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A tea egg, ready to eat. This wikipedia photo looks like something fresh from Old McDonald's farm, huh?

For today we offer a few small observations towards food: namely eggs and dessert. Two foods we all think, from time to time, that we should or could do without. Let us all be honest with ourselves; we love both and do well to enjoy both in moderation and perhaps coupled with a bit of exercise at least in the spirit of good health.

First, I present the egg; hard-boiled and steeped in tea.

chá yè dàn, literally means "tea leaf egg". These busters can be picked up at nearly any stand along the street, inside temples, at bus stops, convenience stores, and of course, the Beijing New Oriental Foreign Language School at Yangzhou Cafeteria. They look maybe appetizing and once one has managed to peel off the shell, inside rests a quite ancient-looking marbled egg. They taste about the same as any regular hard-boiled egg but definitely take on the "dare" factor by making the food look extra interesting. Initially, the last thing I wanted to do to manage a pang of hunger was to grab a brown, stained, cracked egg out of an old crock-pot; the crock-pot power source, of course, finding its way down to an even older car battery below the stand.

Proverbial pot of eggs. This wikpedia shot of the 'ol pot-o-eggs does any Chinese egg cooker proud.

Sounds great, huh? But the truth of the matter is that the Chinese have this snack figured out -- its cheap and easy and in the interest of food safety, a pretty-alright food. Apparently, the preparation of this Chinese psudo-delicacy involves a normal boiling, then a quick few random egg crackings (like that of wantonly pouring the eggs from one pot to another) and then boiling them a second time, for quite a bit longer, in a black-tea and salt soup. Ranging in price from 3 jaio to 1 yuan or $0.03 to $0.12, anyone can take part in this eggsellent approach to street-side snacking.

A street-side snack. Hmmmm... just can't get enough of those eggs. Found this tasty morsel at a bus-stop between Yangzhou and Hangzhou.

Next, I would like to make a brief examination of the sweets scene here in the heart land of China. The Chinese, at least the ones we have been around, have an odd love/hate relation with sweet food in general. If one decided to play Minnesota Lutheran at their next Chinese pot-luck and brought a plate-full of brownies, the plate would largely remain untouched. Sweets almost never accompany a meal unless it is the sweetness of a cool bottle of Coca-Cola, said kě kǒu kě lè and literally meaning "tasty cola". Often, a meal's dessert hits its full potential with a few slices of watermelon. By in large, sweets don't get all that much attention at the dinner table.

Interestingly, however, it appears that at least in our part of the country, people love their sweets. One has to ride long and hard to find a block in Yangzhou without a small bakery jam-packed with implausibly sweet cakes, cookies, bars, candied fruit, and odd-looking pastries. Many of the treats are decorated with meat too, which make the desserts extra awesome.

The cake taco. About the twice the size of a Taco Bell Hard Shell, this guy hits and sweet and salty tastebuds with lethal effeciency. You know you want one too.

Our latest encounter with meaty sweet treats was a pair of cake-snacks made to look like hard-shell tacos with meat sprinkled as a garnish along the top. We've also seen the stuff as a popular donut topping as well as a "grassy" covering for fruit and yogurt parfait. The meat, called ròu sōng, means "dried meat flakes" and in English is usually called meat floss. After some wiki-research, we learned that meat floss is made from poor cuts of meat and cooked in a sauce of sugar and soy until it reaches an unrecognizable state. It is then teased with a pair or forks and cooked again, dry, in a wok - apparently if one starts out with five pounds of raw chuck, the resulting finished floss product weighs in at just a hair over one pound.

My friends, we should nary call the kettle black; the Italians with their prosciutto e melone, the Germans with their bacon-wrapped prunes, and let us not forget the American style snacks like Chex Mix with a handful of M&M's nor our beloved kettle corn. These salty-sweet foods pervade their way into all cultural settings and the Chinese cuisine is not an exception. For sure the Chinese found the same salty+sweet = good equation; one of their solutions arrived in the form of a thick cut of cake wrapped around a dollop of unbelievably-sweet whipped cream and finished with a dash of teased salty meat.

 

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