I recently returned from Wenchang, Hainan. The trip was to attend the Galaxy Forum to discuss Lunar development and space exploration.
We stayed at the Wyndham Grand Wenchang, which is not where Google Maps says it is, but rather just seaward of Qinglan Harbor. I very much enjoyed watching the fishing board going in and out each morning, and seeing the fishing nets on their poles in the water. Swimming in the bay is not recommended as the current is deceptive – much faster than it appears from land. You can tell by the difference in the engine sound as the boats run out or in with the current.
Image from Google Maps
Only two months before we arrived, a devastating typhoon had hit the island. It was amazing how resilient and strong the people of Hainan are. With help from the central government the power and communications grids were up and stable within two weeks of the devastation. Our hotel had hosted many of the electrical and telecommunications engineers and other workers who had come to help rebuild.
By the time our conference arrived, the hotel was in full operation, giving us a warm and gracious welcome and providing all the support we needed.
Farms that had been flattened had cleared small plots and were growing vegetables, the shrimp farms were coming back into operation, and the famous Hainan chickens were in the buffet line.
Chickens in the buffet line at the Wyndham Grand Wenchang. Photo by DL Yuen
Hainan chickens are more flavorful than most of what we find in American supermarkets. They spend more time outside scratching and eating fresh greens and bugs, scratching and running, so the meat has more “tooth,” is more firm, without being dry. The breed of chicken is more lean and slower growing, which means they take longer to raise to market, but they are certainly worth the wait!
The famous Hainan Chicken Rice is a classic Hainanese dish. Probably the easiest way to learn how to prepare it properly is with this video from Woks of Life.
We took a tour out to see the launch facility. Yes, Hainan is home to top-notch rochet launch sites! While out, we had afternoon tea. We were told the dishes were classic Hainan tea fare, but that we were getting a full day selection all in one sitting! Many of the goodies are usually served at breakfast, though they all certainly can be enjoyed throughout the day.
Afternoon tea in Hainan. No, you wouldn’t normally eat all of this at one sitting, but they wanted to show us favorite Hainanese goodies. Photo by DL Yuen
Apparently, there is a Great Butter Chicken Controversy complete with lawsuits and everything!
The grandsons of the two men who founded Moti Mahal, possibly the first restaurant where Indian butter chicken was served, are in a battle over which grandpa created the popular dish. The suit has been filed with a 2,752-page-long document. Story and recipe at this NPR page.
Geraldine’s Murgh Makhanii (Butter Chicken)
Ingredients
1 stewing hen
2 medium-sized onions, peeled and coarsely chopped
1 bulb garlic, peeled and coarsely chopped
Fresh ginger, about thumb sized, peeled and coarsely chopped
1 stick cinnamon, about 3 inches, broken into smaller pieces
Seeds from 6 green cardamom pods
8 whole cloves
1/2 tablespoon whole black peppercorns
2 bay leaves, about as long as your finger, crumbled
Dried kashmiri (or other favorite) peppers, crumbled, to taste (if you are not used to spicy food, start with one)
6 tablespoons sunflower or other vegetable oil
16 ounces (2 cups) tomato sauce
1 stick salted butter
Preparation
Remove then skin from the chicken, cut the bird into pieces, and bone it. (Save the bones for broth.) You can place the skin in a pan on the lowest possible setting and render it to add the oil to the dish. (The crispy skin is delicious lightly sprinkled with a little garlic salt!) Cut the meat into approximately 2″ cubes Pat dry and put aside.
In your blender, combine the onions, garlic, ginger, cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, peppercorns, bay, kashmiri peppers, and a tablespoon of water. Blend, adding water a little at a time, until the mix forms a smooth paste.
Heat the oil in a deep skillet, like a chicken frier. When very hot, add the chicken pieces and brown them quickly. You’ll want to add a few pieces at a time, brown, remove, and repeat to get them done properly. Add too many at a time and the steam will prevent proper browning.
When all the chicken is browned, turn heat to medium and add the spices paste. Cook the paste rather as you would a roux for about 5 minutes, scraping the bottom of the pot well to keep it from burning. Add the rendered chicken fat and half of the stick of butter. When it is well blended, add the tomato sauce, and water to just a touch thinner than desired consistency. Bring to a boil. As soon as it boils, turn the heat very low and simmer for 30 minutes. Stir often.
Add the chicken pieces and their juices to the sauce, bring it back to a boil, cover and simmer over very low heat for 30 minutes or so, until the chicken is tender but not falling apart. Stir gently every so often to prevent burning.
Cut thin pats off the remaining butter – as many as people who will be dining.
To serve, scoop hot jasmine rice into soup plates. Top the rice with the a pat of butter each. Scoop the butter chicken over the rice.
Cardamom powder and pods Image – Wikipedia
I learned a rather different version of butter chicken when I was traveling in Indonesia in the 1980s. My partner of the time, Rodrick, and I were somewhere in the hills and valleys above Ubud. I was hungry, and he was wanting to do rather more extreme hiking than I enjoyed, so I availed myself of a likely looking restaurant which had a chalkboard sign advertising butter chicken. I was settled into a comfy chair at a small table and ordered. About two hours later my chicken arrived with an apology. The boy who kills the chickens had gone home and they had to go fetch him before they could cook my lunch. It was a lovely setting, the chicken was delicious (and good exercise for my jaws!), and my correspondence was all caught up.
Here is the recipe, as best as I have been able to re-create it:
Leilehua’s Indonesian Village Restaurant Butter Chicken
1 Stewing hen
chili pepper
salt
1 pound salted butter
Skin the hen and render the skin in a deep skillet or chicken frier. It needs to have a heavy lit. You can put the butter in to melt along with it.
Cut the hen into frying pieces. Grind the chili pepper and salt together into a coarse blend. Roll the chicken parts in it.
Bring the temperature of the butter up and add the chicken. Be careful of splatters! When the chicken is golden and stops foaming, reduce heat as low as possible and add the heavy lid. Keep a good eye on it so the butter does not foam and boil over! Cook until tender.
Serve on rice. They did not present any side dishes. I didn’t know at the time that I was supposed to order them. And the chicken normally would have been served to four people or so. With the side dishes.
Keep the butter in the fridge to use in other dishes.
While we did not go to see a gamelon concert (we were traveling on a very minimal budget), we did have the privilege of listening to them in the evenings. I enjoyed very much listening to the sound as it drifted to us though the trees.
Looking for Christmas gifts? Books are always a great choice!
With the Chinese pirate Shek Yang (Zheng Yi Sao) going viral after books and movies included her, I thought it would be fun to do some recipes of her homeland. She probably was born in the Xinhui area, on the Tanjian River. Using modern transportation, her homeland is about an hour drive from Zhongshan, the homeland of my own Chinese ancestors.
“The stern of the boat held a basic kitchen, with a tiny brick stove and some wood and kindling. We had an iron pot for making the simplest “fish rice,” as well as an iron plate for frying fish and shrimp. . .
“The boat was only five or six meters long. My father and grandfather would take turns standing at the bow to pole the boat forward and cast nets. The middle of the boat was a “ship’s cabin” made from a bamboo canopy, with long wooden boards fixed along either side. These served as both benches and beds. Clothing and food were stored beneath the boards on one side, while fishing nets were piled on the other side, along with water tanks, miscellaneous fishing gear, and repair tools. Whenever the sun was out, the top of the canopy would be covered with all kinds of drying fish.
“My mother made cloth curtains for the two sides of the cabin, so that we could change and groom ourselves with more privacy and keep out some of the wind and rain. “
Because of the challenges of cooking onboard a boat, meals probably were very simple, using as little fuel, space, and working time as possible. It seems that different styles of jook and other soups were the mainstay. Once in the pot, they can be left to simmer over a bed of coals. Dishes that required more complicated cooking, such as baking and frying in oil, might be purchased from nearby communities, though the Tanka were not welcomed in the towns.
At the bottom of this article I have a jook recipe, and found a couple of nice videos to share. I’ll add more recipes as I find them, so please check back!
This pencil and ink sketch (at the Peabody Essex Museum) shows a scene of a woman poling her boat near Macao. She could easily be Shek Yang in her younger years.
Shek Yang probably was a descendant of the Baiyue, ethnic groups who inhabited the region for about 2,000 years before their tribes were assimilated into the expanding Han empire. The Book of Han describes various Yue tribes and says the peoples can be found from the regions of Kuaiji to Jiaozhi. They were described as having short hair, body tattoos, fine swords, and great naval prowess.
According to official Liu Zongyuan (Liou Tsung-yüan; 柳宗元; 773–819) of the Tang Dynasty, there were Tanka people settled in what are now Guangdong province and the Guangxi Zhang autonomous region.
A Tanka Boat Girl Chinese School of Art, 19th Century Shek Yang probably dressed much like this young woman.
By the time of Shek Yang, the late 18th century through early 19th century, many of the Yue descendants had been pushed to the rivers and oceans, displaced by the Han communities in Guangdong who called the earlier inhabitants “Tanka” or “boat people.” The term is now considered derogatory and many discourage its use. Nàamhóiyàn (People of the Southern Sea) or Séuiseuhngyàn (People Born on the Waters) are gaining in usage.
Today, the People Born on the Waters are facing changes from the environment, development, and society. I hope that they can navigate these new currents to live as they wish.
River Dwelling, Canton, Guangzhou, China John Thomson, 1869Auguste Borget sketch 1838 Shek Yang might have been born in a home similar to these. Land-based homes often were made from boats which had been pulled up out of the water, or the homes were constructed to be similar to a boat.
Unfortunately, many people are sharing turn-of-the-century photographs claiming that they are Shek Yang, and these images have nothing to do with her!
Though they should not be conflated, there are similarities between the Ainu and the Séuiseuhngyàn. Both are indigenous peoples, both were colonized and displaced, both are being severely impacted by environmental destruction.
You can learn about the Ainu people in this excellent documentary below by Dr. Kinko Ito, a professor of sociology at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock (UALR) in the United States. She conducted her research and many unstructured interviews in Hokkaido in 2011, 2012, and 2014. This ethnographic film features several Ainu people, and the interview topics include identity, marriage and family, human relations with non-Ainu Japanese, their history, and school and work experiences.
This image below also is not of Shek Yang. But the actress Crystal Yu is, indeed, lovely!
Shek Yang would have looked much more like this woman, below. Maybe I should make my own Shek Yang fan art?!
You can help support my research in global food and culture by becoming a patron of the Questing Feast Patreon page which continues to support the work and legacy of Geraldine Duncann.
Tom Johnson photograph of Tanka woman 1869
Tingzai Zhou艇仔粥 (Sampan Jook)
Tingzai Zhou is the modern spelling of the old-fashioned sampan jook I grew up with. This variety is also known as boater’s jook, boat congee, or any of several other names. Considered to have been developed by the Nàamhóiyàn of Lìzhī Wān (Lychee Bay) it’s a great one-pot meal. One pot meals that are easy to prepare, filling, and nutritious are important in the limited space of a boat! While my family is descended from the later Han inhabitants of the Zhongshan area, sampan jook became a popular dish throughout the Pearl River Delta.
Here is how my family prepares it:
If you don’t have an item, donʻt worry about it, just substitute something else that would taste good in the blend. This kind of cooking is not about following a specific recipe, but about adapting a basic recipe to what is available.
Rice (white or brown short grain)
Chicken carcass or pork bones
Chicken meat
Pork meat
Shrimp
Fish (I prefer a white flesh fish for this)
Water chestnut, slivered
Ginger, slivered
Scallion, shredded
Pi dan (hundred year egg), roughly chopped
Fried peanuts
Cook rice as you normally would. You will want about a half-cup of uncooked rice per person, plus one full cup. When we know we want to make jook, like when a storm is coming, we make lots of extra rice the night before.
For the main proteins, combined, you will want about a half-cup per person.
While the rice is cooking, or even the morning or night before, boil the chicken carcass and/or pork bones to create a broth. You want about 2 cups of broth per person. Strain all bones out of the broth.
When the rice is cooked, add it to the broth and cook just below a simmer. Long slow cooking to make a porridge about the consistency of split pea soup. These days, I do this in my slow cooker.
While the rice is cooking, prepare your other ingredients. I cut the pork, chicken, and fish into pieces about 1/2in by 1in or 2in. These are blanched to set and firm them. The fish, especially, will tend to fall apart in the jook if not set first. It will still be tasty, but there won’t be delicious chunks of fish to eat! Set them aside.
If the shrimp is small enough to pick up with chopsticks and eat conveniently, just shell, de-vein, and blanch them. If it is too big, then after cleaning, cut them into bite-sized pieces.
When the proteins are cooked, garnish the top with the remaining ingredients.
You can serve this in one big bowl with the garnishes already added, and people can scoop out what they want, or you can serve in individual bowls and people can add the garnishes they like.
Here is another way of preparing this hearty jook:
Youtiao 油條
Also known as yau char kway in Southern China and guǒzi in Northern China. It also has a multitude of other names throughout the dough-frying world!
For myself, I just buy them, so my advice on how to make them will not be the best. I guess I need to make them, though, as these days I cannot find anyone who sells them. I like this video series:
Cock a Leekie takes many forms in Scotland and is as much a part of the culture as single malt whisky, haggis, bagpipes and shortbread. I found this recipe in the records of the crofters village of Auchachenna, on the shores of Lock Gynn in Argylshire. In it’s original form this recipe probably dates from the 17th century since it mentions that if you could get them you might find the “New Virginia Patata,” preferable to neeps, (turnips). The original recipe calls for “…a venerable old cock who had outlived his usefulness in the barnyard and was too old for roasting…” Since you most likely don’t have a “…venerable old cock…” handy, you may of course use any chicken you find in your market.
2 or 2 strips of bacon, diced
1 large onion, diced
a small sprig each of thyme, rosemary, sage, and savory
1 chicken, cut up
1 large or 2 to 3 small, (depending on size) Leeks, chopped and well washed, including about 4 to 6 inches of the green tops
2 medium potatoes, peeled and diced
Stock, broth or bouillon, – (or canned commercial) *
1 cup cream
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
Salt and fresh coarse ground black pepper to taste
Place the bacon in a large heavy pot and gently sauté the bacon until it begins to release its fat. Do not allow to brown. Add the diced onion and herbs and continue to sauté until the onions are soft, pinkish and translucent. Add the chicken parts and lightly brown on all sides. Add the leeks and potatoes and cover all with water of stock. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to maintain a rapid simmer. Cover with a tight fitting lid and continue to cook until the meat is falling off the bone. Remove from the heat and leave sit until cool enough to handle. Remove the meat from the bones and dice. Set aside. Skim as much fat as possible from the broth. Return the chicken meat to the pot and stir in the cream. Cook only until all is hot through. Stir in the fresh parsley and season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve hot with Fresh Crusty Bread.
* Since most likely the only chicken you will be able to find will not be a “venerable old cock,” chances are it will not produce quite as favorable a stock as the old bird would have, therefore you may wish to give your stock a bit of help.
