Bamboo Shoots 竹笋

These bamboo shoots or bamboo sprouts are another interesting vegetable that is common in Chinese cuisine. This spring they were everywhere at our fresh market, so we have made sure to take advantage of learning how to cook this delicious sprout. 

We stir fried the bamboo shoots with chicken, peanuts and Chinese Toon (see below).  It was absolutely delicious!

This is the Chinese Toon (Toona Sinensis), which are some of the early leaflets of the tree in the spring. It plays a large role in Chinese medicine and may have potential to be developed by western medicine as well (says wikipedia).  Either way, we really liked the taste of these leaves as they have an onion and another hard-to-describe savory flavor.

Lotus Root

You may have seen or heard of the lotus plant (nelumbo nucifera) before.  Here a beautiful picture that we borrowed from wikipedia to show you.

 

This plant is an aquatic perennial. Under favorable circumstances its seeds may remain viable for many years, with the oldest recorded lotus germination being from that of seeds 1,300 years old recovered from a dry lakebed in northeastern China. Now that's impressive!  The roots of lotus are planted in the soil of the pond or river bottom, while the leaves float on top of the water surface or are held well above it. The flowers are usually found on thick stems rising several centimeters above the leaves. 

What you may not know is that many parts of this plant are eaten.  The flowers, seeds, young leaves, and "roots" (rhizomes) are all edible. We want to show you the delicious root that is well known in Chinese cooking.  It's quite crisp and if eaten in large chunks can even be a bit hairy (or stringy), so it's much better to cut it into thin slices. We've had it several times out at restaurants but wanted to take a stab at it in our own kitchen.  We used half of it to make a cold vinegar salad after blanching it. Then we used the other half to stir fry.  Both turned out great.

Here's some of our pictures of the root and cooking process.

Some More Blooming Trees

 In the last two weeks we have seen blooming trees all over the city. You saw a glimpse of those trees in another recent post, but we thought we should share some more since they have made walking around the city so lovely. However, there has been tons of pollen in the air too and when it mixes with wind its quite painful to open your eyes. We will have some relief from that now after the rain yesterday and today.

This is our street view.

 

We found these bright purple blossoms just outside of the Alliance Française, which we were very happy to find. And it's only a 15-20 minute walk from our place! We'll be spending some time at their library in the future. That way Red can improve her French and Yellow can enjoy their resources.

 

 This is our new campus where we work. You can see the largest library building in Asia just behind the pretty pink flowers and the Weeping Willow.

Some Homecooking

 Now that it's spring there are lots of new fruits and veggies at the market.  That means we have a lot to discover. After watching the CCTV documentary called "Bite of China", Yellow recognized these bamboo shoots at the market. We liked them so much we've already eaten them twice so far. Here's what they look like, but we don't have a picture of the prepared dishes we made. Hopefully next time. 

 

Yellow has also been experimenting with making flat bread and naan. It was quite successful from the start. Here you can see the naan, roasted eggplant and fresh tomatoes with the tzatziki cucumber sauce we made with our kefir. 

  

 Since we bought an oven in September, we have made several pizzas. This weekend we made chicken barbeque pizza with lots of caramelized onions and green peppers. I think we'll be doing this one again.

Feng Qing Park

We heard that some trees were blooming in a park nearby our university.  So we decided check it out, and we saw a lot of interesting things which we will show you below.

Here are some of the beautiful flowering trees.

 

Once the trees start blooming there are photo shoots and people taking selfies surrounding the all the trees. You have to be patient and wait your turn.

 Spiderman even made an appearance!

There's a lake in the middle of the park and people were enjoying it on some boats.

You can even let your child use up all their energy trying to run around like a hamster in one of these.

 

 We saw a group doing yoga, which was quite entertaining. 

 

 These kids were doing water paintings on the sidewalk.

There are the many music groups that we have seen already around parks in the city. This particular group was quite big and very loud. It's very hard to explain the sounds that we heard.  It's a type of traditional music that might be pleasant at its base, but its really chaotic and seems almost like everybody playing is just doing their own thing. And it doesn't help that the microphones they use distort their voices. 

We were very surprised and relieved to find another music group that included around 10 violin players and one accordion player.  The also played Chinese traditional music and were able to bring some tranquility back to us after listening to the previous group.

Spring has sprung in Xi'an!

So it's been awhile. We are back from our month vacation. That means Red is busy working, while Yellow is busy studying Chinese.  He, on the other hand, is still waiting for further news on his job for the semester.  We will do our best to put up some pictures from our trip soon.

Spring has sprung! How do we know? Because yesterday we walked past several children holding baby chicks in their hands while we were on our way to lunch.  Near our canteen we found the source of these brightly dyed chicks. This is the first time that we've seen the sale of live young chickens to young children along with other pets like turtles and birds. We are wondering what the fate of these small birds will be...

By the way, it really is spring here. This week the high is in the 60s F (15-20 C) and the air is not too bad. We've opened our windows the last two days and done some spring cleaning around the house. Feels great.

Since we've been back we have been exploring the restaurants near our university. Last night we had some beef, lamb, and chicken wing meat sticks; with a grilled eggplant; and some fried rice and fried noodles. Yum.

The Great Mosque 西安大清真寺

The Great Mosque in Xi'an is one of the oldest and most renowned mosques in the country. It was founded in 742, although most of it was built later during the Ming Dynasty. It's still used as a place of worship (by the local Hui people), but it's quite the touristy spot too. You can see that like the other mosque in Xi'an it is completely Chinese in its architecture and construction.