That’s right! One of our Traditional Chinese Medicine professors recently invited us to his home to make medicinal wine. TCM has many types of medicinal wines (including wines with snakes in them!), but the wine that we prepared was made from fermented rice. This wine is used for overall health, rather than for treating a specific condition. I’ll take you through the steps of making this wine, but as with any fermented product prepare at your own risk! :) (Many thanks to my friend Therese for having the foresight to copy down this recipe!)
Our professor’s apartment complex:
Begin with about 500 grams of glutinous rice (the sticky kind). You can prepare the rice one of two ways: either (1) soak the rice overnight and steam for 20 minutes, or (2) steam for 1 hour. Our professor chose (1) because it is more energy efficient – and it was hot as Hades in the apartment already without steaming rice for an hour.
Our professor draining the soaked rice:
At the same time, steam a handful (about 1/2 cup) each of goji berries (for your immune system) and dried gyrophora(for strength) for 5-10 minutes. This steam serves to both soften and sterilize the ingredients.
After steaming:
Add 1/3 packet of yeast to steamed rice and stir. Add just enough room temperature water to moisten rice (about a cup):
Pour rice into storage container (e.g. Tupperware). You can either separate the rice into two different containers and add goji berries to one and gyrophora to the other, or you can combine everything together into one big container. We went with the former option.
Once you’ve mixed all the ingredients, flatten the rice and make a well in the middle. Cover and store in a room temperature location. After 1-2 days, you can start tasting the liquid. If the wine is too strong, dilute with water. The rice mixture should smell pleasantly of alcohol. If it just smells BAD, don’t drink it! According to the Chinese, if your mixture is too strong or has toxic ingredients, it will kill the yeast and your wine is no good. Fermenting the mixture for 1-3 days will give a mild wine with a sweet flavor, while fermenting for 7 or more days will yield a strong alcohol.
Our professor prepared some medicinal wine ahead of time so that we would be able to taste it.
Prior to pouring off the liquid:
The medicinal wine:
The wine tasted really good! Our professor fermented this batch for only a few days, so the taste was light and sweet. Notice how the wine is cloudy? If you distill it or just let it sit for a while until the solids settle out, you have sake :) I’m definitely trying this at home sometime.
Q: Have you ever tried to make your own, ahem, “spirits”?
P.S. By the time this post is up, I’ll be in Hong Kong visiting my aunt. I don’t have Internet there, so if I don’t respond to emails right away, that’s why! Talk to you all soon!
For those of you who have been to Beijing, you have probably visited the famous Wangfujing Night Market, home to foods both crazy and delicious (and sometimes both). Deep fried scorpions and starfish, stinky tofu, and fried milk are all staples of this major shopping area, as well as more normal foods such as lamb kabobs and sugared fruit. I was thrilled to visit this exciting street about a week ago. Let’s take a food tour, shall we?
Starting with something relatively normal: fruit kabobs dipped in a simple syrup and allowed to harden. A delicious start to our gastronomic explorations.
Lanting showing off her mad chomping skills.
The fruit was wonderfully sweet with a hard candy coating, but I could only nibble a few sugared grapes before they started tasting sickly sweet.
After our fruit kabob, we spied something a little more unusual:
Yes, scorpions (and starfish) on a stick! The vendors deep-fry them for your delectation. I didn’t actually see anyone order scorpion (or any other crazy kabobs) while I was in the Night Market, but some of my classmates did on a later visit. The strangest part of these kabobs (besides that fact that they are scorpion KABOBS) was that the scorpions were still moving. If you’re feeling really brave, check out this video of the scorpions moving, as well as some shots of the Night Market:
Yum, yum.
Speaking of yum, I finally sampled a food I had been longing to taste: stinky tofu! Stinky tofu is a fermented tofu that smells just how it sounds. Usually stinky tofu can be smelled for hundreds of feet around, but the vendors have toned down the smell in the Night Market, probably to prevent potential customers from keeling over as they approach.
Giving stinky tofu a skeptical sniff:
Let’s chow down!
How was it? Delicious! Stinky tofu does not taste anything like it smells. The outside is firm and crispy and the inside is soft and smooth. Instead of tasting bland, the tofu is flavorful from the fermentation process (as well as from the heaps of scallions and hot sauce on top). If you’re ever in this part of the world, give stinky tofu a try! All you have to do is follow your nose ;)
We passed by a few interesting stores on our stroll through the Night Market, including this candy lover’s heaven:
I surprised to find this bag hanging on the wall:
Yep, that would be the regional special, Beijing Kao Ya (Peking Duck), hanging on a rack in a candy store. I think I’d rather eat my Beijing Kao Ya piping hot, served fresh in a restaurant with green onions and special sauce.
I had to stop by the booth serving many types of fried delicacies.
Can you guess what this is?
After perusing the selection, I decided to sample the fried banana, fried ice cream, and fried MILK (pictured above). The vendor plucked one of each food from a plate and briefly submerged them in boiling oil. Mmm-MM! Double fried.
From left to right: fried banana, fried milk, fried ice cream.
Giving a tentative nibble:
Yum squared!
The fried ice cream and the fried milk tasted mostly like fried dough with a moist center – not delicious, but not too terrible either. However, the fried banana was tasty :)
We looked at a few of the other unusual kabobs, such as tarantula:
And some sort of lizard (which the hi-larious vendor jabbed into my hand as I was distracted from taking a picture of something else. Har har.):
Yep, an exciting trip overall :)
P.S. This post is duplicated at my Beijing study abroad program blog here.
Disclaimer: The information presented on this website is for education purposes only. Please consult your doctor and/or registered dietitian for your health and nutrition needs.
