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Tea being poured in a Beijing restaurant
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Check the local press for details of cooking classes
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Beijing duck The
best-known dish in north Chinese cuisine. The duck, a local Beijing
variety, is dried and brushed with a sweet marinade before being roasted
over fragrant wood chips. It is carved by the chef and eaten wrapped in
pancakes with slivered scallions (spring onions) and cucumber.
Beijing duck
Hotpot Introduced
to Beijing in the 13th century by the invading Mongols, hotpot is a
much-loved staple. Literally hundreds of restaurants across the city
sell nothing else but. It’s a great group dish, with everybody sat
around a large bubbling pot of broth dropping in their own shavings of
meat, noodles, and vegetables to cook.
Hotpot
Zha jiang mian The
name means “clanging dish noodles” – like hot pot, ingredients are
added at the table to a central tureen of noodles, and the bowls are
loudly clanged together as each dish goes in, hence the name. Jiaozi The traditional Beijing dumplings are filled with pork, bai cai (Chinese leaf), and ginger but, in fact, fillings are endless. You can find jiaozi at snack shops all over the city. They are also sold on the street, served from a giant hot plate over a brazier.
Dumplings
Thousand-year-old eggs These
are raw duck eggs that have been put into mud, chalk and ammonia and
left, not for a thousand years, but more like two weeks. When retrieved,
the egg is steamed or hard-boiled: the white has turned a
greenish-black. The eggs are cut up and sprinkled with soy sauce and
sesame oil. Lao mian Watching a cook make lao mian
(hand-pulled noodles) is almost as enjoyable as eating them. First the
dough is stretched and then swung like a skipping rope, so that it
becomes plaited. The process is repeated until the strands of dough are
as thin as string. Lamb and scallions Scallions
(spring onions) are a common Beijing ingredient and in this dish they
are rapidly stir-fried along with sliced lamb, garlic, and a sweet-bean
paste.
Lamb and scallions
Sweet and sour carp Beijing
cooking is heavily influenced by the cuisine of Shandong Province,
generally regarded as the oldest and best in China. Sweet and sour carp
is a quintessential Shandong dish traditionally made with fish from the
Yellow River.
Sweet and sour carp
Drunken empress chicken Supposedly
named after Yang Guifei, an imperial concubine overly fond of her
alcohol. The dish is prepared using Chinese wine and is served cold. Stir-fried kidney flowers These
are actually pork kidneys cut in a criss-cross fashion and stir-fried,
during which they open out like “flowers”. The kidneys are typically
prepared with bamboo shoots, water chestnuts, and edible black fungus (a
sort of mushroom).
Top 10 Beijing Street Foods
Lu da gun’r Literally “donkeys rolling in dirt”: sweet red-bean paste in a rice dough dusted with peanut powder. Jian bing Chinese crêpe. Often sold off the back of tricycles and a typical Beijing breakfast. Shao bing Hot bread roll sometimes filled with a fried egg and often sprinkled with aniseed for flavoring. Tang chao lizi Chestnuts, roasted in sugar and hot sand and served in a paper bag. A seasonal snack appearing in autumn. Tang hu lu A kabob of candied hawthorn berries. Chuan’r In any area with lots of bars and clubs you’ll find street vendors selling chuan’r (kabobs). They cost just a few yuan per skewer. Baozi These
delicious steamed dumplings are cooked in bamboo baskets. Typical
fillings include pork, chicken, beef, or vegetables and tofu. Rou bing Cooked bread filled with finely chopped and spiced pork. A variant is rou jiamo, which is a bun filled with diced lamb. You tiao Deep-fried dough sticks, often dipped in warm congee (a rice porridge). Hong shu A winter specialty, these are baked sweet potatoes, often heated in ovens made from oil drums.
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