simple chinese food for chinese students

[scoffs]

Hello this is my first post

I have a sandwich and food shop in preston lancashire Uk

We sell afordable food to anyone that wants to buy it

Preston is a university town and this year we have hundreds of chinese students and our shop is in the middle of their acommodation

We get a few Chinese students in and this is their first visit to the UK To some of these students we have been the first shop that they have entered and they have been keen to practise their language skills and to us we have enjoyed this experience

Some of these students have tried our food and have enjoyed it

The chinese students seem to have far different tastes than the English ones the realy love "cheese cake"for instance and seem mildly amused by it they obviously like rice dishes

So far we whilst we have taken their tastes into acount in our daily choice of "specials" that we do , We do not make food just for them But we woukld love to make some affordable food that they might gain some economically priced sustinence from

We are a business and we have to make a profit but we get this profit from our work rather than a percentage on top of the cost of the food ie we like to make a certain amount per hour spent preparing the food

We would love to find a few simple recipes that they can afford and ones that they are famillar with

We are a northern City so our prices are a lot lower than places like London and idealy we would like to make a well balanced meal with a small profit to sell at £1.50 sterling

Any ideas folks

we know they enjoy trying new foods but soon their fasination and their budget will maybe help them choose more wisely

Thanks a lot patsy scoffs

[davidj]

My impression is that one of the most common simple dishes is basically scrambled egg and tomatoes. There is also some sauce (soy?) and I don't know what oil is used. You can find a picture on Chinese Hours' Chinese Menu pages, but I can't remember exactly which page.

The small restaurant near Barbican, run by people from Beijing, used to be reluctant to do this because they considered it to be more home food than restaurant food. They've since produced special menus for Chinese students, and it might actually be in those.

[davidj]

Another approach to this is to try a forum that in some way mirrors this, i.e. it is used by mainland Chinese people in the UK, rather than westerners, often in China. For the one I'm thinking of, the biggest hurdle will be registering and getting the user interface language into English. Once you are there, you ought to be able to get replies in English to questions in English, as long as you make it clear that you can't read Chinese.

The one I'm thinking of does have an English language forum, but it is rather low volume and the sign on process is not exactly the same as the Chinese one, although they use the same BBS software, so you probably can't use it as a model for signing on to the latter. I don't have time now, but I could probably talk you through the sign on and language change, although I can't dry run any secondary sign on pages. Signing on to the English one might give a rough idea of any secondary pages.

My guess is that you would want the food and cookery sub-forum.

[liuzhou]

Noodles.

In China, students survive on cheap noodle dishes. Noodles in soup, fried noodles, noodle, noodle.

Also, rice porridge - congee.

Ask them what they want.

[scoffs]

Thank you we will try that forum and noodles are OK but it is what meat to put with them with what recipe

there were another 150 chinese students that moved in a newly built building within 150 yards of our shop today

[imron]

Jiaozi will also be popular, although they can be time-consuming to make.

[roddy]

If you can do something like this or this or this and serve it up in a wrap so it can be eaten on the go, I think you could be on a winner. You'll want to keep it kind of dry though, or it'll disintegrate.

[scoffs]

Thanks again we will try some of these next week

once again thank you

[roddy]

Let us know how you get on, with photos and reports from the test subjects if possible.

Even if you can get the sauces and flavors from those recipes and add it to a chicken or pork sandwich you could be on a winner. I'd buy one.

[krinkle]

oops i see this was already suggested! sorry!

jook (or congee or joak)

rice porridge very inexpensive to make

a few toppings for it i.e. scallions cilantro and soy some chopped veg

do a search for the a recipe it is so easy to prepare it isnt funny

Edited September 7, 2008 at 06:31 PM by krinkle

[davidj]

If you want to try asking in the forum for Chinese in the UK that I mentioned, their English language one is now broken, but was too low volume to be useful anyway.

To register for the Chinese language one (in which you would still be able to get away with English questions, if they were relevant), first make sure that you have the Chinese fonts enabled on your PC. You might also want to make sure that your browser is showing link URLs in the bottom margin, as these contain English words which are clues to the functions.

Near the top of the page, with a pink background, you will find the text ( 登录 | 注册 ). 登录 is login (URL contains "act=Login") and 注册 is register (URL contains "act=reg"). Use the second link and you will be presented with the terms and conditions, in English. If you are happy with them, tick the tick box underneath them (it basically says "I've read, understood and agree to these rules", and use the 注册 at the bottom of the page.

The boxes in the first column are (left to right within top to bottom): proposed user name; name you want displayed in the forum; proposed password; repeat of password; real email address; repeat of real email address; captcha (a displayed number that you must copy into the input box, to show you aren't a machine).

The second column fields are: check box to allow administrators to send you email; check box to allow any member to send you email; and timezone (you probably want just "(GMT)". Then use the button at the bottom right.

I don't want to dry run the process beyond here, but I think you will be sent a confirmation email. You may need to use Babelfish on this, or if you get a second registration page. (Do not use Babelfish to translate into Chinese (except to produce a first draft of something that you will manually correct) as all machine translations can be pretty poor.)

To login from the first page choose 登录. The first box is the user name and the second box is the password. The top tick box is remember me and the second one is, I believe, to stop you being shown as lurking.

Once you are logged in, select English in the pull down list at the extreme bottom left of the page. This will not change the forum names, but I think the one I suggested is appropriate, or you can try Babelfish.

If the language choice appears earlier, you can obviously use it then, but it didn't appear at the point at which I stopped my dry run.

[flameproof]

Jiaozi will also be popular, although they can be time-consuming to make.

time-consuming to make if you make it yourself. But you can get most Dim Sum stuff deep frozen (most restaurants get it that way) and just steam it up. The good thing with Dim Sum you can keep it in the steamer for hours.

There are a million types of Jiaozi, and Ha Gao, XiaoMai and and and...

If you run a commercial kitchen the easy to do part is probably quite important. Saying that, most fast food places here in Hong Kong cut all corners and the food is usually crap - but still sells. Don't worry too much about quality. It will sell.

[Jialihai Jiejie]

Easy?

That'll be 'chilled tofu served with soya sauce' - it's one of my favourites!

It takes less than a minute to prepare; healthy and cheap.

Try it!

[HoVis]

A fairly common dish I ate (and enjoyed!) whilst in China was, as quite a few people have mentioned, egg and tomatoes. I think you make it something like this:

1) Fry about ten beaten eggs in a wok (the egg should split into lots of little bits; don't try to keep it together like an omelette) until they are cooked but not browned.

2) Remove them and fry the tomatoes a bit.

3) Add water and lots of salt (not more oil!).

4) Replace the eggs in the wok with the tomatoes, mix up, put lid on wok and allow to steam for a few minutes.

And that's it, I think! Just four ingredients; egg, tomato, salt and water (and a bit of cooking oil to get it started). And it's delicious. This dish was a lifesaver whilst trekking in the Guangxi region this summer, I can tell you!

[imron]

Two eggs and two tomatos seems to work well for me. Ten eggs might be a bit too much I also recommend adding some spring onion and garlic.

[heifeng]

anything 凉拌is pretty easy, such as:

Diced tomatos + sugar....yummm.

eat it in the hot weather and drink up the 'tomato juice' and sugar mix left behind:mrgreen:.

小葱拌豆腐：

throw some soft diced toufu onto a plate, sprinkle salt, drizzle sesame oil, toss on some finely chopped green onion and wala

tea eggs are easy too...

just make a hard boiled egg, but add soy sauce, salt, and tea leave and when the eggs are cooked, crack their shells and just let sit there until you feel like eating them

[HoVis]

The reason I said ten eggs is because when I cooked it in China it was for a large number of very very hungry people. I'm not greedy... honest!

[Jialihai Jiejie]

Ah... Do you know how to make 'wallet egg' (荷包蛋）？

It's also very easy - we call it 'sunny side up' in the West.

Chinese people see the sun as a giant golden coin, hence they call it 'wallet egg'

Jialihai Jiejie

[flameproof]

Do you know how to make 'wallet egg' (荷包蛋）？

That's just a fried egg, fried from one side. It's not exactly difficult to make.

Use a fry pan, put it some oil (or bacon YUM!), let it get hot. If use bacon, let the bacon lose all its fat.

Put the egg in.

Fry it.

If you have not much idea about cooking then use a anti-stick teflon coated pan. Worst to use IMHO are stainless steel pans. They stick very easily. Experts use un-coated iron pans - they do not stick at all if burned in correctly. Cast iron is also OK, but they are very heavy. If you have an iron pan - do NOT EVER wash them with detergent. If you do then they will stick and need to be burned in again.

That'll be 'chilled tofu served with soya sauce' - it's one of my favourites!

It takes less than a minute to prepare; healthy and cheap.

Try it with a mix of soy- and Vietnamese fish sauce. Maybe add some celery. Try it! Works better. Not exactly take away food though.

In a commercial environment you have to offer food that is easy to prepare and maybe can be prepared in advance. Jiaozi is definitely good. Wide acceptable, can have with beef, bork, lamb, different vegetables, potatoes (for our Indian friends), tomato paste and beef (for the Italians as Ravioli replacement) - can be boiled, fried, deep fried, steamed. And best, you can keep a ton in the deepfreezer on demand.