It
is said that China's three major contributions to the
food world are soy sauce, noodles and bean-curd (tofu).
Here Deh-ta clarifies some of the misconceptions about
Chinese food.
Pardon
my Chinese — but is 'soy' a 'sauce'?
HOW often has your enjoyment of Chinese food been spoiled
either by choosing the wrong dishes when eating out, or
worse still, by following recipes that misguided you when
cooking at home?
The
fault, I must emphasize, has probably little to do with
your personal judgment or cooking skills, but is rather
a matter of misunderstanding caused by incorrect translations
and inadequate explanations of Chinese food and cookery
terms.
China
today is a far cry from the days of Rudyard Kipling, whose
often-quoted maxim: "Oh East is East, and West is
West, and never the twain shall meet..." must have
helped to nurture the seed of prejudice in the minds of
many Westerners with the result that they looked suspiciously
at anything that was Oriental. Nevertheless, China and
the Chinese still appear to be a complex puzzle to the
outside world, despite the narrowing of the cultural gap
in the recent years - one cannot being impressed by the
extent to which Chinese food and cooking have become established
in almost every corner of the earth.
Whether
Chinese cuisine is the greatest in the world is debatable
and at any rate quite irrelevant; but it is true to say
that there exists a uniqueness about Chinese cuisine in
comparison with any other food cultures - perhaps with
the exception of South-East Asia, not only in the preparation
and cooking, but also in the serving and eating of the
food.
The
Chinese have always regarded clothing, food, housing and
transport (in that order) as the four basic necessities
of life. Over the years, there has been a tremendous transformation
in all these except one - namely the culinary art of China.
For despite all the foreign influences and modern technology
that have affected nearly all walks of everyday life in
China, the indigenous cuisine alone remains resistant
to fundamental changes. In fact, foreign foodstuffs have
been introduced into China since the dawn of history,
but they all became integral ingredients of Chinese food.
It
has been established that trade and cultural exchanges
between China and the outside world took place as early
as the time of the Roman Empire, and for centuries many
aspects of Chinese civilization were admired in the West,
and influenced its cultural development; yet Chinese culinary
art, one of China's greatest traditions, was comparatively
unknown in the West until very recent times. Even today,
it is not appreciated as it deserves to be. Partly because
of the many misunderstandings caused by the gulf between
the two cultures.
I
think the root of the problem lies in translating Chinese
food and cookery terms into a foreign language that is
based on an entirely different culture. Therefore I believe
that none of the misunderstandings are insurmountable,
once the vital glossary is correctly translated and properly
explained.
It
must be pointed out that in the early days of inter-exchanges
between East and West, the very few linguists could not
be expected to be specialists in all the different fields,
least of all on food and cooking. Once a definition was
struck and passed down in common usage, it then became
established as fact however misconceived the original
might have been.
Take,
for instance, the very basic Chinese condiment jiang
you known in English as soy sauce; now there is
a real misnomer, because to start with, the Chinese term
jiang has no equivalent in most European languages,
while you means oil or fat, but here it should
be translated as 'extract' - chou in Chinese, which
is another name for 'soy sauce' in China. And to complicate
the matter further, there is no equivalent for 'sauce'
in Chinese either - we usually describe the term as sosi
(which is a meaningless transliteration); 'gravy'; 'seasoning
juice'; or 'liquid jiang. But none of these represent
'sauce' properly.
First,
let us look at the term sauce in the context of Western
cooking. Generally speaking, a 'sauce' implies a seasoned
liquid served with, or on food. It can be made from the
liquid in which the food it is to accompany has been cooked,
and thickened by various means - e.g. cream, flour, and
egg-yolks etc. Or it may be made separately and served
as an accompaniment to grills, roasts, vegetables and
so on. Sauce making must be of a paramount importance
in French cuisine - didn't many great chefs build their
reputations on the sauces they made or created? The saying
of Brillat-Savarin, that a cook can be made but that a
roaster must be born, is well known. What is not so well
known is that the great gourmet was persuaded by his friend,
the Marquis de Cussy, to revise the aphorism to: On
devient cuisinier, on devient rotisseur, on nait saucier
- "Cooking and roasting are things to teach; it needs
genius to make a sauce."
Now
if we look at the making of jiang you or
soy extract, you will see at once that it is entirely
a different matter. The process, like wine making, is
a lengthy and painstaking one - it generally involves
the following: cleaning of the dried soya beans; soaking
until soft; steaming; cooling; mixing with yeast culture
and wheat flour; incubation for 3-5 weeks (according to
climate); fermentation with brine solution for 6-24 months;
'baking' in hot summer sun for 100 days; extraction; filtration;
pasteurisation; bottling and packaging.
The
quality of the end product depends very much on the expertise
of a 'soy master', who supervises every stage of the process
from start to finish - the selection of the soya beans,
the making of the yeast culture, the proportion of different
ingredients for the mixture, precise timing in fermentation
and 'sunning', and the temperature control. Any deviation
from one of these processes can make all the difference
between a superior soy and an ordinary one. So you see,
a 'soy' is not really a 'sauce' that is freshly made and
served up in a restaurant. Imagine my reaction, when teaching
Chinese cookery in India's leading Catering Institutes,
invariably a student would ask me: "Sir, can you
show us how to make a soy sauce?" - and this was
usually during the last 10 minutes or so of the question
time at the end of each demonstration session!
I
hope I haven't bored your pants off by all this, what
you really want to know is probably the differences between
light soy and dark soy, and which brand I would recommend
and so on. All these will be revealed in another article.
Watch this space.
