I Love Chinese Soup
I am a non- typical foody and now only craven for Chinese food.
Having been U.S. for a year, I found that eating American food in China and eating American food in America are two different things.
Actually, American food is very popular in China. Take KFC as an example. When travel in China, you will find that KFC is almost the landmark of a city. When someone wants to hangout with a friend, they will always meet in KFC first. Except the air conditioning and clean environment in KFC, no one would refuse the food of KFC. The chicken wings are delicious, juicy, and meaty, the soup is hot with variety vegetables, the corn is steamed with milk and the hamburger can be seasoned to any flavor you like. When I was in middle school, parents often rewarded me with a KFC meal plan when I got a high grade in the finals.
Other typical American food, such as steak, can be considered as a high-class level of food. When couples celebrate their anniversary, a man ask a woman out for a date, steak restaurant must be on the first of their choice list. A glass of wine, a plate of steak with black pepper glazed over it and two candles lightening on the side of the table, make customers the hero and heroine of a romantic movie.
Anyway, when people consume the atmosphere of a restaurant, a sophisticated foody as me will be more concerned about the food. However, I simply think that the original American food will be exactly the same like the food in China. One big important point I ignore is that all the American food sold in China have been altered to the Chinese flavor.
So the first time I walked in the Shaw Hall Dining Hall for my first lunch in America, I was totally shocked by what I ate. First, I do not quite understand why cheese can be put in everything, even if it makes the flavor worse. The pasta is composed of noodles and cheese, the pizza is made of cheese, some wraps use cheese to change the taste, and even the soup has been put a lot of cheese in it. Second, what I tasted is either salty or sweet. Pasta, pizza, hamburger, chicken nuggets, chicken wings, port, beef, roasted chicken wings etc are salty; the rest are sweet. Being a foody for almost twenty years, I am far from satisfied with only two flavors.
Cheese Potato Soup Vs Chinese crock soup
In order to elaborate the differences and distance between American food and Chinese food, I would like to use the soup as an example. I take cheese potato soup for American soup, and crock soup for Chinese soup.
Before I elaborate more of Chinese crock soup, let’s compare these two soups very briefly.
Why I am so enchanted into Chinese crock soup? There is something you should know about the crock.
In Chinese history, there is an old saying -“It’s better to drink soup than eat meat”. The ancient Chinese thought soup is more nutritious than meat, and this thought is still acceptable by Chinese nowadays. Meanwhile, soup can also satisfy Chinese demand in flavor. For a long time, Chinese had been searching how to cook a delicious soup while keep the nutrition of the ingredients. So they found the crock, which is made from mud. Crock has many rare metal ions, which are necessary to human body. Besides, the thermal conductivity of crock is not that good, which will not break up the nutrition in the soup or of the food. So when one put ingredients and some water in crock, and slowly heat it with fire, the metal ion of the crock, and nutrition of the food will be slowly dissolved in the soup. Because of the proper temperature in crock, these nutrition still keep their original form, and benefit for human beings.
Chinese crock soup has uncountable flavors and that is why I do not list in the form. One thing needs to be mentioned is that Chinese crock soup are not only for appetite, sometimes it can function as a cure. I am going to introduce several Chinese crock soups that have this function.
