Why the Chinese Don't Count Calories (13 page)

Rice and millet porridge provide some of the most easily digested forms of nourishment. You can make your
zhou
more interesting by varying the ingredients, and you will add a vast range of nutrients to your diet at the same time. Millet, for instance, is a source of silica, which is good for the hair and nails and is not often found in the modern diet. Buckwheat contains rutin, which helps protect the heart, and barley provides calcium, copper, iodine, magnesium and potassium as well as many vitamins.

There is always the option of oatmeal if
zhou
is a little intimidating in the first instance. An alternative to cooking grains is the traditional Swiss method of soaking muesli overnight in water. All the nutrients of the wholegrain are retained and the flavour seeps out into the liquid to make a delicious juice, which is even tastier if enhanced with dried fruit, nuts and some desiccated coconut. There is no need to add milk; whole grains are packed with nutrients, especially when accompanied by fruits and nuts. The same cannot be said for the modern-day proprietary products that rely on the additional nutrients of milk and a large number of synthetically prepared added vitamins and minerals to allow them to make their nutrition claims. Modern breakfast cereals are simply an over-processed, over-packaged variation of the boiled grains that featured in traditional diets and are still eaten in China today. During my time in China I was very sad to see the breakfast cereal manufacturers move in with a vengeance. In
The Food
of China
, E. N. Anderson includes a survey of Western and Chinese foods used by Chinese immigrants who had been in the US for five years. 6 It shows that two-thirds of the families surveyed had adopted the breakfast cereal and milk habit, and indicates that dry cereals were the greatest Western influence on their diet after bread. The most important meal of the day is the one where there is the most time pressure, and so advertisers have spent millions convincing us of the benefits of ‘special breakfast foods’. The overall eating experience is not a particularly satisfying one, despite food manufacturers’ claims to the contrary, and all that salt and sugar can be habit-forming. Certainly my daily bowl of branflakes was the last vestige of my Western diet, and I used to enjoy a couple of pieces of wholemeal toast with honey and a banana, all washed down with a cup of good strong English tea. In Western terms these are pretty healthy options, and it is easier to form a habit than to break one. So I probably would have kept the whole idea of
zhou
on the back burner, limiting my intake to half a dozen bowls a year to humour Guo Gui Lan, had it not been made easily available to me and presented as a favourable option.

Make your own
zhou

The best grains for
zhou:
short grain white or brown rice • wild rice • millet • quinoa • cornmeal • Job’s tears (coix seed) • buckwheat • barley

Other ingredients you might like to add:
aduki beans • mung beans • split peas or lentils • sliced Shitake mushrooms • chopped sweet potato • sweetcorn (add just before serving) • Chinese dates (jujube) (see page 194) • wolfberries (sometimes sold as gouji berries) (see page 194) • dried apricots • prunes

Toppings (for savoury
zhou
):
chopped spring onion • minced coriander • chilli sauce • soy or fish sauce • sesame oil • chopped or boiled peanuts, pinenuts, walnuts • sprouted seeds (allow to soften) • fine slivers of ginger

We were having breakfast at the Riverside Hotel in Hoi An, a former Vietnamese trading port famous for its mixture of cultural influences. There is excellent French bread available on the streets of Vietnam, but it had not reached our breakfast buffet – the yellow-looking buns actually tasted more like a processed cake. There was some dubious looking ‘toast’, but I knew that the French had never worked that one out for themselves so there wasn’t much hope of their passing it on to the Vietnamese. Ignoring the children’s squeals of horror and against a background of their gagging and retching noises, I decided that it was time I started eating
zhou
. Following the lead of my fellow Asian guests, I filled a small bowl with the white paste-like substance and then scattered a mixture of deep-fried garlic chips, shallots, chopped green onion, peanuts and fresh red chilli over the top, followed by a few splashes of fish sauce and sesame oil. By the third day my body had stopped wondering where the toast and honey had gone. I never looked back.

Liquid food at any time of day

When the Chinese started to mill flour in the Han dynasty (long before Marco Polo reputedly made his way along the Silk Road), they compensated for taking the moisture out of the grain by serving their noodles in liquid. In the West we eat bread with our soup; bread is baked, which makes it very dry or
yang
, and this may be why many people find it hard to digest. The Chinese make a nutritious broth using a small amount of ginger and spring onion and put vegetables and noodles in it to make a one-dish meal. This traditional form of serving noodles and even dumplings is much more popular than the more modern recipes for fried noodles, and is particularly popular in the summer months.

Chinese noodles are usually made simply from wheat flour and water and come fresh, dried, hand-rolled or machine-cut and in a whole variety of shapes and thicknesses. But local stores also offer egg, spinach, buckwheat and corn noodles as well as rice noodles – which are not actually called noodles (because the Chinese name
mian tiao
means ‘thin strips of flour’) but
mi fen
, meaning ‘tiny bits of rice’. So, if you are one of the many people in the West who suffer from wheat or gluten allergies, there are plenty of alternatives to wheat noodles.

While lacking the restorative powers of
zhou
, a bowl of noodles is nevertheless more easily accessible and quicker to make.

Noodles in soup

Tang mian

This recipe can be subject to infinite variation. You can use plain, wholemeal, buckwheat or rice noodles. For a more substantial dish add pieces of carrot or broccoli, or use a light chicken stock and add shredded meat and peas. For a richer dish mince the ginger and spring onion, frying them first.

a few slices of ginger
a few slices of spring onion
1 litre/2 pints/5 cups water
100 g/3½ oz/1 cup dried noodles
1 tomato, chopped into eight
2 eggs, beaten
salt to taste
1 tsp sesame oil
1 tbsp coriander leaves, roughly chopped

Add the ginger and spring onion to the water and bring to the boil. Simmer for a few minutes to allow the flavours to permeate, then add the noodles. Simmer for three minutes or until the noodles are nearly cooked. Add the tomato pieces. Trickle the eggs into the soup, pouring through chopsticks or a fork, moving around the pan to ensure that the egg pieces are well distributed. Season with salt and top with sesame oil and coriander.

Serve as soon as the egg mixture is cooked.

Noodle houses were originally opened to fill the gap between formal restaurants and street food, but now offer quick inexpensive meals to people on the go. The simplest recipes use a water-based stock, flavoured with a few chunks of ginger and spring onion. Richer, more nutritious dishes can be made with a chicken stock. Toppings usually feature what is easily available: tomato and egg, minced aubergine with tiny prawns, minced green beans, dried mushrooms and bamboo shoots, or just a handful of seasonal vegetables.

The Chinese idea of liquid food may be difficult to get your head around but it is surprisingly easy to realize. Noodles are now my stock-in-trade lunch on the run, taking less time to make than to grill a piece of cheese on toast and can be carried in a thermos when you are away from home.

Sadly, few moist
yin
foods are eaten regularly in the Western diet. As a sideline to my cooking school I used to help my Western clients who wanted to entertain at home by putting together menus and supplying Chinese chefs. My objective was to offer something more authentic than the menus produced by the numerous embassy chefs who moonlighted at the weekends and churned out sweet and sour dishes, spring rolls and fried rice in a pineapple boat. But I found that I had my work cut out. One winter’s day I was planning a meal with a Finnish woman. She reeled off a list of eight rich, oily and meat-based dishes. I suggested a proliferation of vegetable alternatives but she was convinced that the male guests would not like them. Then I recommended some lighter dishes such as beef, potato and carrot stew or winter melon soup with pork balls. ‘Oh no,’ she told me firmly, ‘those dishes aren’t very Chinese.’

I knew the woman quite well. She had a flushed appearance and suffered from various skin complaints, all signs of an excess of
yang
energy. She was not overweight, because she did not eat lunch; she found it preferable to spend a large proportion of her life eating very poor-quality, mundane and tasteless food, or nothing at all, and then, splash out on a few elaborate and rich dishes, rather than eat regular meals which used a wide range of ingredients and a mixture of cooking methods. By limiting her food intake to this type of food she was not keeping her body in balance.

If you suffer from skin complaints, headaches, nosebleeds, hot flushes or even regular outbursts of hiccups it is likely that your diet is too
yang
. Of course these may be symptoms of some deeper, underlying imbalance, but there is a fair chance that by eating more
yin
ingredients and taking in more liquid food on a regular basis you could improve your health.

Like every aspect of the Chinese diet, the fifth secret does not involve lists or calculations: just add a liquid element to every meal or at least to your daily food intake. A high proportion of liquid in your diet will help with your quest to feel satisfied after each meal yet ready to eat the next one. When you get used to eating liquid food you will find that you need to drink less, particularly at mealtimes, and you will feel more comfortable for this.

Tang
soup
, zhou
and noodles are all simple to prepare, and will add another dimension to your new diet and additional opportunities to eat more and use new and different ingredients. Enjoy them.

six
Bring
yin
and
yang
into your kitchen

‘Water has the property of coldness; fire the property of heat. The interdependence of
yin
and
yang
is reflected in all things in the universe and cannot be separated. ’

FROM
NEIJING SUWEN
, THE INNER CANON OF
THE YELLOW EMPEROR OR HUANGDI,
CIRCA SECOND CENTURY AD