Dietary health, food safety, nutrition, and food culture.
This episode of Food Talk visits Pingren Farm in Changping, Beijing. Food doctoral researcher Zhou Chen, cultivation technician Zhao Fei and home cook Auntie Li discuss releasing the fixation on looks, learning more about production and engaging all five senses to come closer to truly “good food”.
Adding kelp and wood ear mushroom to dishes, swapping white-flour steamed buns for Shandong jianbing, and dipping oily dishes in vinegar water — these three moves helped a cook in his sixties shed 15 kg over two Spring Festivals, eating with the whole family exactly as always.
From ready-to-heat dumplings to central kitchen ingredients, pre-made dishes have permeated takeaways, school meals and New Year’s Eve dinners. Five contributors — including an anthropologist, a domestic worker and a sustainability practitioner — shared their views on identification, plastic packaging and the impact on Chinese chefs.
A friend’s winter visit with washing-up liquid and a stir-fry wok turned Villains’ Valley’s spring-water pool black as thick ink, ending two years of untroubled greywater purification. No argument conveys so vividly how modern household chemicals sever the mutual-nourishment cycle between people and the land, under one’s eyes.
From tending the fire by the stove to leaning on a cane to visit his own grave, the granddaughter threads her childhood with her farmer grandfather through four farming proverbs—until, in early spring 2022, he passed away at home.
Sanyuanli has become a coffee brand’s check-in exhibition venue. At the Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market, meanwhile, pesticide-free strawberries, king oyster mushrooms with their caps open, and seasonal Chinese chives stand guard over the most solid trust between daily meals and the land.
Sun Shan runs an ecological farm and fermentation kitchen in Ottawa. Eight years of daily vegetable-growing and sauerkraut-making embody Sandor Katz’s vision in The Art of Fermentation: fermentation is not just food preservation, but a way to rebuild connections with microorganisms, the land and the community.
Beijing-born Liu Yang, from IT, fell for cheese while studying in France. From a small Huilongguan Farmers’ Market stall in 2009, he crafted over a dozen handmade cheeses blending French tradition with Beijing’s terroir, yet Bule Cheese Workshop faces the growth challenge of “from workshop to factory”.
From making pre-made cat food for three cats during the pandemic to always having fifteen finished meals in the freezer, Doudou turned the batch-cooking mindset into practical methods: portioning and freezing, keeping meat and vegetables separate, and sealing at low temperature.
Yi Jian, who runs Jane&Lucy, cultivates a natural sourdough starter from flour and water — rich in yeast, lactic acid bacteria, and acetic acid bacteria — and walks through every step of making sourdough bread, from starter cultivation to baking.
