Norman’s Odd Crusade to the New World

We went to one of our favorite Chinese patronized fast food shops last night: Bu Hger Kee Ng. The Chinese contingent made up greater than half the patrons. Unlike the Thai (Chinese) restaurant we patronized recently there were plenty of people. We ordered pan fried ‘beef in a ‘bun’. Not bad. It came with white sauce. We ordered Coke as most of the Chinese families do.

A few days back we were at Little Dumpling in Little Neck. There we had ordered pan fried pork in bun. Good but lots of carbs. There we followed that course with Luk Shun soup. As I could not use chopsticks I ordered a fork to get the Luk Shun to my mouth. Soup had great flavor (ate it with a porcelain spoon) and I did the Luk Shun like Marco Polo would have (1260). Polo wrote nothing about noodles so that the Venetian must have had friends from the silk Route.

The Jewish peddlers must have thought that this form of matzoh was great. And soup a great way to eat it rather than the old Jewish style of crumbling the baked matzoh.  Anyway they all had wives on the 7th day when they rested and used their expertise (the wives) in cooking.  Like Polo, I ate my soup using a fork in the Italian style. Lots of Chinese and Italian cuisine came about after Columbus went to Central America and found ‘Indians’.

The tomatoes for sauce recipes all followed Columbus, who saved Jews from the inquisition by sailing the day before the start of the roundup.

The Inquisition

And in Columbus’s discovery of the “new world”, he also, by association, found these New World foods: corn, potato, tomato, bell pepper, chili pepper, vanilla, tobacco, beans, pumpkin, cassava root, avocado, peanut, pecan , cashew, pineapple, blueberry, sunflower, petunia, black-eyed susan, dahlia, marigold, quinine, wild rice, cacao (chocolate), gourds, and squash.

Cashews and peanuts came from the new world (two of my favorite Chinese ingredients/dishes).  And what would Sichuan food be without Chili pepper?

Inquiring minds want to know!

–Norman

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