A street food cooking lesson.

Walking around today on one of the five streets that are dedicated to Chinese Fast food a.k.a. street food, I was allowed to watch and take pictures of this gentlemen making a type of fried bun. Cost of bun 2 RMB = . 30 cents. He works rather quickly and sells them just as fast.

He starts with smooshing the dough out into long strips, and then rolling them out a bit.He then smears some sort of lard or fat onto the dough.A press of what either could be ground pork, beef or lamb and a handful of scallions are put on top.He rolls them up and then they are fried. You can see the finished product in the back of the picture.Here is his wife or girlfriend or daughter - hard to tell. She was so interested in the fact that I was so interested in the process that she came over to look over my shoulder to see what kind of pictures I was taking.So I waved my arms around a bit to indicated that I wanted to take her picture too. She was so pleased that she jumped into doing HER job so I could take of picture of her working. This is her smiling, really! And she is just pretending to serve up some soup.I did buy one, you know to pay for my photo frolic. I broke it open and then took a wee bite.
No flavor really, hard crisp dough, not flaky, and then I threw it out, I did not bite into the meat....and I was worried about the fat, it all could have been rancid or loaded with a bacteria that would have killed my tummy. Anyway I was taking pictures of the process, which I thought was interesting. I thought the actual bun was unappetizing looking to begin with.

I have just learned that in a few months or sooner this street is being torn down as well as a number of other blocks in the neighborhood, this street I was told will not reappear anywhere else, which I do not believe, I mean what is this family going to do? I think: What are all these business going to do? Where will they go? Here are a few pictures of the street food market. It's pretty gross and dirty and I would never eat here but it is really a part of the Chinese life - oh and then smell sometimes is horrendous. I can only imagine in the summer how rancid it gets.