Food from China: A Beijing Banquet

We're back! It's been a great couple of weeks for us travelling around China, and we've got some great pictures of the foods we ate to share with you. We didn't get any chance to cook, as YiRan's family were extremely generous hosts and wouldn't allow for anything other than serving us.

The first set here is from a big family get together we had with YiRan's family in Beijing. Family dining in China was a really cool experience - we had a private room with a giant round table in the middle. The table itself was basically an enormous lazy susan, upon which the staff brought in many, many dishes. As the table spins around, everyone just grabs what they're interested in from the center and puts it on their plates or eats directly. And this is all done with chopsticks of course.

The fish (above) was delicious. The insides are battered and fried and then placed back on the plate, and covered with a tangy sauce, actually quite similar to the sweet and sour sauce you get in American Chinese restaurants, but lighter, and more delicious. We just grabbed bits of it with our chopsticks and ate them directly. Divine. We did not eat the head, but it's edible.

This next dish is best described as shoe string french fries. Seriously. We're pretty sure it's potato based, but it could have been some other root. In any case, it's fried in oil that's been infused with chilis, so they've actually got a bit of a kick to them. These were one of Bryan's favorites.

While we're on the topic of potato-ey things, this was a mashed root. The root itself was kind of like a cross between yuca and potato. We'd eat it for breakfast, dipping it in sugar, but mashed up it was pretty good, especially topped with this raspberry jam.

You may have had Peking Duck before, but have you ever had it in Peking? That's not to be obnoxious, but actually because it's quite a bit different. The skin is much crispier and there's much less fat. In the background you can see the little wraps that you place the meat in, and top it with the sauce and the veggies for a delicious Peking Duck quasi-taco.... of sorts.

Chinese food includes a lot of pork, most notably, pork belly. This pot had braised pork belly which was probably the best version of the dish we'd ever had. The fat cap was luxuriously caramelized and the meat was super tender, all in a slightly sweet and tangy sauce.

Noodles are great. You may be familiar with "lo-mein" - one of Bryan's go to dishes prior to this trip - this isn't really like that. These clear vermicelli rice noodles in a spicy soya sauce with endives were a treat.

These noodles though, while the sauce was good, the texture was weird. YiRan liked them, but Bryan did not. The sauce had a cool peanut-y, almost satay like flavor.

We had a few soups that night as well, this one was the one we got a picture of. It was somewhat similar to egg-drop soup that you find at an American Chinese restaurant, but again, better. Very chicken-y, with tofu, and chives as well.

And lastly (well, there were actually quite a few more dishes, but we didn't get pictures of all of them), shrimp. Heads and tails were still on, so these were pretty fun to take apart. Perfectly cooked, steeped in a nice tangy sauce, quite good.

This was a really fun meal, and we got a great sampling of good, quality, local food. If anybody has been to China and knows the actual names of these dishes, please drop them in the comments!

The best thing (and one of our favorite things about China) was that each of these massive plates of delicious food was maybe 30 - 60 RMB. No more than$8 or $9 a plate. Amazing.

Stay tuned for photos - we'll be posting other dishes we had at different stops in China throughout the week!