Category Archives: Chinese food

food from Southwest (Yunnan, Sichuan) and Northwest (Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia, Inner Mongolia)

A Chinese pan-fried flatbread and “Chinese hamburger”

Posted on May 21, 2017 by David Dettmann

As the cuisine of China’s interior becomes popular in US cities (i.e. among the popular Xi’an-themed restaurants in NYC and Philadelphia–see here for my past post on that topic), items like “Chinese hamburger” are slowly becoming commonplace on menus at … Continue reading →

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Delicious greens: water spinach

Posted on May 10, 2017 by David Dettmann

Water spinach is one of our favorite vegetables. It is a popular vegetable to stir fry in Southern China and Southeast Asia. When quickly fried at high heat, its leaves wilt and the stems stay crunchy. Its flavor is like … Continue reading →

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Sour times: the instant noodle-fueled rise of “old crock” sour vegetables

Posted on November 27, 2016 by David Dettmann

In a 2014 post I tried to argue that the Kang Shifu 康師傅 (aka Chef Kang, or Master Kong) “happy chef” and his style of the popular beef stew noodles have influenced not only other instant noodle brands in Taiwan … Continue reading →

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Selamat pagi, Yogyakarta: a surprisingly rich and savory chicken rice porridge for breakfast

Posted on August 11, 2016 by David Dettmann

I’ll start by saying that I’m not one for sweet breakfasts. As regular readers will know (ex. 1, ex. 2, ex. 3), I prefer savory foods leftover from the night before to American breakfast cereal or glazed donuts. A recent … Continue reading →

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Guilin rice noodles for breakfast

Posted on April 12, 2016 by David Dettmann

My 2014 posts on Guilin rice noodles (Guilin mifen 桂林米粉 master stock and noodle staging) are two of the most viewed posts on this blog. Google is the primary referrer, and I attribute these search engine queries to: 1. people … Continue reading →

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Sweet preserved daikon and Pad Thai

Posted on September 26, 2015 by David Dettmann

Pad Thai (ผัดไทย literally “Thai-style fry”) is one of the most popular and best known dishes in the genre of Thai cooking, both in Thailand and abroad. The name of this dish comes from a time of nation-building for Thailand, … Continue reading →

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Spicy pickled cowpeas and leftovers for breakfast

Posted on July 9, 2015 by David Dettmann

For me, breakfast is an important meal. I’m not big on cereal or doughnuts or the like however. Ever since my time living in Thailand, I adopted the habit of eating leftovers, fried rice, noodles, or random things on toast. … Continue reading →

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Turpan raisins in Chinatown

Posted on May 17, 2015 by David Dettmann

We have yet another import from the Uyghur homeland of Xinjiang available here in Philadelphia. These are raisins from Turpan, a city particularly well known for its sweet fruit (including grapes and melons). I found these at the newly reborn … Continue reading →

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Cantonese clay pot rice

Posted on March 22, 2015 by David Dettmann

Rice cooked in earthenware pots is a specialty in various places throughout China, but the dish is particularly well known in Hong Kong and broader Guangdong, by the name baozai fan 煲仔飯 (also written 堡仔飯, and pronounced bozei faan in … Continue reading →

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Four unique Asian dried chile peppers

Posted on March 5, 2015 by David Dettmann

Chile peppers have only been in Asia for several hundred years now, but they have gone a long, long way to become standard and staple ingredients in many of Asia’s great food cultures. Southeast Asia is of course full of … Continue reading →

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