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Re: Bricks & stuff
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Re: Bricks & stuff
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Re: Bricks & stuff
Cool, that works great thanks Oz, and hope you had a pizza for Oztralia day the other day mate!
Bunch of your countrymen work over here with me. Good blokes all
CheersComment
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Re: Bricks & stuff
Cool, that works great thanks Oz, and hope you had a pizza for Oztralia day the other day mate!
Bunch of your countrymen work over here with me. Good blokes all
CheersComment
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Re: Bricks & stuff
Filthy,
Thanks for (re-keying) the summary on your Chinese oven observations. I think you're absolutely correct: if there had been any history of masonry ovens many would still be around. Given the Chinese history of ancient glazed/fired cooking and ornate food storage/serving vessels, it is curious why ovens did not evolve there. According to Gavin Menzies in his book '1421', it took 600 acres of teak to build one of the mammoth ships that purportedly reached America in huge armadas well before Columbus. This would indicate not only vast areas of wooded resources for oven fuel, but also the skills and tools to harvest it.Comment
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Re: Bricks & stuff
Well they may have had the fuel just not the desire to go that route. Oven baking.
Their whole approach to cooking and eating differ from ours. Theirs is more in preparation I suppose.
Where our foods are generally prepared by a cook in "bulk" then put onto the table or your plates in such a fashion as the diner is then required to do the finishing work themselves. As in further cutting the meat or potato or whatever into a bite sized portion to eat therefore requiring the diner to have his own set of tools to do so, knife, fork, spoon.
For the Chinese and many other Asian cultures the cook does more prep work. rendering the meal all the way down to the correct size to be eaten. The diner then has no work to do, no need for a knife or a fork with which to hold it down while cutting. Only the simple chopsticks to pick it up and eat with.
I don't know why the oven would have never evolved here maybe it has something to do with this approach to cookingComment
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Re: Bricks & stuff
The other thing is Patience. The Chinese, and no I am not being racist I live here, work here and am married to a Chinese, they have no patience. Everything is now, they want it when the want it and they do not want to wait for it.
Cooking with a wok using very high heat is fast. The chopping and the prep can be done ahead of time but the actually cooking can be done very quickly. When the people want to eat they can be served fast.
Ovens on the other hand take a long time. Cooking/Roasting/Baking is a slow process. Pre-heating an oven, then the actual time it takes to roast a duck or turkey or whatever, takes a lot of time... Diners have to wait or the cooking has to start earlier.
I don't know but that is my take on it. I think the outlook on cooking styles owes a lot to ones cultural outlook on life.Comment
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Re: Bricks & stuff
There is one way of "Baking" that the Chinese have. There is a dish called Beggar's Chicken. This is one where the bird is covered in Mud before being stuck into the fire, the mud dries and hardens, the chicken cooks then after it is plucked from the fire the mud oven it was in cased in gets broken open and discarded.
The way I had it when I was in HangZhou was that the bird was enclosed in a paper bag before being enclosed in the mud.
Anyway, I guess that constitutes building your "clay oven" right around your bird on the spot. Still baking I suppose.Comment
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Re: Bricks & stuff
The mud-baked chicken is quite interesting! Kind of like an instant cloche only for fowl.
re: Chinese cooking styles, the common belief is that many regions of China had limited sources of cooking wood, so were forced to develop meals that could be quickly cooked in a wok, hence the bite-sized pieces of stir-fry that are easily negiotiated with chopsticks. No WFO's, long, slow roasts, nor leavened breads. Only last month did I learn that there is such a thing as Chinese baked sesame buns that can be filled with pork, shrimp, beans etc. The unique thing about these buns is that the dough is made with alternating layers of two distinct doughs: one made with oil, the other made with water. This results in a light, flakey bun that is quite different than the traditional steamed char siu bao. When I told the pretty Chinese woman (a new client of mine) that I was building a WFO, she went berserk and offered to buy from me as many of these as I could make.Comment
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Re: Bricks & stuff
Hey GF,
I am not familiar with that bread you mentioned. I may have seen it and forgotten about it tho.
What region is it from, any idea? The others you mention like Char siu bao my kid likes but I am not too fond of them. Actually, I suffer living here in Guangdong (old Canton). As I can not find much of anything appealing about Cantonese food. Steamed & tasteless being its most memorable qualities. Shanghainese, not much different.
Give me, DongBei, HuNan, SiChuan, LanZhou, XinJiang or many of the other regionals and I am happy. Spicier the better please!
Bake that lady some nice breads and you might have yourself a side business!Comment
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Re: Bricks & stuff
Brickie, I think there are other cultures doing that as well, also ones that bury the food with hot coals I've heard. Whatever works right!Comment
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Re: Bricks & stuff
Apparently gypsies in the united kingdom used to coat hedgehogs in mud before putting them into a fire to bake. Breaking the clay cover would remove the spines and hair. Not much meat on a hedgehog.
Unfortunately we don't have hedgehogs in Australia and I am pretty sure echidnas are protected so I will probably stick to pizza.Comment
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Re: Bricks & stuff
mmm hedgehog yummy. Pizza for me too tho pleaseComment
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Re: Bricks & stuff
FM,
I could not tell you where these 'flakey' buns may have originated from. I suspect that they may be an Americanized carryover from China. Yes, the breads served in Chinese restaurants here in southern california are commonly steamed. And I agree, the food styles from SiChuan, Fujian and Shanghai is easily my favorite.Comment
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