菜尾 (Food)

Once upon a time, there had been a Taiwanese course that had no fixed ingredients, but has been a shared childhood memory of my peers. I’ve been told by many of them about how they have been missing the course and how it has made them drool at the thought of it.

This course is called菜尾(cai4 wei3) in South Min Dialect, literally meaning the “tail,” or the “end” of courses. As I said, it doesn’t have fixed ingredients. But mostly it is a mixture of thick soup stock with various kinds of meats, such as pork or chicken, and different veges. To be brief, it’s a combination of leftovers from a banquet.

Yuck! You might think it’s unhygienic 不衛生(bu2 wei4 sheng) and gross. Indeed it might be. That’s why we don’t have this course any longer. I mean the “real” 菜尾, the reheated mixture of leftovers.

In 1961, Taiwan had a GDP per capita of $153. (And in 2011 it is  $20,629.) Food was not as abundant as it is now. It would be lucky for a parent not to have to worry about feeding his kids. And most kids were constantly in a state of hunger, yearning for anything to eat. In the movie Dust in the Wind, 戀戀風塵(lian4 lian4 feng chen2), a kid was scolded by his mom because he was so hungry that he ate all the toothpaste and powder for upset stomach. The scene did remind many people of their hungry childhood and adolescence.

For some poor family, they couldn’t even afford rice every day, not to mention meats. Most people had to wait until festivals such as the Chinese New Year to have meats like pork, chicken or fish. That was what festivals were about, especially for the growing and always-hungry kids—food.

Apart from festivals, it would be occasions such as wedding banquets for people to have a feast, 打牙祭(da3 ya2 ji4), literally meaning worshiping your teeth. Very often all family members, young or old, dressed up and headed for the banquet excited. They had to give their 紅包(hong2 ba), the red envelope as a gift. Getting a full and merry meal was to be expected.

It was the host’s responsibility to feed the guests well. It stood to reason for people to abandon their usual thrift for a while for such occasions like a wedding or a worship to God. Rich and yummy dishes were served one by one until people ate and drank to their heart’s content.

More often than not, there was too much food. People just looked at the later dishes and sighed, “I’m too full for these.” They put down their chalk sticks and gave up.

What about the leftovers? Throw them away? It was considered a sin that would be condemned by God. People of that time never threw anything edible away; thus came this dish菜尾.

The leftovers were gathered in buckets and given to the relatives, good friends or helping neighbors besides the hosting family. They had to be re-boiled so that they wouldn’t rot away. The ingredients all depended on what were served and left.

Frankly speaking, I myself don’t have much memory about this course, even though I’ve read and heard people telling me how delicious it is. I was lucky and was never that “hungry” as many of my peers. I was not born to a rich family, but I’ve never starved as a kid. Perhaps that’s because my parents only had three kids, not 6 or 8 as most of the families had back then. Or perhaps my father, a teacher, thought the course was unhygienic and never brought it back.

I once saw a notice outside a diner in my neighborhood that they served菜尾. Too bad I didn’t have the chance to taste it before it was closed. No matter how it is cooked today, I think, it would never taste the same as it did, the real leftovers.

In the course of my writing this, my 15-year-old daughter approached my computer. “What is 菜尾?” she asked. I explained to her. “Gross!” she exclaimed and left. Same response as I have imaged you would have.

Did it really taste that good? Or is it just that we were too hungry?

不衛生=不卫生

戀戀風塵=恋恋风尘

Sweet potato (Food)

If you ask a Taiwanese what crop can represent Taiwan, possibly he will choose sweet potatoes 蕃薯(fan shu3) , or also named地瓜(di4 gua). Why?

        sweet potato 

 (from fm4715/魯獅 flickr.com)          

Taiwan
(from yfps.tpc.edu.tw )

  

Well, first of all, the map of Taiwan is shaped like an erect sweet potato. Second, the sweet potato is tough, full of vitality and easily planted, which hardly needs any care. It will survive even when cut into pieces. Recalling Taiwan’s history of the past century, you’ll know why.

Before we moved to Taichung, I put a shooting sweet potato that was supposed to be cooked to the earth in my little backyard. Every other few days I got a dish of 蕃薯葉(fan shu yie4), sweet potato vege on my dinning table. It’s very safe cause no chemical is needed when growing it.

The word 番(fan) or 蕃is used to refer to those non-indigenous crops, such as 蕃茄(fan qie2), tomato. It is said sweep potatoes have been introduced from the south America by the Spanish.

During the Japanese-ruling era (1895-1945), sweep potatoes had been the staple food of Taiwanese people. Though Taiwan produced rice itself, the crops were mostly sent to Japan. People who broke their backs planting rice ended up eating little of their produce. What was put on their table was mostly sweet potatoes that were dried and shredded. Some elders have told me that they hated to eat sweet potatoes because they’d been fed up with them when they were young.  

Another peer of mine once told me that she kind of felt reluctant to eat蕃薯葉because it used to be called 豬菜(zhu cai4), pig’s vege. Being a city child, I’ve never had the experience of what some of my peers had as a kid. They had to chop up the leaves of sweet potatoes to feed pigs. That’s why it was called豬菜in the past.

Who could predict that this “pig’s vege” later would be considered a healthy food and consumed a lot by the modern people? It’s the same with 蕃薯, which used to be the poor’s staple.

I once read that Taiwanese called themselves 蕃薯仔during the Japanese-ruling era to distinguish themselves from the Koreans, who were also colonized by Japan then. It was not only because of the shape of this island, but also the perseverance spirit and vitality it symbolized.

After 1949 when Chiang Kai Shek 蔣介石 led his troops to Taiwan from China, those soldiers from China were called 芋仔, taros in the South Min Dialect as a contrast of 蕃薯仔. Later as they grew older, the word “old” 老(lao3) has been added as老芋仔. Two names for crops have now become labels for people from different places.

The Beatles has a song “Let It Be.” In Taiwanese we have a proverb that conveys a similar notion, which goes in the South Min Dialect as 時到時來擔，無米再煮番薯湯, Do not anticipate troubles and worry too much. You can at least cook sweet potato soup when running out of rice.

So when you see online the name 蕃薯藤(fan shu3 teng2), sweet potato vine as an entrance website, you certainly know its origin.

蕃薯葉=蕃薯叶

豬菜=猪菜

蔣介石=蒋介石

時到時來擔，無米再煮番薯湯=时到时来担，无米再煮番薯汤

矮冬瓜 (Food)

Summer in Taiwan is hot and humid. The scorching sun makes people dehydrated, craving for something that can quench their thirst and cool them off. The cold drink shops that stand around almost every corner of the street can prove what I have just said. No wonder in Taiwanese we had a saying that went as “The best way to get rich is to sell ice/cold drink.” (And the second best, to be a doctor.)

Before the emergence of the modern cold drinks such as pearl milk tea 珍珠奶茶(zhen zhu nai3 cha2), a traditional popular cold drink would be 冬瓜茶(dong gua cha2), which is made from , 冬瓜(dong gua), winter melon.

冬瓜 (from vegoo.net)

It is also called “white gourd” and is eaten as a vegetable. Simmered for hours with sugar and water, it turns to a drink, 冬瓜茶. For busy modern women who do not have the time to cook it from scratch, they can get a冬瓜茶磚(dong gua cha2 zhuan) , a “brick” of dried winter melon with sugar. Boil it with water, you get a pot of冬瓜茶in fifteen minutes or so.

冬瓜茶磚  (from blog.hetai.com.tw )

Short people are often called矮冬瓜(ai3 dong gua),short winter melon. It doesn’t seem fair to relate winter melon to shorties. Compared with other melons such as luffa or cucumber, winter melons actually are bigger. They are bigger but seem “stouter.” Perhaps that’s why we have the term  

矮冬瓜.        

Winter melon is good to eat in summer. (But strangely, it is called “winter” melon.) It is urinative and “reduce the internal heat.” 降火氣(jiang4 huo3 qi4). Usually we’ll cook it with some ginger to balance because it is catalogued under the “cold” food.

In my previous April writing “Thousand-year egg,壞蛋?” I talked about some egg-related terms such as 笨蛋(ben4 dan4)，傻蛋(sha3 dan4). Similarly we have some “melon-related” terms. For example, 傻瓜(sha3 gua), a foolish “melon,” means the same as傻蛋, a fool. 笨瓜(ben4 gua) is also similar to笨蛋. Just replace the word蛋 “egg” with 瓜“melon,” you’ll get a term with similar meaning. Funny we have a term 呆瓜(dai gua), a “foolish melon” referring to a fool, but we don’t say 呆蛋(dai dan4)

Some ancient wise man advised us not to bend down to put on shoes in a melon farm, and not to adjust your hat under a plum tree. If you do so, people would think you’re stealing melons or plums. Accordingly a wise man should avoid acts that could cause others’ doubts or negative assumptions. Thus we get an idiom 瓜田李下(gua tian2 li3 xia4), (in) a melon farm or under the plum tree.

For example, your son is taking a selection exam for a position, but you’re a member of the committee in charge. What should you do? You’d better withdraw from the committee to avoid being suspected that you’ll pull the strings. You should 避瓜田李下之嫌(bi4 gua tian2 li3 xia4 zhi xian2), avoid being suspected.

茶磚=茶砖     

降火氣=降火气

壞蛋=坏蛋     

　

“Hitting wife” vege (Food)

 from 松青食材百科事典

This is the vege you often see in the hot pot, 火鍋(huo3 guo), or in 湯圓(tang yuan2), dumplings made of glutinous rice flour served in soup in Taiwan. We call it 茼蒿(tong2 hao) in Mandarin but jokingly we’ll call it “hitting wife vege” 打某菜 in South Min Dialect.

It is rich in carotene, iron and calcium, which help you with your blood and bone. But what does it have to do with the act of hitting wife?

Try cooking it yourself and you’ll know. You labor yourself in the kitchen washing off the attached sand and cook it. You open the pot. Is that all the big bunches of vege you have just put in?

It is said that once a farmer brought back a big basket of茼蒿for his wife to cook. When it was served, he was unsatisfied with the small dish of vege and thought his wife had eaten part of it while cooking it. The poor wife got a good beating by her husband, who didn’t know that this vege shrank a lot from cooking.

This is a hearsay about the origin of this special name. From the story I get two points. First of all, food was very precious in my grandfather’s days and getting full was a big deal. Second, the status of this wife at home was nothing more than that of a servant. She was supposed to cook the food that didn’t “belong to” her and shouldn’t be enjoyed by her before her husband or any other members of the family. In addition, her husband would beat her whenever he gets an excuse.

To write this article, I googled a little bit about hitting wife. A report in 2009 claimed that one-fifth of British men hit their wives according to a study by the government of UK. The top reason for them to hit their wives is that they dress themselves too revealingly. Another report says that in the U.S., a wife is beaten by her husband every some ten seconds.

The famous author魯迅, Lu Xun (1881-1936) once said that in Chinese society, people oppressed and abused those who are under their class. The lowest-class men could, at least, let off their steam by beating their wives.

In Taiwan, we have a saying in South Min Dialect that goes as “those who hit their wives are animals like pigs, dogs, and bulls.” 打某豬狗牛. My interpretation for this saying is that it’s advisory for those who take hitting wife for granted, which might be nothing unprevalent back in the old days before women’s liberation. Only when hitting wife is so common do you need to degrade it into beast level to talk people out of it.

Back to my grandma’s days, women couldn’t sit at the dinning table and eat until the other family members had finished their meal. Those were days when food was rare and precious and most people were starved. How much food would be left for women, who actually cooked it? No wonder some women would resort to “stealing” it. No wonder the husband in the story would be alert and hit his wife only for a dish of vege.

I’ve heard a lot about how Shanghai men are such “good husbands” that they “go home from work with a fish in one hand to prepare dinner for the whole family.” In my recent Internet surf I found a saying which is said to have been passed around Shanghai women, “The first-class men are afraid of their wives, 怕老婆(pa4 lao3 po2); The second-class men scold their wives罵老婆(ma4 lao3 po2); The third class men hit their wives打老婆(da3 lao3 po2). Shanghai men seem to have been depicted as “small husbands” that is a “mutation.”

Taiwanese writer 龍應台(long2 Ying4 tai2) has written an article praising the Shanghai men she has discovered as extremely “good husbands,” who will cook for their wives when there are guests at home, when all their wives have to do is dress up and make themselves look good.

I have to say I’m very cautious and conserved about classifying people only because where they are from. A non-wife-hitter will never hit his wife even though every neighbor of his is doing it or whatever his wife has done. And in today’s society, when gender equality has been emphasized and practiced, there are still men, regardless of their educational background or social status, hitting wives as they want.

Does it make a good husband or good wife only because he/she cooks for you? Should we label a husband or a wife as incompetent only because he/she seldom goes into kitchen and cook? I want to say “equality” shouldn’t be interpreted that way.

Of course as a woman and wife, I’m glad I can eat whatever I want when I’m cooking. And I can sit at the table with my family to enjoy the meal. Next time when you enjoy a dish of 茼蒿on the table, show some gratitude to the one who has prepared it, be it your husband or wife, who has endured the heat in the kitchen and labored for a while to serve it.

火鍋=火锅

湯圓=汤圆

魯迅=鲁迅

罵老婆=骂老婆

龍應台=龙应台

水仙不開花—Scallion, Ginger & Garlic (III) (food)

水仙不開花(shui3 xian bu4 kai hwa), a commonly used Xiehouyu, literally means narcissuses don’t blossom. What if narcissuses don’t blossom? They look like the first picture below.


sowerclub.com


The second picture is garlic. From the pictures you can tell the point of this Xiehouyu: if a narcissus doesn’t blossom, its flat leaves and corm look like those of garlic.


food.39.net


I read online a story about one year when Qianlong Emperor was on a tour around the south of the Changjiang River, he was impressed by an extensive green field of garlic. But the next year when he went there again, the garlic hadn’t gown up. To please the emperor, an official replaced narcissuses with garlic, whose leaves resembled those of the former when watched from a long distance away. The emperor was pleased and the official was promoted.


The story is said to be the origin of the latter part of the Xiehouyu--裝蒜(zhong suan4), pretend to be  garlic.


When you know something but pretend that you don’t. This is 裝蒜. For example, you know that your girlfriend is eager to get married and is expecting you to pop the question. You just pretend that you know nothing about it and keep ignoring her suggestive remarks.


Besides being a condiment, garlic is considered a good sterilizer, which prevents and cures some infections. Some people dip garlic in water and gargle with it to prevent colds. We even have essence of garlic as health food.


In some courses, garlic plays not only as a condiment, but as a main ingredient. For example, when cooked with chicken as a coup (sometimes clans are added to it), it is a delicious course , 蒜頭雞(suan4 te2 ji), which will warm you up in winter.


When someone is doubtful about something without firm proof, or later is proved to be wrong, we’ll say he’s 多心(duo shin),which literally means “many hearts.” We have a Xiehouyu 大蒜發芽(da4 suan4 fa ya2) to express it. When garlic sprouts, it looks like it has many “hearts.”


Another garlic-related xiehouyu is大蒜剝皮,(da4 suan4 bo pi2) peeling garlic. When peeling a bunch of garlic, you got to 層層深入(ceng2 ceng2 shen ru4) , peel one layer after another, like a detective solving a case, or a scientist dipping into a fact.


Next year is the presidential election year. Whenever there’s an election in Taiwan, you’ll hear a lot of 凍蒜(dong4 suan4), which has nothing to do with garlic despite the word 蒜. It’s the south Min dialect meaning “elected.” You can guess what you probably will see in the candidates’ offices next year.




水仙不開花=水仙不开花


裝蒜=装蒜


蒜頭雞=蒜头鸡


大蒜發芽=大蒜发芽


大蒜剝皮=大蒜剥皮


層層深入=层层深入


凍蒜=冻蒜

薑是老的辣—Scallion, Ginger & Garlic (II) (food)

No one likes to be called “old.” In the past, you called someone 老先生(lao3 xian sheng) or 老太太(lao3 tai4 tai) as a respectful title to the elderly. These days we delete the word old, 老. But we call a teacher 老師(lao3 shi) in Mandarin. Sometimes I’ll joke with my students by claiming that the reason I can’t stay young is because I am “cursed” by them, who call me 老師 every day.

But don’t get mad when someone praises you by saying that薑是老的辣, only old gingers are spicy enough. He’s giving a compliment after you succeed in something due to your abundant experience. For example, when an experienced technician fixes a machine after three young ones have tried in vain, you may as well say this to him with your thumbs up.

Gingers are divided into 老薑(lao3 jiang), old ginger, and 嫩薑(nen4 jiang), young, or tender ginger based on the time span they stay in the ground. When cropped in the fourth month, the gingers are still tender and juicy, with their skin thin and slightly –colored. These are嫩薑. Like their color, they are mild in flavor and often finely shredded to add to a soup. They are easy to shrink and cannot be stored for long.

 嫩薑 ttmeishi.com  

   

老薑, however, stays longer. They are not cropped until the tenth month, when they are harder and dryer, with their skin thicker and darker, their flavor much spicier, which is why we have such an expression as 薑是老的辣. With their strong flavor, they are used to rid of the fishy smell of food.

老薑 tech.sina.com.

According to本草綱目(ben3 cao3 gang mu4), Bencao Gangmu or Compendium of Materia Medica, a Chinese materia medica work written by Li Shizhen in the Ming Dynasty, gingers can cure cold, nausea, upset stomach, headache, stuffy nose . . . etc. Traditionally food is divided into  溫熱(wen re4), hot, 寒涼(han2 liang2), cold, or 平性(ping2 xing4)mediocre. Here the hot and cold does not refer to the temperature of the food, but the reaction between the food and our body.

It’s the same with people’s body. Some people are easily excited or nervous. They’re always thirsty and found of cold food. Their urine is yellower and lesser in amount. Many of them suffer from constipation. They are called to have 熱性體質(re4 xing4 ti3 zhi2), a “hot body.” On the contrary, if they’re always exhausted and listless, but not so thirsty. They are found of hot food. Their urine is lighter in color and more in amount. it’s 寒性體質(han2 xing4 ti3 hi2), a “cold body.”

If you have a "cold body," gingers are your friends. In winter when it’s freezing cold, people like to have gingers cooked with brown sugar and drink it to warm themselves up, because gingers belong to the溫熱  group. Eating “hot food” helps a “cold body” balance itself. This is a general principle of eating in terms of溫熱 or寒涼

Traditionally a woman after labor will have a so-called Post-labor confinement month 坐月子(zuo4 yue4 zi3), when she eats a lot of 麻油雞酒(ma2 you2 ji jiu3), chicken cooked with rice wine, sesame oil and gingers. Here I’d like omit the other regulations and focus on the gingers.

The reason for a post-labor woman to have麻油雞酒is that Chinese people think in the process of the labor, her pores and bones are “open,” which makes ready accesses for 風寒(feng han3), the chills to enter her body and make her sick. With a different makeup from the westerners, she has to eat what helps her get rid of those “chills,” which is what the 麻油雞酒for. If you keep smelling the wonderful aroma of sesame oil with ginger in your neighborhood, probably you have a newborn baby from the eastern Asia.

But this love for麻油雞酒 or food of such kind is not limited to post-labor women. In winter, especially when a cold front hits, you’ll see people getting together to eat tonics to get warmer or healthier, which we call 進補(jin4 bu3). 薑母鴨(jiang mu3 ya), old gingers with duck, is one of the most favored tonics.

薑母(jiang mu3) is the expression for old gingers in the southern Min dialect. One day my son Steve told me that for a long while he had considered the course as “gingers with she-duck,” as he saw it as薑●母鴨, which actually should be薑母●鴨. This is not some uncommon error when reading Chinese. My foreign friends in Taiwan, when you see on the street the boards with the three words, have you ever had the same wonder as my son Steve had, Why the she-ducks?

薑是老的辣=姜是老的辣

本草綱目=本草纲目

溫熱=温热

寒涼=寒凉

熱性體質=热性体质

寒性體質=寒性体质

麻油雞酒=麻油鸡酒

進補=进补

薑母鴨=姜母鸭

你算哪顆蔥?—Scallion, Ginger & Garlic (I) (food)

Scallion, ginger and garlic, 蔥(cong)、薑(jiang)、蒜(suan4) are indispensable in Chinese kitchen. Not only do you see them in almost every course of Chinese cuisine, you hear them a lot as well.

When fighting with someone, for example, you want to say to him, “Who do you think you are” in Mandarin, just say你算哪顆蔥(ni3 suan4 na3 ke cong)? Literally it means “Which scallion are you?”

In a traditional market, 傳統市場( chuan2 tong3 shi4 chang3) , scallion is never really for sale (except after a typhoon when the supply of the greens is in short temporarily), but complimentary from the vendor to please the housewives. And on the dinning table, though seen a lot, it seldom plays the main role in a course. Mostly it’s of subordinate and minor status. This is my guess why we use this expression to belittle someone.

But scallion is also used as a compliment, for a woman’s fingers. When reading, I often encounter a sentence describing a woman’s long and slim and white and tender fingers that goes as 青蔥般的手指(qing cong ban de shou3 zhi3), green-scallion-like fingers. If you’ve ever seen a fresh scallion with its end and beads of stew on it, you know what it means. Too bad that I couldn’t find a picture of scallion with their ends. ( I’m moving tomorrow and my camera is packed.)

   (from foodsubs.com)

In my previous writing, “Obsessive with names and words,” I talked about how some food are associated with different meanings due to their pronunciations. These days when going to a temple of Wenchang Dijun文昌帝君, or God of Culture and Literature, to pray for their children to be blessed with luck in exams, many parents will prepare scallion as an offering, since the word 蔥 is a homophone of 聰, which means clever.

The most famous and expensive scallion in Taiwan is produced in 宜蘭, Yilan, which is called 三星蔥. The other day when I was surfing the TV and turned to TLC Chanel, I saw Janet, the host of the show “Fun Taiwan,” interviewing some scallion farmers in Yilan. She picked up a scallion and took a bite directly as the farmer told her. It was very spicy, according to her.

On the streets of Taiwan, you often see a stand selling 蔥油餅(cong you2 bing3), scallion pancake, with the scallion as the main ingredient. In my home management class in high school, the first cuisine our teacher taught us was this. You put flour, lard, salt together with the scallion, plus some labor of handling the dough and frying, you get a yummy snack.

 alina28.pixnet.net    

 oldout.com

According to the experts, scallion helps you sweat and get rid of your phlegm or parasite. It whets your appetite and prevents colds. When catching a cold, one of the remedies would be chopping up the white part of the scallion, adding some miso and boiling water and drinking it. It also works for a stuffy nose.  

You might not get cleverer by eating scallion, but you get fewer colds. And next time when someone says to you, “你算哪顆蔥?” You may reply, “I’m三星蔥, blue blood of the scallion!”

  

你算哪顆蔥=你算哪颗葱

蔥、薑、蒜=葱、姜、蒜

傳統市場=传统市场

聰=聪

宜蘭=宜兰

蔥油餅=葱油饼