Food Interview

Simon Ye was my subject of interview about food. He is an international student from China studying in Iowa State University. Therefore, I was curious to know his traditions practiced in his home town to cook and how he is coping with food in American environment.

China is a big country. Different regeions in China have different cooking traditions. Simon's hometown is in North part of China, a city near sea,called Wen Zhou. Seafood is easily available and popular there. There are a lot of ways to cook the seafood in Wen Zhou. One of them is boiling, the simplest way to cook. Boiling seafood without any other ingredients and eating them on the spot preserves the real taste and smell of the seafood. However, people with low preference for the smell of the seafood boil the seafood with garlic as garlic removes the 'bad' smell of the seafood.

Another easy way to cook seafood is stir-fry. According to Simon, 'Stir fried seafood is tastier than boiled seafood, but stir-frying causes the seafood to lose it's original taste'.

People in Wen Zhou prefer to eat cooked vegetable rather than raw vegetables. Normally, vegetables are stir-fried. The yellow rice wine added to make the vegetables tasty. As a final process of cooking vegetable, soy sauce is added. The people here add little salt in their cooking, especially vegetables.

During his stay in the US, Simon doesn't cook often, since he is having meal plan on campus. He misses his traditional Chinese food. Luckily, having restaurants that serve Chinese dishes makes the situation better for him even though the taste is not exactly as same as the traditional one that he used to cook.

Interviewing Simon made me realize that people miss the food they used to eat when it is not available. =)