November 11, 2024 • 27 mins
In North America, Chinese food has changed soooo much over the last thirty years. Let's talk about what's gone on, from Sweet And Sour Pork to the crazy-good range of Szechwan food available now.
We're Bruce Weinstein & Mark Scarbrough. We've written over three dozen cookbooks and this is our podcast about that passion. We've developed tens of thousands of original recipes in our career and even ghost-written several cookbooks for celebrities.
Thanks for being on this journey with us. Here are the segments for this episode of COOKING WITH BRUCE & MARK:
[01:11] Our one-minute cooking tip: Watch out for hidden caffeine in your food.
[03:38] What’s happened to Chinese food in North America? Let's talk about the incredibly changed landscape of Chinese cooking, from the once-favorite chop suey to today's incredible range of dishes at regional Chinese restaurants in North America.
[23:00] What’s making us happy in food this week: Korean rice cake carbonara and osso buco.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Bruce (00:01):
Hey, I'm Bruce Weinstein, and this is the podcast
Cooking with Bruce and Mark.
Mark (00:04):
And I'm Mark Scarborough.
And we're approaching the holidays herein North America and in parts of Europe,
so we're not going to talk about that.
Bruce (00:14):
You're not going to tell us what to do?
Mark (00:17):
We're the only food podcast right now that's not all up into Thanksgiving,
but we will get back up into Thanksgivingnext time around, probably, I guess.
Bruce writes these episodes,so I'm not sure, but I hope so.
We were on beverages for the holidays acouple weeks ago, but now we're going to
be instead on something that's lurkingin your food that you may not know about.
(00:39):
You don't have to be scared about it.
You just have.
to know about it.
We're going to tell you that in the oneminute cooking tip, then we're going to
talk about Chinese food and particularlyChinese food in North America.
I want to talk to you about kind ofthe ways it has changed in the last
25 years, what's happened to it.
It's extremely interesting story aboutglobalization and about an increasing
(01:01):
awareness of the world around us.
And finally, as always, we'll end withwhat's making us happy and food this week.
So let's get started.
Bruce (01:11):
Our one minute cooking tip.
Be careful of hiddencaffeine in your food.
Yeah, this is a kicker.
Kombucha, everyone's drinking kombuchathese days, often made from fermented
teas, and therefore contains caffeine,so if you're like someone who says,
I don't drink kombucha, Coffee ortea after three in the afternoon,
(01:32):
but you have a big glass of kombucha,you're probably getting caffeine
Mark (01:35):
and another hidden source of caffeine and this came as a big
surprise to me are Protein bars proteinbars up all sorts often include a
heavy hit of For example, the Cliffchocolate chip cookie dough flavored
protein bars that are very popularhave 65 milligrams of caffeine in it.
That's like getting an espresso shot.
(01:56):
It
Bruce (01:56):
is.
And even their standard chocolatechip protein bar has chocolate
and chocolate has caffeine, right?
I mean, I don't know.
An ounce of dark chocolate's got 12 grams.
That's not nothing.
Mark (02:07):
That's not nothing.
It's not a lot, but it's not nothing.
And you should just be really aware ofthe caffeine level, particularly if you
have cardiac or respiratory issues, youhave allergies, any of these things,
which speed up production of mucus andother things in the body and speed up
heart rate, just know that caffeine lurksaround the corner in a lot of things.
I'm still always surprised.
(02:28):
And now it's.
We're going over one minute.
I'm always surprised about the numberof people who don't know that dark,
soft drinks like Coca Cola and Dr.
Pepper and those kind ofthings have caffeine in them.
Oh,
Bruce (02:38):
and Mountain Dew and even those.
I'm
Mark (02:40):
always shocked by people who don't know those have caffeine in them.
Bruce (02:43):
And all they have to do is go to the store and look at
the shelves where it's, Caffeinefree Coke, caffeine free Dr.
Pepper.
I know, but you They wouldn't beselling that if there wasn't caffeine.
But you say
Mark (02:52):
that and somebody still doesn't really know.
They're like, what, Dr.
Pepper has caffeine?
And you're like, well, thenwhy do they sell caffeine free?
And, um, just be careful.
If you've got, especially, asI say, cardiac or pulmonary
sensitivities, just be carefulabout how much caffeine you have.
You don't have to freakout, but just be aware.
of what you're eating.
Okay, before we get to the next segmentabout Chinese food in North America
(03:13):
on our podcast, uh, let me just saythat we really appreciate your being a
part of us and we would love it if youcould write us a review on any podcast
platform or just rate the podcast.
We'd like to stay up to date.
Unsponsored because we don't wantto be at the behest of anyone.
So you're doing that helps us stayin the analytics, which keeps the
podcast fresh, which means that we canactually continue on without a sponsor.
(03:36):
So thanks for doing that.
Okay up next What has happenedto Chinese food in the last
40 50 years in North America?
Bruce (03:48):
If you've listened to more than a few episodes of this podcast You know
that I, Bruce, make a lot of Chinese food.
Mark (2) (03:55):
Right.
Bruce (03:55):
And I have interviewed quite a few Chinese chefs
and Chinese cookbook authors.
And I've always had a, not evena love hate, I've had a love,
love, love relationship withChinese food since I was a child.
Mark (04:06):
And let me just, Mao, the writer, is going to add to that.
offer a caveat before we launchinto this larger discussion.
And it's a caveat that you maybe a little uncomfortable with.
I mean, you may be impatient with mysaying this, but I just want to say
that saying the term Chinese food isa bit racialist because we should be
saying food from China because thereisn't such a thing as Chinese food.
(04:30):
When You say that you're lumping manydifferent culinary traditions under
a label, in fact, a political labelof a political landscape, China.
And we have many ethnic groups,many different kinds of Chinese
food produced, not only in China,but in North America, in Europe.
So Chinese food has alittle bit of a racist.
(04:52):
edge to it.
And don't be impatientwith me for saying that.
I think it's really important tobe sensitive to that and say, we're
using a kind of shorthand term.
I just used it a minuteago in what I was saying.
We're using a shorthand term, but it'snot necessarily a great short term.
It used to be.
And this is the big change.
Once upon a time when we were little.
(05:13):
Chinese food meant something andit meant a kind of conglomeration
of American Chinese food.
Bruce (05:21):
Now, when I was a kid, one of my favorite activities when my
parents said we were going to godown to Chinatown and have dinner.
Made me so happy and so excitedbecause yes, there was a decent
Chinese food restaurant near us inQueens where I grew up outside of
Manhattan Kings on Horace HardingExpressway by Springfield Boulevard
(05:42):
and the food all came on those littlestainless steel stands with the lids.
And on the table was hot mustard and ducksauce and a little fried crispy things.
My mother wouldn't letme touch the hot mustard.
She always was afraid I was goingto get into the hot mustard.
Oh my goodness, we ordered the ribsand dipped them in that hot mustard.
But every now and then, my parentswould say, let's drive into
the city and go to Chinatown.
(06:03):
And it was always delicious.
Now a battle, because my parentsloved Cantonese style Chinese food.
Shrimp and lobster sauce.
They liked shrimp and lobster sauce.
My father loved chicken chow mein.
Oh, there you go.
They liked things, youknow, chicken almond ding.
They li Oh!
Mm hmm.
Ooh!
Mark (06:21):
Ooh!
That's what it was called.
Racist.
That's what it was called.
Oh, Chicken Almond Ding.
That's as bad as The King and I.
That is terrible.
Okay, do go on.
Well,
Bruce (06:34):
it's not as bad as some things, but it's pretty bad.
Mark (06:37):
Uh, yeah.
Okay, do go on.
Bruce (06:39):
I wanted to go to the Sichuan restaurants that were down the street,
and I wanted the spicy things, and Iwanted the stir fries with beef and
chilies, and they were like, Nope.
So I got lots and lots and lots ofCantonese food when I was a kid.
What was your Chinesefood experience like?
Well, I think I had
Mark (06:55):
the very typical North American experience.
I grew up in Dallas, Texas, and wewent down to this place, Yee's, which
was down on Lemon Avenue a millionyears ago, if you know Dallas.
And Yee's was the typical egg foo young,um, uh, you know, sweet and sour pork with
the pineapple or the maraschino cherries.
Yee's.
Um, which I listen as a kid, I loved, Ithought getting sweet and sour pork in
(07:20):
the no sour, all sweet sauce with themaraschino cherries was so sophisticated.
It looked sophisticated.
Did they serve it in
Bruce (07:27):
a pineapple
Mark (07:28):
half?
No, they served it in those, uh, thosesilver pedestal things with the domes and
they would put it all down and lift it.
the domes all at once.
And I should say that in typicalfashion, and I think this was a more U.
S.
Canadian rather than New York fashion,we each ordered a dish and ate our dish.
(07:51):
We did not share Chinese food.
I know.
Bruce (07:53):
When Mark first told me that, that's what they did.
I was dumbfounded.
Mark (07:57):
And I should tell you that, uh, of course I was ever the adventurous kid.
And the fact first time I orderedMushu pork, my parents freaked out
because they didn't know what it was.
And they were like, why are you ordering?
And then it came with thepancakes and all this stuff.
And I thought I was just,Oh, I was, I mean, I might as
well have been Josh like war.
I was the height of sophistication, you
Bruce (08:18):
know, but it was, it was exotic and it was different and it was sophisticated.
Mark (2) (08:24):
It's that exotic thing that has the racialist air to it.
It does.
I know.
It's
Bruce (08:28):
gross.
I continued to have this loveaffair with Chinese food.
I lived in Brooklyn in theearly eighties before Brooklyn
gentrified in a neighborhoodthat I was terrified to live in.
I would run from the garage where Iparked my car to my apartment hoping
like I didn't get stabbed to death.
I mean, it was not a fun place and therewas one Chinese takeout place and it was
(08:51):
called Sky star, but the s was burned outfrom the sign, so it was sky, tar and when
you could to order fruit from sky tar.
It was, you know, it, it was not very, um,what I would call contemporary, authentic.
It wasn't trying to doanything, so I decided.
(09:11):
I had to do this myself.
I had to learn.
Didn't you, wait,
Mark (09:14):
so just for people who didn't grow up in this time and in New York, so you
had to order through Plexiglas, right?
In
Bruce (09:19):
this neighborhood, it was so bad that they had a giant Plexiglas
turntable, and you spoke through holes init, and then you would put your Not the
Mark (09:28):
holes in the turntable, the holes in the Plexiglas wall.
Yep, so
Bruce (09:30):
you could talk to them.
And then you'd put your money onthe turntable, they would turn it,
so now the money's on the inside.
Then they would put the bag offood and turn it back to you.
Wow.
Wow.
Because otherwise they were afraid.
It was not a safe neighborhood.
Mark (09:42):
And let me say that Yee's, where I went in Dallas, included a doorman
who opened the front door for you.
So it was a very different experience.
What ethnicity was that doorman?
I don't
Bruce (09:50):
know.
Mark (09:51):
I don't know.
But, um, it, it was up for us.
Chinese food was an up experience.
Well,
Bruce (09:57):
it was up because we got to go out.
But then I think I was about eight.
18, when I decided I had to learnhow to cook Chinese food, I had
already started going to chef school.
I was back at home and I wanted tolearn and there was a guy, famous,
famous Chinese chef, Norman Weinstein.
Mark (10:20):
So, so bad, so bad, go on.
No
Bruce (10:24):
relation to me.
And he actually taught classesat the new school in Manhattan,
and he did cooking classes.
And I went and took a Sichuan classfrom him, and he taught me how to make
cold sliced pork and garlic sauce.
And he told me how to That's getting more
Mark (2) (10:40):
fancy.
Bruce (10:40):
He told me how to make tangerine beef.
Oh.
And one day, he brought it home.
whole duck and we did a deep fried duckand he made all these dipping sauces and
the point of this story is that becauseof that deep fried duck and him showing us
how to eat the web feet and the head andeverything else, I became a vegetarian.
And that lasted three hours.
Mark (11:01):
Yeah, that's not my experience with Chinese food, but you can see right
there that Chinese food is starting tonot become Chinese food It's starting to
become what it is Which is a collectionof dishes from again from various ethnic
and regional groups and you can alreadyhear it cold slice work in garlic sauce.
It's starting to move away fromthis, uh, for lack of a better
(11:23):
word, panda express kind of Chinesefood, where it's an amalgamation of
basically sweet, deep fried food.
And I think that that'sreally important to see.
In fact, by the time I met Bruce in 96.
I have been to China.
I traveled around rural China even, andI had seen a lot of Chinese cooking.
And um, when we met, I was muchmore conversant in Chinese food.
(11:48):
I think I was more conversant eventhan Bruce who had taken classes on it,
because I was I introduced him to dimsum, and I introduced him to congee,
and I showed you what these things were.
If you don't know aboutcongee, it's a rice porridge.
You overcook the rice until it'svery, very soft and almost mushy,
and add lots of broth or water to it.
(12:08):
So it's like a rice porridge, and thenyou add savory things to it, like pepper.
Peanuts and scallions, this kind ofthing is often served for breakfast.
I love congee with an egg in it.
I
Bruce (12:18):
love it.
It could be served with protein too.
Fish can be put into it.
Shrimp can be put into it.
And there was a restaurant Mark and Ifound on Mott Street in New York and
they had the most delicious congee andthey had All the roast meats hanging in
the window and we would go down there.
Oh, probably every weekend,just eat congee and
Mark (12:37):
chopped up roast pork.
But I will say that what I now knowabout Chinese food, because again,
this has been a long educationalprocess away from sweet and sour pork.
And what I know about it now is thateven back then, when I moved in with you
in the mid nineties in New York City,Chinatown still catered a great deal
(12:57):
to the white patronage and the Chinesefood that would be served in Chinatown.
Now, I'm sure that Chinese people gota separate menu and all that kind of
stuff, but that was served to us on ourmenu was very much almost the standard
stuff, but maybe elevated just a tad.
I mean, the first time I took Bruceto dim sum, I'm going to tell a story
(13:18):
that we sat down at this big tableat this huge dim sum parlor in New
York city, which I lied found andI was like, Oh, we have to try it.
And he's like, what is dim sum?
The New Yorker?
What is dim sum?
I'm like.
Trust me.
You want to do this.
So we went and we had the whole thingwith the rolling carts and all, but
we sat at the table and there were,you know, 12 seats at a round table
and there's just the two of us andthere's like other families at this
(13:39):
big table because you're just catchingfood off the carts as they go by.
And Bruce reached across thetable and grabbed one of their
teapots and poured tea in his.
Bruce (13:47):
Oh, God, that's their tea, but I know that Chinese food
is often a communal activity.
This
Mark (13:56):
is where your upbringing led you astray.
It is not everythingon the table is yours.
That was their tea in
Bruce (14:04):
there.
I wasn't going to reach for their food,but I thought the tea was fair game.
Oh my gosh.
Um, okay.
But the thing was, They gotdifferent tea than we did.
Yes, they did.
They had beautiful black Oolongtea and they gave, they gave the
two white boys here jasmine tea.
They did.
And you
Mark (14:20):
had that, this is one of the first times we kind of started to
understand that there was somethingdifferent for Chinese people in a lot
of North American Chinese restaurants.
And we kind of started to notice this.
Now we're talking towardthe late nineties.
And then all of a sudden this revelationhappened and it happened in a restaurant
that was weirdly just right acrossthe street from where we live, where
Bruce (14:41):
were we lucky?
Mark (14:42):
I know it's really weird.
And so this restaurant advertiseditself as a restaurant that.
only had one menu and that was itsgimmick and it was a good gimmick.
In other words, only one menu forChinese people and non Chinese people.
Cause
Bruce (14:56):
it was finally like this hidden secret.
Cause in New York, as Mark said, it,people who, you know, looked like they
were from China or were culturally Chinesewere handed a different menu, right?
Or
Mark (15:07):
often ordered without,
Bruce (15:09):
or ordered without a menu.
So there were two sets ofcooking going on in the kitchen.
And there was the Chinesefood for the white audience.
And then there was a Chinesefood for the Asian audience.
Again, you can't even
Mark (15:19):
now call that Chinese food.
There was a
regional
set
of dishes
for ethnic Chinese.
Bruce (15:24):
And this restaurant decided it was Grand Sichuan International.
It was.
And they decided there will be one menu.
And it was very funny.
When they came out with this onemenu, Oh, they got a lot of press.
The New York Times wrote about them.
The New York Magazine.
Everybody was writingabout this revolution.
Mark (15:40):
And the dishes were so odd.
to most New Yorkers, even that they cameand sat down on your table, a giant three
ring binder that explained every dish.
There was a photograph
Bruce (15:53):
and a couple of sentences is not a couple of paragraphs of what the dish was
Mark (15:57):
and how it was made, you know, because literally don't
gross out and turn our podcast off.
But literally they were servinglike sliced sea cucumber.
They were selling allkinds of entrails and.
Inards and organs andintestines and tendons
Bruce (16:12):
even more shocking than that was they had a section on the menu
for chicken dishes and live chickendishes when you ordered a dish
they would they had chickens in thebasement and they would cook kill a
chicken to make that dish for you.
Mark (16:26):
And it was, it said something like, like a lot, like it was like a
45 minute process for a live kill dish.
Um, and all of this says that Chinesefood was becoming not Chinese food.
It was becoming what I keep saying,a beautiful and varied amalgam of
regional and personal cooking taste.
(16:47):
The cross, uh, broad spectrum.
And that is the biggest change.
And while, you know, listen, you mayhave been impatient with me with my
little diatribe about not callingit Chinese food, but it's important
because this is what's happened.
And now we've reached this placewhere where you can, in fact, discover
various personal regional dishes.
(17:09):
And I don't, I want always to avoidthe authenticity trap because I
think there are as many Szechuangrandmothers who make red cooking pork
as many different ways as there aregrandmothers making red cooking pork.
But now you can find.
out about these kind of reallyintense breezes and stir fries.
(17:29):
So for example, Bruce made his sisterand brother in law were here and
Bruce made some incredible dishesfor them one night while they were
Bruce (17:36):
here.
And let's say they live in the Bayarea, so they can get really good
Chinese food in a restaurant, but.
She, my sister just wantedme to make it because
Mark (17:45):
Let me say that, wait, before you, before you get to your dishes,
sorry, let me interrupt and saythat she reminds me again about the
diversification and regionalizationand personalization of Chinese food.
When Bruce and I visit his sister andbrother in law in the Bay Area, we often
go to this halal Chinese restaurantand it is food from a particular
region of China that is Islamic.
(18:06):
And so, for example, there's not goingto be any pork in this restaurant
at all because it's halal Chinesefood and it's not terribly spicy.
It's very sour.
There's a lot of sour, fermented
Bruce (18:18):
pickled things.
Yep.
Mark (18:19):
Yep.
And a lot of souredpickled things in the dish.
We make a trek all the way down to SanJose to eat this halal Chinese food.
It's delicious.
Bruce (18:28):
So I made two dishes for Julie when she and her husband were here.
And the first one, I don't know theChinese name of, I'm not even going
to pretend that I know what it is.
I know that this dish is an,old fashioned comfort food dish.
I've seen online videos of olderChinese people talking about having
this when they were kids, whenthey were sick, their mothers would
(18:50):
make it for them as comfort food.
You take very fatty ground pork at yourbase and you mix into that actually some
water and some rice wine and some stock.
You want it to actually be a wet mixture.
You season it with oyster sauce and water.
with a white pepper and then the keyingredient is depending upon where
(19:10):
your grandmother was from, she wouldhave either put in preserved chopped
cabbage or preserved mustard greens.
I decided to use both.
Why not?
And I put both in.
Then you flatten that into a pie plate.
You put that into a bamboosteamer and you steam it.
Mark (19:27):
So good.
And
Bruce (19:27):
you end up with this sort of floating burger patty of meat floating.
Isn't it really?
Mark (2) (19:33):
Salty sauce,
Bruce (19:34):
salty, fatty, delicious sauce.
And you pour that sauce over the rice.
And
Mark (19:39):
you like chunk it up almost like pie wedges or just with a spoon.
And then you want allthe sauce on your rice.
Bruce (19:46):
So comforting.
And then the other thing Imade is, uh, sometimes called
fish and sour mustard soup.
And it's really,
Mark (2) (19:56):
favorite thing.
Bruce (19:56):
A simple dish.
Actually, if you think about it, um, Ijust stir fried some ginger and scallions
and garlic and some fermented red chilies,which yes, of course I fermented myself.
And then you put in a fish broth andyou put in some sliced thin white fish.
I used sea perch.
Mark (20:15):
Thank you, Costco.
Costco has amazing sea perch.
Bruce (20:20):
And the key ingredient is is the soured pickled mustard greens.
And you buy those in pouches, you drainoff the brine, you chop it up, you
let that all come to a little simmer,and then you put fresh green Sichuan
peppercorns, which you can find in afreezer section of an Asian market.
And it's just so good.
(20:40):
And
Mark (20:41):
Sichuan, green Sichuan,
Bruce (20:42):
Chili oil.
Well, yeah, I added that on toptoo, because we like sizzling
oil over the top of the whole.
I poured it over the hop justto bring out all those flavors.
It was so it's
Mark (20:52):
it's an amazing dish.
And again, this is what has happenedis that we have all become now because
of globalization, whatever you thinkabout that politically, but because
of globalization and because of theaccess to ingredients on a global
scale, we've become globalized.
All much more conversant in these things.
So let me say, when we round outthis discussion about where Chinese
(21:12):
food has come from, let me encourageyou to find local small Chinese
businesses and frequent them.
And you can do this with reallyeasy Google searches, Yelp searches,
TripAdvisor searches in your area.
And the reason I say this is twofold.
One, To get away from PandaExpress, of course, and broaden
your understanding of Chinese food,which is really a fun thing to do.
(21:36):
And two, a lot of these places thatyou'll frequent are small entrepreneurs,
and we all want to support smallentrepreneurs and small businesses,
and we all want to help them.
them survive.
So you're not only helping,uh, broaden your own palette,
you're kind of helping the U.
S.
economy by supportinga small entrepreneur.
And it will make a difference in whatyou consider, quote, unquote, Chinese
(21:58):
food to this new and exciting andvast world of regional, cultural,
and geographic dishes in China.
Before we get to the last partof this podcast, let me say that
Bruce and I have a TikTok channeland, uh, you should check it out.
It's cooking with Bruceand Mark on TikTok.
You can find cooking with Bruce and Markon Instagram and you can find us of course
(22:20):
in our Facebook group as Bruce alwaystells you, but the TikTok channel is got.
All the videos lately that are goingup and, uh, that's kind of fun.
We're, we've been on a chocolatecookie jag for a while now.
Um, Bruce, I've been making Bruce dairyfree chocolate chip cookies and he's
been making me full butter, chocolatecookies of all different kinds.
I even overcame my fearof a pastry bag recently.
Bruce (22:42):
And you made the most delicious almond horns for me.
Mark (22:45):
I did.
They were good.
So, um, you might want tocheck that out on Tik TOK.
And, uh, see what we're up to, becauseit's a great thing to subscribe to
just to get constant videos aboutfood, which is, you know, we love,
all right, as is traditional, thelast segment of this podcast, what's
making us happy in food this week?
Bruce (23:06):
Korean rice cake carbonara.
Mark (23:09):
Oh gosh.
Okay.
Well, this is something you canfind on TikTok, but okay, go on,
you can find on our TikTok channel.
So
Bruce (23:14):
the Korean rice cakes that are tubular, you know, the tubular
rice cakes, not the flat ones,the Becky, and I know that's not.
correct accent of pronunciation, butso I basically used that instead of
pasta to make a carbonara with eggyolks and parmesan cheese and bacon and
man, it was filling and it was filling.
But as we ate it, I keptsaying something is wrong.
(23:37):
It's like there was this crosscultural problem happening.
The flavor was totally carbonaraand Italian and the texture
was totally Korean rice cake.
So
Mark (23:48):
the difference in us.
Bruce (23:49):
And I didn't know what to do with it as I ate it, except enjoy it.
Mark (23:52):
It's, it's, you're the chef and you're much more into like, well, but this
goes with this and this goes with this.
And I'm just the wild guy.
And I make crazy recipes and I make stuffup and I don't care about categories.
And I just mush it all together andput gochujang on frosted flakes.
And I'm happy.
And so I'm, this is just crazy experiment.
food because I don't haven'tbeen trained and I don't have
(24:16):
any notion of what the rules are.
And so because I don't have any training,I'm just the writer of our books.
To me, it was fabulous.
It was deeply chewy rice bits and,um, rice logs, rice cylinders.
Then, you know, with the justtraditional carbonara with
parmesan and, uh, eggs and bacon.
(24:37):
No,
Bruce (24:37):
but that texture.
I expected chilies and he did use
Mark (24:41):
bacon and not one Charlie.
And I think that actually the bacon workedbetter because it's a stronger flavor.
It's more, you know, he just used, uh, U.
S.
As they call it, streaky bacon, thinbacon strips that we all know in the U.
S.
And actually gave it a better Huge smokehit and a huge salt here, which actually
made it a little better against all thoserice cakes So it it was really good.
(25:02):
I loved it What's makingme happy in food this week?
Is that we got to go to a friend's housethis last weekend and eat ossobucco
And if you know me, you know how muchI love ossobucco and he did a big
bang up job on this awesome book.
Oh, and he made it with a citrus.
So it had orange zest in the awesome book.
(25:24):
Oh, and parsley and garlic.
It was tomato.
Yeah, it was tomato based, but theoranges were just what was the thing.
And then he made a gremolata, thedry herb garlic topping with orange.
And he put, he didn'tlet me get there yet.
He put it with orange zest in it.
And it's, it was just so.
Unbelievable, comforting.
(25:45):
We sat at that table for hours, uh,hours, and I think, uh, there were six
of us, and I think five bottles of winegot drunk in the end by the time the
evening was over, but it was almostworth what happened to me the next day.
I'm too old to drink like that anymore,but, uh, it was almost worth it, but
the food was absolutely spectacular.
It was.
I was actually very happy that somebodycooked for me and cooked so carefully
(26:09):
for me, and, um, it was fantastic.
So, uh, cook for your friends.
You can make this.
them happy.
Okay, that's the episode of Cookingwith Bruce and Mark this week.
We appreciate your time with usand listening to us bang on about
Chinese food, whatever that meansin North America, and how we've
seen it change over the years.
And actually, it's an exciting change, andI look forward to other exciting changes.
(26:31):
I look forward to finding out theintricacies of Indonesian fare in
the months ahead as Bruce startsto explore Indonesian cuisine.
Until I look forward to that somuch because it's just fun to
explore food in various ways.
Bruce (26:46):
And every week we tell you what's making us happy in food here
on Cooking with Bruce and Mark.
So go to our Facebook group, alsocalled Cooking with Bruce and Mark,
and every week I post a question.
What's making you happy in food this week?
Please answer it because we want toknow what is making you happy in food
this week here on Cooking with Bruce
and
Hey, I'm Bruce Weinstein, and this is the podcast
Cooking with Bruce and Mark.
Mark (00:04):
And I'm Mark Scarborough.
And we're approaching the holidays herein North America and in parts of Europe,
so we're not going to talk about that.
Bruce (00:14):
You're not going to tell us what to do?
Mark (00:17):
We're the only food podcast right now that's not all up into Thanksgiving,
but we will get back up into Thanksgivingnext time around, probably, I guess.
Bruce writes these episodes,so I'm not sure, but I hope so.
We were on beverages for the holidays acouple weeks ago, but now we're going to
be instead on something that's lurkingin your food that you may not know about.
(00:39):
You don't have to be scared about it.
You just have.
to know about it.
We're going to tell you that in the oneminute cooking tip, then we're going to
talk about Chinese food and particularlyChinese food in North America.
I want to talk to you about kind ofthe ways it has changed in the last
25 years, what's happened to it.
It's extremely interesting story aboutglobalization and about an increasing
(01:01):
awareness of the world around us.
And finally, as always, we'll end withwhat's making us happy and food this week.
So let's get started.
Bruce (01:11):
Our one minute cooking tip.
Be careful of hiddencaffeine in your food.
Yeah, this is a kicker.
Kombucha, everyone's drinking kombuchathese days, often made from fermented
teas, and therefore contains caffeine,so if you're like someone who says,
I don't drink kombucha, Coffee ortea after three in the afternoon,
(01:32):
but you have a big glass of kombucha,you're probably getting caffeine
Mark (01:35):
and another hidden source of caffeine and this came as a big
surprise to me are Protein bars proteinbars up all sorts often include a
heavy hit of For example, the Cliffchocolate chip cookie dough flavored
protein bars that are very popularhave 65 milligrams of caffeine in it.
That's like getting an espresso shot.
(01:56):
It
Bruce (01:56):
is.
And even their standard chocolatechip protein bar has chocolate
and chocolate has caffeine, right?
I mean, I don't know.
An ounce of dark chocolate's got 12 grams.
That's not nothing.
Mark (02:07):
That's not nothing.
It's not a lot, but it's not nothing.
And you should just be really aware ofthe caffeine level, particularly if you
have cardiac or respiratory issues, youhave allergies, any of these things,
which speed up production of mucus andother things in the body and speed up
heart rate, just know that caffeine lurksaround the corner in a lot of things.
I'm still always surprised.
(02:28):
And now it's.
We're going over one minute.
I'm always surprised about the numberof people who don't know that dark,
soft drinks like Coca Cola and Dr.
Pepper and those kind ofthings have caffeine in them.
Oh,
Bruce (02:38):
and Mountain Dew and even those.
I'm
Mark (02:40):
always shocked by people who don't know those have caffeine in them.
Bruce (02:43):
And all they have to do is go to the store and look at
the shelves where it's, Caffeinefree Coke, caffeine free Dr.
Pepper.
I know, but you They wouldn't beselling that if there wasn't caffeine.
But you say
Mark (02:52):
that and somebody still doesn't really know.
They're like, what, Dr.
Pepper has caffeine?
And you're like, well, thenwhy do they sell caffeine free?
And, um, just be careful.
If you've got, especially, asI say, cardiac or pulmonary
sensitivities, just be carefulabout how much caffeine you have.
You don't have to freakout, but just be aware.
of what you're eating.
Okay, before we get to the next segmentabout Chinese food in North America
(03:13):
on our podcast, uh, let me just saythat we really appreciate your being a
part of us and we would love it if youcould write us a review on any podcast
platform or just rate the podcast.
We'd like to stay up to date.
Unsponsored because we don't wantto be at the behest of anyone.
So you're doing that helps us stayin the analytics, which keeps the
podcast fresh, which means that we canactually continue on without a sponsor.
(03:36):
So thanks for doing that.
Okay up next What has happenedto Chinese food in the last
40 50 years in North America?
Bruce (03:48):
If you've listened to more than a few episodes of this podcast You know
that I, Bruce, make a lot of Chinese food.
Mark (2) (03:55):
Right.
Bruce (03:55):
And I have interviewed quite a few Chinese chefs
and Chinese cookbook authors.
And I've always had a, not evena love hate, I've had a love,
love, love relationship withChinese food since I was a child.
Mark (04:06):
And let me just, Mao, the writer, is going to add to that.
offer a caveat before we launchinto this larger discussion.
And it's a caveat that you maybe a little uncomfortable with.
I mean, you may be impatient with mysaying this, but I just want to say
that saying the term Chinese food isa bit racialist because we should be
saying food from China because thereisn't such a thing as Chinese food.
(04:30):
When You say that you're lumping manydifferent culinary traditions under
a label, in fact, a political labelof a political landscape, China.
And we have many ethnic groups,many different kinds of Chinese
food produced, not only in China,but in North America, in Europe.
So Chinese food has alittle bit of a racist.
(04:52):
edge to it.
And don't be impatientwith me for saying that.
I think it's really important tobe sensitive to that and say, we're
using a kind of shorthand term.
I just used it a minuteago in what I was saying.
We're using a shorthand term, but it'snot necessarily a great short term.
It used to be.
And this is the big change.
Once upon a time when we were little.
(05:13):
Chinese food meant something andit meant a kind of conglomeration
of American Chinese food.
Bruce (05:21):
Now, when I was a kid, one of my favorite activities when my
parents said we were going to godown to Chinatown and have dinner.
Made me so happy and so excitedbecause yes, there was a decent
Chinese food restaurant near us inQueens where I grew up outside of
Manhattan Kings on Horace HardingExpressway by Springfield Boulevard
(05:42):
and the food all came on those littlestainless steel stands with the lids.
And on the table was hot mustard and ducksauce and a little fried crispy things.
My mother wouldn't letme touch the hot mustard.
She always was afraid I was goingto get into the hot mustard.
Oh my goodness, we ordered the ribsand dipped them in that hot mustard.
But every now and then, my parentswould say, let's drive into
the city and go to Chinatown.
(06:03):
And it was always delicious.
Now a battle, because my parentsloved Cantonese style Chinese food.
Shrimp and lobster sauce.
They liked shrimp and lobster sauce.
My father loved chicken chow mein.
Oh, there you go.
They liked things, youknow, chicken almond ding.
They li Oh!
Mm hmm.
Ooh!
Mark (06:21):
Ooh!
That's what it was called.
Racist.
That's what it was called.
Oh, Chicken Almond Ding.
That's as bad as The King and I.
That is terrible.
Okay, do go on.
Well,
Bruce (06:34):
it's not as bad as some things, but it's pretty bad.
Mark (06:37):
Uh, yeah.
Okay, do go on.
Bruce (06:39):
I wanted to go to the Sichuan restaurants that were down the street,
and I wanted the spicy things, and Iwanted the stir fries with beef and
chilies, and they were like, Nope.
So I got lots and lots and lots ofCantonese food when I was a kid.
What was your Chinesefood experience like?
Well, I think I had
Mark (06:55):
the very typical North American experience.
I grew up in Dallas, Texas, and wewent down to this place, Yee's, which
was down on Lemon Avenue a millionyears ago, if you know Dallas.
And Yee's was the typical egg foo young,um, uh, you know, sweet and sour pork with
the pineapple or the maraschino cherries.
Yee's.
Um, which I listen as a kid, I loved, Ithought getting sweet and sour pork in
(07:20):
the no sour, all sweet sauce with themaraschino cherries was so sophisticated.
It looked sophisticated.
Did they serve it in
Bruce (07:27):
a pineapple
Mark (07:28):
half?
No, they served it in those, uh, thosesilver pedestal things with the domes and
they would put it all down and lift it.
the domes all at once.
And I should say that in typicalfashion, and I think this was a more U.
S.
Canadian rather than New York fashion,we each ordered a dish and ate our dish.
(07:51):
We did not share Chinese food.
I know.
Bruce (07:53):
When Mark first told me that, that's what they did.
I was dumbfounded.
Mark (07:57):
And I should tell you that, uh, of course I was ever the adventurous kid.
And the fact first time I orderedMushu pork, my parents freaked out
because they didn't know what it was.
And they were like, why are you ordering?
And then it came with thepancakes and all this stuff.
And I thought I was just,Oh, I was, I mean, I might as
well have been Josh like war.
I was the height of sophistication, you
Bruce (08:18):
know, but it was, it was exotic and it was different and it was sophisticated.
Mark (2) (08:24):
It's that exotic thing that has the racialist air to it.
It does.
I know.
It's
Bruce (08:28):
gross.
I continued to have this loveaffair with Chinese food.
I lived in Brooklyn in theearly eighties before Brooklyn
gentrified in a neighborhoodthat I was terrified to live in.
I would run from the garage where Iparked my car to my apartment hoping
like I didn't get stabbed to death.
I mean, it was not a fun place and therewas one Chinese takeout place and it was
(08:51):
called Sky star, but the s was burned outfrom the sign, so it was sky, tar and when
you could to order fruit from sky tar.
It was, you know, it, it was not very, um,what I would call contemporary, authentic.
It wasn't trying to doanything, so I decided.
(09:11):
I had to do this myself.
I had to learn.
Didn't you, wait,
Mark (09:14):
so just for people who didn't grow up in this time and in New York, so you
had to order through Plexiglas, right?
In
Bruce (09:19):
this neighborhood, it was so bad that they had a giant Plexiglas
turntable, and you spoke through holes init, and then you would put your Not the
Mark (09:28):
holes in the turntable, the holes in the Plexiglas wall.
Yep, so
Bruce (09:30):
you could talk to them.
And then you'd put your money onthe turntable, they would turn it,
so now the money's on the inside.
Then they would put the bag offood and turn it back to you.
Wow.
Wow.
Because otherwise they were afraid.
It was not a safe neighborhood.
Mark (09:42):
And let me say that Yee's, where I went in Dallas, included a doorman
who opened the front door for you.
So it was a very different experience.
What ethnicity was that doorman?
I don't
Bruce (09:50):
know.
Mark (09:51):
I don't know.
But, um, it, it was up for us.
Chinese food was an up experience.
Well,
Bruce (09:57):
it was up because we got to go out.
But then I think I was about eight.
18, when I decided I had to learnhow to cook Chinese food, I had
already started going to chef school.
I was back at home and I wanted tolearn and there was a guy, famous,
famous Chinese chef, Norman Weinstein.
Mark (10:20):
So, so bad, so bad, go on.
No
Bruce (10:24):
relation to me.
And he actually taught classesat the new school in Manhattan,
and he did cooking classes.
And I went and took a Sichuan classfrom him, and he taught me how to make
cold sliced pork and garlic sauce.
And he told me how to That's getting more
Mark (2) (10:40):
fancy.
Bruce (10:40):
He told me how to make tangerine beef.
Oh.
And one day, he brought it home.
whole duck and we did a deep fried duckand he made all these dipping sauces and
the point of this story is that becauseof that deep fried duck and him showing us
how to eat the web feet and the head andeverything else, I became a vegetarian.
And that lasted three hours.
Mark (11:01):
Yeah, that's not my experience with Chinese food, but you can see right
there that Chinese food is starting tonot become Chinese food It's starting to
become what it is Which is a collectionof dishes from again from various ethnic
and regional groups and you can alreadyhear it cold slice work in garlic sauce.
It's starting to move away fromthis, uh, for lack of a better
(11:23):
word, panda express kind of Chinesefood, where it's an amalgamation of
basically sweet, deep fried food.
And I think that that'sreally important to see.
In fact, by the time I met Bruce in 96.
I have been to China.
I traveled around rural China even, andI had seen a lot of Chinese cooking.
And um, when we met, I was muchmore conversant in Chinese food.
(11:48):
I think I was more conversant eventhan Bruce who had taken classes on it,
because I was I introduced him to dimsum, and I introduced him to congee,
and I showed you what these things were.
If you don't know aboutcongee, it's a rice porridge.
You overcook the rice until it'svery, very soft and almost mushy,
and add lots of broth or water to it.
(12:08):
So it's like a rice porridge, and thenyou add savory things to it, like pepper.
Peanuts and scallions, this kind ofthing is often served for breakfast.
I love congee with an egg in it.
I
Bruce (12:18):
love it.
It could be served with protein too.
Fish can be put into it.
Shrimp can be put into it.
And there was a restaurant Mark and Ifound on Mott Street in New York and
they had the most delicious congee andthey had All the roast meats hanging in
the window and we would go down there.
Oh, probably every weekend,just eat congee and
Mark (12:37):
chopped up roast pork.
But I will say that what I now knowabout Chinese food, because again,
this has been a long educationalprocess away from sweet and sour pork.
And what I know about it now is thateven back then, when I moved in with you
in the mid nineties in New York City,Chinatown still catered a great deal
(12:57):
to the white patronage and the Chinesefood that would be served in Chinatown.
Now, I'm sure that Chinese people gota separate menu and all that kind of
stuff, but that was served to us on ourmenu was very much almost the standard
stuff, but maybe elevated just a tad.
I mean, the first time I took Bruceto dim sum, I'm going to tell a story
(13:18):
that we sat down at this big tableat this huge dim sum parlor in New
York city, which I lied found andI was like, Oh, we have to try it.
And he's like, what is dim sum?
The New Yorker?
What is dim sum?
I'm like.
Trust me.
You want to do this.
So we went and we had the whole thingwith the rolling carts and all, but
we sat at the table and there were,you know, 12 seats at a round table
and there's just the two of us andthere's like other families at this
(13:39):
big table because you're just catchingfood off the carts as they go by.
And Bruce reached across thetable and grabbed one of their
teapots and poured tea in his.
Bruce (13:47):
Oh, God, that's their tea, but I know that Chinese food
is often a communal activity.
This
Mark (13:56):
is where your upbringing led you astray.
It is not everythingon the table is yours.
That was their tea in
Bruce (14:04):
there.
I wasn't going to reach for their food,but I thought the tea was fair game.
Oh my gosh.
Um, okay.
But the thing was, They gotdifferent tea than we did.
Yes, they did.
They had beautiful black Oolongtea and they gave, they gave the
two white boys here jasmine tea.
They did.
And you
Mark (14:20):
had that, this is one of the first times we kind of started to
understand that there was somethingdifferent for Chinese people in a lot
of North American Chinese restaurants.
And we kind of started to notice this.
Now we're talking towardthe late nineties.
And then all of a sudden this revelationhappened and it happened in a restaurant
that was weirdly just right acrossthe street from where we live, where
Bruce (14:41):
were we lucky?
Mark (14:42):
I know it's really weird.
And so this restaurant advertiseditself as a restaurant that.
only had one menu and that was itsgimmick and it was a good gimmick.
In other words, only one menu forChinese people and non Chinese people.
Cause
Bruce (14:56):
it was finally like this hidden secret.
Cause in New York, as Mark said, it,people who, you know, looked like they
were from China or were culturally Chinesewere handed a different menu, right?
Or
Mark (15:07):
often ordered without,
Bruce (15:09):
or ordered without a menu.
So there were two sets ofcooking going on in the kitchen.
And there was the Chinesefood for the white audience.
And then there was a Chinesefood for the Asian audience.
Again, you can't even
Mark (15:19):
now call that Chinese food.
There was a
regional
set
of dishes
for ethnic Chinese.
Bruce (15:24):
And this restaurant decided it was Grand Sichuan International.
It was.
And they decided there will be one menu.
And it was very funny.
When they came out with this onemenu, Oh, they got a lot of press.
The New York Times wrote about them.
The New York Magazine.
Everybody was writingabout this revolution.
Mark (15:40):
And the dishes were so odd.
to most New Yorkers, even that they cameand sat down on your table, a giant three
ring binder that explained every dish.
There was a photograph
Bruce (15:53):
and a couple of sentences is not a couple of paragraphs of what the dish was
Mark (15:57):
and how it was made, you know, because literally don't
gross out and turn our podcast off.
But literally they were servinglike sliced sea cucumber.
They were selling allkinds of entrails and.
Inards and organs andintestines and tendons
Bruce (16:12):
even more shocking than that was they had a section on the menu
for chicken dishes and live chickendishes when you ordered a dish
they would they had chickens in thebasement and they would cook kill a
chicken to make that dish for you.
Mark (16:26):
And it was, it said something like, like a lot, like it was like a
45 minute process for a live kill dish.
Um, and all of this says that Chinesefood was becoming not Chinese food.
It was becoming what I keep saying,a beautiful and varied amalgam of
regional and personal cooking taste.
(16:47):
The cross, uh, broad spectrum.
And that is the biggest change.
And while, you know, listen, you mayhave been impatient with me with my
little diatribe about not callingit Chinese food, but it's important
because this is what's happened.
And now we've reached this placewhere where you can, in fact, discover
various personal regional dishes.
(17:09):
And I don't, I want always to avoidthe authenticity trap because I
think there are as many Szechuangrandmothers who make red cooking pork
as many different ways as there aregrandmothers making red cooking pork.
But now you can find.
out about these kind of reallyintense breezes and stir fries.
(17:29):
So for example, Bruce made his sisterand brother in law were here and
Bruce made some incredible dishesfor them one night while they were
Bruce (17:36):
here.
And let's say they live in the Bayarea, so they can get really good
Chinese food in a restaurant, but.
She, my sister just wantedme to make it because
Mark (17:45):
Let me say that, wait, before you, before you get to your dishes,
sorry, let me interrupt and saythat she reminds me again about the
diversification and regionalizationand personalization of Chinese food.
When Bruce and I visit his sister andbrother in law in the Bay Area, we often
go to this halal Chinese restaurantand it is food from a particular
region of China that is Islamic.
(18:06):
And so, for example, there's not goingto be any pork in this restaurant
at all because it's halal Chinesefood and it's not terribly spicy.
It's very sour.
There's a lot of sour, fermented
Bruce (18:18):
pickled things.
Yep.
Mark (18:19):
Yep.
And a lot of souredpickled things in the dish.
We make a trek all the way down to SanJose to eat this halal Chinese food.
It's delicious.
Bruce (18:28):
So I made two dishes for Julie when she and her husband were here.
And the first one, I don't know theChinese name of, I'm not even going
to pretend that I know what it is.
I know that this dish is an,old fashioned comfort food dish.
I've seen online videos of olderChinese people talking about having
this when they were kids, whenthey were sick, their mothers would
(18:50):
make it for them as comfort food.
You take very fatty ground pork at yourbase and you mix into that actually some
water and some rice wine and some stock.
You want it to actually be a wet mixture.
You season it with oyster sauce and water.
with a white pepper and then the keyingredient is depending upon where
(19:10):
your grandmother was from, she wouldhave either put in preserved chopped
cabbage or preserved mustard greens.
I decided to use both.
Why not?
And I put both in.
Then you flatten that into a pie plate.
You put that into a bamboosteamer and you steam it.
Mark (19:27):
So good.
And
Bruce (19:27):
you end up with this sort of floating burger patty of meat floating.
Isn't it really?
Mark (2) (19:33):
Salty sauce,
Bruce (19:34):
salty, fatty, delicious sauce.
And you pour that sauce over the rice.
And
Mark (19:39):
you like chunk it up almost like pie wedges or just with a spoon.
And then you want allthe sauce on your rice.
Bruce (19:46):
So comforting.
And then the other thing Imade is, uh, sometimes called
fish and sour mustard soup.
And it's really,
Mark (2) (19:56):
favorite thing.
Bruce (19:56):
A simple dish.
Actually, if you think about it, um, Ijust stir fried some ginger and scallions
and garlic and some fermented red chilies,which yes, of course I fermented myself.
And then you put in a fish broth andyou put in some sliced thin white fish.
I used sea perch.
Mark (20:15):
Thank you, Costco.
Costco has amazing sea perch.
Bruce (20:20):
And the key ingredient is is the soured pickled mustard greens.
And you buy those in pouches, you drainoff the brine, you chop it up, you
let that all come to a little simmer,and then you put fresh green Sichuan
peppercorns, which you can find in afreezer section of an Asian market.
And it's just so good.
(20:40):
And
Mark (20:41):
Sichuan, green Sichuan,
Bruce (20:42):
Chili oil.
Well, yeah, I added that on toptoo, because we like sizzling
oil over the top of the whole.
I poured it over the hop justto bring out all those flavors.
It was so it's
Mark (20:52):
it's an amazing dish.
And again, this is what has happenedis that we have all become now because
of globalization, whatever you thinkabout that politically, but because
of globalization and because of theaccess to ingredients on a global
scale, we've become globalized.
All much more conversant in these things.
So let me say, when we round outthis discussion about where Chinese
(21:12):
food has come from, let me encourageyou to find local small Chinese
businesses and frequent them.
And you can do this with reallyeasy Google searches, Yelp searches,
TripAdvisor searches in your area.
And the reason I say this is twofold.
One, To get away from PandaExpress, of course, and broaden
your understanding of Chinese food,which is really a fun thing to do.
(21:36):
And two, a lot of these places thatyou'll frequent are small entrepreneurs,
and we all want to support smallentrepreneurs and small businesses,
and we all want to help them.
them survive.
So you're not only helping,uh, broaden your own palette,
you're kind of helping the U.
S.
economy by supportinga small entrepreneur.
And it will make a difference in whatyou consider, quote, unquote, Chinese
(21:58):
food to this new and exciting andvast world of regional, cultural,
and geographic dishes in China.
Before we get to the last partof this podcast, let me say that
Bruce and I have a TikTok channeland, uh, you should check it out.
It's cooking with Bruceand Mark on TikTok.
You can find cooking with Bruce and Markon Instagram and you can find us of course
(22:20):
in our Facebook group as Bruce alwaystells you, but the TikTok channel is got.
All the videos lately that are goingup and, uh, that's kind of fun.
We're, we've been on a chocolatecookie jag for a while now.
Um, Bruce, I've been making Bruce dairyfree chocolate chip cookies and he's
been making me full butter, chocolatecookies of all different kinds.
I even overcame my fearof a pastry bag recently.
Bruce (22:42):
And you made the most delicious almond horns for me.
Mark (22:45):
I did.
They were good.
So, um, you might want tocheck that out on Tik TOK.
And, uh, see what we're up to, becauseit's a great thing to subscribe to
just to get constant videos aboutfood, which is, you know, we love,
all right, as is traditional, thelast segment of this podcast, what's
making us happy in food this week?
Bruce (23:06):
Korean rice cake carbonara.
Mark (23:09):
Oh gosh.
Okay.
Well, this is something you canfind on TikTok, but okay, go on,
you can find on our TikTok channel.
So
Bruce (23:14):
the Korean rice cakes that are tubular, you know, the tubular
rice cakes, not the flat ones,the Becky, and I know that's not.
correct accent of pronunciation, butso I basically used that instead of
pasta to make a carbonara with eggyolks and parmesan cheese and bacon and
man, it was filling and it was filling.
But as we ate it, I keptsaying something is wrong.
(23:37):
It's like there was this crosscultural problem happening.
The flavor was totally carbonaraand Italian and the texture
was totally Korean rice cake.
So
Mark (23:48):
the difference in us.
Bruce (23:49):
And I didn't know what to do with it as I ate it, except enjoy it.
Mark (23:52):
It's, it's, you're the chef and you're much more into like, well, but this
goes with this and this goes with this.
And I'm just the wild guy.
And I make crazy recipes and I make stuffup and I don't care about categories.
And I just mush it all together andput gochujang on frosted flakes.
And I'm happy.
And so I'm, this is just crazy experiment.
food because I don't haven'tbeen trained and I don't have
(24:16):
any notion of what the rules are.
And so because I don't have any training,I'm just the writer of our books.
To me, it was fabulous.
It was deeply chewy rice bits and,um, rice logs, rice cylinders.
Then, you know, with the justtraditional carbonara with
parmesan and, uh, eggs and bacon.
(24:37):
No,
Bruce (24:37):
but that texture.
I expected chilies and he did use
Mark (24:41):
bacon and not one Charlie.
And I think that actually the bacon workedbetter because it's a stronger flavor.
It's more, you know, he just used, uh, U.
S.
As they call it, streaky bacon, thinbacon strips that we all know in the U.
S.
And actually gave it a better Huge smokehit and a huge salt here, which actually
made it a little better against all thoserice cakes So it it was really good.
(25:02):
I loved it What's makingme happy in food this week?
Is that we got to go to a friend's housethis last weekend and eat ossobucco
And if you know me, you know how muchI love ossobucco and he did a big
bang up job on this awesome book.
Oh, and he made it with a citrus.
So it had orange zest in the awesome book.
(25:24):
Oh, and parsley and garlic.
It was tomato.
Yeah, it was tomato based, but theoranges were just what was the thing.
And then he made a gremolata, thedry herb garlic topping with orange.
And he put, he didn'tlet me get there yet.
He put it with orange zest in it.
And it's, it was just so.
Unbelievable, comforting.
(25:45):
We sat at that table for hours, uh,hours, and I think, uh, there were six
of us, and I think five bottles of winegot drunk in the end by the time the
evening was over, but it was almostworth what happened to me the next day.
I'm too old to drink like that anymore,but, uh, it was almost worth it, but
the food was absolutely spectacular.
It was.
I was actually very happy that somebodycooked for me and cooked so carefully
(26:09):
for me, and, um, it was fantastic.
So, uh, cook for your friends.
You can make this.
them happy.
Okay, that's the episode of Cookingwith Bruce and Mark this week.
We appreciate your time with usand listening to us bang on about
Chinese food, whatever that meansin North America, and how we've
seen it change over the years.
And actually, it's an exciting change, andI look forward to other exciting changes.
(26:31):
I look forward to finding out theintricacies of Indonesian fare in
the months ahead as Bruce startsto explore Indonesian cuisine.
Until I look forward to that somuch because it's just fun to
explore food in various ways.
Bruce (26:46):
And every week we tell you what's making us happy in food here
on Cooking with Bruce and Mark.
So go to our Facebook group, alsocalled Cooking with Bruce and Mark,
and every week I post a question.
What's making you happy in food this week?
Please answer it because we want toknow what is making you happy in food
this week here on Cooking with Bruce
and
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