#shanghai eats

[toyastales]

Shanghai Beef Noodles 🍜

[wissamacaroni]

[no-1-rosalind-lang-apologist]

In fhh when Celia rescues Oliver he asks her if he’s hallucinating again when he sees her. He thought of Celia and then he thought of nothing at all.

[heavenlyyshecomes]

Cha chaan teng means ‘tea restaurant’ in Cantonese (cha canting in Mandarin) but these places are much more than that. There is one in Shanghai, hidden on a quiet street that splits off from chaotic Huahai Zhong Lu. The neon sign hanging in the window, “茶餐厅”, spills pink and green light onto the wet pavement. There is always a queue, and you will always have to share a small table with people you don’t know. The walls are a pale greenish-brown, with retro screens of yellow and blue glass tiles separating smokers from the non-smokers. It’s like stepping into Chungking Express, Wong Kar Wai’s film set in 1990s Hong Kong, with its cool palette of jade green and soft aquamarine. When I first saw the film I recognised the colours instantly, and the way the characters always seemed to be looking at each other through a haze of steam and city smog. At the back of the restaurant, where plates of food arrive clattering from the kitchen onto steel counters, the shelves are stacked with tins of condensed milk, Bovril, soup and packets of instant noodles. The menu is what you might call ‘Canto-Western’ or, as it’s known colloquially, ‘soy sauce Western food’. When Hong Kong was a British colony, cha chaan tengs emerged as a cheap option for those wanting Western food, which was usually only available at high-end restaurants. As a result, here are all the wondrous comfort foods of my childhood somehow listed on a single menu: fried noodles and fried rice, soy sauce chicken and roast goose, pork buns and fried wontons, along with spaghetti, macaroni, tinned soup, corned beef, sandwiches and toast of all kinds. Peanut butter toast, sugar toast, condensed milk toast, and Hong Kong-style deep-fried French toast.

—Nina Mingya Powles, Tiny Moons: A Year of Eating in Shanghai

[theperksofbeingstupid]

i need dumplings in my mouth NEOOOWWW i want gyozas i want momos i want jiǎozi give them to me give them to me nowwwwwww

[typingwithmyhandstied]

Oliver is the kind of man that makes me sad.

[grasscaraz]

aces instead of double faults, this is what i am here for

[romajuliettesupremacy]

chloe furthering proving why alisa is the funniest and best character ever to grace my bookshelf ever

[thisisreal-really]

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[liu-yu-xin]

I think the china-south korea beef goes a little far sometimes but it is also kind of funny how chinese ppl act like korea is a food desert like any chinese person who has lived in korea for an extended period of time is always screaming and crying about the lack of food options and how expensive everything is . Which i get honestly like ofc a country 1/100 the size of china is gonna have fewer types of food but also these ppl would explode if they had to live in north america. or worse yet europe.

[viovio]

man I haven't eaten anything today and none of the food here is scratching my itch

[ourladyofomega]

Shanghai, China.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BehvzZqgqZ5/?

[no-1-rosalind-lang-apologist]

“‘I’m your friend,’ Rosalind settled on softly. It was the truest answer she could find.”

[heavenlyyshecomes]

女 (woman, feminine): I see a curved standstill / a breath being held in /

It is tiring to be a woman who loves to eat in a society where hunger is something not to be satisfied but controlled. Where a long history of female hunger is associated with shame and madness. The body must be punished for every misstep; for every “indulgence” the balance of control must be restored. To enjoy food as a young woman, to opt out every day from the guilt expected of me, is a radical act, of love. My body often feels like it’s neither here nor there. Too much like this, not enough like that. But however it looks, my body allows me to feel hunger.

—Nina Mingya Powles, Tiny Moons: A Year of Eating in Shanghai

[lisagiaandrews]

Newly opened restaurants in Shanghai in 2004

By ShanghaiProps

[cellamare]

For Chinese home cooking, I absolutely love The Woks of Life and Red House Spice. I also recommend Clarissa Wei’s cookbook Made in Taiwan and Betty Liu’s My Shanghai: Recipes and Stories from a City on the Water.

The Dungeon Meshi renaissance is making me want to share the resources that taught me how to cook.

Don’t forget, you can check out cookbooks from the library!

Smitten Kitchen: The rare recipe blog where the blog part is genuinely good & engaging, but more important: this is a home cook who writes for home cooks. If Deb recommends you do something with an extra step, it’s because it’s worth it. Her recipes are reliable & have descriptive instructions that walk you through processes. Her three cookbooks are mostly recipes not already on the site, & there are treasures in each of them.

Six Seasons: A New Way With Vegetables by Joshua McFadden: This is a great guide to seasonal produce & vegetable-forward cooking, and in addition to introducing me to new-to-me vegetables (and how to select them) it quietly taught me a number of things like ‘how to make a tasty and interesting puréed soup of any root veggie’ and ‘how to make grain salads’ and ‘how to make condiments’.

Grains for Every Season: Rethinking Our Way With Grains by Joshua McFadden: in addition to infodumping in grains, this codifies some of the formulas I picked up unconsciously just by cooking a lot from the previous book. I get a lot of mileage out of the grain bowl mix-and-match formulas (he’s not lying, you can do a citrus vinaigrette and a ranch dressing dupe made with yogurt, onion powder, and garlic powder IN THE SAME DISH and it’s great.)

SALT, FAT, ACID, HEAT by Samin Nosrat: An education in cooking theory & specific techniques. I came to it late but I think it would be a good intro book for people who like to front-load on theory. It taught me how to roast a whole chicken and now I can just, like, do that.

I Dream Of Dinner (so you don’t have to) by Ali Slagle: Ok, look, an important part of learning to cook & cooking regularly is getting kinda burned out and just wanting someone else to tell you what to make. These dinners work well as written and are also great tweakable bases you can use as a starting place.

If you have books or other resources that taught you to cook or that you find indispensable, add ‘em on a reblog.