Saturday Lunch - 週六午餐

[English]
There are four dishes this noon. They just satisfied us. I'll try my best to introduce them one by one:

1> The diaphragm of hog:
Our Chinese eat almost every parts of pig. The pork as you see is the diaphragm muscles located between the 12th ribs and the 14th ribs. Because the muscle connects with the membrane, it tastes more flexible not like other general pork. The feeling of chewing is similar a bit to chewing the part adhered to the bone when eating spareribs. We usually eat them with garlic soy sauce.


2> Edible tree fungus flavored shredder pork:
There are two main materials. One is general pork, (unnecessarily explain!) and the other is black jelly ear fungus, which scientific name is Auricularia Auricula. It tastes like the harder jelly. It's so difficult to describe. Moreover, they was fried with silk ginger.


3> Fried sweet potato leaves with thousand-year-old egg
Sweet potato (yam bean) leaves were so common in Taiwan farm home in early age. According to the statement from my grand mother, these leaves was so cheap that the farmer fed pigs with them. However nowadays, people want to eat healthfully, so eat every easily available vegetables. Because modern people don't like to eat simply but creatively, they add the thousand-year-old egg to flavor. The thousand-year-old egg is a sort of preserved egg. The old Chinese preserved the duck egg with tea under special soil. Many foreigners hate it because it smells like urine. When I was young, my parent also kid me and said it was made by horse urine.


4> Fried Chinese cabbage
This the simplest dish of four. My mom just sliced the cabbage and fried it with less garlic.

Finally, I may introduce our rice later.

In conclusion, it is so very very difficult to explain Chinese food. So many materials even have no name in English or never be ate by foreigners. I spend about 4 hours to look for their names and post here. I am so tired and not sure it's a good idea to keep posting my home dishes.

[中文]
今天中午有四道家常菜，剛好夠我們一家四口享用：

1> 豬肝連
這實在很難形容給外國人聽，他們一聽我們幾乎吃遍豬的所有部位大概會昏倒，所以我只介紹豬肝連是豬的橫隔膜，在其他網頁查到的資料是位於第12根與14根肋骨之間。接著我形容他的口感就跟吃豬肋排的時候靠近骨頭邊的肉差不多，因為都是肉上面還連著筋膜。而我們通常會沾著大蒜醬油一起吃。

2> 黑木耳炒肉絲
這道菜最難形容的就是木耳了，剛開始查他的英文名稱只查到學名，什麼「像耳朵的耳朵」(照字面翻譯)，後來有查到比較通俗一點的名字，叫「類果凍的耳朵狀真菌類」。他的口感也讓我頭大，要怎麼形容那種又有點QQ又有點脆脆的感覺，我乾脆就說是硬掉的果凍。畢竟連台灣都不是人人都有吃過黑木耳。而這道菜還有用薑司提味，不過我不知如何形容「提味」，若有人知道怎麼寫的話請告訴我。

3> 皮蛋炒地瓜葉
這道菜也是一絕，一開始地瓜葉就有兩種說法，我選擇了「甜馬鈴薯」的稱呼。而且還提到我外婆說以前地瓜葉都是用來養豬的，因為實在太普遍了，反而現在人為了健康還去吃以前豬吃的。不過我們家喜歡變化一下，所以加了皮蛋，最好玩的就是皮蛋的英文名字了。因為外國人看到皮蛋就怕，所以替它取了「千年蛋精」這個響亮的名號。據我查詢的結果，皮蛋是用鴨蛋加茶下去醃的，最後會有一股尿臊味，但真正醃的好的皮蛋會有一股臊味但跟尿臊味還是有差。可是以前我爸媽都會跟我開玩笑說皮蛋是用馬尿醃的，害我小時候都不敢吃皮蛋，尤其是他的蛋黃。

4> 炒高麗菜
還好最後一道菜比較簡單，但是國外依然沒有高麗菜這個名詞，包心菜、甘藍菜、高麗菜全都是一個名字。

本來還想介紹一下我們台灣米，但今天沒有力氣了。

現在才知道要用英文解釋中國菜是多麼難的一件事，加上中文版的話我花了四個小時寫這篇文章，因為實在是太多東西根本沒有英文名稱，甚至大多數的外國人從來沒吃過，搞不好也沒看過。這篇文章確實讓我心力交迫，看來之前想的主意是失算了，我可沒時間天天寫這種文章，以後可能要調整一下了！

[參考]
這是大陸那邊為了奧運所以給中國菜名取英文名的網站，還滿有趣的可以參考參考。