-breaking comedy series 'In Living Color'.




And the original inspiration ...

Hagoromo canned tuna does gay disco Star Wars

Circa 1978, via Pink Tentacle

Mr. Zhang's mud oven

 The Zhang family's mud oven

My good friend Ron Rose recently had the opportunity of participating in a unique Taiwanese culinary tradition. To mark the winter rice harvest, some farmers continue the ancient tradition of constructing a mud oven in their recently harvested fields. The oven in the picture was created by Mr. Zhang, the soon to be father-in-law of said Rose. This oven is used once and once only to roast a single chicken and some accompanying vegetables. The oven itself is constructed with mud clumps in a manner similar to an igloo. A fire is then burned in the oven for several hours baking the mud to a high temperature. The coals are then removed from the oven, the chicken is inserted, and the oven is collapsed on top of the bird. It is the heat of the mud itself that cooks the chicken.

The traditional method of preparing the chicken involves encasing the entire bird in clay. This dish can still be found in specialty Chinese restaurants under the name of 'beggar's chicken'. At Dalia Jurgensen's Chinese food site Red Cook , I found a colourful story explaining its origins:

A starving beggar in China during the Qing dynasty is said to have stolen a chicken and was hotly pursued by its owner. In his haste he buried the chicken in mud near a riverbank to hide it. Later that night he returned and retrieved the chicken, its feathers covered in mud. He started a fire of twigs and branches to cook the chicken. But not having any utensils he placed the entire chicken directly into the fire. A tight clay crust formed as the fowl cooked, and when the crust was cracked open the feathers came right off the chicken exposing juicy tender meat and emitting an incredible aroma. The roasted chicken was so delicious he decided to start selling his creation to the villagers. Unbeknownst to him he had just invented one of the greatest culinary traditions of China.

Picture yourself living thousands of years ago in China, existing on little more than millet. Can you imagine the joy of pulling that blackened mass of clay out of the mud and ashes after hours of preparation and anticipation? Do you envision yourself cracking it open to release the most heavenly of aromas? Is your mouth watering as you taste the tenderest and most flavourful chicken imaginable with every drop of the bird's juices preserved inside? While the veracity of the above story of the beggar may be questionable, isn't it possible that this dish spawned or is at least representative of a more pervasive myth in the Chinese culture. That of the phoenix: a golden bird rising from the ashes.

Note the similarities:

There is some dispute over the geographical origin of beggar's chicken. The first time I came across a description of foul baked in clay was in an article in the FT by Fuschia Dunlop in a restaurant in the central Sichuan region that specialized in the peasant foods of the Western Xinjiang region. Eileen Yin-Fei Lo, in her book 'The Chinese Kitchen', cites this dish as being of Beijing origins. I also came across references on the net that cited it as a dish of the Hangzhou region. It seems likely that this method of cooking foul could go back to the stone age. Perhaps even predating the use of ceramic pots. Perhaps this cooking method led to the tradition of 'clay pot' cuisine in China, which utilizes unglazed ceramic. The pot is first soaked in water in order to steam the contents while cooking. The same effect obviously applies when using wet clay.

 Clay pot chicken found at: my dinner table 

Versions of this recipe include first wrapping the chicken in lotus leaves before wrapping it in the clay. Others substitute the clay for a kind of salty bread dough.

Above images from: Red Cook

 

Baked chicken encased in bread dough

The Zhang family has their own traditional method of wrapping the chicken. They first wrap the bird in newspaper before encasing it in mud. This year though, there were some alterations to the traditional recipe. It seems that Mrs. Zhang decided that the newspaper and mud method was unsanitary so insisted on a foil baking bag instead, she also (for some unknown reason) made the decision to pre-boil the chicken. Mr. Zhang was none too pleased with these changes but acquiesced in stoic silence. Perhaps he had to acknowledge that in the end, the preparation of food was his wife's domain.

Images: Construction; Inserting the bird; three generations of the Zhang clan

Plan D for your viewing pleasure.