[Beijing] More Breakfast Curiosities

Other foods served at this breakfast stand include tofu soup (fondly referred to as "tofu brains" for its consistency)


-- and Tea Leaf Eggs, which are hard-boiled eggs named as such because tea leaves are a major ingredient in the brew in which they're steeped and marinated. Other spices that are also used include cinnamon sticks, star anise, cloves and orange peel, along with a little soy sauce and some salt. Mum says the recipe is also frequently known as "Five Spice Tea Leaf Eggs". But I only listed four of the spices because I don't know the English term for the fifth spice...


(My mother makes them at home, too. They are wonderfully tasty.)

It was a restaurant of small but not uncommon size. There were about 4-6 small tables inside and one table outside, all of which seat four people each. If you're not getting your food on the go, your food will be brought to your table once you order at the front. In small or private restaurants like this, what food goes to what table is usually just memorized by those who take the orders. And if course, if all else fails and they forget, a loud call of, "Four grease rods and a tofu brain!" is all that's needed. Sometimes I think yelling is the main form of verbal communication in China anyway.

We ordered a bowl of tofu brains each and a tray (that is likely never washed) of three grease rods. My father walked over to the bao zi maker next door and also bought some of those, some with meat and some with vegetables. Then they hand you some hot sauce in a tiny saucer (that's usually shared communally) and a stack of thin napkin squares, and you have at it.

"Tofu brain" is mainly just a thick, brothy sort of soup with one big slab of fragile soft tofu that you stir up into little chunks when you get it. The tofu is so soft and the soup is so thick that they usually taste like a similar consistency. Most kinds of tofu themselves don't actually have a taste at all. Tofu is a food that is used more for its texture, and the taste of it depends heavily on the other stuff in which it's cooked. This tofu brain soup had all sorts of seasoning and some garnish cilantro in it. Thick but definitely slurpable (of which most people take advantage with no shame). I suppose it's similar to "hot and sour soup" you might find in a Chinese restaurant in America, but with less of the sour, and more towards a salty flavor. A small scoop or two or three of spicy sauce, depending on personal preference, goes excellently with it.

As I've mentioned them before, a bao zi is just a stuffed bun. Both the bao zi and the western dinner roll are made of mostly the same stuff, but the difference is that dinner rolls are baked, whereas bao zi are steamed. Bao zi are springy but much less spongy than dinner rolls. The dough is also a consistent white throughout, unlike the dinner roll that has a brown outer shell. A bao zi with no filling is called a Man Tou (mahn tow), which means, "full/filled head." So it's even more like a dinner roll. They're a little easier to make since they require no additional recipe for a filling, but bao zi are still usually much more popular.