Then I thought about how non-Chinese my experience has actually been. Sometimes I feel more like I’m studying in the U.N. than in China!
Take, for example, just the past week. One week ago, I hosted a big lunch for some of my friends. I cooked what can more-or-less be considered “American” food (chili and gumbo), and all the guests were from Africa.
Thursday, I got together with my American friend to bake cookies. Yes, that’s right, I baked cookies! First time in six months! It was marvelous. But let me tell you, there’s nothing Chinese at all about baking chocolate chip cookies.
And yesterday I was getting ready to make something for dinner, so I opened my fridge. True enough, the rice inside is fairly Chinese. But the kimchi that I fried that rice up with was certainly not! (It was, however, homemade kimchi. Not by me, of course, but by one of my Korean friends. And for those of you who don’t know, kimchi is that famed pickled cabbage that Koreans eat with everything. Unlike many Americans, I actually love it.)
So, like I said, the U.N.
One of the most entertaining conversations I’ve had this week was with my Chinese friend about chocolate chip cookies. I had been with him in the morning before going to bake the cookies, so I was telling him that I was excited to go bake. He had absolutely no idea what (non-Chips Ahoy) chocolate chip cookies actually are, nor how on earth to bake them. In talking, he said that he always thought “cookies” were just “big crackers.” Only in China can cookies and crackers be considered as one thing! He was terribly surprised when I told him that American cookies are usually soft, not crunchy or crackery. In the end, he decided American cookies must be like a cross between crackers and cake… Not that I would have ever said it that way myself, but I suppose given what he has to compare them to, it’s not a bad analysis!
Of course, I gave him some cookies after we baked them, so he could experience a true American cookie. He said they looked just like he’s seen on TV. Haha!
On the one hand, baking cookies with my American friend felt just like being back in the U.S. for a few hours. However, we still knew we were in China as we were mixing up the dough… Butter, for example, comes in sticks here that are a different size than those in the U.S., and they are only measured in grams. The recipe, of course, didn’t give the gram measurement for how much we needed. Then there was the lack of chocolate chips that ails China. We just bought chocolate bars and broke them into pieces. In the process, though, we managed to buy one chocolate bar that was clearly made in China… nasty! (We discarded that one.) And perhaps the most entertaining was trying to decide how much brown sugar (or “red” sugar, as it is called in China) to use. Of course, the recipe called for a certain amount of brown and a certain amount of white. But brown sugar in China is about six times darker than brown sugar in the U.S. Even with replacing half a cup of the brown sugar with white, our cookies tasted a bit molassesy. We also had to decide what kind of white sugar to use, since even white sugar in China is different than in the U.S. They have two kinds here: wet sugar and sugar crystals. (We went with the wet sugar.) And then there was the problem of the flour…
I could continue, but I’m sure you get the idea. It was the most entertaining cookie-baking experience of my life! But somehow – miraculously! – those cookies turned out, and they were also the most delicious cookies I’ve eaten in a very very long time. Mmm.
Actually, the kimchi fried rice was possibly the tastiest fried rice I’ve had in a while, too. I’ve been on a fried rice kick recently, making a different sort of fried rice every day. (Rice is cheap, but I can’t eat the full pot when I cook it. The best way to use leftover rice is fried.) So far the kimchi wins.
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