What Do We Really Know about the History of the Wok?
Not much. Just enough to know that the standard story has to be revised. My long-time friend and fine scholar and anthropologist, E.N. Anderson, told this story in The Food of China (1988). “Wok is a...
View ArticleMending Woks. Uses of Woks in the Nineteenth Century
Donald Wagner, the expert on Chinese metallurgy, sent me a page he has put together on the historical and contemporary accounts and photos of the Chinese tinkers who mended woks. Just a bit of molten...
View ArticleBread, Celestial Made. Or Bread’s Long Journey to Hawaii
Here’s something I’ve been wanting to post for some time. This ad appeared in Honolulu in a weekly, The Polynesian, in June 1840. If it’s hard to read the words, here they are: Good people all, walk...
View ArticleThin rice starch batter pastry from the 6th century AD
Just look at this. Wow. Have to re-think lots of things. ca. 540 AD. Recipe (not direct translation). Take refined rice glutinous rice starch, add enough water to make a batter, heat a large pot of...
View ArticleChinese Tourists Don’t Eat European Food
This week’s Economist has a fascinating piece on what Chinese tourists seek out in Europe. And at just the point where you are beginning to think the author is being a tad condescending about their...
View ArticleTwo nineteenth-century kitchens: Mexico and China
Photographs of old kitchens are not that common so I was delighted to come across this one. In the early twentieth century, Mineral de la Luz was a boom mining town with a number of well-to-do...
View ArticleCooking Across Cultures, Classes, and Sexes in the 1930s: The Extraordinary...
When I taught at the University of Hawai‘i in the 1980s, I often wandered into the university bookstore during the lunch hour. Always on the shelf of local cookbooks was an unassuming volume with a...
View ArticleWhat’s the History of the Wok? A Continuing Investigation
I was so pleased to get a message yesterday from the distinguished sinologist, Victor Mair (and here), having found my blog posts on the wok. Here’s the first asking what we know about the history of...
View ArticleJackie Newman is seeking a new editor for Flavor and Fortune
I’m writing on behalf of Jackie Newman who is looking for a new editor for Flavor and Fortune, the magazine dedicated to the art and science of Chinese cuisine that she founded twenty years ago and...
View ArticleWhat About Food Heritage?
Last week I attended a conference entitled Food: Heritage, Hybridity and Locality hosted by the American Studies Department at Brown University. It was a small conference, always the best, with just...
View ArticleDining with the Dead
Every year I enjoy the Day of the Dead but can’t help feeling slightly tetchy about some of the widely-held assumptions about it. I have very happy memories of families going to the graveyard with...
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