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Meet the chef |
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Our Chef |
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Oriental History |
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Oriental history |
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Did you know that:
- Buddha Jumps Over The Wall is a hotpot of chicken, ham, pork, shark's fin, scallops, and vegetables and seasonings that has to simmer for two days?
- this Oriental dish was so named because its aroma was so enticing, it caused the Buddha to jump over a wall?
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Did you also know that rice, the Oriental staple, was grown along the Yang-tse river as early as about 5000 BC? But rice didn't grow well all over China. In the colder north, millet was grown and boiled into a sort of porridge.
Wheat wasn't introduced until around 1500 BC, when the West Asians brought it in – and even then, it wasn't used to make bread. In fact, as late as about 1200 AD, Marco Polo, an explorer from Venice, wrote home that the Chinese didn't eat bread.
Neither were the ancient Orientals great meat-eaters. They usually preferred vegetables, like soybeans and cucumbers, saving meat for special occasions. Fruits were also in abundance, like oranges, peaches, apricots and lemons. And ginger and anise are also native to the Orient.
Then, around 5500 BC, the Chinese started to keep chickens, which had come from Thailand. And almost 2,000 years later, sheep and cattle were introduced from West Asia.
But meat always remained expensive. And so when Buddhism became popular, vegetarianism really took off, with people using tofu (bean curd) and bean sprouts as a source of protein.
These days, though, Oriental cooking is popular all over the world. And you'd be hard put to find a town anywhere that doesn't have a Chinese restaurant!
So that's what makes it such a perfect addition to our Around the World range!
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