Suitable for holding in the hand while walking and eating snacks, each place has its own characteristics. Chengdu, the streets of the big head of vegetable folder pot helmet is not seen elsewhere. Guangzhou roadside stalls selling radish beef noodles is simply unparalleled flavor. Simple as cinnamon and red bean dumplings are also the best street, twenty years ago I saw Jin Nong's double hooks in Yangzhou Museum of Ink and Bamboo to the door of the tricycle vendors have eaten a bowl, and so far I have not encountered that the thickness of the right amount of just the right amount of warmth and fragrance of the soft and soft.
And in North America, in addition to the end in the hands of the coffee, eating while walking is really not very popular, there is no such atmosphere, you can eat things are not good. But while there's little, there's not nothing.
1. hot dog
Can stand in the street to eat food, hot dog (hot dog) is deservedly the first place. The bustling downtown, every corner of the block has a hot dog vendor, pushing a three-foot-long or two-foot-wide four-wheeled cart, open up a parasol is a stall. The owner of the stall is standing inside, and a few sausages are bubbling on a grill.
Though there is little difference in appearance, hot dog vendors usually differentiate between a "hot dog" and a "sausage" - a hot dog is a beef-filled sausage. Hot dogs are beef-filled and the price lists often say all beef hot dogs, while sausage is mostly pork-filled and comes in German, Italian, Polish and other flavors.
German sausage, also known as Bratwurst, or simply brat, is mostly fresh and unsmoked, with a heavier spice flavor. Polish sausage, sometimes written directly in Polish as Kielbasa, is garlicky, lightly smoked, and looks more like Harbin red sausage. Kielbasa sold in North America is also shaped differently from other sausages in that it is a long, curved horseshoe. And Italian sausages at the stalls are often spicy Italian or hot Italian, with a spicy flavor.
The vendor gives you the grilled sausage in a bun, with no seasoning added. The side of the cart facing the customer has a long alcove where various sauces and toppings are lined up, and diners add their own. These are collectively known as condiments, and the essential sauces are ketchup, mustard, and hot sauce, while the dry goods include onion, tomato, relish, and pickle. ), pickle (sour cucumber, diced or thinly sliced), pickle pepper, and often sauerkraut (German sauerkraut), which looks and tastes like northeastern sour cabbage.
The hot dog's juggernaut status on the streets of North America doesn't just depend on widespread distribution. Just like the Beggar's Association if only a bag of two bags of disciples more than the number of people also do not top things, there must be a few big protector of a few big elders to hold down the fort. The hot dog world also has such a luxury configuration.
Cheese dog (cheese hot dog) is a typical representative. Some cheese dogs are made with cheese-laden sausage, while others are made with a slice of cheese on top of the sausage in a bun with a basic sauce and toppings. It's a good idea to lightly grill the dog with the cheese on it, so that it tastes best when the cheese is melty.
Just as the Beggar's Bowl has its own specialties, hot dogs have their own versions of local favorites in different cities. chicago-style hot dog, also known as chicago dog or chicago red hot (chicago red hot (chicago hot dog)), is characterized by a large number of toppings. While other places dice tomatoes, Chicagoans stuff them in big slices. While other places slice the gherkin thinly, Chicagoans slice the whole thing in half.
Also, while most regular hot dogs are served on white buns, the Chicago version is served on a poppy seed bun, which has black poppy seeds smaller than sesame seeds. Poppy seeds, by the way, are a safe ingredient, legal in every country in the world, and on the list of spices in China's National Food Standard. It's common practice in Europe and the United States to add poppy seeds to bread and baked goods, but to be honest, I've never found it to have an appealing flavor.
There's another kind of hot dog that Chicagoans love called the Maxwell Street Polish, named after the street, which uses Polish-style sausage as the main ingredient, topped with pickled peppers and grilled, softly caramelized onions.
Similarly, Seattle on the West Coast, which echoes Chicago in the center of the country, likes its hot dogs with lots of grilled onions, and the Seattle dog's unique toppings include cream cheese, cabbage, and BBQ sauce.
As the capital city, Washington was not to be left behind and had to have its own specialty hot dog. The half-smoke hot dog is also unique in that it emphasizes the word "half". The ingredients of the sausage must be half pork and half beef, and the sausage must be smoked, but only half-wet, not dry, and when grilled, it must be cut in the center so that it becomes two halves. The hot dog is topped with a spoonful of chili, a paste made from beans and ground beef, in addition to the usual condiments.
The list goes on and on. All in all, whenever you visit a place, look for the local specialty of hot dogs on the streets and you'll definitely get something out of it.
2. Deep-fried snacks
The hot dog vendors with their carts have a fixed location, which is not a matter of rivalry, but rather a matter of municipal licensing.
There are also peddlers all over North America, but they sell different things. Inside the residential area, you can occasionally hear the sound of tin knocking against each other, and the volume is enough to penetrate the homes and reach the ears, but not so big as to disturb the people. Experienced residents don't have to stick their heads out to see it to know it's the knife sharpeners coming. With today's lifestyle, it is rare that this traditional business can still be maintained, but there are not many trucks like this, and you may not hear it once a year.
More trucking businesses are food trucks. If you can sell hot dogs from a wheelbarrow and move them to a truck that's too big, it's too expensive to make any money. So a food truck will never just sell hot dogs. The burger (汉堡) that is baked and sold on the truck will give off a great smell and attract passers-by to stop by.
But it's not the hot dogs or the burgers that make the food truck so appealing; it's the fries, cut into thick strips, that are the killer. I don't know if it's the variety of potatoes, the oil in the pan, or just the ambience, but the fries are unlike anything you'll find in any other restaurant, not a fast food joint, not a fine dining establishment.
There is a food truck like this parked in front of my office building, and there is always a long line at lunchtime. If the weather is warm and sunny, bought in the open air downstairs and eat, is really a work gap to enjoy. Once I bought French fries, and when it suddenly started to rain, I had to take them back to my office. It was a long, narrow, open-plan office, with people from several different departments, all busy with their own work, many of whom were familiar but not known to each other. A week after I ate the fries, I ran into one such unnamed co-worker in the elevator, who winked at me and said in an enigmatic tone, "I smelled your fries the other day, they were so good!"
Fries have the same deluxe upgrade in Canada, and it's the Maple Leaf Country's specialty, poutine - fries with special cheese curds and topped with hot gravy.
The authentic poutine must be made with cheese curd and not cheese instead. Cheese curd is not strictly cheese, but a by-product of the cheese-making process, and is smoother and less fatty than cheese. It's not very popular because it has to be eaten the same day it's made, otherwise it loses its "toothsome" texture.
When you make poutine, you pour gravy on it while it's still hot, so it's at the right temperature for the cheese curd to melt and soften, but not completely melt away. Cool cheese curd and hot gravy in the mouth collision, hot but wrapped in a bit of cool, semi-fluid but also sticky in the teeth pulled out of the silk, just the sense of touch can bring you to a kind of ethereal but specious state, a bit of "can not steal the heart itchy" meaning.
If it's not for hunger but for fun, sweets are more appealing. We've talked about fried sweets like funnel cakes and churros at theme parks in the chapter "Play and Eat," and they can be found on the streets as well. They're also close cousins to some of the more local street foods.
Just like poutine, beaver tails are a Canadian specialty. Beaver Tails are a Canadian specialty because beavers are a Canadian specialty. The beaver is a simple but powerful mammal, with a mouthful of sharp teeth that can bite off large trees, and then push the broken wood from the mountain to the river to build an ingenious dam for fishing. Like the moose, the beaver is a proud national pet of Canadians, and it is common to see beaver cartoon dolls in RCMP uniforms at tourist attractions.
One particularly recognizable feature of the beaver's appearance is its round, flat tail. This snack called Beaver Tails is actually a pancake, because the shape is flat like a beaver's tail, so it is named. It's very close to the sugar cookies that old Beijingers used to eat for breakfast, but the Canadian version is deep-fried and then topped with toppings and eaten.
These are made on the spot, the dough is prepared in advance, and when it's done, it's pulled into a flat sheet by hand and deep-fried in a frying pan until it's golden brown. A sprinkle of sugar mixed with cinnamon makes the basic Cinnamon & Sugar. For a more satisfying meal, you can add Chocolate Hazelnut and Banana, and you can break up Oreo cookies and sprinkle them on top.
In 1978 a couple trademarked their one-of-a-kind secret recipe for oil cakes as Beaver Tails, and after decades of painstaking work, it's now one of those snacks you can't travel to Canada without eating. Even the Canadian Embassy for Barack Obama's first president-elect reception organized by eating Beaver Tails, but also specially with chocolate and maple syrup (maple syrup) mixed into a sauce in the oil cake painted a representative of Obama's letter O, from this special edition was named Obama Tail (Obama Tail).
In the US, another variant of the fritter appeared, also named bear claw after an animal's body. Unlike beaver tails, bear claw doughnuts are filled, usually with a mixture of ground almonds and granulated sugar.
3. Ice Cream
One of the most popular food trucks for kids is, naturally, the ice cream truck. This truck is instantly recognizable because of the giant ice cream cone painted on the white car. These trucks are always found at beaches, parks, and other places where there are lots of children in the summer. They also travel the streets like knife-sharpening trucks, soliciting business with fast-paced music, never to be confused with the clanking of knives being sharpened.
The ice cream trucks' main product is soft serve ice cream, which is squeezed out of a machine and comes in three flavors: vanila, chocolate, and twist, which is half vanilla and half chocolate.
The ice cream is frozen hard and sold with a twist. The ice cream sold in stores is frozen hard and is scooped out with a spoon, so the unit of measurement is the scoop. Soft-serve ice cream from the truck is priced by size, small, medium, and large.
Ice cream can be eaten in a cup with a spoon or in a cone for the same price, but if you don't say so, the owner will ask you "in a cup or cone". A regular cone is called a sugar cone, a thin, crispy layer. Add a few cents to upgrade to a waffle cone (waffle cone), more hard, some people like it and some people do not like its texture.
The ice cream can also be topped with a few flower heads. A bit of warm chocolate syrup in liquid form, pour a layer on top of the ice cream, quickly cooled to form a hard shell, which is called a chocolate dip, can also be sprinkled on top of some peanut (peanut crumbs) or sprinkles (colorful crushed sugar), the former to add flavor, the latter is mostly a child think it looks good and fun.
Of the few choices on the menu, the banana boat and sundae are the more "luxurious" of the ice cream trucks. The banana boat, as the name suggests, is a boat shaped with bananas cut down the long sides and ice cream "sitting" inside. Sundaes are a centuries-old classic of American desserts, with a layer of sauce or syrup poured on top of the ice cream. The most traditional combination is vanilla ice cream with maraschino cherry and whipped cream, but nowadays it is also common to find chocolate syrup and caramel.
Parfait is a variation of the sundae, with granola sandwiched between layers of ice cream. If you're in a dessert store, parfait can be topped with a bit of schnapps, but due to the strict regulation of alcoholic beverages in the vast majority of North America, it won't be available on the truck.
In addition to making them on-site, ice cream trucks also sell packaged popsicles, most often in red, white, and blue. These popsicles are basically sugar and coloring, which is super unhealthy and doesn't taste like anything other than sweet, but kids love them.
Ice cream trucks also have drinks. Similar to the coloring popsicle is slush (smoothie), the only difference is that the coloring of the sugar ice is not strung on a stick, but broken in the cup. Even more delicious is the shake, which is short for milkshake - fruit broken up with ice cream.
Another version of the milkshake is the smoothie, which ice cream trucks don't usually sell, but a number of small stores specialize in. Comparatively speaking smoothies have slightly less dairy in them, and the fruit is less broken up and tastes more grainy. Small stores that sell smoothies have a special kind of frozen yogurt (frozen yogurt) with fruit that is broken up in a blender. This frozen yogurt is made differently from ice cream, by freezing the thick yogurt directly into ice. Because ice cream in North America is very sweet and yogurt is less sugary, frozen yogurt has been touted as an alternative to ice cream by many health-conscious diners. In terms of flavor, I personally think they are both very different.
4. Chocolate and candy
Chocolate is really a culture in the West, so important that there is a special term to describe the chef who makes it. In English, a chef is called a chef, and a dessert chef can be called a dessert chef in front of "chef", or a pastry chef in front of "pastry". But the chocolate chef does not apply to this naming method, they called chocolatier, appear outstanding, and must not be confused with the general chef.
A variety of beautifully packaged chocolate in supermarkets and convenience stores occupy a lot of shelves, but they are not strictly street food. Specialized chocolate stores are either big-brand specialty store chains or centuries-old family-run stores with local characteristics, and the latter must have an on-site production component.
In addition to showing how chocolate is made, these stores also have a snack of fruit dipped in chocolate. The most famous is chocolate dipped strawberry, or chocolate covered stawberry, a fresh strawberry covered in dark chocolate or white chocolate. White chocolate), good-looking and delicious.
Chocolate is made from solid cocoa mass, cocoa butter, milk and sugar. Dark chocolate does not contain milk, only a small amount of sugar or no sugar at all, slightly bitter, with strawberries together with two different flavors and textures reflect each other, a unique flavor. White chocolate contains no solid cocoa, only cocoa butter and milk. Cocoa butter is a vegetable fat extracted from cocoa beans and is light yellow in color, similar to butter. So white chocolate is smoother and mellower, and it's a completely different experience when put together with strawberries.
In addition to chocolate, a confectionary (candy store) can be found in tourist spots or shopping centers, and is best known for its fudge, which is made on site. This is a fudge very similar to caramel and is more complicated to make. The sugar is heated, melted, poured out, buttered and kneaded over and over again.
Similarly, there's toffee. This candy was modified in Atlantic City, absorbing the spirit of the Chinese philosophy of "to sweeten, add a little salt", and became a famous Atlantic City specialty. The name Salt Water Taffy is derived from the salt used in the production process.
The word toffee also appears in the name of another snack sweet, the toffee apple, although in North America it's usually called a candy apple or candied apple. Much like a chocolate-dipped banana, the whole apple is stuck on a stick and covered in a layer of red syrup, which when cooled forms a sticky, hard shell that is not very tasty.