Tse - A Chinese Street Food Odyssey

A Chinese
Street Food
Odyssey

Helen and Lise Tse Photography by Clare Winfield I loved reading through A Chinese Street Food Odyssey. I felt like a fly on the wall as I travelled with my intrepid guides, Lisa and Helen Tse, throughout China. I was transported to many undiscovered, as well as familiar, dishes of the rich and varied street-food culture you can find there. Their experiences reverberate on every page as they describe in wonderful detail what could easily be a food diary. From my own experience as an author of cookery books, I was also impressed by the well-written and clear recipes. I know the authors want us to duplicate at home what they ate and enjoyed on the streets of China.

The only missing part of this landmark book was the actual taste of the food... For that you need to get into your own kitchen and embark on a truly delicious voyage! Ken Hom
BBC broadcaster and author

To ensure we were giving you the most authentic and delicious versions of these recipes, Lisa and I did our research primarily by travelling to many parts of China and eating morning, noon and night. We have each gained 20kg (more than 40 pounds) doing the research for this book! We would taste the street food on offer and ask each others opinion about the ingredients some apparent and some less apparent. Some dishes were very familiar, others were totally new to us and for those, wed ask the vendor whose version we felt was the tastiest to share their recipes with us. Many of those vendors were generous with their time and very patient, repeating the steps again and again so that we could capture the dish accurately in this book. Where its difficult to replicate, we have given alternatives that come pretty close.

I write this book with my twin sister, Lisa, who is head chef at Sweet Mandarin, our restaurant in Manchester. I am the voice in the narratives, and Lisa has written and tested the recipes. Some of these recipes have been cooked for friends, family and even Premier Li Keqiang, the Prime Minister of China. He finished all the food on the plate and I was astounded when he asked for a private audience with the chefs Lisa and me to say thank you for the delicious food, the best Chinese food he had tasted in the UK. Our most vivid experience was walking through the street market of Beijing, where rows and rows of food stalls line the pedestrianized streets, with red lanterns glowing above. Smelling the mix of aromatic spices, caramelized apples, barbecuing meats and steaming dumplings made my stomach rumble and I wanted to try all the dishes.

There are clouds of smoke as the cinders burn beneath the cooking meats and its noisy really noisy with people jostling for the last bao (savoury bun), roasted meats, black chicken, sesame peanut brittle and hotpot of intestines. Piping hot bowls of noodles, coal-roasted squid, fried frogs legs in soya milk and sweet potato shavings welcome the hungry, boisterous crowd. People are happy and laughter makes the street food experience even tastier. I want to capture that sense of excitement, wonder and hunger for these morsels of street food. Street food is accessible to all, but without being able to speak Chinese, the language barriers can make this feast rather one dimensional more of an exercise in pointing. We want people to love Chinese food as much as we do, and to understand its diversity.

There are eight main regional cuisines Anhui, Cantonese (Guangdong), Fujian, Hunan, Jiangsu, Shandong (from which the Beijing style developed), Szechuan (Sichuan) and Zhejiang but elements of each permeate through the culinary lineage and appear in the variety of street food recipes found throughout China. With this book we aim to open a window into China, to understand more fully each dish, its texture, colour, history and meaning, drawing on over 5000 years of civilization. Writing this book is our great challenge to bridge the gap between East and West. You only live once and we believe you should try things you have never tried before. Even if you never travel to China, we hope that our shared experiences will take you on an amazing culinary journey, where you will learn so much more than if you were just wandering around the street markets without an interpreter. Best wishes
Lisa and Helen Tse MBE (Services to Food and Drink)

MAKES 8PREP TIME 30 MINUTES, PLUS 20 MINUTES RISING COOK TIME 20 MINUTES A Shanghai speciality, shengjianbao, as theyre known everywhere in China, are buns filled with juicy pork, then arranged in a flat, oil-slicked wok in which the bottoms are fried until they are crisp.My uncle introduced me to shengjianbao at Shanghais famous Dongxin Lu wet market; we both ran over to the street vendor.

Hurry, they sell out fast, called my uncle. Despite being in his seventies he was fit and still ran faster than me. I followed my nose. The smell was sensational like salted caramel as the bottoms of these buns were being fried. When Id caught up with him, hed already ordered a portion for each of us. I watched eagerly as they were fried in a huge cast-iron pan.

I couldnt resist trying one there and then. Pillowy and light, enveloping minced pork with all its glorious juices, it was so tasty that I wanted to scoff the lot immediately.We left the market with a bag of shengjianbao each and ran for the bus. It was time to say goodbye. I waved to my uncle as I clambered onto the bus and it immediately pulled away from the bus stop. Through the dusty windows, I caught the old mans eye, giving him a thumbs-up through the window. He was agitated and waving his hands and shouting, but I couldnt hear him.

I thought how sweet, he already missed my company. I waved back as the bus sped off.It was only about 15 minutes into the journey, when the bus went off in a different direction, that I realized I was on the wrong bus. I shook my head in disbelief. Thats what uncle had been trying to tell me. The bus rattled on, and I had no idea where I was going. Usually Id be panic-stricken but I decided to just stay put and eat my shengjianbao.

They were so tasty that I laughed off my mistake and enjoyed the scenic route. Being well fed with such delicious street food made me feel warm and happy. Dusk set in and the sunset glowed behind the narrow buildings. It is a beautiful memory and it made me realize there is a freedom associated with getting lost; I found this perfect travel moment, with a bag of these wonderful

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