Food city area

Cultural Chop Suey

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid2c3TFSqS_FlsTcMbaS5FO9JHaWMGP6g5GUPVjlXdb8kY5kuCxJoBItb7aB_vag4Pz0Ugz8FF_OnZuUKYQZYPoVL2d7eOCrE2tBbpka9FzD_5_b1qRt5ZpMuCywZHSxS1QENtVMH_nEgM/s1600/hopper-chop-suey-1929.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5458163699573252738" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid2c3TFSqS_FlsTcMbaS5FO9JHaWMGP6g5GUPVjlXdb8kY5kuCxJoBItb7aB_vag4Pz0Ugz8FF_OnZuUKYQZYPoVL2d7eOCrE2tBbpka9FzD_5_b1qRt5ZpMuCywZHSxS1QENtVMH_nEgM/s400/hopper-chop-suey-1929.jpg" style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 340px;" /></a>In writing my recent lecture titled "Who won the war between gefilte fish and chop suey?" I learned just how much of an icon chop suey once was in America.<br /><br />For over a century, "chop suey" was synonymous with Chinese food. A Chop  Suey House meant a Chinese restaurant. Other dishes were there for the adventurous diners, but most Americans ate chop suey or chow mein. And maybe soup or an egg roll.<br /><br />This was the case by the 1890s when Chinese food and all things Chinese became very popular. It continued through the 1920s as chop suey restaurants opened from  coast to coast. In the 1940s with China an ally, chop suey was so mainstream that it appeared in the US Army Cookbook. And it didn't end until the 1970s when regional Chinese food such as Hunan and Szechuan cuisine became more dominant.<br /><br />The details of this history are complex -- the claim that chop suey was invented in 1896 by a Chinese diplomat is an urban legend, as is the claim that it's a joke that Chinese cooks played on Americans. The dish is really a descendant of Cantonese home cooking as documented in the book <span style="font-style: italic;">Chop Suey</span> by Andrew Coe. More on that in a future post.<br /><br />Chop suey was so culturally embedded that it appeared in all kinds of popular culture. Hopper's picture "Chop Suey" (right/above) is an expression of the amazing popularity of Chop Suey restaurants.<br /><br />A number of popular songs of several eras from the jazz age to the present mention it as well. Here's a list of the chop suey songs I'm aware of:<br /><ul><li>"Cornet Chop Suey" by Louis Armstrong (1925) </li><li>"Who'll Chop Your Suey (When I'm Gone)" by Sidney Bechet, performed by Margaret Johnson (1923-1927)</li><li>"Chop Suey, Chow Mein" by Louis Prima (1953) </li><li>"Chop Suey" from Flower Drum Song (1959)</li><li>"Chop Suey" by The Ramones (original version, 1981)</li><li>"Chop Suey" on the album "Toxicity" by System Of A Down (2001, about drug addiction or suicide. It has been banned at various times. I  haven't actually heard it.)</li><li>... and incidentally, on the theme of Jews and Chinese restaurants is "Chinese Food On Christmas" by Brandon Walker (2007)<br /></li></ul>

Cultural Chop Suey

In writing my recent lecture titled "Who won the war between gefilte fish and chop suey?" I learned just how much of an icon chop suey once was in America.For over a century, "chop suey" was synonymous with Chinese food. A Chop Suey House meant a Chinese restaurant. Other dishes were there for the …

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09Apr2010

From today's New York Times Dining and Wine Section

Trends! Sometimes the papers say blogging is obsolete, replaced by some other social medium. Twitter, maybe -- those tiny brief recipes. Or maybe something I haven't heard of. Today in the Dining and Wine section, blogging is back. People who photograph their food. This doesn't mean I'm a trend: they are talking about people who photograph every bite they eat. I'm not sure if they write anything much about it; the implication is that it's more of an obsession than a writing exercise. Anyway, it's a trend:<br /><br /><h1><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/dining/07camera.html?ref=dining"> First the Camera, Then the Fork</a></h1> <h6 class="byline"> By KATE MURPHY         </h6>  <div class="ledePhoto"> <div class="image"> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/dining/07camera.html?ref=dining"><img alt="The blogger and food diarist Nora Sherman." border="0" height="260" src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/04/07/dining/07cameraspan-1/07camera_CA2-sfSpan.jpg" width="395" /></a> </div> <h6 class="credit">Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times (center);  photographs by Nora Sherman</h6></div>

From today's New York Times Dining and Wine Section

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07Apr2010

Happy Twinkie Day!

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivcTBiqVw6YfFt2PgTaqkxufgixoG6qIb5wdExK6kK-cgXRbkXXJfCjqpIYRg1ps7-Xi7eoZ6oTi9LemwJmYGyqG-M9DFZNT1bRRWlAHfuxCiG5bAml0Jr8rJSL5bQMWBjfHAncRXxWGJQ/s1600/twinkieday.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5457065926209672018" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivcTBiqVw6YfFt2PgTaqkxufgixoG6qIb5wdExK6kK-cgXRbkXXJfCjqpIYRg1ps7-Xi7eoZ6oTi9LemwJmYGyqG-M9DFZNT1bRRWlAHfuxCiG5bAml0Jr8rJSL5bQMWBjfHAncRXxWGJQ/s320/twinkieday.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 198px;" /></a>Thanks to <a href="http://monthsofediblecelebrations.blogspot.com/2010/04/april-food-celebrations-week-two.html">Louise</a>, I'm aware that this is the day Twinkies were invented in 1930. The funny thing is that I remember thinking they were new when I first ate them as an elementary school child. That was long after 1930. Actually, I liked them. And I bought this package of 10 individually wrapped Twinkies today and ate my first one in years. Despite the mile-long list of industrial ingredients, it tasted pretty good. I assume the other 9 have an infinite shelf life.<br /><br />Update: after an hour, I decided to have a second Twinkie. It didn't taste as good as the first. All kinds of philosophical thoughts are crowding into my brain in response to this experience.

Happy Twinkie Day!

Thanks to Louise, I'm aware that this is the day Twinkies were invented in 1930. The funny thing is that I remember thinking they were new when I first ate them as an elementary school child. That was long after 1930. Actually, I liked them. And I bought this package of 10 individually wrapped Twink…

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06Apr2010

What did Mao Eat?

"Chairman Mao adored red-braised pork," Fuchsia Dunlop learned from the dictator's distant relative -- also named Mao. She found Chairman Mao's native village of Shaoshan to be full of such relatives. They still profit, she observed, from a lively tourist industry of Chinese visitors who revere the one-time leader.<br /><br />Mao's family home was carefully preserved: "no opportunity for communist propaganda is missed." Throughout Shaoshan's province of Hunan and the rest of China, Dunlop found a surprising view of Mao as "the last great leader of China.. ..They smile a little sadly when they reflect on his 'mistake,' the Cultural Revolution, but they forgive him: after all, doesn't everybody make mistakes?"<br /><br />Dunlop's book <span style="font-style: italic;">Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China</span> combines her experiences traveling, learning Chinese, discovering a wide range of Chinese regional cooking, and exploring villages and cities where Westerners rarely travel. In visiting Mao's home in Shaoshan, she focused on the kitchen  with meat-smoking racks over an old wood-burning range and an open fire with a blackened kettle suspended above it. Dunlop talked to a local official about Maoist cookery and collected the red-braised pork recipe with its seasoning of star anise, ginger, and chili. Another tourist might have had a different focus. Hers is always on food.<br /><br />To the end of his life, she found, Mao's eating habits were those of a Hunanese peasant. He told a Soviet envoy "that you couldn't be a revolutionary if you didn't eat chillies." He disliked Chinese haute cuisine, and preferred rustic dishes such as steamed bacon, smoked fish with chilli, bean curd, cabbage, wild vegetables, and "the coarse grains that were normally the last resort of the rural poor."<br /><br />Above all, Mao despised those who ate well and wasted food to show off their wealth or power while others went hungry. Throughout the book, Dunlop documents the destruction of Chinese traditional court and restaurant cooking during the Cultural Revolution. She also frequently mentions the mass starvation caused in 1958 by the Great Leap Forward. Peasants were forced into collectives and their cooking pots were melted down to make steel. A mass wave of self-deception and bad faith resulted in a famine during which at least thirty million people died. She often remarked on the lasting impact of these events on the food preferences and habits of people she met.<br /><br />Dunlop's ability to create a vivid image of history through her own experiences is amazing. Her tour of Mao's home town is only one of many chapters. As she apprenticed in restaurant kitchens, ate at home or in restaurants with many common and not-so-common people, and learned several regional languages, she learned food and culinary customs of China. The combination of food history, political and social history, and personal experience makes her book extremely readable.<br /><br />(Quotes about Mao: p. 175-179)

What did Mao Eat?

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04Apr2010

Mona Peepsa on the Web -- Happy Easter!

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiv8eRROMS7syPgdam8vSG4cJfRs8FjW-7C8AMlQEuE6686s3xQ2Pz-vYitwdNflV-6jzoH52CZPWnud8N2oqN6e9_GNFTbxl4yyrSZ9rIUSstvhwg34FnTUeoitPYqe4qRBKWUvf1V8iW/s1600/monapeepsa1.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5456268764938173378" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiv8eRROMS7syPgdam8vSG4cJfRs8FjW-7C8AMlQEuE6686s3xQ2Pz-vYitwdNflV-6jzoH52CZPWnud8N2oqN6e9_GNFTbxl4yyrSZ9rIUSstvhwg34FnTUeoitPYqe4qRBKWUvf1V8iW/s320/monapeepsa1.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 248px;" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTjgAe7xpOnhSLRbkPb4eJvxJfSVHDNoaaTT2dODnGI-2zfk7JxFCfFOZt1pPx5jgptShXO_ql2XMbyLiRYxe6067UEcyAJ9CT4lhSmveOunZAILtUojM6puc3dXnHDDq2q1PZPgfVD8tJ/s1600/monapeepsa2.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5456268759442902626" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTjgAe7xpOnhSLRbkPb4eJvxJfSVHDNoaaTT2dODnGI-2zfk7JxFCfFOZt1pPx5jgptShXO_ql2XMbyLiRYxe6067UEcyAJ9CT4lhSmveOunZAILtUojM6puc3dXnHDDq2q1PZPgfVD8tJ/s320/monapeepsa2.JPG" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtMjF-Wkgr3MiH6Rqjh2PmEh_3rxCq9tGXT4448vOo39NakoK-K2OQxZ3n_UJiwTq2EAbbwiYTVMO1cyMYOnOPYqXtTpBZs5R0MaC0imdJGCX4KT3WGlsy_WXU6nmyyhSRJReS0elApU1y/s1600/monapeepsa3.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5456268753747184962" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtMjF-Wkgr3MiH6Rqjh2PmEh_3rxCq9tGXT4448vOo39NakoK-K2OQxZ3n_UJiwTq2EAbbwiYTVMO1cyMYOnOPYqXtTpBZs5R0MaC0imdJGCX4KT3WGlsy_WXU6nmyyhSRJReS0elApU1y/s320/monapeepsa3.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" /></a><br />This is Peeps Day among other things, and Peeps belong on this blog because they are edible and some people even view them as food. So I searched the web for Mona Peepsa. Here are a few web gleanings. (There are also a lot of dead links to past Peeps contests.) I enjoy looking at the winners of the many contests, and seeing the creative titles of all the entries.

Mona Peepsa on the Web -- Happy Easter!

This is Peeps Day among other things, and Peeps belong on this blog because they are edible and some people even view them as food. So I searched the web for Mona Peepsa. Here are a few web gleanings. (There are also a lot of dead links to past Peeps contests.) I enjoy looking at the winners of the …

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