Nostalgic food installment 2 - jerky.
If you’re used to North American beef jerky, you might be a fan of Big John’s. I am. I just ordered 4 lbs of it (4 lbs is A LOT of jerky, btw. $60 CDN worth, to be precise.) off their website, and once again I’m reminded of the differences. They might both be called jerkey, but jerkey gotten in Chinatown is completely different from something you get out of Dominion. Or Costco.
NA jerkey is often "hickory smoked" and additionally flavoured with spices. Chinese beef jerkey is thinner, marinated, air/heat dried, and then, uh, covered in grease. I’m beginning to see a trend here. Needless to say, Chinese beef jerky is higher in fat and sugar - it’s marinated in soy sauce, honey, and fresh garlic and pepper - but tastes infinitely better.
Here’s another reason to make a trip to Chinatown. Beef jerky. Maybe I’ll pick up some dried octopus strips and spicy fish sticks too…
June 6th, 2006 at 6:45 pm
Have you ever had the chinese beef / pork jerky from the place near Fraser and 26th Avenue? Bee something or another. Apparently it’s quite popular with the Chinese, not only in Vancouver but across Canada!
June 7th, 2006 at 4:21 pm
Here in the US, we blockheads go with the “jerky” spelling.
I agree, I prefer Chinese ngo yuk gan over its Western cousin.
Have you tried pemmican?
Come to think of it, I remember our Cantonese snacks being predominantly salty or savory. Salted dried plums, salted ginger, salted olives.
As a one-year-old dying of thirst in Hong Kong, I begged for water and got thick opaque black tea.
It’s a miracle any of us achieved adulthood.
June 8th, 2006 at 12:21 pm
Weird. I remember HK snacks as sugary. Sweet ginger, sweet dried coconut, sugared nuts for New Year’s, sweet popcorn at the theatre. Sweet yam baked on stones in stalls.
Pemmican is ick. Well, for taste anyway. I’m sure if I go camping a lot I could learn to like it.
June 9th, 2006 at 2:25 am
Bless you, you clearly live in happier times. Don’t forget that I am several centuries older than you.
Grandfather (who lived to 102, may he rest in peace) resided in Wong Nai Chung.
I recall the red lacquer box in the parlor had compartments for that sweet crystallized ginger and sweet coconut, but they were for adults (and company, at that) and not the likes of us.
When I was a boy, and dinosaurs ruled the earth, chocolate had apparently not yet been discovered. At least the kind that wouldn’t melt in Hong Kong.
As they had five sons and eight daughters and I was one of umpty-gazillion grandchildren, I suppose we were lucky to get even the salty olives and the salty red ginger.
Camping?!? If I can’t get my newspaper, drinkable coffee and decent food, I don’t thkn so.
Not for all the pemmican in the world, dearest Sally…
June 9th, 2006 at 2:21 pm
whaaaaaa…
pemmican… cool. i ony know it from reading books…
it’s native american right?
dried jerky that they powder up and mix with fat… um, buffalo… before anyway?
wow… wonder what that tastes like….
oh, here’s a question for anyone who comes along….
WHAT THE STRANGEST (as opposed to “normal” standards) FOOD YOU’VE EVER TASTED OR WANT TO OR WILL NEVER EAT…?
i’d really like to try snake.
June 9th, 2006 at 7:06 pm
In Asia, snake is not uncommon and considered a powerful male restorative.
In the US, rattlesnake can be had in stew and ordered online.
I don’t speak Spanish, so my employers sent me to Mexico. In the cafe, I asked what we were having.
Marco: “Albondigas”
Me: “What’s that?”
Marco: “Ball meat.”
Me: “WHAT?”
Marco: “Sorry, meat ball. Tonight at dinner, I order some especial appetizer for you…”
That night we had creadillas (which are Rocky Mountain oysters) and machitos (the other part).
Next day they fed me grasshoppers.
It soon got to be, “Let’s see what chinito will eat next!”
June 10th, 2006 at 4:13 am
Since you like to read and cook, had you read a novel entitled “Eat Cake” by Jeanne Ray?
June 12th, 2006 at 10:30 am
Gerry/ Yup. I was a “favorite” (aka spoiled rotten) grand-daughter, so I got every snack imaginable.
Red seeds, black seeds, sweet beans, coconut - everything.
M&M’s didn’t melt when I was a kid - until you drop one in your mouth and realize the inside is liquified. EW. Damn 40 celcius weather.
Jamie: weirdest? Water beetles. Snake tastes like dense chicken. Like frog legs.
Hoteik/ Nope. Is it good? For the past year I’ve been going through the Discworld series, and now I’m reading Walter Jon William’s Dread Empire’s Fall series.
June 12th, 2006 at 2:33 pm
Sally, I am confident that you were only fulfilling the exacting terms of your job description in being spoilt rotten as the favo(u)rite you continue to be. The last time I was in Hong Kong was 1977, and M&Ms were still hit-or-miss if I correctly remember. I think I did share a bag of dried liquorice salted plums with a classmate for the flight back to the US.
Have you ever read Margaret Visser’s Much Depends Upon Dinner (MacMillan, 1988) or A Zee’s Swallowing Clouds?
June 14th, 2006 at 12:23 pm
Dried salted (sort of sugared) plums. Mmmm. (Do you mean the sour kind?)
Have read neither of those books. :/ Just to let you know - I’m very much a sci-fi/fantasy/classics/graphic novels/random non-fiction sort of person.
June 15th, 2006 at 3:49 am
Even so, I can still taste them. Red (no doubt highly toxic food colo[u]ring), crystals of sugar and salt crowding their moist surfaces.
Stop, you are making me all hot.
Most impressive reading tastes as well, I note your Philip K. Dick blurb with great pleasure and slight ruefulness.
“Grand-Daddy?”
I remember when “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” was new.
What in the heck does that make me? And my close personal friend, Jules Verne?
Do you know Robert L. Fish?
I liked Keith Laumer, and understand his Retief has been done as a graphic novel, or as those of my generation call them “Comic Book.”
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get a Woolly Mammoth for breakfast. “Grand Daddy!”
You know how to hurt a fellow.
June 15th, 2006 at 11:40 am
I AM 25, you know. Now, by the calculation that I plan to be a mom in the (very) near future, and my future child decides to have a child just a bit earlier, I’d be a grand-mammy at your age. Easily. (It’d be fun!)
I’d probably have to work at it though.
I consider Alan Moore and Frank Miller, as well as Gaiman, graphic novel writers, as opposed to, say, X-men, which are comic books. Minor distinction - lower production costs with better plots.
Hvaen’t read fish/Laumer. But in other news, I picked up Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles in a little bookshop (not a first edition, sadly) in a small town a few weeks back and I think I’m in love.
June 15th, 2006 at 1:58 pm
Mathematically correct. My cousin is 5 years younger than I, and a Great-Grandmother.
I’d probably enjoy my Grand-Daddyhood much more than my 3 daughters the Motherhood assignment.
Permit me: Harlan Ellison, Roger Zelazny, E E Smith, Harry Harrison.
Do you know the gekiga 子連れ狼 Kozure Ōkami “Lone Wolf and Cub” by Koike Kazuo and Kojima Goseki? I think the publisher of the reprint series modestly calls it “the best manga of all time.”
The series and the films made me ‘fraidy-scared, and I loved every bit.
July 25th, 2006 at 7:39 am
True friends are the people that are there for you unconditionally.
They are the people that never question you and support you no
matter what the circumstances are. They are the people worth
living for.. and thank you, you are one of them…and giving is the
secret of a healthy life.
Not necessarily money, but whatever
a person has of encouragement,
sympathy and understanding…
July 25th, 2006 at 7:40 am
on life we seldomfind a true person and
if you ever find onehold on and never let go
value that person coz it lifeworth