In case you missed it: WGC-HSBC Champions in Shanghai
Video: The Great Panda Escape
Caption This: Poster for joining the female fighter pilot force
Pencil This In: November 9-13
More sex in China: PDA police and condom confusion
It may not be your grandmother's Christmas sweet potato casserole, but the sweet potatoes you can buy on the street (the guys with the steaming metal barrels) are pretty tasty — perfect for a wintry Shanghai evening.
The price of sweet potatoes (bái shǔ - 白薯) is somewhere around 2.5rmb per jīn (1/2kilo). They are soft and very sweet. To pick a good one look for one that is soft and wrinkly on the outside. When you push the skin with your finger it should give way quite easily. This is caused by the naturally higher sugar content, which means this sweet potato will be sweeter and will also have a slight caramel taste on the inside close to the skin. These are the best ones. You will often find corn sold at the same time, yù mǐ, 玉米. Each corncob costs 3rmb — they are sold by number, not by weight.
Sweet potatoes and corn — that's almost half of a Christmas dinner for little more than 5 kuai. (Or, if you want, you could pay RMB 1,688 ... per person.)
Cross posted at likealocal.
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
post to facebook
and i thought they were just selling hand warmers!
:)
usually grilled sweet potato,like on the photo, is called hong(1) shan(1) yu(4)- 烘山芋. before cooked, it's called hong(2) shu(3) - 红薯
山芋＝红薯
never heard this name "白薯", where u get it?
you mean those aren't just pocket sized edible hand warmers? ;)
perfect for a wintry evening? Perfect for getting cancer.
DO NOT EAT THESE POTATOES
The barrles they used previously contained you don't want to know what.
Can't believe Shangahiist is advising on carcinogenic food. Maybe Mark's a newbie but surely Dan knew this.
A sister from Torontoist here.
Carcinogens or not, I love those sweet potatos. I've only eaten the ones out front of the sadly defunct donjiadu market.
Sweet potato is said one of the most healthy food. If it is carcinogenic, then it must be caused by some other things, like the used barrel, but not the food itself.
BTW, in the last sentence, "litle" should be "little", I guess.
:)
Can't believe Shangahiist is advising on carcinogenic food.
Can't believe it? The same place where we can get odes to a pastrami sandwich?
Give me a break. Living in Shanghai and just breathing the air is cutting years off my life anyways. Let me eat my sweet potato.
That's my point, What do barrels contain? Toxic waste? Sewage? Oil?
And you think the sellers clean them well? Anyway, enjoy.
Are you an expert on barrels too? 55 gallon drums are not just for oil or "toxic waste" - like in movies. They're also used for all sorts of ordinary things as well. If oil or "toxic waste" had been stored in them before the smell would be released quite pungently when you burned coals in them.
Nothing like a little ignorant scare mongering . . .
Now its time for a nice roasted potato . . .
coal contains mercury, think about that when you are handling those potatoes with your bare hands.
Don't let me dissuade you barrel man, enjoy your cultural treat and for your sake, I hope I am right.
Actually, Shanghai Daily had a warning about this last year. The drums they cook on previously contained dangerous chemicals and a crackdown by officials found that all the drums confiscated still contained high amounts of chemical residue. There are risks and there are RISKS. Don't do it.
I don't think they are actually cooked over coal. Those round fuels with several holes in them that they use to heat the stoves are usually made of compressed charcoal dust, so the effect is more or less the same as eating over a bar-b-q.