HowieCOOK: Soy Story Catch-Up!

No clever quips this time, and no fabulous recipes. Below are the 7 clips from Soy Story that I have so far. Sit back, relax, enjoy and don't get too terribly hungry!

OK, first some background. The Soy Story film project was formally conceived of about one year ago, after 12 years, many trips to, and thousands of meals consumed in China. I had decided that very few outlets within the enormous and influential food media world were doing enough to shift focus onto the rich history, diversity and significance of Chinese cuisine. I thought perhaps, with the then impending Beijing Olympics, media consumers would be ravenous to find out more about the food of the Middle Kingdon, its diversity, its dynamism and its cultural importance withing Chinese society.

Rather than clarify and debunk misconceptions of Chinese cuisine, much of the main stream culinary media took a wonderful opportunity and blew it by further cementing said misconceptions. Leading up to the Olympics, I watched in horror as the TV dudes who eat weird foods went to the best *donkey* restaurant in Beijing, the best *penis* restaurant in Beijing (I kid you not), and found the best *scorpion on a stick* in Beijing. I also combed through a number of US newspaper articles about Beijing cracking down on scores of restaurants that serve dog meat, mandating that they take dog off the menu during the Summer of 2008.

If you are an avid food media absorber like me, you may have been left with the impression that the following are true and many of your Chinese food urban legends were right:

1. Eating dog is common across China.
2. The Chinese eat only strange parts of even stranger animals.
3. If the cats in your neighborhood are disappearing, there must be a Chinese joint opening soon.
4. I could go on...

Soy Story seeks to celebrate Chinese cuisine in a way I find to be unique within the food media stream we receive. I interview real people, in real China, with real opinions, eating real farm-to-table foods, the array of which may surprise you. It's time we handed Chinese food back to China, and ask them to clarify a few things for us, don't you think?

I am not yet done filming for Soy Story, and I hope to find the footage a good home after I am done. If that last bit never occurs, however, it will always have a safehouse here at HowieCOOK. Bon appetit: