Kettle Corn
Unlike the kettle corn cooked and sold in bathtub-sized cauldrons in farmer's markets all over California, the kettle corn in China is made in small batches. You buy a batch for 5 yuan, which gives you the equivalent of one large movie theater bucket. The popcorn is coated with sugar and strange combinations of flavors can be added, like chocolate, black sesame, melon, tangerine, and blueberry. It kind of reminds me of caramel corn.
There is a little stand across the street from my apartment building that sells this kettle-popped corn every day, 7 days a week. Across from this popcorn place is a stinky tofu stand, so every time I pass, I first get a sweet whiff of butter and sugar, followed by the pungent, sour smell of stinky tofu. I bet in 20 years, the smell of stinky tofu mixed with sweet popcorn will still transport me back to TUFE all over again.
Tong yuan
Recently, the fresh fruits and vegetables markets have some newcomers selling little white balls of floury dough. I immediately identified them as tong yuan, the little chewy balls of tapioca with various filling inside. However, I have never seen such a variety of fillings before. Back at home, my Dad just makes two kinds: the ones with a sweet and salty mung bean filling and little balls of dough with no filling at all. After much lobbying and begging, my Dad made some with red bean filling one year, but that was an exception not repeated the following year. So imagine my delight to find 10 different kinds of filling: black sesame, peanut, tangerine, strawberry, chocolate, cocoa, red bean, dates, pineapple, and mixed fruit. There are no distinguishing features to any of them, and they mix them all up in the same bag after your purchase, so eating tong yuan becomes like picking from a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get.
Here's a pic of the tong yuan, which I ate with a dark brown sugar and ginger syrup--that's the way we eat it in our family. Apparently in Tianjin, the locals just boil the little balls and eat them straight, no sweet syrup, because the filling is sweet enough. I like mine with the ginger syrup though.
I know this post is supposed to be about "street" food, but I figured I'd just sneak in an amazing fruit in there. I love tropical fruit, and the pineapple is no exception. I love the tart and sweet flavor combination and the intensity of flavors. The pineapples in the States have gotten worse and worse each year, each batch more sour and bland than the next. Grocery stores all have these dark green pineapples that were picked too early and taste like lemons. Only in Hawaii can you get good, ripe, sweet pineapples. But in China, they have these smaller varieties that are very very sweet. I haven't had a sour pineapple here so far. Best of all, every supermarket peels and pits the pineapples for you free of charge. It's full service treatment! Here's the pineapple I carried home (in a plastic bag, of course)after all the cutting and peeling was done. Isn't it a beauty?
Last but not least is the famous Tianjin Kebabs (Shaokao). They are not famous in China, but every student and young person loves to eat it. Nothing hits the spot late at night like a good shaokao and beer. This kebab place is supposed to be one of the best in TJ and I went there with my Japanese, Mongolian, and Ivory Coast classmates from Chinese class. It was an unexpectedly long night because I thought we were only going to dinner and only later found out that they had plans for ktv and shaokao afterward as well. The lamb kebabs were indeed very good, and it was nice having the coal brickets right on the table to keep our skewers warm. At other places, you either freeze your head and butts off sitting over a coal roaster outside, or you eat meat that has cooled already since it left the grill. Shaokao is really good stuff, well worth the risks of diarrhea.
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