Looking for foods to try and share a bit of my own culture. My family is cantonese viet and I grew up eating in a lot of traditional banquet hall restaurants. Usually these are dim sum menu for lunch and traditional shared foods for dinner. Most people have tried the common ones like siu mai (pork wrapper dumpling) and haw gow (shrimp rice dumpling) but my favorites are the uncommon ones like ngau zaap (beef offal) and baak wan fung zaau (pickled chicken feet).
Ngau zaap is basically braised brown sauce using off cuts, usually stomach and whatnot, with chinese radish. Its very savory, kinda like if you made an asian gravy.
Baak wan fung zaau is just chicken feet pickled in white vinegar. If you had pickled radish it’s essentially the same pickling and the chicken feet is gelatinous and a bit crunchy. You can also get them sometimes boneless since eating around the bones is kinda a pain. I really like pickled foods so this is one of my faves
SO MUCH FUCKING CHEESE
You know how little that narrows it down?
Since I’m literally from the namesake city, Peking duck? Basically it’s duck meat wrap with some veggies, almost like a Chinese taco wrap so to say. It’s not something you can easily make at home and is typically quite pricy for how much meat you’d get, but it is quite good
Fun fact, the ducks used for Peking ducks (including in Beijing) are no longer bred in China for a long time
The real one that should have been famous is the Douzhi. Trust me it tastes even worse than it reads, Beijingnese ppl are weird
Vegemite I suppose, or BBQ shrimp, beer or roo maybe. Pretty sad. Australia has a pretty great multicultural food scene, but the external perception sucks.
It is the simplest thing there is, a tomato rubbed on a slice of bread.
It is usually done with a specific variety of tomatoes but it can be done with almost any variety as long as they are ripe enough. Sometimes if they aren’t ripe enough or I’m short on tomatoes I put them in the blender and spread the puree instead (it is important in this case to apply some pressure on the bread to simulate the rubbing).
Add some salt and olive oil and it is done. Then this is accompanied with all kinds of cured meats and cheese.That’s so absurdly simple it almost sounds like a joke, except I’m salivating thinking about it. Neat.
Chocolate sprinkles on a sandwich
Goudse kaas is much more well known. Also stroopwafels.
Tacos.
Not the “hard shell” variety that is sold in the USA. There is a whole universe of tacos all over Mexico: beef, pork, goat meat, sheep meat, boiled egg, rice, hot peppers, shrimp, crab, octopus, many insects and larvae (chapulines, ant eggs, mosquito eggs, caterpillars), nopales (prickly pear), many kinds of herbs, sausages, etc. The list is almost infinite.
Tacos are great, never tried the more exotic ones though, except nopale. My college had it once for some reason but tbh it just kinda tastes like the seasoning they put LOL
“Exotic” is a strong word for nopales. (Nopal is the singular, not nopale) You can get it at every grocery store in the Seattle area. And yeah it doesn’t have a strong flavor on its own. Kinda like green beans?
I can vouch for ant eggs (escamoles) and roast grasshopper (chapulines), they’re tasty but a lot harder to find around here.
My culture as in ethnicity? Probably hainanese chicken riceball, even though hainanese chicken rice originated from Singapore but the chinese here in Melaka just made it into a riceball, and riceball is delicious in ever culture.
My culture as a Malaysian? its kinda hard to choose, but Nasi Lemak, Roti Canai, and Hainanese Chicken Rice is basically the triforce of malaysian food. There’s also nyonya laksa, spicy thick curry broth topped with sambal, cockle, and tofu puff; prawn noodle where the broth are made from prawn shell(i think) and topped with more prawn; asam pedas, spicy and sour broth made from chili and asam keping, and cooked with various type of fish.
Those are just some of my fav, kinda hard to list down all of it
I think Taiwanese Bubble tea is probably best known.
There could be more, but that’s the only one off the top of my mind that started in Taiwan not China.
But actually eating in Taiwan. Beef noodle soup, Mapo Tofu, Lu Rou Fan, sweet potato balls, fantuan, tea eggs, so many delicious things.
Idk if it’s specifically from taiwan but my favorite snack from taiwan is the fried chicken cutlet you get from the night market
When i visited i drank 2 milk teas a day LOL
It was hitting like 38C when I was there so I was dying everyday
How about taiwanese fried chicken? That giant piece of fried chicken is probably my favourite fried chicken.
Ah shit. This bring back memories and I love the white pepper. Zha Pai Gu is also way up there for me.
I was going for things strictly Taiwanese. That being said Korean fried chicken is also top tiered.
Nice try, CIA
Damn caught in 4k
Germany, grilled sausage and sauerkraut I guess. But if you ask a native about the national food or a food that they miss when living abroad, it’s usually bread, specifically sourdough made from mixed rye and wheat flour. Goes great with butter and slices of cheese or cold cuts (“Käsebrot”, “Wurstbrot”).
Currywurst!
TBH I prefer plain ketchup with my grilled sausage…
If I’m honest I prefer mustard, but Currywurst is quite iconic imo
Well, now I want to see if I can find or make that bread.
Hmm never heard of rye and sourdough at the same time. I’ve seen them separately overseas in the US but never as one bread
It does sound good though, i like sourdough
There’s actually an English Wikipedia article on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mischbrot
Rye-only sourdough is also a thing, gets pretty dense and bitter though. I prefer Mischbrot with more wheat than rye.
Its likely to be Chicken Biryani and Mango Lassi. Though the specific area I am from has a different variant of the dish. I actually don’t like Mango lassi and would rather just drink Mango juice.
I have tried Nasi lemak once and enjoyed it. And thanks to the fish and chips comment, am curious about that as well.
The indian supermarket near my work always hooks me up, i get a whole lunch box with 3 curries for just 10 bucks when other places charge 20 for a lunch box
Place I grew up: McDonald’s is probably most widely known and somewhat specific.
Place I’ve lived for over a decade: either sushi or ramen depending upon when and where you’re talking.
I miss Japan food, so many things to try and almost all of them were good
Fish and chips. And despite all the jokes about British food, you really do owe it to yourself to learn just how good this meal can be when cooked well.
Samin Nosrat argues, in her book of the same name, that all cooking comes down to salt, fat, acid, and heat. Fish and chips is the perfect synthesis of this theory. It is cooking stripped down to this core idea. Done right, it is an absolute delight; beautifully flaky fish cooked to delicate perfection within a crunchy shell of light, crispy batter. Malt vinegar brings acidity to cut through the fat and salt. Everything works in harmony. There are contrasts in texture to enhance the melding of flavors.
Fish and chips, done well, is culinary perfection. But it is very hard to do well. There is nothing to hide behind. It is cooking stripped to the essentials, which means that those essentials have to be perfect. Most people outside of the British Isles have probably never had a good fish and chips in their lives, and even in the UK there are plenty of bad examples.
Anyway, those pickled chicken feet sound incredible. I had paper wrapped duck feet once and those were absolutely delicious.
I tried Gordon Ramsay’s recipe, and i can see why some of them is bland. Fnc basically are lightly seasoned because you’re supposed to taste the freshness and sweetness of the fish, just like how sashimi are. So if your fnc taste bland it’s usually the fish.
So go back to the ramsay’s recipe, i did that, it isn’t as crispy as it should be because i opt out of using beer(i don’t drink), but it still a really nice fnc.
I like fish and chips but in the US it’s so expensive, it’s about 17 USD for a 3 piece
I’d like to visit the UK once since I heard the old school edm scene is still pretty alive there
We don’t call it EDM here, that is a dirty “word” ;) but yeh, there are still some great nights depending on where you are. I went to an old skool hardcore night recently that was fucking sick and most big towns and cities you can find decent drum and bass nights. Plenty of Jungalist nights in that same vein too.
If you are in Brighton, Bristol or London you can find decent proper dubstep nights (not that American brostep crap) and I’m sure there are others out there.
I’m certain all kinds of flavours of house and techno etc are out there too just less my wheelhouse.
The best part about all of these nights though, at least in my area of interest, they are all taking place in small, dark and dingy clubs with absolutely sick sound systems. The way it should be! You haven’t lived until you are chewing your face off at 5 am standing next to the bass bins feeling the music course through you whilst having a life altering epiphany xD
Haha yea edm is a funny word. People who listen always like to say edm is not a genre, it’s just a label, but whenever I tell someone who doesn’t listen about things like frenchcore or dnb they get confused, so I just default to edm.
I’ve been following this scene in the UK for a while and it seems fun
Haha yeh I get you, it is definitely used more in the US as here the general populace tend to know what the bigger genres such as dnb, house etc are so dont need a catch all concept.
Ah Dom Whiting, yeh I know that guy. I remember seeing his videos years ago when he only had a few people following around. He was in my city this year and I joined in the ride for a bit. Absolute chaos but mad vibes! Definitely need more of that in the world these days!
Damn, it’s been so long since I’ve been to a proper dubstep night. It was never that popular here in Germany, but it’s been ultra-niche for a while. Though it’s probably for the better for my hearing :D
Although I have had good fish and chips in the UK, I think New Zealand generally does better - although we do have some shit examples that are over cooked or cooked too cool etc
Although we do tend to do lemon instead of vinegar.
I’ve had pickled chicken legs and chili in rural Sarawak, quite OK but maybe a little out there for many westerners
From my particular part of Ireland, Ulster fry probably. Sausages, bacon, eggs, soda bread, potato bread, fried mushrooms. Sometimes with tomato, black pudding, and baked beans if you’re into it.
Looks like a good breakfast, though usually I skip breakfast haha
vegemite
Hear me out: vegemite fried crab.
that looks amazing
Never tried, it seems like either people love it or they hate it and I am afraid I might fall in the latter LOL
If you do get around to trying it, most people who hate it use way too much. Start with a very very very thin spread. Thinner than that. No, like so it’s barely there. Then if you like that, you can add a tiny bit more. But it’s sort of like spreading bouillon paste - you need such a tiny amount.
I tried it once. Turns out, a very thin layer is all you need.
