Lucky Year of the Dragon Recipe: Tangerine Beef

The Year of the Dragon is upon us! Coinciding with the lunar calendar, Chinese New Year starts today and celebrations will go on for the next 15 days all over the world. Mary Kate and I were really excited when our friend Jaden Hair asked us to write a guest post over at TLC's website for Chinese New Year. If you're not familiar with Jaden and you like eating, you should be. She's the behind the deliciously steamy Steamy Kitchen website and one of the hottest women in the food industry. We've been fortunate enough to meet her in New York where she hosts the NY Dumpling Festival every year and to cook a meal with her and her family at her beautiful home in Florida.

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horse carts in beijing and a new fruit called xiao feng, 特小凤西瓜

Well, it's not a new fruit, just a fruit new to me. Nate and I took the subway two short stops from the Beijing city center and wandered around the streets aimlessly looking for a place for me to buy new glasses. Turns out we were in an area of the city where a lot of Uighur minority people live-- the Muslim minority group from Xinjiang, the Northwest part of China. You may have heard about Xinjiang recently in the news. We saw quite a few horse drawn carts in this area and this one was selling a fruit called te xiao feng xi gua (特小凤西瓜).

We bought one for 10 RMB (about $1.50) and ate the whole thing. I've never seen it sold anywhere else but maybe I haven't looked hard enough. It tastes like a cross between a watermelon and a honeydew melon. Has anyone seen this for sale in the States?

-mk

dragon fruit drinks

You know when you learn about something and then you start seeing it everywhere? Well, since I bought dragon fruit last week in Chinatown, I've seen them for sale at Dean and Deluca and I took a drink out of Nate's fridge at random (shhh... it was his roommate's!) and it happened to be dragon fruit flavored: Glaceau Vitamin Energy. It tasted sweet like the fruit, but carbonated with 2000mg of Taurine which if you don't know, is very good stuff. I don't really know what it is, or does, but it's in all my favorite energy drinks (red bull, tab energy, bawls) that keep me wide awake on days like today when my office desk starts to look soft, fluffy, kind of like a pillow.

I think dragon fruit could catch on as flavoring in drinks and things here in the U.S. It wouldn't even need the extreme PR treatment that the south american acai berries got a few years back because dragon fruit actually tastes good. IMHO acai berries are overrated and over marketed (and I'm a marketing person who likes marketing). See here where acai berries can cure you of ugliness and obesity and here's a CNN article about their hype and the rumor that they can cure cancer. 

Maybe dragon fruit prices will come down too. The dragon fruit I saw at Dean and Deluca cost $10 each and they were too ripe. I paid about $2 each in Chinatown. See our video on dragon fruit here.

Does anyone know of any other dragon fruit flavored drinks... candies... food?

-mary kate

ingredient stalker: what is dragon fruit?

Here's a short video about how to select and prepare Dragon Fruit (火龙果, hǔo lóng gǔo), a funny looking fruit that doesn't get the attention it deserves! You can buy Dragon Fruit at specialty grocery stores or Asian markets. When selecting, pick firm dragon fruits with a bright red peel color and green (not brown) tips. It has a sharp, sweet taste kind of like a kiwi-- great for salads and salsas. 

The Things We'll Do For A Good Recipe

We've been M.I.A. for the last 10 days but we're back. A good friend of ours, Laura Berry (pictured with me on the right) , came over from the states to visit us so we headed to the jungles of Xixuangbanna in Southern China to show her a good time. A place known for it's great food but not it's internet access.

We began our Jungle adventure in the region's capital, Jinghong. With it's balmy weather, fresh fruit, coconut trees, sugar cane, swimming pools (complete with water bugs), and laid back atmosphere, Jinghong is a little pocket of paradise within an otherwise unforgiving wilderness. We decided to make Jinghong our base camp for a couple of days and soak up the good life and fantastic food before beginning our multiple day trek through the surrounding mountains.

Orchid is the owner of the Mei Mei cafe in downtown Jinghong and she's an excellent resource for information on trekking in the area. She remembered Mary Kate and I from our last trek 4 years ago and suggested a more remote and challenging route through the Sanchahe Nature Reserve. The reserve is a lush 3.7 million acre area covered with tea plantations and home to China's last remaining elephants. This all sounded perfect until she warned us about several recent deaths along our would be route caused by the elephants. Mary Kate and I are always up for an adventure but trekking alone through a foreign jungle with killer elephants borders on the insane. Not only did we have to worry about ourselves, but Laura, who doesn't speak a word of Chinese, was trusting us with her safety. We talked it over and decided to find a guide in one of the villages who would know how to steer clear of any potential run-ins with Dumbo and family. If one of us ended up dead, at least we'd have a story and some authentic recipes to relate to our readers.

Xixuangbanna's largest ethnic group is the Dai minority and their food is the main culinary attraction here. Similar to Thai food, Dai dishes are often punctuated with lemon grass or mint leaves and fresh fruit is frequently added to meat or rice dishes, creating a unique sweet and savory combination. Among others, Dai style noodles, pineapple sticky rice, and grilled lemon grass chicken all made our best-of list and will be included in our book.

NT

In Xishuangbanna they have miniature mangos that are slightly more tart and give the smoothie an added citrus kick. You can get this same taste at home by adding fresh lime juice to a ripe mango from your local supermarket.