Chinese Characters for Eating Is Heaven

A couple of days ago I asked my Facebook and Twitter friends to tell me about interesting, unusual or weird food jobs. Right away I received two responses. This isn’t a lot admittedly, but I was happy to have heard from both of them. I told you about Rick Barger and his truffle tasting dog. Here’s the other from Valerie Saint-Rossy.

The conversation began: “Regina Schrambling urged me to tell you about a food class I teach.” Little could I guess that Valerie’s food job would be so wonderfully unusual. Ahh, it is so! Valerie’s class description and fuller background is below.

Chinese Characters for Chinese Food Lovers: Introduction to Reading Characters & Ordering From the Chinese Menu

Do you ever wish you could order the same dishes that the Chinese do in a Chinese restaurant, or be able to read the Chinese-only menu? Enhance your experience of Chinese food and learn about Chinese foodways with this introduction to the study of Chinese characters through food vocabulary.

In no other culture is this truer: to learn how to read is to learn how to eat. Why? Because food names in Chinese say so much more. Aspects of Chinese culture enter into even the most common names, so you cannot help but learn about its history, culture, art, and even its economics when you study Chinese food words.

The student learns how to copy and look up characters by analyzing and identify their parts, called radicals (similar to an alphabet). The student will learn approximately 50 characters that appear not only on menus, but also on signs, stores flyers, and packaging. By the end of the class the student will be able to recognize characters and names of dishes on menus. The student will also know how to look any new character using the Chinese character glossary, The Eater’s Guide to Chinese Characters by James D. McCawley.

I later asked Valerie how she developed this unique food job. What was her background? She explained that her food job passions began in infancy, that several streams intersected. She spent her childhood in Taiwan and India, where “exotic cooking was home cooking for her.

The second stream: since 2002, Valerie has been a freelance book editor, with specialization in cookbooks. It seemed only natural when she undertook a Chinese food project: making an index for the classic 3-volume Chinese cookbook called Pei-Mei’s Chinese Cook Book. (It doesn’t have one).

Over time Valerie’s original idea of teaching herself the Chinese characters for food words, characters, and the names of the dishes she loved grew more sophisticated. “I widened the scope of my food research. In 2004 a long out-of-print Chinese food glossary, (The Eater’s Guide to Chinese Characters), was republished. I realized that with the book I could teach other people what I had taught myself.”

The third strand: NYC is a Chinese food town, so Valerie approached NYU’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies with the Chinese Characters for Chinese Food Lovers idea and they signed the class up. Moreover, friends and colleagues in NYC would call Valerie all the time: “whatever ingredient of type of restaurant you’re looking for, Valerie can tell you where to find it in New York.” (Valerie’s favorite eateries are all ethnic formica-table joints. She admits that her refrigerator is filled with the unidentifiable. Yet she is petite and weighs 108 lbs! Oh, if only i could say the same.)

To enroll in or find out more about Valerie’s private Chinese Characters for Chinese Food Lovers 12-week class, do contact her at vsaintrossy@gmail.com or 718-852-8485.

I love hearing from readers about their food jobs, though like many bloggers, I wish more people would share their experiences. Sometimes just a single idea will provide a spark that will help someone embark on a new path. I heard somebody say, “There is no such thing as a self-made person.” I agree.

Valerie’s lovely story reminds me again that we are interconnected and enriched when we share our food passions and food jobs. Every one of us is a sum of all the help we have received along the way.

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As I peer into the future, I can already begin to make some forecasts about the elements of a meal in 2010.

A
American Cuisine will continue to be ‘IN.’ Every one, (or at least some people) believes New American Cuisine is the future. (Though trying to define American Cuisine is as difficult as trying to pet a porcupine.)

There will be an App for appetite control. New diet drugs may kill you but what a swell corpse you will make.

Appetizers will morph into little meals.

Researchers at Emory University will make significant progress to finding a solution for the 11 million Americans suffering from allergies.

B
There no longer will be a clear definition between foods that are eaten for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Instead, we will eat what we want to eat when we want to eat.

Single servings will continue to be the new darlings on supermarket shelves. Singles bars will morph into communal tables.

Boneless. Everything we eat will be boneless and pre-cut into bite-size pieces, so there will be no need for knives and forks on the table.

C
Chocolate business cards will be the new thing: they will be either white and sweet or dark and bitter.

Chic is a concept that is no longer fashionable. Cash, as in casual-ization, will be the new mantra.

Cakes decorated with real-life photographs of the honoree at the moment of triumph will become all too familiar.

Cookies: some wishful thinkers will believe that two little cookies don’t contain as many calories as one regular one.

D
Durian fruit will become the new kiwi now that scientists have removed the odious smell of unwashed socks from it.

Do It Yourself (DIY) will be the even more popular new mantra.

E
Eating Utensils. We will carry our own collapsible chopsticks in tiny perma-sterile compartments inside the latest version of an iPod.

F
French fries will become the new “health” food. They will be sizzled in “good-for-you” oils.

Every new food will be adaptable for serving in fast food outlets in a recognizable form, preferably shaped like a finger, though not necessarily a fish finger, as fish don’t actually have fingers. It must contain all four essential food groups, i.e., it must be greasy, salty, sweet and crunchy.

G
Goats, that will be got, will gallop onto many legislative agendas and restaurant menus.

H
Healthy Food Talk will continue to consume endless amounts of time and energy. Today most people are succumbing to degenerative diseases and the consequences of lifestyle choices. Death, despite the claims of some, is in fact not an option. Only plastic bags live forever.

I
I will be a guest speaker at cooking schools and colleges and the IACP (International Association of Culinary Professionals) this year.

J
“Juicy” and “scandalous” stories will whet the appetite mainly because they allow us minor sinners to feel momentarily superior to our former idols.

K
Kimchee will be the new craze. It tastes so much better than kabbage.

L
‘Lovely’ will not be the word to describe the bacon martini craze.

M
Mood foods will maintain their popularity as consumers embrace emotional management strategies, including ‘purpose driven eating’.

N
“No!” will be the most popular dietary concept.

O
Onions that won’t make you cry will soon become available, brought to you by the biotechies.

P
The restaurant Per Se will continue to per-sonify the pur-suit of per-fection.

Q
Quote: “Anyone who thinks the way to a man’s heart is though his stomach, flunked geography.”

R
Robots will milk the cows, feed the chickens, plant the crops and gather the harvest. (Robots never need a break and require no benefits beyond an occasional kick-start and a squirt of motor oil.)

S
Sustainable cuisine is an idea that will continue to gather strength.

Sturgeon is now farm-raised along with spuds in Idaho. The new state license plate will be: Idaho, Land of Fish and Chips.

T
Twitter. The Top 10 tweeters were and will be:
Coca-Cola
Starbucks
Disney
Victoria’s Secret
iTunes
Vitaminwater
YouTube
Chick-Fil-A
Red Bull
T.G.I.Fridays

U
U won’t need echinacea to cure the common cold according to a published review in The American Journal of Medicine. (There was simply not enough evidence to say whether it actually worked.)

V
Valedictorian speaker Garrison Keillor is likely to say again, “Eat your veggies!” (It’s a good line.)

W
Wrapped. Everything will be wrapped. The objective is absolute food safety. The goal will be to produce all our produce in biodegradable materials, i.e., within a banana-like sterile peel.

White tablecloths will be disposed (of).

X
EXcellent reporting will continue to be found daily on Food News Journal.

Y
Yum! Brands, Inc. restaurants will expand to meet its customers’ eternal love in over 110 countries and territories for yummy pizza, tacos and fried chicken.

Z

Zealot definition: One who is zealous, especially excessively so. So (James Bond) let’s talk about my friend “M”.

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Beach Plum Fruit

The good news is: plums are now in season! The plum is such a luscious fruit that in the English language a secondary meaning of its name is “something superior or very desirable,” like plum jobs as well as sugar plums and plum pudding.

Our forefathers on Plymouth Rock turned up their noses at native American wild plums, including the beach plum that still grows in some profusion along the Atlantic coast. They had brought their own plum tree seeds from Europe where they had been cultivated for 2,000 years.

The prized plum, known in England as the Greengage, is in France called the reine-claude, named after the famously fat (and often pregnant) Queen Claude, who was very fond of this fruit.

However, the naming was not so much in her honor as she might have thought. It’s said that the reine-claude got its name because the plum’s stem to stern cleft shape reminded her courtiers of her royal backside.

Here’s the recipe for the plum compote I made yesterday.

Serves 4

2 pounds red or black plums, halved and pitted

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 cup water

Rind and juice of 1 orange

1/2 cup port wine

2 tablespoons red currant jelly

I teaspoon almond extract

Put all the ingredients in a saucepan. Cover and simmer over very low heat for 15 minutes.

Serve warm or chilled with (of course) whipped cream or ice cream.

That’s what I call a plum job!

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