It occurs to me that I haven’t really written anything yet about the food in Shanghai. It’s a big topic, much more than can be covered in a single post. It’s also still quite early in our exploration of the cuisine here. But, what the heck, here goes.
First some theory.
You may have heard that the Chinese organize their world around a set of five elements (or forces): water, wood, fire, earth, and metal. Each of these has a relationship with two others, “giving rise to” one, “controlling” the other. Some of the “gives rise to” relationships make perfect sense to me: water gives rise to wood, which gives rise to fire, which gives rise to earth (in the form of ash). Earth is then said to give rise to metal — and I guess I can sort of see that. But then metal supposedly gives rise to water, and they’ve definitely lost me there. Anyone who grew up in Southern California as I did knows for certain that our hard water gives rise to metal in the form of lime deposits! The chain of control is also partly unclear to my Western mind: I get that water controls fire, which controls metal, which controls wood. I guess I understand wood controlling earth — a bit. (But isn’t it the other way around, though? Bad soil can kill a tree; good soil can make it thrive.) But I don’t really comprehend earth controlling water. It seems completely reciprocal to me: the banks of a river channel the water’s flow, but the river will erode the banks, given time.
Anyhow, there are supposed to be five tastes for the Chinese: salty, sour, bitter, sweet, and spicy (or pungent). And these are supposed to line up with the five elements, like so:
- water ↔ salty
- wood ↔ sour
- fire ↔ bitter
- earth ↔ sweet
- metal ↔ spicy
The stereotype for the local Shanghai palate is that it has an appreciation for the salty and sweet tastes, and a dislike for spicy tastes. (The bitter and sour tastes don’t seem to figure in the stereotype.) In our experience, this is certainly true about salt. Some dishes we’ve had here are unbelievably salty. Perhaps not unpleasantly so, but enough to make one fear for one’s blood pressure. Many dishes are also very oily. When you shop in food markets, one thing you will notice right away is how oil is sold in large containers (4 liters, for example, a bit over a gallon, is typical). Perhaps it is the restaurants we have been choosing (which may be specializing in Hunan or Sichuan styles), but there is absolutely no shortage of picante food here. For our supper last night, we tried a restaurant around the corner from our apartment which had a sign in English claiming to serve Shanghai and Sichuan cuisine. We ordered two Sichuan dishes and one Shanghainese. That may have been too much. One of them had a huge amount of large chilis in it. They were pretty easy to pick around, and actually not as hot as they looked. The other used little red devils that were much hotter and much harder to avoid. But this may actually have had a healthy effect: I actually had a bit of a cold going into that meal. Today, it’s all but gone.
There are some local Shanghainese specialties that we have yet to try. And please be assured that we will try them. Eventually. One reason for mentioning them here is to help me make the point that there really doesn’t seem to be any limit to how unappealing the English term for a local specialty may be. Along these lines, I can cite two local specialties as good examples: hairy crab, and stinky (or sometimes smelly) tofu. On our visit to the vegetarian restaurant I mentioned a couple of posts ago (Vegetarian Life) we were struck by use of the term mud to describe a component of many of the dishes. We didn’t end up ordering any mud, so we don’t know if mud essentially equates to sauce, or paste, or something else.
Shanghai is known for its dumplings, both steamed and fried. We had a lunch last week out by Fudan University at a restaurant that specializes in them. We thoroughly enjoyed them (Miles is a special fan).
One of the most disappointing things I’ve had in my mouth is served at the Chinese breakfast that our apartment building (which also functions as a hotel) lays out. It is a kind of rice gruel called congee. Counter to the stereotype, this is made without a trace of salt. It tastes like water which has received a quick visit from a few grains of rice. It is pretty much without any redeeming value of any kind, social or otherwise. There are much better items available on the Chinese breakfast, thank goodness.
Something definitely in the category of “to be gotten used to” — Miles laughs at me because he’s been coming to China for 30 years or so and has long since become accustomed — is the screwy way that the Chinese will prepare chicken. I went alone to a restaurant while Miles was on his recent trip to Manila, and ordered “braised chicken” from the English menu. I wasn’t feeling particularly adventurous, and this sounded quite safe to me. Well, the chicken may have been braised, but by the time they served it to me any of that cooking heat was just a distant memory — it was actually served chilled. Whatever braising the chicken had been exposed to must have been very gentle, because the yellow skin on the outside looked precisely as it would if the chicken were still raw. Inside, it was plainly cooked, but the dark meat had a deep red color. I don’t know how it came by it. But the most striking thing is how the chicken was cut up for serving. It is for all the world as if they put the poor critter into a bread slicer. The array from left to right on the plate had the chicken’s decapitated head as the first slice, and its severed feet as the last, and 3/4-inch thick transverse slices from everywhere in between. This slicing method ensures that there are bones lurking in each and every slice. Don’t misunderstand — the chicken was very tasty. But lots of boning labor was required. I find now that this way of preparing and serving chicken is regarded as a delicacy in Shanghai. Hmm….
One thing I should mention before leaving this topic (at least for now) is how cheap food is here. If you are eating in an ordinary restaurant with a mostly Chinese clientele, you can dine sumptuously for anywhere from ¥35 to ¥50 per person (around $5 to $7.35). Add a bit more if you have a Tsingtao beer with your meal, though tea is cheap enough to be included in such a figure. At such prices, it is simply uneconomical to shop and cook for oneself. And, so far, despite having a modestly equipped kitchen in our apartment, we haven’t yet, not even once.
Time for lunch!
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