Food! Foodies! Duck!

Do I need to say more? :) Seems like my prayers have been answered, finally someone has taken pity on me and made it a project to introduce me to typical Nanjing food. The saint is LiuXing , my language partner. We have become quite good friends actually, laughing about each others mistakes is kind of a bonding experience I suppose :) I guess we started off on the wrong food (now that's a Freudian slip if there ever was one :P) - me cooking pasta for her and making her taste a piece of German style cream cheese ("Schmelzkaese"), because that was the only cheese-like thing I could find and really, I can't blame her she hated that. So, after that she always found excuses to not join me for dinner (I attributed that to this "diet" she keeps talking about). I finally managed to drag her out for lunch, because we were on the way to a pharmacy. Sometimes I do really need an interpreter's help. Pharmacies here are really interesting - apart from selling also "traditional Chinese medicine," which nowadays also comes in forms of pills and syrup (and according to the Chinese I talked to are not really potent anymore because they are not prepared fresh), they sell all sorts of stuff over the counter! Like birth control or, say, anti-depressants... wouldn't you think it's generally a good idea to see a doctor for that? Pharmacies here are more the European variety, not the American drug-store type that sells everything from aspirin to cat litter; some of them have showcases with dried ginseng roots, bird's nests, seahorses and the likes. The "traditional" medicine is characterized by coming in "green" looking packages, somehow reminiscent of homeopathy. No idea if that stuff actually helps. Whenever I was sick, I would get some of that on top of antibiotics, but I was never very convinced of either one helping much. But I can say this - if you ever contemplated eating patchouli - don't!

Anyways, back to the important matters. It was so sweet of Liu Xing, she had even looked up the translation of the specialty she wanted me to try - duck blood silk noodle soup. And she was afraid I might not like it (being a disgusting cheese eater and all). It was so much better than the duck blood soup I had tried in the canteen. I'm still not a big fan of the blood, it doesn't really taste like anything and has a weird consistency (sorta gelatinous, but less elastic), but the liver in the soup was nice. And the added bonus? This place also makes a sort of pastry that comes filled with either meat or bean paste, it's like a puff pastry but instead of butter - you guessed it - they use duck fat! Yum! I think they also sell a few other noodle soups, but the duck blood soup is really their trademark dish. Everyone who came in just said how many bowls they wanted and it was understood to be that soup. A very popular place for lunch, it was packed, but also tiny. There were only 4 tables with 6 seats each. For such a small noodle joint it looked surprisingly new and clean. Most restaurants here look run down when their not totally new. Even the fancier ones... it seems after a while, neglect creeps in and they just leave the beer cases in the entrance way or never bother to remove stains. When it stops attracting customers, it closes down, something else opens and the game begins anew.

In almost related news, I recently watched "Julie/Julia", about this woman who cooks her way through the Julia Child cookbook in one year and I really enjoyed it!Meryl Streep gives a pretty good Julia Child and I certainly gathered a new appreciation of what she did for American food culture. I also want to de-bone a whole duck now...