Food in Chinese Culture | Year 3 Project

Food in Chinese Culture :
Research

I will go into deeper research for my topic, making sure that I have covered enough to present. As mentioned in the previous phase, I chose this topic since it relate to me - there are some things that I am familiar with (such as what types of food we have), but there are many which I do not know about but curious in.

Click here for research

Before going into research, I will ask myself some questions:

Are there different foods in different areas of China? (Cantonese vs Mandarin)
Why some ingredients are a staple in Chinese Culture? (For instance, Rice)
How did the use of Chopsticks come into play?
What utensils do this culture usually use for cooking? Why?
Are there Table Manners? If so, what are they?
Are there superstitions/ beliefs in Chinese Food?

I already know some things regarding to this topic since I did some research from the topic "Food in Culture"; so now, I will apply some the same questions to this topic. Here is the are the questions:

H̶o̶w̶ ̶d̶i̶d̶ ̶w̶e̶ ̶g̶e̶t̶ ̶d̶i̶f̶f̶e̶r̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶t̶y̶p̶e̶s̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶f̶o̶o̶d̶?̶
H̶o̶w̶ ̶d̶o̶e̶s̶ ̶f̶o̶o̶d̶ ̶b̶e̶c̶o̶m̶e̶ ̶m̶o̶r̶e̶ ̶d̶i̶v̶e̶r̶s̶e̶?̶
What was the first ever cooked food?
What ingredients do they use? Is it limited to their own land or is it international?
What makes each food iconic in their own way?
Are there any restrictions when it comes to cooking the food? (i.e. no beef)
H̶o̶w̶ ̶d̶i̶d̶ ̶f̶o̶o̶d̶ ̶e̶v̶o̶l̶v̶e̶?̶
How do you make them?

(Questions with lines though them - I have already covered the questions in "Food in Culture"/ Does not apply to this topic)

When answering these questions, I have slightly changed the questions so that it makes more sense for this topic.

All the questions that I now have are as follows:

What was the History of Chinese Food, How did it evolve to what we have today?
Are there different food in different areas of China?
Why are some ingredients a staple in China?
How did the use of Chopsticks come into play?
What cooking utensils does this culture usually use?
Are there Table Manners? If so, what are they?
Are there superstitions/ beliefs to Chinese Food?
How do you cook Stewed Pork Belly with Red Bean Curd (added it towards the end, step by step in how to make it)

And now it is to go into research, trying to make sure that I use all resources available. This includes cooking Chinese Food or visiting places like Chinese Restaurants or Takeaways.

Experiencing Chinese Food

Throughout Phase 2, I've cooked some well known foods with some of my friends. For the first one, we had "Hot Pot", in which we cook food in hot boiling soup and eat it afterwards. During this time, I had already eaten a large variety of home cooked Chinese Food, so I had selected a few of the ones which are the most interesting.

To begin, we added some instant soup to the pot with hot boiling water. Once it boiled, we added the ingredients that we gathered and put them into the pot. Once the food was done cooking, we can eat it.

Ingredients used for Hot Pot:

Broccoli
Mushrooms
Beef Meatballs
Fish balls
Sliced Pork
Crab Sticks
Tofu
Hot Dog Sausages
Onions
Eggs

We also had condiments, such as chopped Garlic with Soy Sauce and garlic flavour Chilli Oil.

Hot Pot can be eaten at any time of the day, but usually we eat this when we have celebrate certain holidays and festivals (like during Christmas), or when we have guests/ a lot of people coming around.

Food, such as Har Gau (Traditional Chinese Dumpling), Pork Prawn Siu Mai (Another type of Dumpling), and Char Siu Bun gets cooked with the Bamboo Steamer (shown above).

2nd Time I went out was with other friends and family, where we went to a Cantonese restaurant for Lunch. Each person ordered a dish of their choosing.

(Forgot to take Photos before eating)

The receipt of what we bought. The dish that I chose was "XO Cheung Fun", which combines both the XO sauce (Chilli Oil with Fried Scallops) and Cheung Fun (Rice noodle Roll). Of course when you go to a Chinese Restaurant in the UK, the prices are usually expensive.

Finally, these are cooked by my mother and my grandmother. On the left, you have Hmong Pork Belly (Braised Pork Belly), On the right you have Steamed Egg with Mince Pork, and on the bottom you have Fried Pak Choi and Broccoli.

When it comes to what sort of dishes we have, they we usually have a least one meat and one vegetable dish to balance things out, not having too much on either end.

During a gathering of people (such as our cousins, family members from across the globe), we cook a larger variety of dishes, with more expensive ingredients like Lobsters.

You can see on the video how we fried the Vegetables.

We first fry the garlic with a bit of oil and salt whilst we boil the Vegetables.

Then, we added them to the other wok with the fried garlic and fried them both together.

Compared to frying the vegetables, this doesn't seem that exciting (since it is just braising). At the end of the vid, you can see the rest of the kitchen with the stoves (we don't usually use them unless we have to cook large amounts of food), to give an Idea of what the kitchens in takeaways look like.

Review

With the experience that I gained through eating and researching, I will then provide a presentation. I noticed from looking back at the notes that this topic, again, was quite broad. I looked at different sections of it, rather than focussing on one thing then going to town with it.

For instance, there were many rules regarding with Table Manners (some which I knew and others which I did not know), and there were already a lot to record. This in itself could be a topic if I went looked deep enough.

However, this topic was something I enjoyed looking at and wanted to share as many things as I could within those 8 mins of presentation. As I researched through different aspects, there were already some potentially good ideas for the next Phase, but I left them for now since I wanted to hear what my peers thought.

Click here for presentation

Food in Chinese Culture : Research

Experiencing Chinese Food

Review

Food in Chinese Culture :
Research