Quanzhou—Home of Minnan Cuisine

Abstract

The earnest Beijing reporter who asked why I moved to China and obtained permanent residence expected a weighty answer on the lines of “To serve the masses”, and so I gazed at her solemnly and said: “Because Chinese food is too expensive in America.”

(Adapted from Amoy Magic, William Brown).

One should eat to live, not live to eat!—Moliere (1622–1673)

Moliere never had Chinese food!—Bill Brown (1956–?)

The earnest Beijing reporter who asked why I moved to China and obtained permanent residence expected a weighty answer on the lines of “To serve the masses”, and so I gazed at her solemnly and said: “Because Chinese food is too expensive in America.”

There was some truth to this. Let’s face it, eating is a big part of life, so we might as well enjoy it, and Chinese are masters of both cooking and eating! But Chinese food in China is a far cry from the sweet and sour and lemon chicken we get back in America. Chinese delight in eating anything that doesn’t eat them first.

When I spoke in Manila to a group of Chinese business people descended mainly from Quanzhou ancestors, I said that Adam and Eve were not Chinese because had Eve been Chinese, she’d have tossed the apple and eaten the snake. A business lady jumped up and said: “That’s not true!” I was afraid I’d offended her, but before I could apologize, she said: “If Eve had been Chinese, she’d have eaten the snake and sold the apple, not tossed it!”.

Quanzhou cuisine is essentially Minnan (south Fujian) cuisine, but each area, be it Nan’an, Anxi or Hui’an, has its own specialties. The area around Luoyang Bridge, for example, serves succulent oysters so large I could make a sandwich with them. Nan’an dishes up excellent leg of lamb with peanut sauce. Anxi’s remote hamlet of Hutou is famed for its rice noodles. The city Quanzhou itself, located between two rivers and facing the sea, prides itself on rich seafood.

You’d have to travel far and wide to sample them all, but fortunately, Quanzhou is almost wall-to-wall restaurants. Better yet, the Wenling Delicacy Street packs just about every kind of local food and snack into one 613-meter lane!

Wenling Delicacy Street (温陵美食街), which runs north and south between Jinhuai Street and Fengze Street, has “more than 130” (which probably 131) quaint snack shops and restaurants built with traditional architecture, and offering a wide variety of local Quanzhou snacks and fine cuisine (Fig. 15.1).

Fig. 15.1

Wenling Food Street

Both ends of the streets have memorial gates with inscriptions. The couplet on the North Gate reads: “Enjoy here the gentle wind and soft moonlight of hometown; raising your glass for a toast, you are intoxicated with love and affection for your townsmen.”

One morning, as I happily set forth to enjoy a simple breakfast, I was accosted by my kind host and taken to Wenling to feast upon gelatinous sweet potato powder cakes and…

Chinese Breakfast Americans say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, and Chinese have certainly won my heart—except with breakfast.

While by noon I can stomach salted minnows, pork fat, deep-fried fish lips and sea worms in jellyfish mold, first thing out of bed in the morning my heart and stomach cry out for the familiarity and simplicity of an American breakfast: coffee, eggs, and toast.

The breakfast buffet at Quanzhou’s Zaytun Hotel, my Quanzhou home away from home, offers over 60 hot and cold items (yes, I counted!), as well as dimsum, and a chef who will fry up eggs (and then douse them in soy sauce). But I consistently forego these delicacies and ask for eggs, toast, and coffee. This totally bewilders Chinese, for whom any meal must include at least 10 courses, half of which are critters seen only on National Geographic channel, and the half being strange veggies harvested from mountains or scavenged from cracks between sidewalks.

After a long day in which I’d had little for lunch and missed supper altogether, I went to bed hungry but happy in the knowledge that next morning the Zaytun Hotel would, albeit begrudgingly, serve me eggs, toast and coffee.

Next morning, just as I was headed to the dining room, my hosts burst upon the scene, exclaiming: “None of that buffet stuff today. We’ve something special,” and led me straight to Wenling Delicacy Street and a big bowl of steaming congealed pig blood soup. Yum.

Local delicacies include vermicelli paste, white sugar rice cake, Anhai frozen seaworms, fried oysters, “rouzong” (rice, pork and other ingredients wrapped in reed leaves), Shenhu fish balls, orange rice dumplings, deng deng. And given Quanzhou’s location on the sea, between two rivers, seafood takes up a large part on fishy menus. So eat up—and eat slowly…

Seize or Savor? Chinese are not only the best cooks but also the best eaters, and their language shows it. A typical greeting is “Have you eaten?” And a common phrase at the table is “Eat slowly!” Where we Americans are always urging the waitress to hurry so we can gobble, guzzle, and get out the door, Chinese are forever admonishing the waitress as she serves up plate after plate: “Slow down! Let us enjoy our food!”.

For an American who lives by the motto Carpe Diem! (Latin for “Seize the Day!”) it is hard to handle Chinese who would rather savor a morsel or a moment than seize a day or anything else. Chinese take life slowly. After 20 years in China, I too am slowing down, though I think it is not a philosophical breakthrough but simply the unwinding that accompanies age. Nevertheless, I well relate to the insights shown by Ms. Averil Mackenzie-Grieve, who wrote of her experiences in south Fujian in the 1920s in A Race of Green Ginger (next page).

Zhong Mingxuan (钟明选) The Master of Quanzhou Cuisine

I was very fortunate to enjoy a meal prepared by Quanzhou’s most celebrated chef, Mr. Zhong Mingxuan. Mr. Zhong is the host of Quanzhou TV’s popular Minnan Cuisine program, and has been filmed by TV crews from Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and Zhejiang Province.

All of the guests clamored for Chef Zhong to make an appearance in their private dining rooms, so he would chat a few minutes, race out, race back in, race back out again—but I gradually managed to pin down a picture of the man’s career, which is being carried on by his 48- and 44-year-old sons, Zhong Yichuan (钟驿川) and Zhong Yidong (钟驿东).

Excerpt from A Race of Green Ginger

(Ms. Averil Mackenzie-Grieve, Fujian resident in the 1920s)

We could not help contrasting their slow and contemplative savoring of each object of sensuous pleasure with the Western habit of grasping, and discarding half-assessed, a multiplicity of objects or experiences. The Chinese cult of beauty in all forms never lacked elaboration, but it was an elaboration in depth. A spreading downward of understanding which, like the roots of a tree, nourished and increased pleasure. The foreign traders set themselves to create this Western multiplicity of needs. They had successes chiefly because the Chinese are a practical people and by the end of the nineteenth century, too hidebound by traditions to develop, too arrogant to learn, they had fallen far behind the West, but were shrewd enough, nevertheless, to appreciate the products and inventions of Western science.

The foreigners, too, were successful in selling to men and women incapable of making a bad or ugly thing, cheap, mass-produced goods, ugly and badly made, which seemed to us an anomaly until we realize that a Chinese buyer rarely bought foreign goods for aesthetic reasons. The Chinese admired neither the appearance of the Westerners nor that of their goods. They were, however, fascinated by the mechanical ingenuity of the West. The Western merchants found a market, too, among the poor and unlettered, to whom the opening of the Treaty Ports brought, if not an increase in prosperity, at least a raising of subsistence level. Inland, however, the Chinese were still extremely conservative.

If you want to make money out here, you’ve got to make the Chinese want things, and want ‘m so badly that they get so’s they bloody well can’t do without’em’; Mr. Tulser poured more brandy into his beer. ‘That’s the secret.’...

I surveyed the long and, to me, still bewilderingly complex civilization of the Chinese, and said: ‘I should have thought the Chinese wanted enough things.’

‘Ah, but,’ Mr. Tulser pointed a knowing, nicotine-stained finger, ‘you’ve got to make’em want the things you want’em to want. Why, many’s the time as a young ‘un—believe it or not—I’ve stood on a soap box in a village up-country teaching the Chinese how to smoke cigarettes. Never seen’em before—end look at’em now; smoke like lime-kilns... And are they grateful?... ’ ‘Nough to drive you to drink, isn’t it?’

Chef Zhong, now aged 72, has been whipping up prize-winning Quanzhou cuisine since 1965, but he doesn’t stay at one place long. “I don’t go to the best places but to the places that need help,” he said. “I need a challenge.” So, either I was eating at a less than best place or this man was a miracle worker because he’d only been at this restaurant for two months.

“I don’t like to just rely on tradition,” Chef Zhong said. “I’m bold. I like to experiment. Xiamen was first to use foreign flavors, like garlic. Quanzhou leads in Minnan cuisine, but Xiamen is second, and Zhangzhou third.”

I don’t know if his dishes were classics or just experiments to pawn off on foreigners, but each one was so tasty I was hard put to photograph them before devouring them. I especially enjoyed Minnan spring rolls (Minnan “bobing”, 闽南薄饼), chicken rolls (“jijuan”, 鸡卷), silk gourd gum soup (“siguachengen tang”, 丝瓜蛏根汤), sesame sweet potato cakes (“zhima digua bing”—which differ everywhere 芝麻地瓜并), and Baoshao Tofu (“baoshao doufu”, 包饶豆腐). But I thought I had died and gone to heaven when I got a taste of Osmanthus Crab (“Guihua Xie”, 桂花蟹), which looked like scrambled eggs and crab, but tasted like nothing in this world.

Minnan spring rolls are quite unlike any others in China. Diners are often given the various veggies, meats, sauces and peanut powder on saucers, and they assemble their own mix and wrap it in paper-thin soft white wrappers. Now that I’m used to this, I prefer them to the more common deep-fried spring rolls because they aren’t drenched in oil.

Lao Pan’s Quanzhou Favorites

Fish in Rice Krispies (“Maixiang Yinjuan Yu”, 麦香银卷鱼) —Absolutely my favorite! (They said it was crisped wheat, but I think it was rice).

Tofu (“Yiping Doufu”, 一品豆腐). There are few things healthier or more versatile than doufu, and this is one of the best dishes I’ve had. Also try the incredible baoshao tofu.

Pickled Red Veggies with preserved egg (“Xiancai”, 苋菜). It tastes a lot better than it looks!

Beef and Oyster Sauce (“Haoyou Niurou”, 蚝油牛肉). Pork is king in China, so beef is sometimes not up to snuff. I’ve suspected some beef as being sole food (recycled shoe soles). But Zaytun’s beef melts in your mouth.

Shark Lips (“Yuchun Bao”, 鱼唇煲). I told them not to give me any lip but they did anyway—shark lips! It wasn’t that bad, actually. Not lip smacking, but tasty. They’re sort of chewy, like rubbery fish jello.

Pickled Beans (“Jiangdou”, 豇豆)—a tasty little appetizer.

Fried Veggie Buns (“Jianbao”, 煎包). Excellent!

Lamb Ribs in Foil (“Shousi Yangpa”,手撕羊排). Delightful; reminds me of Mongolian lamb, but without the baked sheep’s head staring me in the face.

Quanzhou Noodles (“Lumian”,卤面). Nice way to end a meal! (Long noodles symbolize long life).

Home Cooked Quanzhou Style Minnan Cuisine Recipes

(Adapted from Magic Xiamen)

Swimming Crab Dish—the No. 1 dish (in my eyes, and stomach too). Steam live crabs, shell them, and remove inedible parts (I was surprised to learn that Chinese deemed anything inedible!). Cut the pork, water chestnuts, scallion stalks and bamboo shoots into one-inch strips and mix with beaten eggs and salt. Thoroughly mix in the shelled crabs, stir-fry in hot oil with oil and shredded ginger, and add Shaoxing wine.

Coral Prawn: I’m not sure how they corral coral prawns, but they’re heavenly. Clean live prawns, deep-fry quickly, and season with diced ginger, garlic, sugar, thick Minnan chili sauce, scallions, Shaoxing wine, and clear broth. Sprinkle with pepper powder and sesame oil. Devour—slowly, if possible. If not, at least take a photo, so while they’re digesting you can remember what they looked like.

River Eel: I was glad my hosts bore me no eel (ill) will then they served this excellent dish. Clean Jinjiang River eel and cut into two-inch slices. Marinate eels for one hour in a blend of salt, crushed ginger, and wine. Deep fry the eel slices and add oil, sugar, soup-stock, small pieces of pork, soy sauce, and Shaoxing wine. Steam in a steamer (duh!), then spray with sesame oil.

Steamed Perch: I was perched on the edge of my chair waiting for this one! Select a two-pound or larger perch and then scale and clean it. Place on a large bamboo steamer with small chunks of pork, slices of winter bamboo and ginger, shoots, winter mushrooms, scallion stalks, and some salt and water. Steam on high flame for 20 min, and then remove scallion stalks and ginger slices (personally, I like to eat these).

Fried Red Crabs: The crabbiest diner mellows after feasting on red crabs, which are harvest in the winter in Shihu of Hanjiang (Quanzhou Bay) produces the best red crabs. Pickle large red crabs (at least one pound) in sorghum liquor and then wrap in fatback. Place the lard-wrapped red crabs upside down in a pot with ginger slices and sorghum liquor, and allow them to steam for 10 min. When done, remove the fatback, clean the crabs, and cut each crab into eight slices.

Spicy Fried Rolls Wrap these ingredients in a round sheet of dried tofu: cubed pork, fish meat, onions, water chestnuts, soy sauce, five spices, and sweet potato starch. Deep fry, cut in slices, serve.

Minnan Spring Rolls These delightful delicacies are a Minnan version of Mexican burrito. Buy spring roll wrappers at markets; for the filling, mix shredded carrots and bamboo shoots, green peas, shredded meats and shrimp, tofu, and anything else that strikes your fancy or wanders in off-the-street. Cook well, add salt and soy sauce, and wrap in spring roll wrappers, along with a little mustard, chili sauce, plum sauce, scrambled eggs, leeks, and Chinese parsley (coriander). Enjoy.

Oil-Scallion Cake Add fish meat to diced pork and water chestnuts, then add a little sweet potato starch, some scallions, a dash of “five spices”, and some sugar and salt. Form into balls and coat with rice starch in bowls and steam. Let cool, and sprinkle with your favorite Chinese condiments (chili paste, pickled radish, deng deng).

Tosun (Jelly Fish and Sea Worm) Xiamen’s No. 1 specialty—and my least favorite! But you haven’t lived until you’ve tried it.

These culinary delights are dug from the mud on the beach. Enough said. Wash the “Tosun” (jelly fish) clean and stew over a slow fire until the gelatin dissolves. Pour soup into cups and let cool into a jello-like substance (somewhere along the line adding seaworms).

Force down with Chinese chili sauce, mustard sauce, vinegar.

Fried Squid Our favorite! Clean squid thoroughly and soak in clear water for a couple of hours, then cut it into thin slices and score with intersecting diagonal cuts. Fry the squid with bamboo shoots, scallions, tomato, sugar and vinegar until they roll up into a tube shape. (Don’t overcook or they’ll have the texture of rubber grapes).

Fried Oysters (sort of an oyster-egg pancake) Dip oysters in sweet potato starch, add soy sauce, and fry. Pour beaten eggs on the mixture and continue to fry until done. Add Chinese parsley (coriander); eat with mustard or chili sauce.

Stir-Fried Rice Noodles Deep fry rice vermicelli until golden, rinse in boiled water to remove grease. Stir-fry shredded pork, fish, mushrooms and bamboo shoots in peanut oil and add chicken bouillon, Shaoxing wine, and salt. Add noodles, serve hot. Awesome.

Zongzi Pyramidal dumplings of glutinous rice and other ingredients, wrapped in bamboo leaves. Originally served at Dragon Boat Festival, they are now eaten all year round. First, stir-fry glutinous rice, pork, chestnuts, mushrooms and shrimp (or some use red beans), and wrap them with bamboo leaves into a pyramid shape, and tie them, then braise them in a soup until well done. Dip the zongzis in a mixture of soy sauce and garlic.

Quanzhou Snacks

Oyster Chowder: a hearty porridge made of glutinous rice, fish, pork, oysters, soy sauce, and pepper, often accompanied with “youtiao” (twisted deep-fried dough sticks) or turnip cakes.

Quanzhou Beef is served in shops around town, two of the best just around the corner from the four-star Quanzhou hotel.

Stuffed Fishballs (another of my favorites, some say the best come from the walled city of Chongwu). Finely diced pork, dried shrimp and water chestnuts are mixed, wrapped in a coating made from fresh fish and starch, and boiled until done. Serve with mashed garlic and pepper in soy sauce.

Pickled Chicken Feet. I was sure something fowl was afoot when they served up these fellows, but locals sure love them—second only to jellied duck webs.

Turnip Cakes (my favorite): powdered turnip, rice and flour are mixed, a dash of salt is added, excess moisture pressed out, cut into slices, and deep-fried.

Steamed Sponge Cakes are made from rice flour and sugar, which is fermented and then steamed in bowls.

Fried Sesame Cakes: glutinous rice paste is stuffed with a blend of sesame seeds, peanuts, sugar, and diced winter squash, then deep-fried.

Orange Cakes: powdered glutinous rice is steamed, sugar is added, and the mixture is molded into different shapes.

Sesame Cakes: sesame cakes are steamed, and sprinkled with sesame seeds.

Peanut Soup: a favorite in Southern Fujian, where folks have long worked for peanuts, this is simplicity itself to make. Simply boil peanuts to form a milky soup, and serve up at the end of the meal—either with, or in place of, the fresh fruit platter.

Chinese-English Menu

It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things. Names are everything. The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for.

—Oscar Wilde

Getting a Handle on Chinese Food

Chinese prefer strange and exotic foods, but failing that, they give common foods strange and exotic names. They pass off plain chicken as “Phoenix Breast”, or duck eggs as “Lotus Eggs”. And the famous “Monk Climbing the Wall” soup has neither monk nor wall. I hope.

The playwright who quarreled with words would have appreciated these offerings from Chinese menus:

Silver Fish Wrapped in Snow, from Beijing, is neither winter precipitation nor the ornery bugs that ate holes in my wool Scottish tie. It is simply cooked macaroni fried in whipped egg white.

Chicken in a Lantern, also from Beijing, is cooked chicken and vegetables wrapped in clear cellophane and tied with a ribbon.

Phoenix Breast, from Sichuan, is not the legendary Egyptian fowl but plain old cheap chicken breast.

Lotus Eggs are not the lotus’ source; they’re just chicken eggs.

Dragon and Phoenix Ham, from Sichuan, is naught but duck, pork, water chestnuts, chicken wing bones, ham and white bread—mixed and fried. (So who was the dragon?).

Steamed Dragon’s Eye Rolls, from Sichuan, are strips of pork rolled around red bean paste, topped with a cherry, and served on glutinous rice.

By the time I’ve worked my way to a menu’s soup section and come across, “Bright Moon in a River” and “Buddha Leaps the Wall”, I’m ready to climb the wall myself. But it is worth the climb. China’s elegantly named dishes are invariably just as elegantly prepared and served, and well worth the wait.

To make life easier, I’ve compiled this handy dandy Amoy Magic Menu in English, Chinese, and “pinyin”—and this version I’ve added tone marks. If you still can’t say it—just point!