At Home with Chinese Cuisine (12 page)

We have had a clump of Chinese Chives in our garden in the UK for more than twenty years, and they are easy to look after. They provide us beautiful green leaves from the early spring to the autumn. Come early autumn, their white delicate flowers add extra colour and taste to our autumn salad. I recommend planting some in the garden if you love mung bean sprouts. Mung bean sprouts and Chinese chives are a classic Chinese stir-fry combination; their flavours go seamlessly together.

Because of the cold winter temperature up in the north, most of the locally produced fruits and vegetables available in the early spring in Beijing have to be grown in polytunnels. Polytunnel farming of high-value crops is a thriving industry – and a lucrative one. It is on a grander scale than the miles of polytunnels we saw in Sicily for bell pepper cultivation. Going organic adds the incentive of higher profit margins to the farmers. Kilometre after kilometre of polytunnels are erected in the countryside and are engaged in organic farming, some with air conditioning. It emphasises the trend of healthy eating among the growing middle-class population, whose ability and willingness to pay extra for the fresh, chemical-free agricultural produce is changing the landscape and the dynamics of farming industry in China, hopefully for the better.

For Beijing residents, Spring is the season to visit the rural villages dotted around the outskirts of the city. They seek fresh air and feast on petals, new shoots, and wild greens picked from the surrounding forests and hills. I joined the crowd and tasted magnolia petals in the salad and young wild dandelion leaves (which have a neutral food property and are rich in dietary fibre, calcium, iron, and vitamins A and C) served raw with the brown bean paste as the dip. Magnolia petals have to be handled with care, and they bruise easily. Unlike the dandelion leaves with a faint bitter taste, magnolia petals are fairly neutral in taste.

The willow tree is everywhere in Beijing. Tender buds from the willow tree before the catkins appear are another spring vegetable that can be enjoyed but only for a very short period of time. They are not available in the market; we have to pick them ourselves. They are often pre-blanched first and stir-fried with meat, or they can be used as an ingredient for the pancake mixture. Their apple green colour is pleasing to the eye and stands out more so than the rather bland taste of the buds. By the time catkins appear, the spring breeze arrives as well. Beijing turns into a city covered with flying catkins akin to light snowflakes or confetti for the newlyweds – a scene that has romantically inspired poets and writers. For those with seasonal respiratory complaints, flying catkins are more like fine goose down that are irritating and threatening and have to be kept at bay.

Shanghai is a different world in spring from Beijing. The warmer climate allows the farmers to work in the fields all year round. Seasonal vegetables such as baby spinach and young pak choy are easily available in traditional markets. They are often freshly picked the same morning and sold directly by farmers who are not the regulars at the markets. The farmers have to position themselves by the entrance or at the far end corners of the aisles. Similar to the foraging for wild vegetables in Beijing, local people seek out greens that used to grow in the wild in the spring. Those popular varieties that can be sold with higher margins are now being supplied by a large number of organic farms sprouting around the suburbs of Shanghai.

Broad beans in the pod are in abundance by late spring and continue on to the early summer. They are my favourite vegetable at this time of the year. The ripe and plump ones are flavoursome and nutritious, and they are high in vitamins and plant-based protein. They are also rich in potassium and low in sodium, which make them an ideal vegetable for healthy blood pressure. They have a neutral food property and are suitable for consumption the whole year round. They have the medicinal property of easing the heat and dampness inside the body, and so having them at this time of the year prepares one for the hot and humid summer ahead. They match well with ingredients such as finely sliced meat, pressed and smoked bean curds, new potatoes, and fresh shiitake mushrooms for stir-frying. I bought them by the kilogramme (for less than one pound sterling at the peak of the season) while I was in Shanghai and froze them for rainy days.

Summer is the time the appetite is being suppressed by the heat and humidity. The taste of bitterness is said to have a detoxification function and can remove the dampness inside the body caused by the summer humidity. The bitter gourd with its bitter taste is therefore thought to be an ideal summer vegetable. There are dark green, pale green, and white ones, all with a warty surface. The white one is suitable for soups, or it can be slow-cooked with fermented black bean until it virtually melts in the mouth, which is how my parents like it. The sweet and savoury umamic taste of the dish complements the plain steamed rice very well. The green variety is usually sliced thinly for salad or for stir-frying. Stir-frying thinly sliced green bitter gourd with hard-boiled brined duck eggs has always been a popular dish in the south. While I was in Beijing, I was told that a lot of Northerners were indifferent to the bitter gourd in the past; it was through this dish that a lot of them learned to like the vegetable. The umami taste of the brined duck egg yolk must have played a part in the conversion. Using the same ingredients, my favourite recipe is to blanch the thin slices quickly in the water to get rid of the raw end of the bitterness. The hard-boiled duck egg and yolk are mashed separately. The mashed yolk goes into the medium hot oil; stir it until tiny bubbles are formed. Add the egg white, followed by the slices of bitter gourd. Mix well so that the tiny solids of the eggs coat the slices of bitter gourd. It is a tasty dish with appealing colours of green, yellow, and white that goes well with a bowl of plain steamed rice in the summer.

Food that is light and refreshing tends to be the winner during the summer heat. A beautifully presented cold plate is a good starter. Fresh kelp with a cool food property is one of my favourite vegetables. Kelp is abundant in supermarkets in Beijing from the late spring onwards for about three weeks to a month. To prepare them, blanch the kelp until just cooked to retain the crunchy texture. Shred them finely to mix with a garlic dressing that consists of finely chopped garlic (a warm food property), a dash of vinegar (a warm food property), and white sesame oil (a warm food property). Apart from playing a part in balancing the food properties, garlic is used to counter food-born germs and bacteria in the summer. New season garlic is available in March and April in the south, and it is transported to the north to meet the demand until northern garlic is available, about one to two months later. Because the locals in Beijing like the taste of fermented beans, soy sauce is often added to the dressing. In order to further balance the cool food property of kelp and to add to the colour of the dish, fresh young ginger (a warm food property) available at this time of the year and fresh red chilli (a hot food property) are often added to the dish as well. The mixture has to be set aside in the fridge for an hour or two for the tastes to blend together. Strew the dish with the finely chopped green part of the spring onion just before serving. It is a dish for chewing slowly in order to savour the flavour. Another popular cold plate in Beijing is to soak deep-fried peanuts in aged vinegar; it is an addictive combination of flavours.

Summer in Shanghai is a season of fruits. Local watermelons, pears, and peaches are in abundance by mid-May, followed by local plums, apricots, myrica (bayberries), and grapes in June. These fruits are harvested at the peak of the ripeness, sweet and juicy. It is a sheer indulgence to go to the markets nearby and purchase from the fresh delivery of the morning. It is also an opportunity to observe the entrepreneurial spirits of the young fruit mongers who come from the countryside in full swing. At this time of the year, a group of them in their early 20s twenties rent a shop near the market and stock seasonal fruits for sale at a competitive price for three months or so; they disappear without a trace when the fruit season is over. Another group will appear at the same time the following year, repeating the same activity. Selling fruits give a good profit margin, one of them told me. For the rest of the year, they will move on somewhere else to look for other seasonal jobs.

It is not until July and August that local apricots, nectarines, and peaches are available in Beijing. When they start to ripen, orchards that provide pick-your-own services in the suburbs of Beijing become the centre of activities during the weekends. I was especially impressed by the quality of peaches from PingGu County in the eastern suburb of Beijing.
49
They are big, juicy, and very sweet when tree-ripened; their quality easily surpasses those I have tasted in the West. Visiting the orchards was the highlight of my summer living in Beijing because it was the only way I could get hold of the best quality fruits. Peaches bruise so easily when they are ripe, and they need to be handled with care, but with the state of the packaging and storage facilities, it is a pity to see that the fruits picked at their best have a very short shelf life. Their shelf life was further shortened by the way shoppers select them. The TV celebrity nutritionists advise shoppers to look at the colour and the shape, and to squeeze them and see whether they are soft to touch. I often lamented the pink-red, sun-drenched plump peaches laid discarded in supermarkets, very bruised and maltreated. According to my observation, it is also a popular practice in the West to squeeze them to test their ripeness, with the same undesirable result. We need to use our noses more often: their aroma is a good indicator of their ripeness.

Autumn is the season to feast in Beijing. The northerners traditionally seek to put a little bit of weight on in the autumn so as to have an extra layer of insulation to weather the cold winter. The scientific explanation for this practice is that eating contributes to the maintenance of the body temperature at the appropriate level. The thermic effect of increased food intakes compensates for the heat loss of the b
ody in a cold environment.
50
In Beijing, there seems to be an automatic and speedy switch to diets with pungent spices and rich meat dishes in about September and October. Most of the pungent spices have warm or hot food properties that boost the metabolism and raise the body temperature to keep one warm in cold weather. Hot and spicy food such as spicy hot pots start to appear in the streets the moment an extra layer of cardigan is needed to fend off the evening chill. Incorporating chilli in the diet can aid the blood circulation – a legitimate reason given by the diners who choose to experience the pain and the exuberance of burning heat sensations. They are not deterred by the advice to consume chilli sparingly in the dry season of autumn. The large quantity of chilli floating on the surface of the steaming hot liquid gives plenty of warnings to the faint-hearted (like me) to keep a distance from it.