Mike's Chomping Cheesy Chinese Chow Challenge #10 - Xihongshi Chao Jidan

A food experimentalist’s work is never done. It may be a new year, but my role as a cheesy Chinese food visionary cannot be quelled. I decided to shake things up a bit; by taking a dish that any self-respecting foreigner or Chinese citizen would enjoy and then adding almond and apricot cream cheese.

The dish in question is none other than the simple yet delicious staple: stir-fried egg and tomato (西红柿炒鸡蛋). It is always a welcome addition to any meal. The scrambled egg is the perfect friend to the soft tomato chunks as they swim around in a tasty sauce.

The addition of soft cream cheese melting amongst the egg and tomato created a blissful moment with each bite. Stir-fried tomato and egg will always be a necessity for me when ordering Chinese food and I think that adding a cheeky portion of cheese will be a treat I repeat in the future.

Nom nom nom!

How Wechat Changed My Life

Wechat is a hugely popular messaging application in China. Not long after moving to Beijing in 2012, I discovered that many people use this app to communicate. According to its developer, Tencent, as of August 2015, there are over 600 million active users. Wechat, or Weixin (微信-micro message) provides features associated with similar messaging and social media platforms. You can send multimedia messages to other users and also post text, photographs and links on your “moments” for your contacts to view and comment on.

For the longest time, I used Wechat for the sole purpose of sending messages and sharing information with my friends. After some time, I heard whispers and rumours that there were more exciting Wechat features. But just like my feelings in relation to leprechauns and politicians, I wasn’t yet ready to discover more about these unknown entities. How was I to know that there was so much untapped potential in my mobile app, just waiting to be utilised…

…Things had to change. A couple of months ago I decided to bravely take the plunge and get a Chinese bank account. Previously, I only had a card with a Chinese branch of an international bank, which restricted me in terms of paying for things online. However, with a genuine Chinese bankcard, the world (or in this case, China) is my oyster.

Once I had become the proud owner of my very own Chinese bankcard, I swiftly linked it with my Wechat account. Yes – I could now explore those unchartered territories that I’d feared for far too long. I could embrace the majestic wonder of WECHAT WALLET. With this option at my disposal, I felt like after three years of living in the Middle Kingdom, I would finally be a truly accepted and functional member of society. All the cool kids were using Wechat Wallet. Now, all the cool kids and a Welsh foreigner could. It was as if I had been welcomed into a club of elite social media users. I believed I now qualified as a “real person” by my perhaps misguided perception of Chinese standards.

Wechat Wallet allows users to send money to other contacts. This is perfect if you owe a friend some money or need to share the bill for a meal and don’t have enough cash. Some shops and supermarkets now allow you to pay for goods using Wechat, with just a quick scan of a QR Code.

The biggest convenience that I have discovered is online shopping. Can’t find what you want at the local supermarket or mall? Not wanting to venture outside during a smoggy day? Then you can order almost anything online and have it delivered straight to your door or workplace. This can all be paid for using Wechat Wallet.

My most recent purchases include a laser egg that measures air pollution, a hotpot cooker for the cold winter months and a Chinese set of ‘The Walking Dead’ comics (行尸走肉) in the hope that they will inspire me to keep studying Chinese characters. These treats have certainly cheered me up when the pm2.5 pollution levels have reached over 600 outside.

Buying things from the comfort of my home while avoiding crowds and toxic smog is still a novelty for me. Has Wechat changed my life? Well perhaps the title of this post is a tad dramatic. But it has made buying things a lot easier. Now I’ll just have to work on my self-restraint. I wonder if I can buy a guidebook on how to do that…

Please note that Wechat is not sponsoring me for this blog post (although if you are reading this Tencent, I am happy to receive some kind of payment or praise).

Mike's Chomping Cheesy Chinese Chow Challenge #9 – Sweet Potato

Disclaimer: That is a sweet potato and not a Christmas poo...

The temperatures are plummeting and the Beijing skyline is full of feathery white snowflakes. The city may be transforming into a winter wonderland, but of course that will not stop me from continuing my cheesy Chinese chow challenge.

At this time of year, you would be foolish not to seize the opportunity of scoffing a baked sweet potato. There are a number street vendors selling these winter warmers all around Beijing. If you see someone standing next to a metal drum, then it’s likely they are baking a batch of sweet potatoes! Once you choose the potato you desire, the seller will weigh it and tell you the cost - but don't worry, you can buy a spud the size of your face and it will still be a pretty cheap snack.

Many happy customers can be seen gnawing on a freshly baked potato straight out of the serving bag. I decided to give my sweet potato a cheesy challenge upgrade. After I selected the most scrumptious-looking spud, I took it back to my apartment. I then sliced it open and added baked beans with grated cheese on top.

I was instantly transported back home to the UK, with memories of jacket potatoes, bonfire nights and cosy autumnal evenings flooding back in a delightful nostalgic daydream.

The baked beans and melting cheese were the perfect companions to the fluffy, warm potato. This is a seasonal treat that cannot be limited to just once a year. I feel confident that a cheesy baked bean sweet potato will be a regular item on my winter menu.

Mike's Chomping Cheesy Chinese Chow Challenge #8 – Harbin Kao Leng Mian

Recently, my work load has intensified. However, this has not kept me off the bustling streets of Beijing. If anything, being so busy has just increased my hunger and subsequently deepened my dedication to finding delicious Chinese street food and adorn it with tasty cheese.

Sometimes, the street sellers have to take zoom off on their little frying-snack-stalls-on-wheels (henceforth known as fry-mobiles) when there are police in the neighbourhood. But when the police are preoccupied with doing policey-type-things in other parts of the city, there's generally quite a gaggle of fry-mobiles that cluster around the subway station. This provides me with ample opportunities to select a new snack and combine it with dairy products in a controversial yet fulfilling experiment.

One of the many snack stalls on wheels

With the temperature getting cooler, I decided that this time I would opt for 哈尔滨烤冷面 (Harbin Kao Leng Mian)。This is a wide, flat noodle that looks very similar to a lasagne pasta sheet. It is then coated in cooking oil and fried with onions, coriander and slathered in a paste of your choice. It can be made with a spicy, savoury or even a sweet flavour. Once it has been fried, it will then get folded over and sliced into bite-size chunks. 

Once I'd bought my warm cup of kao leng mian, I took it back to the safety of my apartment where I added a fine cheddar. As I have found with other Chinese street snacks, grated cheese works so well with food that's been coated with chili. It cooled down the heat of the chili and the melted cheddar tasted great with the fried noodle (unlike when I've dabbled with parmesan cheese in the past). 

I decided that I would also add a healthy dollop of red onion chutney to the cheesy fried noodle concoction. Some people may say that this would make the meal far too oniony (especially people within close proximity to me after I finished eating it). However, I think that the onion chutney gave the fresh onions a wonderfully tangy boost and it wasn't too overpowering. 

I am already plotting my next Chinese Chow Challenge...stay tuned!

Mike's Chomping Cheesy Chinese Chow Challenge #6 – Shou Zhua Bing

Do not be alarmed. My cartoon picture for this blog post does make the Shou Zhua Bing (手抓饼) look like a deranged, evil clown with a skin problem. But I can assure you that the delectable shou zhua bing is one of my favourite street food snacks. Originally from Taiwan, the shou zhua bing is a soft and chewy pancake yet also crispy and flaky in all the right places.

There is usually a shou zhua bing vendor loitering outside my local subway station, making it a tasty and convenient pit stop before getting home. It should not be confused with the Ji Dan Guan Bing (鸡蛋灌饼) which is more commonly eaten as a breakfast wrap. Perhaps that will be a cheesy challenge for the future.

Once the shou zhua bing is heated and grilled, there are a number of ingredients that can be added before it gets wrapped and handed to you (inside a small handy bag in a vain attempt to stop the oil and other ingredients coating your hands). I decided to have an egg, chicken, lettuce and a ketchup-like sauce added to my bing (my Chinese teacher later explained to me that I should avoid choosing cheap meat in the future as it’s probably not a healthy option, so from now on it will probably be a vegetarian snack in the future).

On this particular momentously cutting-edge day I decided to embrace my inner-Blumenthal and add a new culinary masterpiece to my trailblazing cheesy challenge. I could have taken the easy route of grating cheese in my wrap. But grated cheese was already a successful pairing with my jian bing experiment. This time I wanted to be radical and revolutionise my shou zhua bing experience. I added actual slices of cheddar to my bing, before returning it to it’s rightful tortilla-esque wrap shape. Yes you read that correctly. I ADDED SLICED CHEDDAR.

It is difficult to express in words how wonderful this cheesy pancake encounter was. I suddenly felt overwhelmed by the taste sensation yet devastatingly desolate for people that will forever be eating cheese-less shou zhua bings. I almost ran back to the street vendor and slapped him with the remaining block of mature cheddar in the futile hope that he would see the future: cheesy bings.  Luckily, I calmed down and decided to get my priorities in check – I had to finish this cheesy shou zhua bing immediately before discussing it with others.

For now, I will keep this amazing discovery to myself (and anyone else lucky enough to stumble across this blog post. You’re welcome).

Gần đây tôi đã ăn shǒu zhuā bǐng và phô mai dày. Nó rất đậm đà! Nó có vị ngon đấy~