Chairman Mao’s Brain Food
Hoping to learn why Chairman Mao, like me, considered pork belly “brain food”, I found just this:
The local government in Hunan [where Mao was from] has sought to standardize the cooking of the dish [Mao's favorite pork belly dish], in order to stem the tide of imitations that crowd Chinese restaurants.
According to stringent instructions from the government’s food quality supervision and testing institute, true hong shao rou [red braised pork] can only be made with the meat of rare pigs from Ningxiang county. Officials have designated the pig, which has been bred for nearly 1,000 years, as an “agricultural treasure”.
I tried pork belly from different sorts of pigs (e.g., black pigs) but never noticed a difference.
Hunan Province is also the location of West Lake restaurant, one of the largest restaurants in the world. I’ve been watching “The Biggest Chinese Restaurant in the World,” a wonderful BBC documentary about it. The owner attributes her success to her first husband, who made her furious.
March 23rd, 2010 at 9:07 am
So is this restaurant bigger than Damascus Gate?
http://calorielab.com/news/2008/09/08/damascus-gate-worlds-largest-restaurant/
March 24th, 2010 at 4:21 pm
Nope, not larger than Damascus Gate. Thanks for the correction.
April 26th, 2010 at 7:21 pm
Chairman Mao also decided to rub his teeth with green tea leaves instead of brushing them … giving them a jade tinge. “A tiger,†he reasoned, “never brushes his teeth.†He followed his own path, but he was definitely a man with brown stained teeth!