(Note: This article was originally written for a Chinese magazine, hence the slightly Lonely Planet-esque tone. Unfortunately the magazine was not to be, so I thought I'd best not waste my work, and am thus posting it here. Enjoy!)

The first British home of my mother's family was the East End of London. Fleeing violent persecution in Eastern Europe and Russia during the early twentieth century, they and millions of other Jews moved across land and ocean to North America, Australia, and England.

In London, Jews mainly settled in an area that stretched from Spitalfields in the West to Stepney in the East; from Hackney in the North to Whitechapel in the South. The centre of the Jewish East End was Brick Lane, a long, narrow road running for over half a mile between Whitechapel and Bethnal Green Roads. Now a popular weekend destination lined with cafes and vintage clothes shops, Brick Lane was then a little pocket of Eastern Europe in London, complete with pickled cucumber stalls and bagel shops (a couple of which survive to this day).

This was the world that my maternal grandparents grew-up in. Though it's now years since the family moved to the suburbs, my grandmother, Sylvia, still talks about the folklore of this area. Sylvia witnessed the Battle of Cable Street in 1936, when Oswald Moseley’s British Union of Fascists were prevented from marching through the area; she remembers when the Jewish restaurant Bloom’s was at the southern end of Brick Lane; and she remembers eating cholent on the Sabbath.

Cholent, a long, slow-cooked dish of beef, potatoes, barley and beans, is the quintessential East-European Jewish food. Its origins, however, lie further west. In Medieval France, Jews in cities such as Toulouse, Nimes and Montpelier adapted the local speciality of cassoulet, and it is from the French that the dish gets its name - a combination of chauld (hot), and lent (slow), in reference to the cooking method. When the Jews were expelled from France in 1394, many went to Germany and further East, and they took their eating habits with them.

However, as the food writer Claudia Roden points out, 'the Jewish practice of cooking a meal in a pot overnight is of course much older than the fourteenth century’. Because lighting fires and cooking are both forbidden on the Sabbath (the Jewish holy day, from sunset on Friday to sunset on Saturday), Jews have long found ways of making sure they have at least one hot dish to eat during this time. In the shtetls (villages) of Central and Eastern Europe, on Friday evenings Jewish housewives would assemble their uncooked cholent at home, and seal the lid onto their copper pot with a mixture of flour and water. The name of the family was then marked on the pot in chalk, the pot taken to the local baker’s oven, cooked overnight, and finally fetched, often by children, on the way home from synagogue - a tradition that continued in London's East End.

Though patently a poor people’s food, cholent is nonetheless loved and held dear by many, and my own family has its own stories about the dish. My great-grandmother Annie apparently made an excellent cholent, for which her two adult sons, Harold and Morris, would come home every Saturday night. Annie also had her own secret ingredient - a sheet of parchment paper pitted with dozens of small holes made with the tip of a pencil, which she would place on top of the assembled cholent, and then pour over a layer of beef dripping, allowing the fat to ooze slowly onto the ingredients below - a pretty indulgent extra, since cholent is already so rich that it is said that ‘people have to go to synagogue on Sunday to pray for their stomach to recover’.

I bought the ingredients for my version of this dish at one of the last remaining open-air markets in East London: Ridley Road, in Dalston, Hackney. Now one of the most fashionable parts of the city, this area has, like the rest of the East End, had a chequered history. Settled by Jews in the early 20th century, it is now home to a sizable Turkish and Afro-Caribbean community, both of whom are increasingly being pushed out by the rising house prices. This is an area undergoing major changes - the Olympic Park is just down the road, making it the focus of many government-funded regeneration projects; this though is creating its own problems, as the riots in August 2011 showed. There is a certain tension in the air of Hackney, as the (usually) white yuppies rub shoulders with their poorer neighbours; while taking the photographs for this article, I was told that it 'wasn’t allowed'.

Nonetheless, I have a great fondness for this area. My best friend Francesca grew up just around the corner from here, and within my own family there are associations - my grandfather had a china and pottery shop on Mare Street, and Annie lived for a short time at the Pembury Estate (one of the flashpoints of the 2011 riots). Ridley Road market itself is a joy - ‘like taking a holiday every time you walk down it’, as I once heard someone say.

I’d never made cholent before, but the easiness and deliciousness of the finished product could easily convince me to do it again. This recipe comes from the wonderful Book of Jewish Food by the incomparable Claudia Roden, which is also where I gathered much of the information in this article.

Cholent, adapted from The Book of Jewish Food, by Claudia Roden

Serves 4

500g fatty beef, diced
3 tablespoons light vegetable oil
2 large onions, diced
3 garlic cloves, peeled and left whole
3-5 potatoes, peeled and cut into bite-size chunks
200g dried butter beans, soaked for an hour
100g pearl barley (optional)
2 bay leaves
salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 400°F / 200°C, gas mark 6.

In a large heavy pot or casserole dish with a tightly fitting lid, heat half of the oil, and brown the meat. Remove to a bowl, add the rest of the oil, and then fry the onions until soft. Add the garlic and bay leaves and fry until the aroma rises. Return the meat to the pot, and now add the potatoes, beans and barley (if using), seasoning each layer liberally with salt and pepper.

Cover with boiling water, then put the lid on and place in the oven. Cook for 20 mins, and then turn the oven down to its lowest temperature. Cook overnight, or for at least 8 hours. Serve, and in the words of Claudia Roden, ‘remove the lid at the table, so that everyone can get the first whiff of the appetizing smell which emanates’.

This is the fifth and final installment of my monthly column in Chengdoo Citylife Magazine, 'Your Chuancai Cupboard'. This month: Vinegar.

Vinegar, 醋， is among the most important condiments in Chinese cooking. One of the so-called ‘Seven Essentials’ of the traditional Chinese kitchen (along with firewood, rice, oil, salt, soy sauce and tea), vinegar’s importance in Chinese culture even extends to the language – in Mandarin, ‘to eat vinegar’， 吃醋， means to be jealous of somebody or something.

Vinegar is said to have been invented in China during the Xia Dynasty in around 2000 BC, and has been commercially produced from as early as the 1st century AD. It is particularly prized for its sourness (one of the four essential tastes, along with salty, sweet and bitter), and it is also widely used in Traditional Chinese Medicine for the treatment of all manner of ailments, from high blood pressure to athlete’s foot; TCM practitioners use vinegar to promote warm (yang) energy, and it is said to be particularly effectively when eaten in autumn.

Though commonly referred to as rice vinegar, Chinese vinegars are in fact usually made from a combination of ingredients that often includes rice (both white and black), but may also utilize wheat, millet, and sorghum. The color of Chinese vinegars ranges widely, from clear to inky black, and so too does the taste, from strongly acidic to smoky and mild.

Sichuan is one of China’s four most famous producers of vinegar; the other three are Zhejiang, Shanxi, and Fujian. Sichuan’s capital of vinegar production is Langzhong, in the northeast of the province, where, unique among Chinese vinegars, bran is the primary ingredient.

Baoning vinegar is the most famous and widely used brand made in Langzhong, but others do exist – I particularly like that made by the Langzhou 朗州 company, which is sweeter than the Baoning variety. At the Langzhou Vinegar Company, the traditional method of production is still in use, and goes as follows.

First, rice and dried corn kernels are steamed, and then are added to a mixture of bran and over 60 traditional Chinese medicines and herbs. This mixture is then left to ferment in sealed containers for up to 60 days, then is mixed with spring water and seeped for 2 to 3 days. Finally, the liquid is strained, boiled, bottled and is thus ready for use.

Though not as commonly used in Sichuan’s cuisine as in other parts of China, vinegar is nonetheless an indispensable part of the Sichuanese kitchen. Black vinegar is more commonly used than white vinegar, but the latter does feature particularly in cold dishes. Black vinegar can be bought at dried good stalls at markets, while supermarkets usually stock a wide variety of many different types. Outside of China, Chinkiang vinegar, widely available in Oriental supermarkets, is an acceptable substitute.

Perhaps the most famous Sichuanese dish that uses vinegar is the ridiculously easy Tiger-Skin Peppers， 虎皮请教， pictured above. Below is a recipe I’ve adapted from Fuchsia Dunlop’s Sichuan Cookery; the size of green pepper you use for this dish can vary – if you like it spicy, go for the long, thin ones; if not, go for a larger variety.

Tiger-Skin Peppers 虎皮请教

4 green peppers (capsicum)
Cooking oil
1-2 tablespoons black vinegar
1/2 teaspoon sugar
Salt to taste

1. If using large green peppers, quarter and discard the seeds and stems. If using the small kind, just squash slightly with the side of your cleaver. Mix the sugar and salt into the vinegar until they are completely dissolved.
2. Heat about 2 tablespoons of oil in a wok until smoking, and then add the peppers. Stir-fry over a medium heat for 5-6 minutes, or until the peppers are tender and their skins blistered and streaky.
3. Finally, remove the peppers to a serving dish, drizzle with the vinegar mixture and serve.

Hanoi is, as I've already mentioned, an utterly charming city, and one of these many charms is it's rich cafe culture. I'm not talking about the (often lovely) kind of cafe aimed towards foreign tourists; but rather the countless unfussy establishments that cater to the local's seemingly unquenchable thirst for coffee and tea, both hot and cold.

I've been hugely enjoying this cafe culture over the past week, especially when with my great friend Karin, who was also in Hanoi until just the other day. The cafes we've been frequenting are not the sort of places to linger on one's own with a book or a newspaper, but they are perfect for a quick drink and chat with a buddy.

One particular joint Karin and I went to several times was a rather characterful place near the apartment where we were staying. This area, far away from the touristy centre, was nonetheless full of great eateries, and at midday the streets were full and bustling with office workers on their lunch break. Karin and I would often come to this area for a breakfast bowl of pho or bun, followed by a glass of this cafe's excellent coffee - black for Karin, white for me.

I actually don't usually drink coffee, but the way there serve it here in Vietnam, ice-cold and with a generous dollop of sweet condensed milk, turns it closer to chocolate milk-shake than espresso - which, luckily, suits me all the better.

104 Ngoc Khanh
Ba Dinh district
Hanoi

Today as I was showering in my local municipal pool after a swim, my nostrils caught the unmistakable whiff of vinegar. I'd smelt vinegar here before, and had always assumed that it was being used to clean the drains or something. Today though, when I looked around for the source of the smell, I noticed a tiny old lady pouring capfuls of a dark liquid from an old soft drink bottle onto her hair.

'Is that vinegar?' I asked her, to which she answered 'Yes, it's very good for your hair!'

After a little Google sleuthing I came across this article, which states that rinsing with vinegar leaves your hair 'shinier, smoother, and easier to manage'.

Seeing as I'm heading off to Langzhong, Sichuan's vinegar capital, tomorrow morning, maybe I should try it out for myself; unlike some other alternative uses for food that I've seen...

UPDATE: My very own mother has just emailed me saying that when she was 'a young lass' (her words not mine!), she frequently used vinegar in her hair to help it shine - so there you go.

Chinese is a richly idiomatic language, so perhaps it’s no surprise, seeing that the Chinese are also such great eaters, that there are many idioms and expressions that involve food. Inspired by the wonderful Chocolate and Zucchini’s Edible Idioms series, I have decided to start my own series of posts, entitled ‘Eating Chinese’, on commonly used food-related idioms and expressions in Mandarin.

In each ‘Eating Chinese’ post, I will look at one idiom or expression. I will include the idiom and the example sentence in both Chinese characters and pinyin (go to this site to download Chinese Perakun, a brilliant add-on that allows you to view the pinyin and English translation when you hold your cursor over a Chinese character). Each post will also include literal and figurative English translations for the idiom or expression, and an example sentence with an English translation. Lastly, there will be a sound file attached to each post, with a recording of a native Chinese speaker saying the idiom or expression and the example sentence (thanks Pablo!)

My hope for this series is that it will prove both useful for students of Chinese, and interesting for anyone curious about the crossover between food, culture and language.

So, without further ado, let’s kick things off with 吃醋 (pinyin: chī cù). Literally meaning ‘to eat vinegar’, this idiom figuratively means to be jealous of something or someone, because, I guess, being jealous and eating vinegar tend to result in a similarly pained facial expression! Here is the example sentence:

她吃醋了, 因为她看到她男朋友和别的女孩子在一起 Pinyin: tā chī cù le, yīnwéi tā kàndào tā nánpéngyou hé bié de nǚ háizi zài yìqǐ. English translation: She was jealous, because she saw her boyfriend with another girl.

In the recording (at the top of this post), first you will hear 吃醋 on its own, and then the example sentence. If you're having any problems with playing the recording, you can open it in an external window by clicking here.

PS. For the full story of this idiom, go to this website.