What is your favorite Chinese Hot Mustard?

[y_p_w]

This weekend I was at a larger Safeway store with a sizable Asian foods section. They had the Dynasty brand hot mustard for $1.99. I would note that 4 oz is really small though, especially since much of it is water. If anyone really wants it, preparing from powder is the best way, but it doesn't store long without a lot of other stuff in there.

I also got invited out for dim sum and we got one little dish of hot mustard. My first taste I got that serious burn in the nostrils.

 

[y_p_w]

Growing up I see the mustard/chili oil sauce double saucer in banquet / formal dinner when they serve cold cut meat platter (usually either a roast duck/goose, BBQ pork, roast pork belly, jellyfish, etc). Most of the time I don't see people using them and sometimes you see kids playing with them. I think it is a "just in case you like them here it is" sort of thing. Vinegar for smoked knuckle and jellyfish, or the fish sauce for cold seafood are very popular on the other hand.

It could be a foreign-influenced culinary thing in Hong Kong or Canton region, but not further north or further inland or they might use it in a different way.

Mustard green is a completely different thing. They are sort of the equivalent of pickle or spicy pickle in European food. Typically they are fermented with salt and chili peppers, washed and diced, and sprinkled into food as a seasoning like jalapeno pepper, not mashed into a sauce or eaten as a vegetable.

Well - zha cai really comes from the stems of a specific variety of mustard, but it's not exactly the greens per se. It's the misshapen stem that's from between the root and the greens. One problem is that they're often improperly labeled as radish, tubers, etc. when it's this part of a mustard cultivar.

But they're sold with so many different improper labels in English, besides just the spelling mistakes. Many descriptions call it a tuber, which is incorrect since the misshapen part grows above ground. It's certainly not a radish, but it's similar in texture.

 

[PandaBear]

Well - zha cai really comes from the stems of a specific variety of mustard, but it's not exactly the greens per se. It's the misshapen stem that's from between the root and the greens. One problem is that they're often improperly labeled as radish, tubers, etc. when it's this part of a mustard cultivar.

But they're sold with so many different improper labels in English, besides just the spelling mistakes. Many descriptions call it a tuber, which is incorrect since the misshapen part grows above ground. It's certainly not a radish, but it's similar in texture.

Maybe someone should standardize the name and just call it what it is in Chinese, literally translated as "squeezed vegetable".

 

[y_p_w]

Maybe someone should standardize the name and just call it what it is in Chinese, literally translated as "squeezed vegetable".

A lot of direct translations don't necessarily work. But I've noticed that it's normally known as some sort of preserved vegetable, on top of whatever description they have of it being part of a mustard plant, tuber, or radish.

I certainly wouldn't go for direct translations where the context (especially from certain cultural understandings) is missing. A lot of phrases in Chinese assume certain defaults. Like the direction translation of the Chinese phrase for soy sauce is "sauce oil". But the context of the sauce is well known as usually meaning a fermented soybean paste that's used to make soy sauce. In my learning of the language, there are certain defaults, such as the assumption that a description of meat usually refers to pork unless it's modified.

 

[PandaBear]

In my learning of the language, there are certain defaults, such as the assumption that a description of meat usually refers to pork unless it's modified.

True. One of my Indian coworkers assumes meat means chicken and was surprised to find out the default meat in China is pork.

 

[vavavroom]

Maybe someone should standardize the name and just call it what it is in Chinese, literally translated as "squeezed vegetable".

Brassica juncea

 

[PandaBear]

Brassica juncea

That would include the whole family of the plants that are planted and eaten in different ways across entire East Asia.

I think what Wikipedia call this plant the big stem mustard.

 

[y_p_w]

Brassica juncea

Good luck with that. Besides the huge varieties of the same species, there are different parts of the plants that are used in different ways. I also hinted that a lot of phrases in Chinese have implied meanings. Red braised pork belly is called "hong sao ruo" (紅燒肉 or literally "red braised meat" in Chinese. The use of "zha cai" 榨菜 is literally "squeezed vegetable" since the traditional way is to squeeze them into a pot.

It might work well if we're just talking about the seeds being used to make a mustard paste, since brown mustard seeds are pretty similar in taste and texture. But probably not for assorted mustard greens/stems/roots.

And Chinese has a lot of words for food that are more specific, while there are other words that are more vague (like the default assumption of "meat" being pork). There's a specific adjective for the heat from chili peppers called "la" (辣), even if they're not native to China. There's also the Sichuan peppercorn, which has a numbing, tingling sensation called "ma la" (麻辣).