Home-Cooked Away From Home.
“What’s it like cooking in China, when the ingredients you’re used to are unavailable?”
Cooking in China is something altogether different. Gone are the days of cooking multiple things at once on separate burners, now everything must be prepped and scheduled to be done one at a time on our tempermental hotplate, 2 at once if I incorporate the toaster oven or rice cooker. Prepackaged foods are non-existant and the spices I’m used to using are a hot commodity, either bought on trips to Hong Kong or brought from Canada. I’m looking at you, basil in my suitcase (please never get mistaken for drugs.)
Even though our selection of import items are getting broader (we can now get mozzarella, milk from Germany, mustard..) it’s still like learning to cook all over again. No more campbell’s for lunch, cereal for breakfast, stir-fry sauce from a jar.
Now I roast garlic and veggies in the oven (yum), or boil them in stock, then spice and blend them for soup. It really doesn’t take as long as one would think to make it from scratch. Pasta sauce I can make from actual tomatoes if need be, and I slice eggplant as a lasagna noodle replacement.
But there’s also a lot of “baking/cooking replacement for _____” Google searches.
It’s also nice to know how much salt and fat is in your food, because you’re the one adding it. Even my ramen is bought without the flavour packets.
There’s definitely a lot more experimenting going on this way, and not all successful, but it’s rewarding none the less. The odd time we get something in that’s familiar, we buy first, decide how to use it second. There’s a lot more thought that goes into everything, which I think is how food should be. When we do eventually go back to Canada, I doubt I’ll go back to canned soup for lunches, that’s for sure.
(There’s also a lot more food pictures on my phone, but if I made three kinds of soup this week and posted it all to Instagram, don’t judge.)
Have questions about what it’s like to live as an expat in Western China? Ask away and maybe I’ll blog about it.
