Chinese Food on the Internet, Revisited

by Gary Allen

Resources

Winter Volume: 2003 Issue: 10(4) page(s): 17 and 18

In the Volume 7(1) Spring 2000 issue of Flavor & Fortune, a brief survey of some electronic sources of information available about Chinese cookery and cuisines was published. That item, the editor advises, brought many appreciative comments. The internet is a very changeable place, so this is a good time to revisit some of the old sites to see if they have moved, changed their focus, or simply disappeared. It is also time to look at some new ones that have appeared since that article was published. The bulk of this revised list still consists of websites, of course, but at the end it includes listservs and newsgroups.

Alternative-Hawaii: Ethnic Food Glossary:
http://www.alternative-hawaii.com/gloss.htm#c
This is a partial glossary of ethnic foods that can be found in restaurants, local grocery stores, and/or at ethnic festivals throughout the islands"—many of which are Chinese

Asia Food:
http://www.asiafood.org/
Glossary, equipment, ingredients and techniques, feature articles, searchable database of recipes

Asia Rice Foundation, The:
http://www.asiarice.org/
The Asia Rice Foundation is working to secure a prosperous future for Asia’s rice societies by supporting rice educational activities, cultural preservation, research, and advocacy movements.

Asiarecipe.com:
http://asiarecipe.com/
recipes and ingredients of almost every Asian country, including China; Blowing up ducks, and other matters
http://www.blackmore7.fsnet.co.uk/Cooking/Chinese_Recipes.html
A memoir and introduction to Chinese cookery

Chinatown Online:
http://www.chinatown-online.co.uk/pages/food/index.html
restaurant guide, food & culture, equipment & ingredients guide, recipe database, shopping directory, a history of the fortune cookie and more; British site

Chinese Cooking: Part 1:
http://www.nybytes.com/nybytes/ChineseCooking1.htm
History, tools and techniques--article by Adrienne Lambert

Chinese Cooking: Part 2:
http://www.nybytes.com/nybytes/ChineseCooking1.htm
Ingredients--article by Adrienne Lambert

Chinese Cooking: Unusual Ingredients:
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/People/suchu/www-cook/intro-ingredients.html
Ingredients glossary, with links to pages on spices, techniques, and regional cooking of Beijing, Shanghai, Sichuan and Kwangtung

Chinese Food/ Chinese Feast/ Kalf/ Kitchen/ Su Shi:
http://www.londonfoodfilmfiesta.co.uk/Artmai~1/gastronomy%20in%20China.htm
Chinese gastronomy

Chinese Medicinal Cuisine:
http://www.warriortours.com/intro/cuisine_medicine.htm
Brief intro, with links to pages on the eight cuisines plus minority cuisines in China, and Chinese food & culture Chinese Recipes:
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~mjw/recipes/ethnic/chinese/
Recipes and menu suggestions

Chinese Recipe Index:
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~mjw/recipes/ethnic/chinese/index.html
Archive of Chinese recipes posted to rec.food.recipes

Chopstix:
http://usa.chopstix.net/index.html
Chinese food, ingredients, lifestyle, culture and recipes – site currently undergoing major renovation

Deh-ta Hsiung:
http://www.chinese-at-table.com/index.html
Chinese cooking teacher and author's site; recipe, essay and background info

Dim Sum Menu:
http://www.dimsum.com/ds1.html
Pictures of Hong Kong style Dim Sum

Food and Cooking in China:
http://www.columbia.edu/itc/eacp/webcourse/chinaworkbook/geog/food_ck.htm
Student reading from class in Columbia University''s East Asian Curriculum Project

Food in Chinese Culture:
http://www.askasia.org/frclasrm/readings/r000044.htm
Adapted from K.C. Chang, Food in Chinese Culture: Anthropological and Historical Perspectives

Frieda’s Specialty Produce:
http://www.friedas.com
Press releases and product information about hundreds of Asian and Latin or otherwise exotic forms of produce, recipes

Little Ma''s Recipe Corner:
http://www.chinavista.com/culture/cuisine/recipes.html
Amazing assortment of regional Chinese recipes; but be prepared to fill in a lot of missing details that Chinese cooks just assume to be common knowledge

Oriental Foods:
http://www.orientalfood.com
Online Asian foodstore with recipes, a forum where users can exchange culinary info, and sections on books, the kitchen, nutrition and culture Oriental Pantry:
http://www.orientalpantry.com
Books on Asian ingredients; housewares, gifts, groceries, and custom made fortune cookies; Chinese and Japanese recipes

RecipeSource: Ethnic Recipes:
http://209.157.67.146/ethnic/
African, North and South American, Asian and Pacific Island, European, plus recipes from non-regional ethnic cuisines; on the home page, the recipes are sorted by category—such as main dishes, soups, baked goods, fruits, grains and vegetables, side dishes, sweets and desserts, snacks and appetizers, holiday foods, restricted and special diets, etc.

Societat d'Amics del Menjar Xines: Lian Shan Po:
http://www.uv.es/lianshanpo/indexeng.html
Links to Chinese Food and Culture webpages; in English--also Catalan and Spanish

Taste of China:
http://pasture.ecn.purdue.edu/~agenhtml/agenmc/china/cfood.html
Recipes, some in Chinese, with photos

The Food Markets of Hong Kong:
http://www.travelintelligence.net/wsd/articles/art_126.html
Travel writing by Sue Carpenter

Tsinoy.com:
http://www.tsinoy.com/Roots/Cuisine.cfm
The Global Village of Chinese and Filipinos; articles on local foods, with recipes

Visions of Plums:
http://chinesefood.miningco.com/library/weekly/aa022301a.htm
Plums in Chinese gastronomy

Yangzhou’s Culinary Art:
http://www.china-yz.com/food/list.htm
Collection of recipes from the Jiangsu Province region of China, northwest of Shanghai

Usenet newsgroups are ever-changing discussions, collections of articles, etc., on subjects of interest to particular groups of users. Interested users submit questions, answers or interesting tidbits to the discussion, or they may be passive observers (called: lurkers). Since the last article appeared, web browsers have expanded their capabilities to include Usenet, and administrators of these lists have begun to make their discussions available on the web.

Formerly, one could not join in on the discussion with the rest of the list subscribers, without subscribing—but these websites automate the subscription process for you. They also allow you to track threads that are of particular interest to you.

Some promising Usenet newsgroups for those interested in Asian foods:
alt.food.asian
rec.food.historic

Listservs are like newsgroups, but one subscribes to the list by sending an e-mail message to the administrator of the listserv, asking to subscribe. From then on, any new material added to the listserv will automatically be e-mailed to the user. One can subscribe to some listservs from their home pages on the World Wide Web.

Asia:
List: asia-owner@cuy.net
Administrator: majordomo@cuy.net
Subscribe: subscribe asia--in body of message
All Asian subjects, including food, culture and travel

Chopstix Discussion
List: discussion-request@chopstix.net
Administrator: majordomo@chopstix.net
Subscribe: subscrib discussion--in body of message
http://www.chopstix.net
All forms of Asian cooking including Chinese and Thai

Many listservs are available in digest form--that is, one can receive all the daily postings to the list in one e-mail (as opposed to receiving all the postings, separately, throughout the day). When you subscribe, you will receive an e-mailed confirmation--along with complete instructions on how to post messages to the list, as well as how to unsubscribe. Print out that message and keep it for future reference. Be aware that some of the more popular listservs can generate over-whelming amounts of e-mail. You may begin to feel like the sorcerer's apprentice.

Other sources are forever appearing and disappearing. Should you want me to revisit the revisited, do send additions, corrections, and also suggestions to the editor by snail mail or e-mail. She will forward them to me and when enough of them materialize, we an revisit this revisited column.
_____
Gary Allen posts frequent updates about food-related websites, and generously distributes them, where, but on a listserve. He authored a book of them, and if you are lucky you can find a copy there, too.

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