1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die: A Food Lover's Life List (193 page)

Pork spareribs with rice and greens.

Long before regional barbecue became a nationwide obsession, Chinese restaurants were beguiling their clientele with their chewy but tender, sweet-and-sour spareribs. Succulently mellow, with a caramelized crust and crackling fat, the ribs are from the part of the pig adjacent to the belly—where bacon comes from—and thus are full of rich flavor.

Barbecued in the Cantonese
char siu
style, the ribs acquire their distinctive lacquered exterior and zesty taste from a marinade of honey and salty-sweet hoisin sauce (see
listing
)—the dark, thick condiment made from fermented soybeans, vinegar, garlic, sugar, and spices, usually five-spice powder (anise, cinnamon, cloves, Sichuan pepper, and fennel or licorice root). The hoisin sauce tints the ribs their characteristic mahogany color and provides an intense savoriness, while the honey caramelizes to a crackling, sugary char. Unlike barbecued ribs from the American South, which are most often rubbed with spices and then smoked on a grill before being “mopped” with tomato-and-vinegar-based sauces, Chinese-style ribs marinate in the hoisin mixture before being slowly roasted. Although delicious on their own, gnawed straight off the bone and perhaps paired with cold Chinese beer, they are occasionally garnished with a sprinkle of sesame seeds or a dab of hot Chinese mustard.

Where:
In New York
, Red Farm at two locations,
redfarmnyc.com
.
Further information and recipes:
Raichlen on Ribs, Ribs, Outrageous Ribs
by Steven Raichlen (2006);
Mastering the Art of Chinese Cooking
by Eileen Yin-Fei Lo (2009);
saveur.com
(search chinese barbecued spareribs);
cookstr.com
(search shun lee’s bbq ribs);
epicurious.com
(search chinese bistro ribs; chinese hawaiian ribs).
See also:
Bulgogi
;
Barbecue
.

Favored in northern China since at least the third century
B.C.
, Chinese chestnuts (
Castanea mollissima
) make up the simple but delicious Peking dust, one of the best festive desserts in the country’s cuisine. Akin to the French-Italian chestnut dessert Mont Blanc, and commonly served at the conclusion of elegant Chinese banquets, Peking dust is a pyramid of cooked, finely pureed chestnuts spread over a base of whipped cream, a most unusual ingredient in what is an almost entirely dairy-free cuisine. (The dessert was perhaps originally developed by European expats in Beijing, and named for the city’s notorious dustiness.) The chestnuts here are unsweetened, enjoyed for their pure, wild, woodsy flavor, with sugar added only to the whipped cream. Although they are nontraditional additions, the puree isn’t harmed by a sprinkling of cinnamon or a light moistening of rum or vanilla. Once mounded on a serving platter, the dessert is decorated with glazed whole chestnuts, pecan halves, or the beloved candied walnuts (see
listing
), for a nice bit of crunch.

Mail order:
For fresh chestnuts, Washington Chestnut Company, tel 306-966-7158,
washingtonchestnut.com
; for frozen and canned chestnuts, Marky’s, tel 800-522-8427,
markys.com
.
Further information and recipes:
Chinese Cooking
by Emily Hahn (1968);
The Thousand Recipe Chinese Cookbook
by Gloria Bley Miller (1984);
food.com
(search peking dust);
chinesefood.about.com
(search peking dust).

A slippery, stinging menace to beachgoers around the world, jellyfish are the translucent, umbrella-shaped members of the invertebrate
phylum Cnidaria
, a collection of hundreds of species of beautiful and occasionally deadly coastal water creatures that have been populating oceans for more than 500 million years. For at least the last thousand of those years, the Chinese have been cooking up the edible varieties they call
hai zhe
, prized for their cartilaginous crunch and slight chewiness, along with a mild flavor that is easily enhanced by sauces.

Sichuan jellyfish salad is a cool, crackly delight, notable for the inclusion of the region’s classic spices, including the signature Sichuan
pepper (see
listing
), plus ginger, garlic, top-quality soy sauce, and scallions. Depending on the cook, the hot chiles typical of Sichuan cuisine might also be added to the dish, for a sting that is very real, but far more benign than that of a live jellyfish.

Eaten straight from the sea, jellyfish would be impossibly tough, so their preparation is of prime importance. Most of the edible jellyfish belong to the order Rhizostomae and have relatively large and rigid bodies. (One prized variety is found along the coast of the state of Georgia—in 2013, three million pounds were exported to China.) Once harvested, they are thoroughly cleaned, then cut into thin strips and preserved or dried in salt. Then, only after they are soaked in water overnight and briefly boiled, are they tossed in their aromatic dressing.

Where:
In Shanghai
, Fortune Palace, Jin Jiang Hotel, tel 86/21-3218-9888,
jinjianghotels.com
;
in New York
, Wu Liang Ye, tel 212-398-2308,
wuliangyenyc.com
;
in Washington, DC
, New Big Wong, tel 202-628-0491;
in Houston
, East Wall Restaurant, tel 713-981-8803;
in San Gabriel, CA
, Shanghai No. 1 Seafood Village, tel 626-282-1777;
in Toronto
, Crown Princess Fine Dining, tel 416-923-8784,
crown-princess.ca
.
Further information and recipes:
The Thousand Recipe Chinese Cookbook
by Gloria Bley Miller (1984);
food.com
(search sesame jellyfish; sesame jellyfish with chili sauce);
thehongkongcookery.com
(search jellyfish salad).

Southern China’s native berry.

The prickly-skinned lychee is China’s most famous fruit, and for good reason. Inside its spiny, rosy skin lies a silken, milky-white sphere of intensely juicy pulp, with a flavor that is floral and subtly sweet, and hinting at dessert wine. At the center of the strikingly refreshing fruit is a single, shiny dark-brown seed, inedible and easily discarded.

Grown on large evergreen trees that thrive in subtropical climates, lychees have been cultivated in South China since at least the first century
B.C.
, and they’ve been the subject of legend and lore ever since. Lychee obsession was a hallmark of various dynasties, most especially during the later period of the Ming Dynasty, the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, when the members of secret lychee clubs supposedly met in temples and ate hundreds of the fruits in a single sitting.

Today, lychees are still most extensively cultivated in China, but are also found in a narrow stretch of Southeast Asia that extends from Thailand to northern India, and in other warm, wet places such as Brazil, Hawaii, and Florida. The fruit travels well if it’s picked just before it ripens, making it easy to find fresh lychees during their very short season, which generally lasts from May through June. The fruits may also be dried whole (thus known as
“lychee nuts”), the pulp becoming raisinlike, or may be peeled, pitted, and canned.

In China, lychees might appear alongside pork in a stir-fry or be fermented into a sweet dessert wine. Nothing, however, matches the decadent elegance of a bowl of the fresh stuff, peeled and served chilled on a bed of crushed ice.

Mail order:
For fresh lychees in season, lychee-based products, and general information,
lycheesonline.com
; Specialty Produce, tel 619-295-3172,
specialtyproduce.com
(search lychees).
Further information and recipes:
Uncommon Fruits and Vegetables
by Elizabeth Schneider (2010);
cookingchanneltv.com
(search cucumber lychee salad);
epicurious.com
(search coconut and lychee sorbet).
Tip:
Fresh lychee nuts should be stored in the refrigerator and eaten within three days or they will lose flavor.

Peeling a bounty of water chestnuts at a market in Asia.

A singularly crunchy delight, the water chestnut, or
matai
in Chinese, has a refreshing, icy bite that adds textural interest to many Chinese dishes, particularly those made with finely ground meat. Not actually a chestnut, or any other kind of nut, the water chestnut (
Eleocharis dulcis
) is the edible tuber of an aquatic plant, tasting much like the South American tuber jicama when eaten fresh and raw.

Native to China, water chestnuts grow along the muddy edges of ponds, lakes, and flood plains and are harvested for their corms—the fat, water-storing offshoots of their roots. Arriving on American shores with the first waves of Chinese immigrants, they quickly became a staple on restaurant menus, appearing in stir-fries, soups, salads, and meat and fish dishes. As a result of that popularity, they have long been peeled and canned for easy accessibility.

Because of their crispness and subtly sweet flavor, water chestnuts offer an especially welcome note of variety in many traditional, soft-textured, saucy regional Chinese dishes, and their mild flour is used as a thickener or to make jellylike sweets that are favorite dim sum treats. Originally prized for their medicinal qualities—very high in potassium and fiber, they are considered by the Chinese to be a “cooling” food that reduces fever and detoxifies the body—they have been cultivated for centuries in rice paddies, and are traditionally enjoyed fresh or quickly blanched, for maximum crunch. Although they maintain their texture even when canned, their flavor is far superior
when fresh; for that reason they’re worth tracking down at Asian markets, where they are usually available year-round.

Where:
In New York
, The Dumpling Man, tel 212-505-2121,
dumplingman.com
.
Mail order:
For fresh sliced water chestnuts, Melissa’s Produce, tel 800-588-0151,
melissas.com
; for canned water chestnuts, amazon.com.
Further information and recipes:
Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook
by Fuchsia Dunlop (2007);
Beyond Bok Choy
by Rosa Lo San Ross (1996);
chinesefood.about.com
(search water chestnuts);
cookstr.com
(search water chestnuts sugar snap peas and shiitakes);
epicurious.com
(search water chestnut cake).
Tip:
Fresh water chestnuts should look fat and glossy, with no soft spots. Thoroughly scrub and peel them before use, and blanch them if they won’t be cooked before eating—they can transmit water-borne illnesses if improperly handled.