Quick and messy translated, two small pieces of writing by 狗子 Gǒuzi, about food: lamb soup and
hong shao rou.
Drinking lamb soup ("喝羊肉汤"
--)
I got this recipe from Gao Yansong. You know, I've never actually made it before. But I've drank the soup plenty of times. It's probably the best hangover cure I've come across.
Ingredients:
Lamb bones, two or three
jin will do (according to Yansong, you should be able to get them in the market for one or two
kuai for one
jin). Break the bones into pieces about three inches long. Let them soak for a couple hours in water, changing the water a few times. This is to get them clean. This is to get rid of any blood or impurities.
Fill a pot with water, enough to cover the bones with a few inches of water. Bring the water to a boil, then turn down the heat and let it simmer. After that, it's just a matter of waiting. I think it's kind of like boiling Chinese medicine, but it takes a lot longer. Yansong says that two or three hours of simmering is the minimum. Four or five hours is just about right.
Boil until the soup looks milky white. The texture should be milky, too-- slightly less thick than condensed milk. When you drink it, the stickiness of the soup, should make your lips stick together. Drinking it straight is a bit too harsh, kind of like choking down medicine or something. So, depending on what you like, throw in some green onion, cilantro, salt, chili oil, or some pieces of cooked lamb. The best is getting some bread to soak up the soup.
My recipe probably has some mistakes in it. Every time I watched it being made, it was after going on a bender. So, even though I learned how to make it a bunch of times, I was always drunk, and there might be some mistakes. Or maybe Yansong made some mistakes when he taught me. You never know. So, if you're going to follow my recipe and you end up with a big pot of glue... well, I'll just give you that little disclaimer.
This kind of lamb soup is from southeast Shandong Province. A lot of people say that the city of Tengzhou is the source, and Yansong agrees. Tengzhou is his hometown.
This spring, Xiao Gang and I went back to Tengzhou with Yansong. Just as I expected, the main street was full of lamb soup joints. Yansong got all his friends and family out drinking with us. Everyone came out to drink with us, including the local punks and layabouts, who came to see what was going down. Drinking like this in Beijing would have killed me, but it was different here, a fresh place helped you to get over the drunk faster, and there was the lamb soup, too. We just kept going.
A few times, we went out to the most famous lamb soup restaurant in Tengzhou, way out on the edge of town, beside a highway, surrounded on all sides by empty fields. The reason it's famous is because people say they've been using the same soup for a hundred years, using it over and over again to boil lamb bones. As you can imagine, the flavor was thick and fragrant. There was a sheep skeleton hanging in the hallway to the bathroom, dripping blood all over the floor. The whole place was lit with dim fluorescent bulbs. We sat around a round table, alternating between a mouthful of cold beer and a few mouthfuls of lamb soup. As we sat there, playing drinking games, downing cups of beer and bowls of soup, I didn't think anything of the atmosphere in the place. Now, when I think back to the feeling and scenery, it brings to mind the image of a tribe of cannibals sitting around some horrible idol. It might have something to do with the fact that I saw a sheep being killed as I was leaving the city. I couldn't bear to take more than a glance. I only have a fleeting impression of the scene. I just remember a small sheep in a pool of blood. A guy stuck a tube into the sheep and started to blow air into it (I'm not sure which hole he was blowing it into), which is supposed to make it easier to skin. Right beside the slaughter of the sheep, was a farmer's tricycle. Standing in the tricycle's sidecar were a crowd of sheep, pressed tightly together. They didn't bleat or cry. They just stood there, in a big shivering ball, absolutely silent. They were shaking something fierce but you could see that their eyes were already dead. All the light in them was extinguished, and they expressed only despair and numbness.
After we left Tengzhou, I got a bunch of blisters in my mouth and Xiao Gang had nosebleeds. But Yansong was absolutely fine, same as before we got there. It might just be a local thing. You gotta be born there.
Hong Shao Rou( "红烧肉"
--)
A few years ago, I lived a quasi-married life. Most days, we'd eat at home. After I made dinner, we'd eat, and after eating, I'd watch TV, and after watching TV until the 10 o'clock sports highlights, I'd go downstairs for a walk, and after I came back I might read for a while, and then I'd go back to watching TV until I got sleepy.
We divided the work like this: I cooked and she did dishes. I love cooking. Back then, I didn't have a job and I didn't have any friends to fool around with. Except for writing, cooking was what filled my time.
I've always considered my specialty to be
hong shao rou.
Around noon, after freshening up a bit, I'd walk down to the supermarket. At the meat counter, I'd ask for two
jin of pork belly, with the skin still on. After getting home, I'd wash the meat and throw it onto the cutting board. I'd cut the two
jin up into seven or eight little cubes, some with skin and some of just lean meat. I'd fill half a pot with water and blanch the pork. I was trying to get rid of any impurities or things I just didn't want in there. I learned that from TV.
After a quick blanch, I'd take the meat out and put it on a plate. I'd chop up the green onion, the ginger, the garlic. It was usually two big sticks of green onion, a whole head of garlic, and one massive chunk of ginger-- sounds pretty extravagant, huh?
I got a pan really hot, put in a splash or two of vegetable oil, put a bit of the ginger and the green onion in the pan. When the green onion started to smell good, I put in the meat and fried it in the oil for a while, then put in a bit of white sugar, a bit of soy sauce, a bit of cooking wine, half of the garlic. I fried it all together for a minute or two. By that time, the meat was already taking on a red color. By now, the pan would start to dry out, so I poured in a bowl or two of water, or at least enough to cover everything. I'd get a piece of cheesecloth and wrap up some Sichuan peppercorn, star anise, cassia bark, and put it in the pan. The final thing was throwing in the rest of the ginger, green onion, and garlic. Gotta stir it all up, then put the lid on tight, turn down the heat, and let it stew. Right then, I put my bean starch noodles in a bowl of warm water to soften, and then got two potatoes ready, washed and sliced. When I was done all that, it was about two o'clock in the afternoon.
When the meat was safely stewing, my work in the kitchen was done, so I'd usually go back to the studio/bedroom and start my other work: writing. The creation in the kitchen wasn't like what I was creating in my writing. Maybe cooking wasn't even creating. Anyone can cook, right? But back then, my girlfriend and I really considered my cooking something amazing. Apart from tossing in all the ingredients, I was putting in a bit of my heart (my gluttonous heart), so maybe it was a type of creation, right?
The meat stewed until six o'clock. That's about four hours, give or take. I'd check in a few times while it stewed, and if the liquid reduced too much, I splashed in some more water.
An hour before it was done, the noodles went in, and a bit more water. Forty minutes before it was done, the sliced up potato went in. Now, a quick taste. If it was too bland, salt or soy sauce. If it was too salty, more noodles and potato. At about six o'clock, a dish of
hong shao rou with bean starch noodles and potato was done.
I'd go downstairs and grab some beer. Back upstairs, I'd get the rice boiling and crack a bottle. Then, I'd get a vegetable dish ready, make some soup, that kind of thing. I knew my girlfriend was on the way home from work, maybe already hearing me humming a little song to myself in the kitchen.
