Chinese mountains are beautiful but you can’t eat them

Chef Li Peng talks to Shana Maria Verghis about chasing poultry, understanding Indian people, cuboid and baked noodles, the story of spring rolls, Beijing markets and more at a food promotion

If you run 500 metres after a chicken, you won’t easily want to part with it,” said Chef Li Peng from China, who is organising a Beijing food promotion at The Pavilion in Maurya Sheraton till November 27.

Chef Li Peng, who has a prominent funny bone, has been, “trying to understand the Indian people” before he explores their food in more detail. And one of his many observations is that, “Indians usually tend to throw away various parts of meat produce, like hens,” saying that, “we don’t eat wings, we don’t eat skin, we don’t eat the neck. In China, however, we don’t like to waste.”

Hence his comment earlier, about chasing after a chicken and not passing it over to anyone else.

There’s a practical and a geographical reason behind this: “When there are 10 people in a family, if you stick to, “I don’t like,” someone less fussy will eat the food.” The second aspect is,  “The Chinese tend to eat more meat in the diet, using vegetables to alleviate boredom with this protein source. Or if they are poor. Vegetarian items are usually there to enhance the tastiness of non-veg food.”

Moreover, he explained, in the north, where Beijing is located, there is shortage of vegetables. It is a beautiful country, ‘lots of beautiful mountains,’ we cooed, and Chef responded laconically, “Maybe good to look at. But you cannot eat mountains. So, especially in winter, people tend to stock meat.” Given an ultimatum, you may have no choice but chase chickens. Metaphorically that is. Modern Chinese are well-equipped, and don’t have to pant after poultry. Not in a metropolitan area, at least. In fact, like moderns elsewhere in the world, they too resort to quick fix processed items.

In the olden days, the women might have prepared handmade noodles and sauces. Now a lot of it is bought from supermarkets. Incidentally, a survey, or social commentator in India, had noted that our middle-class diet across the board, has become more non-veg, as incomes have increased.

The chef, working in India during the Beijing Olympics, was not so dismayed by shameful happenings of the Commonwealth Games that he didn’t want to come back.

By now he is somewhat familiar with some kinds of Indian food. “About the year 2002,” he said, “I sampled a lamb biryani at a restaurant in Beijing, but what they were actually giving me was mutton fried rice. By 2010, the quality of the Indian restaurants there had improved, and I’ve eaten some tasty food. I always say that in another 100 years there will no longer be any Chinese food, or Indian food or any kind specific to a country, because I imagine it will all be totally mixed, given the pace at which people are travelling.”

Beijing, like other cosmopolitan cities, is also a blend of various regional Chinese cuisines. Along with various world cuisines. But there are a few that are unique to the city, or have been localised. It has its street food, its pancakes, its hotpots and chop sueys. Despite not being near the coast, like Delhi, it sources fish from outside and chef said there’s a recipe for prawns tracing back to a ruler who ordered his fish from Tian Jin, about 170 km away. It probably passed down for popular consumption through various courtiers. “Older people,” also explained chef Peng,  “still get up to buy vegetables from the early morning markets. Most others nowadays, get their purchases from supermarkets.”

The Pavilion’s Beijing quarter, which is an extension of the restaurant’s regular buffet, features a seafood special menu on Wednesday, which was when we chanced to go there. The entrees have a spring roll that’s traditionally made in Beijing. “It’s signature look is that it is flat rather than round.” And our one had a filling of pokchoy, beans, sprouts, and tender peas.” Like Indians in early times,  Chinese rotate their meals according to seasons. We boasted to each other about how many seasons we each had — “Indians have only three, we have four,” “No, Indians have five, no seven, pre-monsoon, monsoon and post monsoon, in addition to the other four.” “Oh. But you will know better.”

Then chef shared how the spring roll  or ‘chun juan’, was originally called by its  name, because it was made during spring only, “with the tender, juicy, baby veggies.” Apparently the idea was to contrast moistness and water in vegetables with crispiness of wheat flour wrapping.

“And unlike Indians, the Chinese people,” Chef explained further, “often tend to fill  spring rolls with glass noodles, as it means you can avoid using cornflour. The glass noodles provide moisture and swell to capture vitamins and water in the vegetables. This can get lost if you fry it in cornflour.”

There are other innovations with food that are uniquely Chinese or Li Peng creations.

One of these is the cuboid noodle. A recipe he learnt from a senior chef. It is a tedious process of cubing the noodle after it has been rolled into a sheet. Chef said this, and his recipe for baked noodles, which involves baking the noodle base, wouldn’t be available anywhere else in India.

The other starter of Steamed Veg with Rice Crumb, also involves tough manual work. A mixture of Chinese herbs, Schezuan pepper, lotus roots and cauliflower along with rice powder, which is ground to a powder. The dish is steamed, yet done so carefully that the end product seems sauteed.

Chef was mulling over the fact that he’s put on weight, “Though I spent half of last year losing several kilos.” His grouse was that, “a healthy looking chef’s food you can trust better than thin one, but girls, they like men who look like chopsticks!” Totally oblivious to the future vision of weighing ourselves on bathroom scales, we dug into two large and curly Tiger Prawns that had been marinated in Chinese prawn oil.

And then subsequently into succulent grilled fish and poached fish, (off the Continental menu), to round it with a fabulous Lamb Shank, marinated in Chinese wine and herbs. “Indian lamb is very good. Better than Chinese. It’s very....lam...by,” he said to our sceptical remembrance of mutton curries where we were Sumo wrestling with the meat.

But he couldn’t understand why we insist on drowning everything in heavy spices. “I want to taste the chicken flavour in the chicken.” In China, the Yunan folk tend to add more chillies to their food.

He reminded that dimsums are South Chinese, from Hong Kong side. Beijing has a different kind. While there’s a transparent version of Tomyum flour and potato starch making it shine like glass.

He had been in the kitchen putting his staff through the strenuous art of creating wheat gluten.

The end result was like a small puri, except that instead it crumbling away, it remained elastic, and dipped into sauce, has a strange, interesting food texture like soaked sponge. Not that one would want to consume a soaked sponge, unless it was Good Friday and you were getting vinegar served up the way it was to Christ on the cross. But you get the general drift.