patrick.net

ohomen171 says

We know what real Chinese food is.

So you know it wasn't a dog, cat or a bat? Reputations are earned, not just made up. I'm not certain one will know what "real" Chinese food is besides the person grabbing the cat behind the restaurant.

$25 a plate for chow mein. I could see how that would be unforgettable.

I don't know about anybody else but I just live for ohonmnm's folksy little homilys and bromides.
What will dear Elena get up to next??
I too am "one of his readers"

There's no such thing as Chinese food, only Asian cooking techniques.
Other countries in Asia have more of a pronounced cuisine as it pertains to dishes with a consentient recipe.
American Chinese food is more authentic in that regard than to pin point a unified menu in China.
From what I have seen, simple and minimalist seasoning is the main thing there. Which leads to artistic license, and a dish will be unique from establishment or family to the next.

One thing I discovered is even in America, there isn't a go to Fried Rice recipe.
My wife likes to make it with cooked white rice, few dashes of soy sauce, then a toss in scrambled eggs and stir-fried green onion.
Where as I like to break about four eggs over the 2 or 3 cups of rice, then mix it like it's going to be a rice cake.
Stir fry that until it gets dry and the eggs sticks to the rice in tiny crumbs. I find what ever seasoning, you put in your fried rice at that point, will stick to the rice and provide more flavor. I also use a fish sauce and sesame oil in my FR.

Protein is Protein. I've eaten a lot of weird stuff and never really suffered any ill effects. Just make sure it's fully cooked.

I still have to sample more insects, though. But they give me the heebie jeebies. Maybe if I can't see the eyes and legs and stuff. I've heard they are commonplace in parts of Africa??

IMHO, there are three main types of cuisines in the world:

1. That of regions rich in naturally available protein. e.g.: you can put a side of salmon (a carnivore) or a raw steak on the grill, and in a few minutes you get a tasty meal without having to use any seasoning.

2. That of of regions of intermediate protein availability. e.g. land is packed in tightly enough that the local farms had to raise pigs; since it's not safe to eat half-raw pork, various sauces were invented for prolonged cooking, like in French Cuisine and Asian cooking. Grass-fed fish caught in fresh/muddy water, so taste muddy without heavy seasoning, here we have German and Asian both having winter festival Christmas/new-year traditions of eating Carp, which is famously known for its grill recipe (put a slab of carp on a pine board, grill for half an hour, then toss away the fish and eat the pine board because the pine board would taste better than the fish)

3. Where/when the people are really hard-pressed to eek out any protein from the land. Here, bugs, wild rodents, snakes and monkeys all become food. In the post-industrial factory food abundant world, some people might be willing to pay extra just for the weirdness of the protein source (a behavior that historically might have had evolutionary advantage: both in terms of protein source diversity and the old proverbial "that which doesn't kill you only makes you stronger," so especially popular in the tropics as the locals had to contend with all sorts of wild poisons) Ironically, shortly after Norman conquest, inland Brits had to eat rabbits while the French (Norman) aristocracy could dine on pork (an imported word).

rocketjoe79 says

I still have to sample more insects, though. But they give me the heebie jeebies.

Think of the bug as a land version of shrimp. A spider would just be the land version of a crab. That might help.

On my first trip to China, my gracious hosts took me out to a long lunch, ordered a bewildering array of local food, and described each dish, frequently with a folk tale and a medicinal value story. The most unusual thing I ate was scorpion - small, deep fried, and crunchy. The deep frying was supposed to have inactivated the toxin, and the food was supposed to have medicinal value for neurological diseases. Chicken feet, intestines (tripe), not that weird, really, but an example of how every bit of the animal was used.

I’ve had tripe. It tasted about like you might imagine intestines tasting.

PeopleUnited says

I’ve had tripe. It tasted about like you might imagine intestines tasting.

In England, "tripe" was some part of a cows' stomach. Nasty. Intestines are commonly used as skins for sausages and not bad at all.