Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 August 1885 — Cookery in China. [ARTICLE]

Cookery in China.

Our kitchen certainly is not so cozy and neat os American kitchens usually are. The smoke goes through the Skylight, and wherever it finds an outlet. The walls are black with the accumulation of years ’of soot That large stove in the corner is built of brick. On the top of this stove is a large round iron spider about three feet in diameter. In this rice is cooking. Straw, being cheaper, is burnt in this stove, instead of wood, and some one is required to feed the fire constantly. Turning.to the left, we see little clay stoves, on which food is frying in spiders or boiling in earthen pots over a wood tire. Vegetables are cut into bits and boiled with pork or mutton, making a soud. Greens are boiling. Fish is steaming, frying or stewing, with or without vegetables. Meat is cut fine; when the spider becomes heated lard is put in it, then pieces of onion, then the <*hred meat, and all is stirred till well embrowned, then turnips, potatoes, and sometimes other vegetables are added, and after boiling water is poured in the whole is left to simmer and stew. All food, we observe, is cut in pieces before being cooked, or el e before serving, for no knives, no forks, are used. At 10 a. m. the tables are set; these for men either in the wings or in their rooms; those for the women in their common sitting-room or parlor. Each table will seat eight No table linen is used. Chopsticks and spoons are placed before each place. The food is brought in large bowls or plates. Rice is carried to the table m a wooden pail or wicker basket, from which it is served in small bowls. The servants summon the inmates to breakfast. The younger ones do not presume to sit till their elders are seated; then after making a show of asking permission to eat, when the elders gravely nod assent, the breakfast begins. Soup is taken first; then each person, holding the chop-sticks in his right hand and the bowl of rice in the left, lifts his food to his mouth, pushes the lumps in with the sticks, alternating this motion with picking meat, fish or vegetables from the dishes which are common to all. One must take only from that side of the plate which is nearest, to him, however. It is a breach of etiquette to reach over to the opposite side. When one finishes he bids the rest to “eat leisurely,” which is our mode of saying “excuse me!” The Chinese invariably wash their hands and faces after every meal. Tea is drank about the same time. It is taken without milk or sugar. Coffee is not common in China, and we are not accustomed to drink cold water. Tea is the national beverage, and is taken to assuage thirst at all times and occasions as water is in America. At noon a lunch of cakes or pastry may be served. The majority of people are satisfied with two meals a day. Supper or dinner is served at 5 p. m.— Pan Phon Lee, in Wide Awake.