It seems like American chip flavors just keep getting crazier, with each trip to the grocery store yielding a rogue’s gallery of strange new monstrosities. But this craziness is also circumscribed, pushed toward ever more extreme, overdriven concoctions, mash-ups and combinations, as well as eerily faithful reenactments of foods that have no business existing as chips. On the fast-food side of this equation, Pizza Hut has recently launched the latest attempt at challenging the Doritos Locos Taco. This hulking abomination expands the humble Cheez-It to mammoth proportions. A Cheez-It is obviously not a chip, but it's pizza-fied offspring (the end-result of years of desperate promiscuity by Sunshine, a company that needs to realize the inherent perfection of its star product and stick with it) is so wrongheaded, and so representative of the grotesquerie which defines the current state of processed food culture, that I would be remiss not to mention it. I should also mention that Extra Toasty Cheez-Its are a godsend, and almost singlehandedly balance out the damage inflicted by the last 15 years of lab-spawned, misbegotten oddities.
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Not a still, but too good to ignore (or leave unanimated). Jackie Chan's bumbling private eye finds his lust competing with his hunger, Tex Avery style, in Wong Jing's City Hunter (1993)
It took over a year and more than a few trips to different Indian supermarkets, but I’ve finally (and inadvertently) found the answer to the Ching’s Secret Mystery. My original guess, that this was all some kind of reference to a Bollywood character that I was simply not grasping, ended up being not too far off. In fact, Steampunk Hat Man and the man seen below are variations on the same persona - Ranveer Ching - an invented spokesman (played, appropriately, by Bollywood star Ranveer Singh), who’s anchored a series of gigantic, cinematic commercials chronicling his gymnastic proclivity for Instant Indo-Chinese fusion. Ching’s latest outing (helmed by acclaimed director Rohit Shetty, and reputedly the most expensive advertisement in Indian history) finds him parading around a post-apocalyptic landscape as a Mad Max-esque hero, in such elaborate form that my Indian friend had assumed, from passing familiarity with the commercial, that it was a clip from a full-fledged movie. Look below for the blockbuster advertisement, as well as its predecessor, in which we’re finally able to glimpse the equally ridiculous hair-do hiding beneath that asinine hat. China is a big place, one whose seemingly infinite variety of regional sub-cuisines is further complicated by hastening modernization and circuitous internal emigration. I’m still nowhere near finished working through the ever-expanding options offered at Chinese restaurants in New York, and the growing infusion of Northern and Western immigrants into the city’s composite cuisine only makes attempting to do so more of a fool’s errand. There’s also the additional difficulty that, even if something appears to be unavailable in Flushing or Sunset Park, it may just be under-reported (no one can check every menu, especially when some aren’t even entirely in English) or operating under a different name, which I suspect may be the case with the exotic delicacy sometimes known as Golden Sand. I was put on to this stuff by Carolyn Phillips’ fantastic Madame Huang’s Kitchen; in short, it’s a rich combination of salted egg yolks, garlic and onion, which get wok fried, then joined in the pan by any variety of edible matter, usually vegetables or seafood.
Beyond warily eyeing them during their bi-seasonal autumn/winter appearance at the borders of the supermarket fruit section, I’ve never really known what to do with the persimmon, a fruit that seems firmly (if not insistently) Asian in character. Finally, this year, emboldened by a recipe that provided a method for synthesizing these mysterious orange globes into bread form, I picked up half a dozen in Chinatown, where stores seem to be especially bountiful during the fall season. Here I disabused myself of a long-time misconception - that persimmons are mushy and/or pulpy. Maybe this has something to do with their offhand resemblance to a tomato, or a since-forgotten encounter with an overripe persimmon on a store shelf, but the ones I purchased were actually hard, with a fibrous inside that in some ways resembled a pear. Even after brown-bagging these guys for two weeks they stayed hard, and I was eventually forced to unceremoniously mulch out the semi-soft meat inside with a spoon.
I’ve also since learned that persimmons are not exclusively Asian, despite the majority of production occurring there, with the Japanese ‘kaki’ variant being the source of the main crop produced for global consumption. These are generally split into two categories, the rounder fuyu (which I purchased) and the heart-shaped, more-bitter hachiya, which requires a bit more massaging (and/or ripening) to get to an edible state. These widely available versions, as is often the case, are only the tip of the iceberg. There’s also the legendary date plum, one of the first fruits cultivated by humans and a favorite of the ancient Greeks, the Texas/Mexican persimmon, the charred-looking chocolate persimmon, and the velvety Filipino mabolo. Last but not least is the American persimmon, which grows wild across the Eastern United States, originally cultivated by Native American tribes. These are evidently quite bitter, and eating them before they’re ripe can lead to a coagulated mass of acids and food known as a bezoar, a nasty condition (do not Google image search this, especially if you’re planning on eating in the next twelve hours) that wreaks the most havoc in animals; humans can usually break them down through the nifty trick of drinking cola. With an appearance that sits somewhere between root and poop, the bezoar can also be polished into jewelry; Queen Elizabeth I had one in her crown jewels, cast in gold and apparently given as a gift from noted Renaissance Man John Dee. This gift likely had something to do with the bezoar’s reputation as a means of protecting against poisoning. All this from a fruit that seemed pretty much worthless at first glance. For every modern food craze, there’s some sort of historical antecedent. So while slurping down almond milk seems like a decidedly contemporary (and possibly environmentally deleterious trend, the practice actually has a long history, stretching back to the dark, dairy-deprived days of the Middle Ages and beyond. In a time before refrigeration and canning, when you needed to own a cow or live in close proximity to one to enjoy the benefits of lactose, plant milks served more than a niche purpose.
Bird’s Nest gets a lot of attention as one of those fundamentally bizarre foods, perfectly demonstrating the eccentricities of the Chinese palate. Produced from the massed saliva of tiny cave swifts, it’s prized for its supposed health proprieties_, textural qualities and the inherent difficulty of procuring these little prizes. The latter makes this one of the most expensive foods on earth (retailing at upwards of 2k per kg), although the old, dangerous method of scaling cliff faces to pluck nests from gaps in the rock has mostly disappeared, largely due to the accompanying devastation of swiftlet populations. The nests are now harvested in specially built birdhouse complexes dotted throughout Southeast Asia (see here for more info and a fabulous headline), but the high price remains part of the prestige attraction and has thus held. This leaves lots of room for artificial bird’s nest flavoring, which might not pass muster in the famous soup, but works as part of handy imitation beverage. Genuine bird’s nest drinks do exist, and may come with better packaging and real-deal spittle, but the imitation, purchased for $1.50 from a Chinese supermarket, will do in a pinch. This version employs “artificial bird’s nest flavoring,” in addition to floating flecks of white fungus, which I guess cover for the missing textural consistency of the actual nests. Produced in Thailand, which seems to have recently caught the bug in terms of bird’s nest production and consumption, the can also boasts a bevy of beautiful birds, darting through the air with the stern efficiency of military aircraft. The golden sun, cresting above the outline of a white cloud, is also a nice touch.
A potentially exciting product, purchased over a year ago from the cavernous J Mart inside Flushing’s New Word Mall, then cruelly consigned to the forgotten snacks limbo of my kitchen cabinet. By the time I’d opened the box the spun sugar bundles inside had desiccated into a foul-tasting saccharine powder. This leaves me capable of only waxing theoretically on this Chinese treat, threaded into shaggy frosted wheat style bundles that resemble psychedelic haystacks. I imagine it’s a portable rendition of Dragon’s Beard candy, a sweet which predates cotton candy (and whose Wikipedia entry notes its short shelf life) but can’t say whether the ‘must’ refers to the flavor (grape?) or some aspect of its preparation. The packaging strikes an odd balance between food-focused directness on the right half, old-fashioned street-market populism on the left, with a circular expansion on the royal purple theme. As the old saying goes: ashes to ashes, Dragon Must to dust.
In 1968 China received the gift of a case of mangoes from visiting Pakistani foreign minister Mian Arshad Hussain. Normally, this wouldn’t have been a big deal. Gift-giving is endemic to Chinese guest culture, and while the fruit was unfamiliar to many Beijing residents, it’s also native to the southern part of the country, which is the world’s second-largest producer of mangoes. Yet, as described in this article by Ben Marks, Mao’s decision to send off the mangoes as a gift to his rabid student supporters sparked a nationwide sensation. Emblazoned on plates, pencil boxes and countless other mementos, the famous fruits usurped the peach as the national symbol for vitality and life, wax-cast replicas circulating as symbolic tokens. Now, two years after first opening in Zurich, this exhibit has rolled around to New York, where it’s being exhibited at the China Institute on 65th street, allowing visitors to feast their eyes on another historical instance of mango madness. Below, for complementary listening material, you'll find Claude Channes' "Mao Mao," as featured in Jean-Luc Godard's La Chinoise. Few foods are as perfect for fusion as sandwiches, which whether in Dagwood monumental style or miniature snack size allow for a variety of differing ingredients to share one bready meeting place. Over the span of one week I consumed four fusion-oriented sandwiches, prepared with varying degrees of success: 1 - Paneer Achari Tikki / Polenta / Orange Tomatoes / Cilantro / Tamarind & Date Chutney: A leftover serving of these delectable cheese kebabs paved the way for a vaguely Indian-themed sandwich, using the ubiquitous tamarind date chutney (familiar as part of the omnipresent trio of condiments offered at Indian restaurants), also available in bottle form. A previous attempt at haphazardly pairing lamb shami kebab with polenta having proven successful, I embarked on the larger scale effort of mixing mild corn pap with Subcontinental flavors, fresh herbs and cherry tomatoes. The result was possibly the most successful of these four sandwiches, and also the only photograph taken under ideal circumstances. Fair warning that the backdrop will only grow more rumpled, and the staging more haphazard, as we continue.
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The coded language of snacks, sandwiches and seasonings, in NYC and beyond.
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