Steppe up and Get Your Goat Endeavoured to Make the Fish Look As Alive As Possible, and Hence Deep- Fried It Into an Arched Shape to Emulate a Live, Flipping Fish

6 TRENDS

LEGENDS SQUIRRELFISH With no food for emperor, a dish is born

China’s Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces are known for their freshwater fish, thanks to the many lakes and rivers that weave through the region, including Suzhou, known as “the Venice of the East”. One of the area’s most well-known dishes is the curiously named squirrelfish. It is said that Emperor Qianlong once visited Suzhou during his reign (1735-96). He arrived in the city at an odd hour but was hungry and stepped into a restaurant. The chef was unfortunately out of food, but he feared that telling the emperor A Mongolian ger (above); barbecue Mongolian style (below); goat cooked inside a milk churn is known as khorkhog (bottom). Photos: Tom O’Malley that would anger him and lead to serious consequences (such as a beheading). Looking around in STORY ON A PLATE MONGOLIA desperation, the chef noticed a carp on the restaurant’s altar that was being used as an offering to the gods. He took it and cooked it for the emperor. Afraid that he would infuriate the gods, however, the chef Steppe up and get your goat endeavoured to make the fish look as alive as possible, and hence deep- fried it into an arched shape to emulate a live, flipping fish. He also ...... sliced the flesh into strips to founder of a Mongolian eco-travel barbecue is cooked inside a metal enhance the effect. Tom O’Malley company. In today’s Mongolia, You milk churn. Smooth-sided stones When the fish was presented to [email protected] can be sure that, flickering television collected from riverbanks and the emperor, he was greatly amused notwithstanding, Genghis Khan gullies are heated until red hot and and remarked that it looked like a True, you can pick up a slice of pizza himself would be right at home layered together in the churn with squirrel with its fur standing on end. or an espresso in Ulan Bator, but sitting down to a boodog or butchered goat meat on the bone When the sauce was poured over it, outside the capital, the flesh and khorkhog after a hard day’s ride. (including organs like the heart, the fried batter even gave off slight milk of the sheep, goat and cow “Dish” is probably a misnomer kidney and liver, and little blood squealing sounds, giving the dish its remains the staple of all but the for a boodog, since it requires no sausages made from the intestines) name. most upwardly mobile Mongolian. kitchen accoutrements to roast a plus whatever vegetables are In one of the Qing dynasty’s Unlike agrarian settlers with our marmot or goat steppe-style by available – carrots, potatoes or beets foremost culinary tomes, Tiaodingji, diversified food chains, Mongolia’s stuffing it with scorching hot stones if you’re lucky, along with water, salt the recipe for squirrelfish calls not food culture is born from – and and tossing the body directly on to and pepper and garlic. The urn is for carp but for a Chinese perch (also constrained by – its natural the fire. Or, in our case, by blow- sealed and placed in the embers of a known as a Mandarin fish, though surroundings. Half the population torching the outsides to oblivion. fire, resulting in a warming, protein- not to be confused with the brightly still live in white ger tents scattered It’s the sole premise of men, heavy meat stew. coloured saltwater Mandarin fish like seeds across this country of which is not surprising, really, since The taste? Unadorned, primal; of from the Pacific) to be fried in an egg endless pasture. there’s no washing up. muddy meadows and the wide- yolk batter, finished off in a sauce of The cuisine divides seasonally For all its boil-in the-bag open sky. soy sauce and oil. between red and white: that is, meat simplicity, a boodog does require “Essentially steamed mutton However, the modern-day in winter and dairy in summer. The certain cooking expertise. The with a hint of river rock”, according interpretation involves ingredients division of labour is also still trussed-up beast is essentially an to Michael Kohn, a journalist and that aren’t native to Jiangsu province traditional. Men kill and butcher the ancient pressure cooker. They’ve author of the Lonely Planet – a flour-based batter and a sweet meat; women process milk into a been known to explode on occasion. Mongolia guide. Herdsman and and sour sauce that includes variety of products. Uruum, a richly A young herdsman and our their families gnaw it all – fat and tomatoes, or even ketchup. The fortifying clotted cream, is spread culinary guide, Bold, carved our sinew, muscle and offal. Meat is version from Shanghai Garden even thick and yellow over pieces of rodent into a heap of blubbery meat, always cooked well done, and cut incorporates pine nuts for extra unleavened bread for breakfast. Tiny a few stones, a tin bowl of dark gravy directly off the bone by each diner. crunch. wild strawberries and tart and four little clawed hands. The The spine is the most prized, blueberries can be mixed with ribs were gamey and tender; the “In the winter the appetite for given to the highest ranking or Shanghai Garden 1/F, Hutchison yoghurt called tarag. Dried cheese gravy deep, rich and tinged with flesh comes southward from the oldest male present. Any herdsman House, 10 Harcourt Road, Central. curds known as aaruul are popped petrol. Biting into the fatty hide was Arctic regions with the cold,” wrote worth his horse will tell you the Tel: 2524 8181 in the mouth like rock-hard, lemony like trying to gnaw through a bicycle American writer Jacob Abbot in his most delicious meat comes not from gobstoppers. And of course, there’s tyre, which is understandable when 19th-century book, Genghis Khan. the well-watered Siberian frontier the beloved tipple of many a you consider this animal was soon After a long white season, the but from the dusty Gobi, because nomadic knees-up: airag, or to be hibernating through herdsmen look forward to the grass that does manage to fermented horse milk. Mongolia’s merciless winter. quenching their “meat hunger” with struggle up through the dry, sandy Admittedly, spices are scant, mutton either boiled, fried or steppe is hardier and richer in recipes are crude, and what few cooked in dumplings called buuz, nutrients. vegetables and grains exist are just as much as they dread the To share in a khorkhog is to mostly imported from China, but difficult times ahead. Ulan Bator is honour the work of the herding don’t be too quick to malign the coldest capital city on earth, and family that has reared and cared for Mongolian cuisine. [Khorkhog is] winter on the steppe is even more the animal, day and night, since its You might say what Mongolian severe. With just a few layers of ger birth. Wigstein recounts his own barbecue lacks in culinary essentially steamed felt keeping the biting winds at bay, experience with khorkhog. “I had complexity it makes up for in heart the herdsman’s own animals – the two goats slaughtered on my and soul. But more than that, it’s mutton with a hint literal fat of the land – sustain them tarpaulin leaving just two drops of living archaeology. “Boodog was of river rock until the first signs of spring. blood. Even the children took part. probably practised across great The more civilised cousin of the Absolutely nothing was wasted – the swathes of central Asia thousands of MICHAEL KOHN, boodog is the khorkhog. Essentially leftover meat was reheated in milk Squirrelfish with pine nuts from years ago,” says Jan Wigstein, the LONELY PLANET MONGOLIA the same dish, this nose-to-tail goat tea the next day.” Shanghai Garden restaurant