Novel Food Winter 2011: Vinegar Peanuts for the Novel World and Town

For this edition of Novel Food, I'm doing my book and food report on World and Town, the latest novel by Gish Jen.

The story is set in a small town in New England; a town, the narrator tells us, that "dates to before the Revolution. A town that was American before America was America." The narrator's name is Hattie Kong, and she's "half half"; that is, half Chinese and half American (her mother was an American missionary who married a Chinese man). Hattie was born and raised in China but was sent to live with her mother's family in Iowa as a teenager, when her home in China was threatened by war. Now in her late sixties, having lost both her husband of many years and her best friend two years earlier, she is, as it says in the book, "reconstituting herself."

As are Hattie's new neighbors, a Cambodian immigrant family who have moved to the town to get away from the problems they had in the big city. The adults in this family suffered unspeakable horrors during the Pol Pot regime in their homeland, the kind of trauma that probably no person ever recovers from—and yet they must live on somehow and try to make lives for their children as well. Hattie befriends the family, especially Sophy, the teen-aged daughter, and tries to help them in various ways. Naturally, there are clashes between the parents, raised in a country and with traditions and beliefs that are now lost to them, and the young people (Sophy, her sisters, and her brother) being raised in America.

The book is all about people's need to belong and their need to believe in something. And it's about not being able to have either need met. Hattie herself epitomizes the discomfort, nay, the deep pain, of not being able to fit in anywhere: She's not totally Chinese, so she can't merge with that culture and its traditions, and she's not totally American, so she can't disappear into her American life, either. In this excerpt, she reminisces about being suddenly thrust into an American family at sixteen, after losing her homeland and her parents.

Thank goodness for her English! People said she spoke so well, they forgot she was Chinese, or half Chinese, or whatever it was she was. Yet even as they forgot, she remembered that she was whatever it was she was. A person away from herself. With what she guessed must be Chinese ideas and what she guessed must be Chinese feelings. She was pretty sure she dreamed in Chinese. And she craved Chinese food, of course. Màntóu. She craved màntóu. Lǎocù huāshēng—peanuts generally. Cù—American vinegar was not vinegar. She missed sea cucumbers, squid. Spicy clams. Before this she had known that her mother was American, but not that her father was Chinese, really.

Now, every day, she knew: Her father was Chinese. She was raised in China.

And yet she was not her old self, translated. Neither was she a Chinese in America. She was just foreign—wàiláide.

What she had always been—wàiláide.

From elsewhere. A stranger.

This is a big, complex novel filled with fascinating, engaging characters and lots of humor, despite the losses and the tragedies. It's also the story of a decades-long romance. It raises questions that can't be answered. It has heart and courage, intelligence, and insight. Reading the book and living, as it were, with Hattie, Sophy, and the other characters for a while was an experience that I feel grateful to have had. Gish Jen is a stupendously good writer.

In honor of the novel I made one of the northern-Chinese foods that Hattie misses (she had lived in Qingdao as a child and teenager). It's a snack-type dish called lǎocù huāshēng — vinegar peanuts. The peanuts were easy to make and were quite sweet. I plan to play around with them again using less sugar, because I'd like to try them more sour than sweet (I saw some recipes in which raw peanuts were simply soaked in Chinese vinegar with no sugar at all, in fact). That said, I really enjoyed these peanuts.

I got the recipe from a food blogger's site in China called Beijing Haochi, which also has gorgeous photos. Unfortunately, as of yesterday, the site has been unavailable. I hope that situation will be resolved soon, so please do check the following link until you can get to the blog and try the recipe for yourself!

Recipe for Vinegar Peanuts on Beijing Haochi food blog

The method for making the peanuts is simple: You buy some raw, shelled peanuts (I got mine at Chang's grocery in Royal Plaza; Farm & Fleet also carries them, as does Strawberry Fields, though Fields' are skinned and blanched).

You fry a cup of peanuts in a couple of tablespoons of oil (I used peanut oil) in a wok or a skillet until the peanuts turn from pale white to deep golden brown.

Then you take the peanuts out of the wok with a slotted spoon and put them in a bowl, sprinkle them with salt, and leave them to cool a bit.

Meanwhile, you pour some vinegar into the wok and add sugar to it, then you cook and stir for about 5 minutes until the sugar is dissolved and the vinegar sauce thickens somewhat. (I believe the Beijing Haochi recipe called for equal parts vinegar and sugar, and  I think the amount was a half-cup of each.)

As you can see, the vinegar really bubbles up when the sugar is added. Note that it's very important to use Chinese black vinegar, not white or cider or wine vinegar. I got my black vinegar at Chang's, where I'd gotten the peanuts. This is what the bottle looked like.

That said, I've read that balsamic vinegar can be substituted for the black vinegar with good results.

Once you've cooked the vinegar mixture for about 5 minutes, you pour it over the salted peanuts that you'd previously put into a bowl, and stir. Then you garnish with chopped scallions and cilantro.

Because the syrup became almost candy-like, the peanuts were sticky-sweet and reminded me of the ones in boxes of Cracker Jacks. Curiously addictive.

Now let's go and see what the other food bloggers who joined us for this edition of Novel Food are reading and cooking.

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Michelle, who writes the blog On and Off My Plate, recently read the memoir Untangling My Chopsticks, by Victoria Abbott Riccardi.

Michelle reports that "you will devour this book and rush to the kitchen to savor every recipe as you 'live' in Kyoto." Michelle made toshikoshi soba ("year-crossing soba") in honor of the book.

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Jo, author of Not an Everyday Circumstance, and currently residing in England, read William Goldman's The Princess Bride. In the book's honor, she made a delicious-looking shepherd's pie.

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Ruhama, of the blog Rumahama, read the novel Matched, by Ally Condie, and the dish she was inspired to make was mixed-berry pie. That pie is taking me back to summer.

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Sandi, a.k.a. the Whistlestop Cafe Cook, read another of her favorite author's novels for this edition of NF. This time it was Flagg's latest novel, I Still Dream About You. In honor of that book, Sandi whipped up luscious looking raspberry mousse brownies.

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Florence, who writes From Bach to Stock, chose a nonfiction book instead of a novel. The book's title is How to Walk to School: Blueprint for a Neighborhood School Renaissance, and it's written by Jacqueline Edelberg and Susan Kurland. Florence is working as a student teacher at the moment, and she decided to create the school lunch she wishes all "her" kids would be interested in eating: a pita sandwich stuffed with a chickpea and vegetable mixture.

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Susan, the Well-Seasoned Cook, made strawberry fool and no-bake strawberry crisp, having been inspired by Edward Morgan's poem "Strawberries," which appears in the volume A Book of Love Poetry, edited by Jon Stallworthy for Oxford University Press. Let's think of Susan's post as a reminder that spring is just around the corner.

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Finally: Simona, writer of the blog briciole and my partner in this event, made her own Neufchâtel cheese. The novel she read is called Blessed Are the Cheesemakers, so you can see that food and novel fit together like—well, like a Fuji apple and a slice of sharp cheddar.

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Thanks so much to everyone who joined us for this edition of Novel Food. Be sure to check out the other half of the submissions on Simona's blog for more tasty treats.