新年好 – 祝大家恭喜发财! Happy Chinese New Year and good fortune to you all!
So on Monday the FSI Chinese department had the New Year Party and food extravaganza. And when I say food extravaganza…
They were very well organized
There were TWO tables like this one, and a small drinks and dessert table. Our teachers put a lot of time and effort in getting the party ready for us – they’re really amazing.
The food was just the first part though, there were also performances by the students and teachers. One class opened with the dragon dance, which was really cool. The class that began last month sang this song, which was pretty amusing to the students, especially the confused looks of the random Chinese people in the video.
There were some other dances that involved fans or scarves or rubber ducks. There were also pretty songs about the moon and raps about learning Chinese. Then there was my class. We had a jeopardy-ish game where we asked two teams of teachers questions about American movies, literature, geography, Presidents, etc. At the end of the day, our coordinator worried that our part was too different for the program. We told her that NEXT year she could make students sing and dance, but that WE were grateful that we didn’t have the extra lunchtime practice that the other groups did… 
So we did Chapter 12: Dining Out, waaaay back in November. For reference, we start Chapter 18 tomorrow. However, Chapter 12 was definitely my favorite. We learned about different Chinese foods and got some first hand restaurant and grocery store experience. At the grocery store, we bought ingredients to make a dish to bring to a class potluck. Chad made (without any help from me) 干煸四季豆/gānbiān sìjì dòu/dry fried green beans with chili. I made 麻婆豆腐/mápó dòufu/Mapo’s tofu. They both turned out pretty well – see:
Our teachers even liked it! 麻麻的，辣辣的，很好吃!
Anyway, the reason I’m bringing it up now is that I meant to waaaaay back in November, but then never got around to it. BUT, I made Mapo Tofu again tonight as part of the meal of the week, and it was super tasty. So I’ve decided to share the recipe here. I just want to point out really quickly that there’s a whole lot of chili oil in this, so the mouth numbing Sichuan peppercorn is oooh so very necessary. This recipe is straight from SeriousEats.com with NO alterations, and originates from a Sichuanese chef. I highly recommend reading the story first: How The Best Mapo Dofu is Made
The Original Recipe for Real Deal Mapo Dofu
2 tablespoons Sichuan peppercorns, divided
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon cornstarch
2 teaspoons cold water
1 1/2 pounds medium to firm silken tofu, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
1/4 pound ground beef (pork is also commonly used, they both taste great)
3 garlic cloves grated on a microplane grater
1 tablespoon fresh ginger grated on a microplane grater
2 tablespoons fermented chili bean paste
2 tablespoons Xiaoxing wine
1 tablespoon dark soy sauce
1/4 cup low-sodium chicken stock
1/4 cup roasted chili oil
1/4 cup finely sliced scallion greens
1. Heat half of sichuan peppercorns in a large wok over high heat until lightly smoking. Transfer to a mortar and pestle. Pound until finely ground and set aside.
2. Add remaining sichuan peppercorns and vegetable oil to wok. Heat over medium high heat until lightly sizzling, about 1 1/2 minutes. Pick up peppercorns with a wire mesh skimmer and discard, leaving oil in pan.
3. Combine corn starch and cold water in a small bowl and mix with a fork until homogenous. Bring a medium saucepan of water to a boil over high heat and add tofu. Cook for 1 minute. Drain in a colander, being careful not to break up the tofu.
4. Heat oil in wok over high heat until smoking. Add beef and cook, stirring constantly for 1 minute. Add garlic and ginger and cook until fragrant, about 15 seconds. Add chili-bean paste, wine, soy sauce, and chicken stock and bring to a boil. Pour in corn starch mixture and cook for 30 seconds until thickened. Add tofu and carefully fold in, being careful not to break it up too much. Stir in chili oil and half of scallions and simmer for 30 seconds longer. Transfer immediately to a serving bowl and sprinkle with remaining scallions and toasted ground Sichuan pepper. Serve immediately with white rice.
We had such ambitions…
When Mandarin Express ended, Chad and I didn’t want to loose any of the progress we’d made over those four months. Since Mandarin Express focused primarily on speaking, and the specter of learning a few thousand Chinese characters loomed before us we decided to do a little study ahead. Looking around a different character books (and reading Amazon reviews) lead us to Tuttle Learning Chinese Characters, Vol. 1: A Revolutionary New Way to Learn and Remember the 800 Most Basic Chinese Characters
We could TOTALLY learn 800 characters in four months! That’s 200 characters a month, a mere 50 characters a week, or just 10 characters a day! Only a lazy bum wouldn’t be able to do 10 characters a day! 2/2 in Mandarin in 36 weeks here I come!
Yeah, so we’re lazy bums. We got through the first 80 characters before ignoring the book completely. But that’s no fault of the book. It has amusing stories to help you remember the meaning and pronunciation of each character, and was excellent at teaching stroke order for writing. Oh yes, we wrote. We even bought awesome college ruled with graph paper notebooks to practice writing in. See!
You can print your own doane pages for free too!
Ah well, it wasn’t all for naught. We started at FSI with more than 50 characters under our belt, which gave us time to work on other things, like our tones, which, as our teachers tell us, we have to focus on/concentrate/pay attention to all. of. the. time.
I’ve got my new calendar ready and everything!
Acrylic on 2012 Black Leather Moleskine Weekly Calendar
This one turned out pretty well. There’s a bit part of me that thinks I should have bought another red one and done a negative space painting of a dragon instead. Then I look at it and think, “how pretty,” and tell myself that I can do a dragon in 12 years…
My site got injected with some malware this week, so to give myself a cleaner start I’m re-installing wordpress. Hopefully I’ll get posts back up and running tonight.
DONE! Tomorrow I’ll deal with photos and layout
But if I don’t, don’t panic – we’ll be back to normal in no time.
Better late than never, right? Below is a picture of Thanksgiving dinner.
We had: Roasted turkey breast, apple cider braised turkey legs, cauliflower mashed potatoes, wild mushroom and hazelnut dressing, kale in apple cider vinegar (with bacon and crispy onions), and two types of gravy. For dessert we had our choice of apple pie, pumpkin tart, or pecan tart all with cinnamon-clove-nutmeg frozen custard.
Of course, I forgot to put out the cranberry sauce that I made last week. Of course.
Sorry the kale isn’t clear in the picture, to make up for it, here’s the recipe.
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon dried crushed red pepper
2 cups plus 1 tablespoon peanut oil
Coarse kosher salt
3 strips of bacon, cut into 1 inch pieces
2 pounds kale stems removed, cut crosswise into 1/2-inch-wide strips
crispy fried onions (French’s or Lars)
Dissolve sugar in 1 tablespoon water in small saucepan over medium heat. Increase heat; boil without stirring until amber, brushing pan sides with wet pastry brush, about 5 minutes. Add vinegar and crushed pepper (mixture will bubble vigorously). Stir until caramel bits dissolve. Cool. (this is all the same)
Use store bought crispy onions (I like the Lars brand).
Fry bacon in large pot over medium-high heat. Remove the bacon to a paper towel lined plate – leave the hot fat in the pot. Add the greens, pour the gastrique over the greens and cover. After a minute toss to make sure the greens wilt evenly. Let them cook another minute or so until bright green and tender.
Serve immediately, sprinkled with the crispy fried onions and the bacon.
To further amuse, Harvey dragged his puppy pop to the spare chairs and ate underneath them…
Thursday is already Thanksgiving! Of course, judging by all of the Christmas decorations going up this weekend, I’d almost think I missed it. Although this year will be stress free (we’re just having a couple of friends over), I like to keep it stress free by getting a few things out of the way. Today we finished 90% of the shopping, I made the compound butter for the turkey, pie crusts, and the cranberry sauce (recipe behind the cut). Just a few more days! Continue reading »
So I just watched the full Diane Sawyer interview with Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and husband Astronaut (!) Mark Kelly (yes, I know he’s retired, but I just can’t help including the Astronaut part…). The story of her recovery is incredibly inspiring, and I highly recommend watching it with a full box of tissues.
Some of parts of her brain that were damaged were the ones that control communication and language, so she has to re-learn how to verbally express herself. Her struggles through recovery and progress in therapy are amazing. Watching her search for the right word or phrase really resonates with me and gives me a lot of perspective. No matter how frustrated I get while learning Mandarin, at least I’m learning a brand new language. I can barely begin to imagine how frustrating it must be for her to have to relearn how to speak her native language.
Keeping up the good work Congresswoman – you’re doing great!
Ha! I’m back and writing again – a few more weeks of this and it’ll either be a habit, or I won’t write again for another eight months… Anyway, I wanted to share how Chad and I got ready to study Mandarin at FSI. As the reality of moving to Shanghai in 2012 set in, the more anxious we got about our ability to learn the language to some semblance of proficiency. Since we had plenty of time, I started to look into classes we could take before going to FSI.
I looked at NOVA community college, the USDA graduate school, and private language schools. All of these options were either poorly timed for us, too far away, or too expensive. As our goal was just to get some familiarity with the language, we didn’t want to spend too much time or money. So I looked at our options through FSI. Early morning Chinese didn’t appeal to either of us, so one of the online options would be the best. I’d heard some not so great stuff about the software available through FSI, but then I saw a class called Mandarin Express.
Continue reading »
Hello again Internet.
Every couple of months I several reminders in my inbox that people do occasionally come to this site. These reminders are comment notifications for my guesswork post on FSOT scores (which are still guesswork), in which people post their scores for the first FSOT hurdle (the written exam), and unintentionally make me feel guilty for neglecting my blog.
SO! Here I am, awoken early first by the radio turning on when we thought we had turned that alarm off, then by the lovely sound of my dear sweet canine companion retching in the living room (thanks Harvey Pup, now please please please stop trying to eat grass and quit licking the walls!).
Where have I been? Lately, in Mandarin Chinese class at FSI, for the past 9 weeks. Hopefully, I’ll write more about that later. But before that, I worked in Consular Affairs. It was a great first tour – I met a lot of great people and learned a lot about consular THEORY, and I really look forward to doing the work. However, there are two big reasons why I didn’t write about this first assignment. Continue reading »
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