Sunday, August 7, 2011

Chinese food and its regional and overseas varieties.

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“Chinese food” is a kind of food that contains a lot of deep-fried, strong-flavored and greasy dishes that all taste similar. In spite of its similar taste some of Chinese food have become highly popular in other parts of the world – from Asia to the Americas, Australia, Western Europe and Southern Africa.

As China covers a large territory and has many nationalities; hence there is a wide variety of Chinese foods, each with quite different but fantastic and mouthwatering flavors. Because China's local dishes have their own typical characteristics, Chinese food can be divided into eight regional cuisines (cookings), the distinction of which is now widely accepted. Certainly, there are many other local cuisines that are famous, such as Beijing Cuisine and Shanghai Cuisine.

The other cuisines are Shandong Cuisine, Sichuan Cuisine, Guangdong (Cantonese) Cuisine, Fujian Cuisine, Huaiyang Cuisine, Zhejiang Cuisine, Hunan Cuisine and Anhui Cuisine. There is another cuisine named cuisine of xinjiang. It reflects the region's many ethnic groups, and refers particularly to Uyghur cuisine. Signature ingredients include roast mutton, kebabs, roast fish and rice. Because of the Islamic population, the food is predominantly halal. Overseas cuisine include Burma, Canada, Caribbean, Philippines, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, Peranakan, PerĂș, Singapore, United States etc.

All across America, Chinese buffets offer endless arrays of beautiful, deep-fried, grease-soaked food. General Tso’s chicken, chop suey, egg rolls, chow mein, fortune cookies. What do all these dishes have in common? They were all invented in America.

Chinese foods include main dishes served with deserts and noodles. Main dishes are Poultry-based dishes (Kung Pao chicken, Peking Duck, Soy egg, Tea egg, Century egg ), Pork-based dishes (Dongpo pork, Sweet and sour pork, Twice Cooked Pork, Char siu), Grain-based dishes (rice, fried rice). Other ingredients of Chinese food are soybeans, vegetables, herbs etc.

Sandwich, one of the top 10 popular foods in USA.

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A Sandwich is a food item popular worldwide made with a combination of salad vegetables, meat, cheese, and a variety of sauses of savoury spreads. It is presented with two or more sleces of briead with one or more fillings between them. Sandwiches are mostly choosen as a kind of lunch food, typically taken to work or school, or picnics to be eaten as part of a packed lunch and the item is easily found in almost all cafes and restaurants.

Sandwiches existed long before they were named this way, and the first sandwich seems to have appeared 100 years B.C. during the Easter fasting when a rabbi though about eating matzo (some kind of ancient bread) with apple slices and nuts.

In 1726 the name first came into existence and it was named after John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich (a town of south-east England), an 18th-century English aristocrat, who was a heavy gambler and was spending endless hours playing cards, kept asking for bread, cheese and meat. Because he kept the cards in one hand, he had to use the other one to eat, so he though about placing the cheese and the meat between the slices of bread. The other players saw the earl’s invention and started asking about the same type of food, calling it “Sandwich’s”.

In 1827, sandwiches were introduced in cooking books and by 1900, they were already famous in the United States. The most beloved sandwich here is peanut butter and jelly sandwich, which was created by the soldiers fighting in the Second World War. Another famous recipe is the one created by Elvis Presley, containing fried peanut butter and bananas. In the United States, a court in Boston, Massachusetts ruled that "sandwich" includes at least two slices of bread. and "under this definition and as dictated by common sense, this court finds that the term "sandwich" is not commonly understood to include burritos, tacos, and quesadillas, which are typically made with a single tortilla and stuffed with a choice filling of meat, rice, and beans.

Therea are various types of sandwiches. They are Club sandwich, Croque monsieur (French ham and cheese), Peanut butter and jelly sandwich, A Philly cheese steak (a type of submarine sandwich), Reuben sandwich, Smoked meat sandwich, French bread sandwich with fries, large sandwich (Weight approx. 2 pounds/1 kg), Shawarma sandwich, A cucumber sandwich with chips and cake, English Sandwich, salami sandwich,  ice cream sandwich, Rebun sandwich etc. Rebun sandwich is one of America's top ten foods. It is made with a combination of  pastrami–a meat so infused with spices that it has more flavor in a single bite than most full meals. Pile this sky-high, preferably using at least a pound of meat per sandwich.

The food value of a sandwich differs as the ingredients it includes differ.
Friday, August 5, 2011

Hamburger has appealfor its taste variety and history.

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Hamburger is a kind of fast food made of cooked patty of ground meat (usually beef, but occasionally pork or a combination of meats) usually placed inside a sliced pieces of bread. The term hamburger originally derives from Hamburg, Germany's second largest city, from where many emigrated to America. Therefore hamburger refers to someone from Hamburg. So hamburger has a relation  with Germany.

On the other hand The term "burger" is associated with many different types of sandwiches similar to a hamburger, using different meats, such as a buffalo burger, turkey burger, elk burger, salmon burger, or even a veggie burger.

Most likely hamburger first appeared in the 19th or early 20th centuries. The modern hamburger was a food product that is needed for a society that was rapidly changing due to industrialization, and therefore, people had less time to prepare as well as to consume meals.

The burger is now readily identified with the United States, and a particular style of cuisine, namely fast food. Along with fried chicken and apple pie, the hamburger has become a culinary icon in the United States. The Texas historian Frank X. Tolbert attributes the invention to Fletcher Davis of Athens, Texas. Davis is believed to have sold hamburgers at his cafĂ© at 115 Tyler Street in Athens, Texas in the late 1880s, then brought them to the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. An article about Louis' Lunch in The New York Times on January 12, 1974, stated that the McDonald's hamburger chain claims the inventor was an unknown food vendor at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. Tolbert's research documented that this vendor was in fact Fletcher Davis. Dairy Queen spokesman Bob Phillips made a similar claim for Dairy Queen in a commercial filmed in Athens in the 1980s calling the town the birthplace of the hamburger.

A hamburger is served with lettuce, bacon, tomato, onion, pickles, cheese and condiments such as mustard, mayonnaise, ketchup and relish. There are various kinds of hamburger such as turkey burger, chicken burger, buffalo burger, ostrich burger, deer burger, hamburger made by mixing seafood or lamb with beef and  veggie burger, garden burger, or tofu burger etc. Moreover it can be different in style and ingredients in country to country. Those countries are USA and canada, Mexico, United Kingdom and Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, China, Japan and other countries.

Considered a "high risk" food because of the poor health standards under which they are manufactured. The time consuming process for making processed meats creates high bacteria counts and putrefaction of the meat which need to be treated with chemicals. Putrefaction causes meat to turn green which is then dyed with red chemicals to appear fresh. Unless marked otherwise, hamburger will always contain red dyes. Most hamburger contain the flavour enhancer, MSG (monosodium glutamate) which causes headaches, allergic reactions and more. MSG is a chemical used to fatten up laboratory animals and evidence suggests it will ultimately make you fat when consumed.

French fries is one of the most favorite food throughout the world.

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French fries is one of the top ten consumed food in the world especially in USA (with US-based fast food chains such as McDonald's and Hot dog). French fries or chips or French-fried potatoes are thin strips of deep fried potato. North Americans refer to any lengthy pieces of fried potatoes as fries, while in the United Kingdom, Australia, Ireland and New Zealand, long, thinly cut slices of fried potatoes are called fries to distinguish them from the thickly cut strips called chips. French fries are known as frites, patates frites or pommes frites in French, a name which is also used in many non-French-speaking areas, and have names that mean "fried potatoes" or "French potatoes" in others.

French fries has its origin in Belgium around 1680. The inhabitants of Namur, Andenne, had the custom of fishing. But when the river was frozen and fishing became hazardous, they cut potatoes in the form of small fish and put them in a fryer like those here. The expression "French Fried Potatoes" first occurs in print in English in the 1856 work Cookery for Maids of All Work by E. Warren: "French Fried Potatoes.—Cut new potatoes in thin slices, put them in boiling fat, and a little salt; fry both sides of a light golden brown colour; drain." In the early 20th century, the term "French fried" was being used in the sense of "deep-fried," for other foods such as onion rings or chicken.

It has also some other name like Belgian fries, fries, steak fries, wedges, potato wedges, frites, freedom fries etc. It is often served as side dish and served with ketchup, vinegar, barbecue, sauce, mayonnaise and other sauces.

The varieties of French fries are thick-cut fries, steak fries, shoestring fries, jojo fries, crinkle fries, curly fries, hand-cut fries and tornado fries.

Though it is verry attractive to look at and has a special taste, it is very toxic. As to make it, they must be cooked at high temperatures which cause thechemical, acrylimide to be released. Acrylimides are a known cancer causing agent that also causes nerve damage. Potatoes are grown in the ground and have a higher pesticide absorption level than almost any other food product. Fries are cooked in oxidized oil that is re-used for weeks at a time! Potatoes have a very high glycemic index meaning it turns to sugar very quickly in the body. Eating a baked potato (or equivalent quantity of French fries) is the sugar equivalent of a large piece of chocolate cake!

 

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