Breakfast of Champions
The Morning Routine:
- 6:12 AM: Roll out of bed after multiple attempts by Hubs to coax me up (he has been awake and functioning, like a robot, since 5:30). *scrunchy, grumpy, not-a-morning-person Wex face*
- 6:20 AM: CAFFEINE. Cuisinart programmable machines FTW means the coffee machine is beeping its completion as I stumble downstairs (with just enough control so as not to fall flat). *faint stirrings of life and color in Wex face*
- 6:30 AM: Warm up car. Today is trash and recycling day. Drag respective bins to the curb. Slip on iced-over driveway. Slip again. Once more. *more Wex scrunchy face*
- 6:40 AM: Drop Hubs off at the train station where he will invariably wait between 15–85 minutes in subzero wind chill for the commuter train. *sad Wex face*
- 7:15 AM: Back home. Apollo peeks through the trees on his ascent. The kitchen begins to warm. More coffee + NYTimes.com. Yes, I am liberal and bougie. *unapologetic Wex face*
Sufficiently updated on and depressed by the headlines, I click down the rabbit hole of the food section, a scurried retreat back to my dream-world microcosm where food and love can solve everything. Join me.
- Click: “A Family Affair,” by Mark Bittman, reminiscing about cozy Neapolitan home cooking.
- Click: “A Measured Approach to Cooking,” by Tamar Adler, echoing my carefree, recipes-are-just-guidelines philosophy on cooking.
- Click: “What Happens When Second Graders Are Treated to a Seven-Course, $220 Tasting Meal,” by Jeffrey Blitz, documenting the hilarity and hope of taking little taste buds on a big adventure.
I am one shuffle-ball-change away from being solidly back in my happy place, when this grumpy little face catches my eye.
“Rise and Shine. What kids around the world eat for breakfast.”
Culturally-based cuisine anthropology? I’m IN. Click.
I salivate over Doga and Okyu’s bountiful spreads, which remind me that tahini has been on my grocery list going on a fortnight now, I’m clean out of Nutella, and Lonely Planet Istanbul has been on my bookshelf beckoning since 2002, woefully outdated, and WHEN AM I GOING?? I wonder whether my friend Ya-Hsuan ate groundnut porridge and drank hibiscus juice during her Malawi Fulbright stint. I wonder how the Dutch manage to eat 300 million slices of white bread smothered in chocolate sprinkles annually without astronomical rates of diabetes. And I understand why Tiago, bringing up the rear of this global food porn parade, scowls at his soggy cornflakes and white bread. *same Wex face* when cold cereal is my breakfast fate. Just ask my husband.
And then delight turns to bewilderment. WHERE ARE THE CHINESE BREAKFASTS?? 1.355 billion people, 20% of the world’s population, unrepresented! (Sorry, India, in addition to liberal and bougie, I am also ethnocentric. I leave it to someone better qualified to champion your cause.) We eat breakfast! Savory, sweet, filling Chinese-y breakfast often on the go but never missed.
So how DO the Chinese, who eat just about everything that crawls, swims, or flies (or at least we’ll try), start off their day? Something like this:
- Zhou 粥 (rice congee): Boil the shit out of last night’s leftover rice, adding lots of water, until the rice breaks down completely. Dig deep through your fridge, pantry, flavor wheel and top with tastpiration. Chinese favorites: zhacai 榨菜 (pickled vegetables), peanuts, cilantro, pidan 皮蛋 (century egg or preserved egg), xian yadan 咸鸭蛋 (salted duck egg), jiang doufu 酱豆腐 (fermented tofu), rousong 肉松 (pork floss). And for the sweet tooth: red beans in syrup.
Today: scallions, fermented tofu, Sriracha, and rousong (which I eat by the spoonful, BTW, because it is so weird and magical and delicious). - Jiaozi 饺子 (dumplings): The Chitalian New Year that keeps on giving.
- Danta 蛋挞 (egg tart): Not part of a traditional Chinese breakfast unless you’re in Hong Kong, these addictive custards came to China by way of Portugal via Macau (forget the casinos, go for the tarts. Note: I'm only vouching for the food version, here, not the occupation).
Tip of the day: Kam Man’s bakery makes the BEST Portuguese egg tarts I have ever EVER eaten. Earnestly eggy, sinfully smooth, quietly quivering.
Breakfast is an informal affair. Leftovers reheated and wolfed down with negative pomp and circumstance or picked up to go. Every street corner invariably has at least one breakfast vendor ready to supply the hungry hordes with their Breakfast of Champions. Of course, it all varies by region. In the southeast, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, dim sum is the perennial favorite; in the mid-lands of the country, you will find noodles swimming in pork broth, pickles and other salty/sweet accouterments bobbing along; while we northerners prefer less noodly affairs: jiaozi, baozi 包子 (filled buns), rice congee, and we LOVE our youtiao 油条 (fried dough or Chinese crullers).
No matter where you go, you will find chaye dan 茶叶蛋 (tea eggs boiled in a spiced tea/soy broth), fresh doujiang 豆漿 (soybean milk), and douhua 豆花 also doufu nao (tofu pudding) rounding out the mix.
Homemade soy milk and tea eggs. Almond tofu pudding topped with a 5-minute blueberry ginger compote. And yeah, I got serving bowls with some serious Asian game face. Pudding and bowls courtesy of Kam Man. Place has got my back.
I left China when I was four years old. Memories, real memories I know to be true and not figments of a child’s imagination strung together, are few. Memories like watercolors. Walking with Nainai 奶奶 (paternal grandmother) every morning to the street, milk tin in hand, where we would buy soybean milk from the soybean vendor then youtiao from the youtiao vendor then sometimes jianbing 煎饼 (egg crepe) stuffed with chives from the jianbing vendor. By the time we had completed this 10-step circular waltz and walked back to the apartment, Yeye 爷爷 (paternal grandfather) would have boiled the congee and tea eggs for us, and maybe refried some jiaozi or Chinese frenchtoast (methinks an upcoming weekend post, yes?). Nainai’s palate was blandly unrefined, and she preferred simple foods—steamed buns and rice congee—that were painfully plain. She was a feminist, a qigong master, and a brilliant mind who parceled her time and effort as she saw worthwhile.
And so every morning at exactly the same time, she sat in her chair at the table and ate the same breakfast: alternating dunking youtiao into soybean milk and congee, slurping her liquids and smacking her lips as the Chinese do. And of all the memories I have of her, this is my favorite.