美国国家公共电台 NPR Think 'Chinese Food' Means Lo Mein? Home Cooking Brings More To The Table

Think 'Chinese Food' Means Lo Mein? Home Cooking Brings More To The Table

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Chinese cuisine 2 is diverse, complex flavors from spicy 3 to sweet depending on the region. A new exhibition at a museum in New York wants to remind people that the country's food isn't all Americanized eggrolls. The exhibition features professional chefs and home cooks. NPR's Hansi Lo Wang recently paid a visit to one of those home cooks in Manhattan.

HANSI LO WANG, BYLINE 4: Here in Biying Ni's kitchen, a small dinner for friends and family means whipping up almost a dozen different dishes.

BIYING NI: (Speaking Mandarin 5).

WANG: Ni's stirring together sugar, vinegar, soy sauce, ground pepper and chopped scallions in a small bowl. It's a sauce for one of two fish recipes this evening. This one is for a batch 6 of fresh yellow croakers. Ni says these are smaller than the ones her father used to cook in Fujian Province along China's southeastern coast, but they're just as good for butterflying and flowering before a deep fry in the wok 7.

NI: (Speaking Mandarin).

WANG: "I used to eat fish every day back in my hometown," Ni says in Mandarin. On our dining table, there's already another plate of fried fish smothered 8 in a burgundy colored sauce. It's made with wine dregs from red yeast 9 rice wine and gives the fish a rich, savory 10 taste that can be hard to find at your local Chinese takeout.

KIAN LAM KHO: I think it's unfair to just classify one Chinese cooking per se.

WANG: Kian Lam Kho is a curator of the new exhibition at the Museum of Chinese in America.

KHO: When you say Chinese cooking, it's like saying European cooking because Chinese food is just too diverse.

WANG: The museum has gathered the stories of Biying Ni and other Chinese cooks around the U.S. Their signature dishes span from Peking duck to cumin lamb skewers 11 from Xinjiang Province in northwest China.

KHO: Even with the same dish or same cuisine, every family has a different variation.

WANG: That's why the curators say if you want to taste the full range of Chinese cuisine in the U.S., you'll need to venture beyond restaurants and into home kitchens, which co-creator Audra Ang says can play a central role in many immigrants' lives.

AUDRA ANG: The kitchen itself is kind of a sphere of comfort when you come to a new country. You don't understand what's going on. You can't find your ingredients. That's the one place where you set up as your home base, and you cook things that you remember from your past.

WANG: Biying Ni, who recently turned 80, says she loves cooking for her friends.

NI: (Speaking Mandarin).

NI: Growing up, though, she says, making meals was her father's job. She left China in the 1980s and worked as a live-in nanny in the U.S. where she learned to make Cantonese dishes for a family she was working for. For years she cooked in other people's kitchens before she could afford to rent her own home.

Now she shuffles 12 around her one-bedroom apartment in beaded, red slippers 13. A sweet aroma 14 of vinegar and rice wine floats from her kitchen. After a quick rinsing 15 of chopsticks, spoons and bowls, dinner is finally ready. Ni's granddaughter Qing Zhuang and Zhuang's boyfriend, David Wu, are gathered around the table.

QING ZHUANG: He's from a different province. He's from Shanghai.

DAVID WU: I'm from Shanghai, so...

ZHUANG: So he has a different...

WU: I have a different palate.

ZHUANG: Yeah.

WANG: Still, Ni's drunken chicken made with Fujianese cooking wine hits the right spot.

WU: It's very light. It retains some of that flavor in the cooking wine that really feels refreshing 16 and cooling.

WANG: For Qing Zhuang, one of her favorites is her grandmother's winter melon soup.

ZHUANG: I went to college out of state, and whenever I come back - and especially the soup, you know - there's herbs in there and these winter melons. When I eat them, it's just extremely comforting.

WANG: It's a kind of comfort food that defines Chinese food for Biying Ni, who has particular tastes.

NI: (Speaking Mandarin).

WANG: "Cantonese food is too sweet," she says, "and Sichuanese food is too spicy." But food from her hometown of Fuzhou...

NI: (Speaking Mandarin).

WANG: (Speaking Mandarin).

NI: (Speaking Mandarin, laughter).

WANG: "It's not too salty, bland 17 or sweet," she says. "It's just right." Hansi Lo Wang, NPR News, New York.