Travel report

200 ways of preparing chicken

The last country of this journey is China. We begin in Beijing, where we firstly need to get used to the oppressive heat. The climate is quite different here. Again, we are accompanied by a local guide and this seems even in Beijing not to be a superfluous luxury. In our hotel no one speaks one word English and this in a period so close before the beginning of the Olympic Games! Our Chinese colleague only taught us how to say ‘Knee How’ (= good day to you), thus this is not really a help. Together with our guide we take a taxi for $ 1 (!) to the other side of Beijing, where we are invited to visit Sarina. Her restaurant is well-known in Beijing for the fantastic spare rib marinade. After going over a typical Chinese bridge inside the house, we meet her and the spare ribs are served, naturally accompanied by 5 other dishes. Although we already had made some special discoveries during our journey, we are nevertheless surprised by this gorgeous dish. What a taste sensation! It seems as if we tasted 5 spices simultaneously.

During the search for our other products we went further inland, among other places to the small village of our guide, in the area of the popular Xi’An, where the first Chinese emperor ordered to produce an army of soldiers and horses from terracotta. Our guide tells us that one presumes that not all statues are excavated yet.

At his home place we meet his sweet children with their favourite snack – wasabi (horseradish) coated peanuts. The youngest daughter repeatedly takes a handful of nuts each time the big family is distracted by the tricks of the youngest son. A handful is offered to us, too and we again had a new spontaneous discovery!

Because, in fact we came to visit Edzes, the nanny of the children of our guide. According to him she has got a tremendous recipe for chicken drumsticks, with the thrilling name ‘Drunken Chicken’! He also tells us that there are 200 official ways of preparing chicken in the Chinese cuisine, by using the opposite tastes hot, sour, bitter, sweet and salty.

With this last pure recipe under our belt, we plan our journey back to Europe. We cannot wait sharing our unique discoveries with other people!