Southeast Asia with the Wilmers and Chevaliers May/June 2013

2015-08-26T12:32:00.001-07:00

A Visual Representation of our time with the Wilmers

Elisabeth, Adele, Emma, Zoe and Perrin on the bike path in Taipei

Bob and Peter

The girls in front of Long Shan Temple

Biking in front of the Taiwanese state house

A short hike in the rain on the canal trail

A traditional Vietnamese house at the Cultural Museum in Hanoi

Zoe having her hands washed in lime

Why So Tiny When So Famous?!

2013-08-26T11:08:00.000-07:00

By Carly

We walked into the tiny deserted hallway. We were going to a traditional Vietnamese music shop to see the owner and his daughter play some traditional instruments.

The tiny, deserted hallway

We walked into the main room. You probably are thinking the main room is a big room with instruments on stands and all kinds of shiny and fancy things, but it was almost the complete opposite. Though he was one of the most famous traditional musicians in Vietnam, his shop was a tiny room, about ten feet wide by ten feet long. It had wacky instruments covering all four walls and lining the edge of the floor. There were also some instruments hanging from the ceiling! Two instruments had been placed on the floor. A girl who looked about 14 years old sat in front of one and an old man sat at the other.

It turned out that the girl was actually 20 years old and was studying at the Traditional Music University and the old man was her father so he was probably about 45 or 50 years old, though he looked older.

Adele, Perrin, Emma, Zoe and I sat on the floor and the grown-ups sat on spindly wooden stools. Once we were all seated, the man and the girl started to play. The song was called “Woman Are As Beautiful As The Moon.”

It was like traditional Vietnamese music and classical music mixed together. It was beautiful and the funkiest music I had ever heard. While we were listening, I looked around at all the instruments. I saw a long object that looked like a banjo with two strings and a bow.

I saw some hollow, oval-shaped objects that were, for some unknown reason, painted to look like eggplants. Each had a crack in the side to let the sound out.

The song ended. We all applauded happily. The girl and father asked if anyone wanted to try to play the instruments. We eagerly agreed. I got to play the daughter’s instrument that had one string that was pulled between a bamboo stick on one side and a sliver of a water buffalo horn on the other side. You put your finger on one of the markings on the shaft of the instrument and with a little piece of flat bamboo, you twanged the string to make a note. You could make the note go higher or lower by bending the water buffalo horn. The instrument had a battery in the bottom to project the sound. We thought that was funny because we didn’t think a battery would be inside an instrument that had been played for more than one thousand years. The sound a thousand years ago would not have been as loud or as nice because they didn’t have batteries or modern tools.

After everyone had had a turn, we walked out of the main room and into a tiny storage room. There were a whole lot of drums and a bamboo xylophone that slanted downward so if a squirrel wanted to it could slide down it and have a nice, powerful back massage. I wish there were bigger ones for people! There was also a wooden frog with a hole in the middle and a spikey line down its back. You use a wooden stick and run it down the spikey back to make a croaking sound. We banged and goofed around for a while, of course not damaging anything, and then, when everyone was ready, we said thank you and stepped back into the Vietnam sun.

Baked Babas and Lard in Xizhou, Yunnan

2013-07-01T00:28:00.002-07:00

Xizhou Babas - mmm, mmm good!

by Ashley

While you might think that after five months my palate would have had enough of Chinese food, in fact my infatuation with the dishes of this region continues. We are presented daily with new street foods to taste, new spices to smell and new textures to experience. Some of the tastes are so delicious that we talk about them for hours, plan restaurants around them, dream about them. Xizhou, the small town that houses the Linden Centre, our home base for the past two weeks, is famous for its Baba, a flaky, round bread that is made with either scallions, garlic and ground pork or sweet bean paste, rose jam and brown sugar. During out time in Xizhou in 2010/11, our family had become fans of the bread, and upon our return, Perrin declared that she was going to eat one every day! I had talked to the folks at the Linden Centre about working with some local food makers as a way to help in the community, and, while the idea didn’t pan out completely as planned, for our first two days here, I worked with a Baba maker just off the town square.

The production and cooking of babas was performed like a fine ballet piece by a husband and wife team with the surnames Zhang and Ya. The speed and ease with which the couple cranked out those babas was astounding. All of this took place in and in front of an open, tiny, very basic and not-at-all clean space. Zhang manned the griddle-oven on the street outside while Ya and I sat at a desk-sized table at the right side of the shop. The left side of the table was cluttered with bowls of ingredients – a massive bowl of ground pork, a bowl of brilliant scallion greens, a container of sticky, stringy brown rose jam, a mound of red bean paste, a small container of salt, a metal canister filled with melted lard and a paintbrush, and, most horrifyingly, a massive bowl of pork lard. The mountain of lard dominated the table. Never had I seen anything like it and very quickly I understood why those babas were so delicious. In the same way that Americans use lard in apple pie crusts to offer a crust a flaky, light quality, so too were the babas enhanced with lard…and I had yet to discover just how much!

To the right side and back of the table was the layer of dough. Imagine rising pizza dough spread to cover an entire table the size of an average office desk. That was our dough, and as we worked, we chopped pieces off of it, pushed it back when it encroached on our space, and periodically, Ya roughly tamed its rise with a handful of water. At the furthest right end of our table was a round piece of wood akin to a pizza board onto which we placed the prepared babas when they were ready to go into the “oven”. The dough sat atop a thick layer of flour that served the dual purpose of keeping the dough from sticking to the table and offering us a source of flour when we needed to flour our rolling pins, our hands or the baba board.

Outside, on the street, was the “oven” where Zhang turned the dough from flaccid, greasy disks into the delicious, crispy items beloved by locals and visitors alike. The oven was ingenious. It consisted of an enormous cast iron frying pan, about two feet in diameter, that sat on a stand above a simple wood fire. Zhang oiled the inside of the pan with a small amount of melted pork lard, swished the lard around with a well-used, straw hand broom, and then, with one quick movement, deftly shook all 7 baba from the board into the pan. He then covered the pan with an enormous lid, on which he placed a collection of hot coals, thus delivering heat to the babas from the top as well as the bottom. After about four or five minutes, Zhang opened the lid, shook the babas about to make sure they were not burning, replaced the lid and continued “baking” for another 4 minutes, until the babas were golden brown.

The oven pan

Heat from the top and bottom

My first question upon joining Ya and Zhang at the baba stand on Monday morning, was where to wash my hands. They looked at me quizzically and replied that there was no need, but when I insisted, they motioned to the back courtyard where I found a sink. No soap. This is common in China. Sinks with no soap. Having taught elementary and preschool for years and having conducted various experiments with my students to illustrate the importance of hand washing to hygiene and health, I was more than a bit disturbed, but, as I had been eating the babas and everything else in this country for two weeks with not a stomach problem, I pushed the issue from my mind, reminded myself that I hadn’t visited the toilet recently, wiped my wet hands on my pants, and eagerly joined Ya at the table to make the babas.

To make a baba:

· Use a cleaver to cut seven pieces of dough from the slab (or whatever number fit your oven)
Grab a handful of lard and top each rough piece of dough with about 2T of lard
Pinch the top of the dough down over the lard and then fold the dough over again so the lard is tucked inside the dough
Flip the little package so the seam is down and use a small rolling pin to roll it a few times so you have a long, flat piece
Turn the piece so it is vertical and fold the top third down and the bottom third up, turn it over and roll it again (this stage reminds me of making croissants…add fat, fold, flatten, fold, flatten, etc.)
Fold it a third time, but this time smash the resulting folded package with your hand to flatten it a bit
On top of the package of dough, add another 2T of lard (Yes, I am not kidding), a sprinkle of salt and about 2T of ground pork
Take a handful of scallion greens and smash them down with your palm onto the pile of ingredients. It’s ok if they overflow.
Bring the top of the dough down over the ingredients, then fold then entire thing over again so that the dough conceals everything and the resulting shape is like an omelet that is lying horizontally in front of you
Flip the omelet so the seam is down
With a cleaver, whack a series of cuts the length of the omelet-sized package of meat-filled dough. Do not cut all the way through. The ingredients within should be visible along the cuts but not gushing out. It takes more pressure than one might think.
This is the tough part: with the cut omelet-shaped package of baba in front of you horizontally, use your hands to pull it a bit longer to the sides. Then use your right palm to begin rolling the dough toward the left at a slight downward angle.
The dough should now look almost like a croissant in the vertical position
Turn the dough so that it is horizontal again, pinch both ends with your fingers, keep the left hand still and use the right hand to twist the dough toward you while pushing the dough into itself. If you do it right, you’ll end up with something that looks like a cinnamon roll stacked against your left hand
Plop it with the spiral side up onto the table
Place a small pile of scallions on the table, place the cinnamon roll on top of the scallions, smash it down with your hand and roll it out a few times, turning it as you roll until it is a circle about 6” in diameter.
Flip the dough over so the scallions are on top and place it on the floured baba board
Grab the can of melted lard and brush the dough with a layer of lard
Take another handful of lard (YUP!) and top each baba with another T+ of lard
If you like pork, take another bit of ground pork and crumble it around the top of the bread
Voila! Zuo wan le! It’s done!
Pop that sucker and its six companions into the oven and let them cook for about 4 minutes
Open the oven, turn the babas so they don’t burn, and replace the lid
When they are golden brown and the meat is cooked, after about 8 minutes, they should be done
Eat that beauty and don’t think about the vast quantity of LARD that is in it!

As you can imagine, our family’s plan to eat a baba every day changed dramatically after I calculated the quantity of lard in every baba, but don’t worry, we still managed to put away a number of them over our few weeks in Xizhou, and Zhang and Ya’s business was all the better for it.

The Millikens in Asia

Southeast Asia with the Wilmers and Chevaliers May/June 2013

Why So Tiny When So Famous?!

Baked Babas and Lard in Xizhou, Yunnan