Beans

March 31, 2010

Red bean soup. Yum! Dessert!

I took my friend, Alex, from home, to get hot pot. Hot pot is China’s version of fondue. At the restaurant we went, Dolar Shop, each person gets their own personal boiling bowl of broth with a variety of flavors to choose from. You then order off a menu of raw vegetables and meats. There is a sauce bar. Once your bowl is boiling, you cook the crudite and raw meat and then dip it in your sauce. It is quite fantastic.

At the end of the meal, everyone was served a red bean pudding. Zach, who has been in China for 2 years, devoured his. Alex looked at hers, then looked at me.

“What is this?”

“It’s red bean.” I looked at Zach, slurping his down. 

“Do you guys remember when we didn’t think beans were a dessert?” Refried beans flashed into my head.

Red bean bun

Red bean is just something that is part of Asian desserts. I suppose it sounds very strange to people who have never encountered it. “Ugh you want me to eat this paste made of beans?! For dessert?!”

Chinese people do not have the same palate as Americans or other Westerners when it comes to dessert especially. They don’t like anything too sweet. Many desserts are rice-based and can be quite sticky. They usually have a very diluted sweet taste, or may not be sweet at all. I’m wary of ever making cookies for Chinese people because they usually turn them down unless they are accustomed to western desserts.

Another place that beans are prevalent in China is in soy milk. One of my students was explaining to me that he makes a drink made of beans every morning in a machine designed especially for this purpose. He asked me what this drink was called. I was so confused. I said, “I don’t know? Bean juice?” It only came to me much later that he was making soy milk. I had never heard of anyone making soy milk before.

When I went to Shaoxing to celebrate Chinese New Year, Tong’s dad made us soy milk every morning. He makes it from a bean mixture that he picks himself. He first soaks the beans for an hour or two, then puts them in a soy milk maker, which I assume boils them and then mushes them. The resulting soy milk is not like anything I’ve had before. It is very thick and purple and hearty. It tastes really great though and seems healthy. Its very filling.

Bing sha covered in red bean, boiled peanuts, and sweetened condensed milk