50 Fun Facts About Asian Food

Mongolian barbecue was invented in Taipei in 1951 by Wu Zhaonan, a refugee from Beijing later famous as what?

A comedian is what Wu Zhaonan became after leaving the restaurant business, so the 'Mongolian' dish was a Beijing refugee's Taipei street-stall invention.

Hong Kong's pineapple bun contains no pineapple at all; what does its name actually describe?

Its crusty topping is the 'pineapple': the cracked, sugary crust resembles the fruit's skin, and the bun is now a fixture of Chinatown bakeries worldwide.

Din Tai Fung, the Taipei chain famous for its soup dumplings, was founded in 1958 as a shop selling what?

Cooking oil was the trade: founder Yang Bing-yi had spent ten years at the oil retailer Heng Tai Fung and named his own shop after it and his supplier, DinMei Oils.

Which Indonesian meatball soup did Barack Obama, raised partly in Indonesia, recall as a childhood favourite?

Bakso, meatballs in clear broth with noodles, got a presidential endorsement when Obama listed it among the foods he remembered from his Indonesian boyhood in a speech.

Jollibee, the Philippine fast-food chain, began in 1975 in Quezon City as what kind of business?

An ice cream parlour selling Magnolia ice cream was the start; when the hot food outsold the ice cream, the Tan family converted it into the first Jollibee outlet in 1978.

Arak, the anise spirit of Lebanon and Syria, turns from clear to milky white when it is mixed with what?

Water does it: anethole, the essential oil of anise, dissolves in alcohol but not in water, so the traditional one-to-two dilution clouds the glass.

Hong Kong-style milk tea is nicknamed after which garment, which the cloth bag used to strain it resembles?

Silk stockings give 'silk-stocking milk tea' its name, and the brewing technique with the stocking-like bag is recognised by Hong Kong's government as intangible cultural heritage.

Myanmar's lahpet thoke is a salad built on the pickled, fermented form of which crop?

Tea leaves, fermented and eaten rather than brewed, are unique to this corner of Asia; a Burmese saying holds that 'of all the leaves, lahpet's the best'.

Beshbarmak, the boiled meat and noodle dish of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, has a Turkic name that means what?

Five fingers refers to the traditional way of eating the dish: with the hands, scooping up the noodles and meat without cutlery.

Which cone-shaped rice dish was declared Indonesia's official national dish by the tourism ministry in 2014?

Tumpeng, a cone of rice ringed with side dishes, was chosen as 'the dish that binds the diversity' of Indonesian cuisine, ahead of the unofficial favourite nasi goreng.

Rijsttafel, the colonial Dutch banquet of dozens of small Indonesian dishes, is a Dutch word literally meaning what?

Rice table is the literal meaning; the Dutch adapted the spread from the Padang way of serving and used it to impress visitors with the abundance of their colonial empire.

Which Malaysian national dish, literally 'fatty rice', is cooked in coconut milk and eaten with fried anchovies and egg?

Nasi lemak gets its richness from rice steamed in coconut milk with pandan leaf, and it has travelled as far as Australia's Christmas and Cocos Islands.

Which frothy Malaysian milk tea, the national drink, is named for being poured repeatedly between two containers?

Teh tarik means 'pulled tea': the pouring from a height cools the brew and gives it a frothy head, and it is a fixture of mamak stalls and kopitiams.

Bak kut teh, the pork-rib soup linked to the Malaysian port of Klang, has a Hokkien name that literally means what?

Meat bone tea contains no tea at all: the ribs simmer for hours with herbs and spices, and the tea is drunk alongside in the belief that it dissolves the fat.

Singapore's chilli crab is traced to Cher Yam Tian and her husband, who from 1956 sold stir-fried crab from what?

A pushcart was the first chilli crab stall: the couple stir-fried crabs with bottled chilli and tomato sauce, launching what is now a Singapore signature.

Singapore's chicken rice was adapted from the Wenchang chicken dishes of immigrants from which southern Chinese island?

Hainan's emigrants carried the dish wherever they settled, so the same poached chicken and seasoned rice turns up across Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam.

Appam, the fermented rice-flour pancakes of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, go by what English name in Sri Lanka?

Hoppers is the Sri Lankan name, and the pancakes are eaten for breakfast or dinner with a side such as vegetable or egg curry.

Which Sri Lankan street dish of chopped flatbread is famous for the clatter of iron blades that carries down the street?

Kottu is made by pounding chopped roti with vegetables on a hot griddle, and the rhythmic sound can usually be heard from a long distance.

Ceylon's planters switched to tea after 1869, when which fungal disease wiped out Sri Lanka's earlier plantation crop?

Coffee leaf rust, Hemileia vastatrix, wiped out the coffee estates and pushed planters into tea, which is why Sri Lanka became a byword for black tea rather than coffee.

Nepal's momo dumplings are popularly believed to have been brought home by Nepali merchants who traded where?

Tibet is where travelling Newar merchants are said to have picked up the recipe, which explains why the dish first caught on in the Newar community.

Which Nepali dish of fermented, sun-dried leafy greens is made like sauerkraut or kimchi, except that no salt is added?

Gundruk is fermented for about a week at around 18 °C until it turns mildly acidic, then dried in the sun, using the glut of mustard and radish greens at harvest.

Nihari, the slow-cooked stew that became a Karachi institution after 1947, is named from an Arabic word meaning what?

Morning is the meaning of nahâr: Mughal nawabs ate nihari as a breakfast course after the dawn Fajr prayer, and it is still served first thing.

Kashmiri noon chai, the pink tea popular across Pakistan, gets its colour from brewing green tea with milk and what?

Baking soda reacts with the gunpowder green tea to turn the brew pink, and 'noon' means salt in Kashmiri, the seasoning it is served with.

Kabuli pulao, Afghanistan's signature rice dish, is crowned with which caramelised vegetable and which dried fruit?

Carrots and raisins, sweetened by caramelising, are scattered over rice steamed with marinated meat, giving the dish its sweet-savoury signature.

Which lemongrass-scented fish and rice-noodle soup, sold as an all-day breakfast, is the national dish of Myanmar?

Mohinga is garnished with boiled eggs, coriander and crispy fritters, and though it began as a breakfast dish it is now eaten at any hour.

Which Cambodian province names the peppercorn that in 2010 became Cambodia's first geographically protected product?

Kampot pepper was described as early as the 13th century by the Chinese envoy Zhou Daguan, and the European Union added its own protected status in 2016.

Which fermented fish paste, with a smell likened to ripe Camembert, is the Khmer staple nicknamed 'Cambodian cheese'?

Prahok's pungency, compared to Limburger as well as Camembert, earns it the nickname and makes it the seasoning backbone of Khmer cuisine.

The Cambodian town of Skuon draws tourists for which crunchy snack, thought to date from Khmer Rouge-era food shortages?

Tarantulas the size of a human palm, fried in oil and called a-ping in Khmer, are bred in holes in the ground in villages north of Skuon or foraged from nearby forest.

In which Southeast Asian country is an estimated 85% of the rice crop the sticky, glutinous kind?

Laos grows mostly sticky rice, and the waxy mutation behind it is thought to have first arisen in the upland regions of mainland Southeast Asia.

Or lam, the tongue-numbing stew of Luang Prabang, gets its peppery bite from simmering which unusual ingredient?

Chili wood, sakhaan, is simmered with lemongrass and chilies into a thick broth, and the original royal recipe called for deer meat.

Airag, the mildly alcoholic fermented drink of Mongolia and the Central Asian steppe, is made from which animal's milk?

Horse milk has more sugars than cow's or goat's, so when it ferments the drink ends up slightly stronger than kefir, though still mild.

Khorkhog, the Mongolian countryside feast, cooks chunks of meat inside a sealed container together with what?

Hot stones, ten to twenty fist-sized rocks heated in a fire, go into the container with the meat and a little liquid, and the pot is often heated from outside as well.

Which Uzbek national dish, rice simmered in a meat-and-vegetable stew called zirvak, was inscribed by UNESCO in 2016?

Plov differs from other pilafs because the rice is not steamed but simmered in the zirvak until the liquid is gone, and the Uzbek style is eaten across the former Soviet Union.

Samsa, the Central Asian relative of the South Asian samosa, is almost always cooked in which way?

Baked in a tandoor, the clay oven, samsa are typically filled with mutton mixed with tail fat, onions and cumin seeds.

Which crisp, caramelised crust scraped from the bottom of an Iranian rice pot has a Persian name meaning exactly that?

Tahdig combines tah, 'bottom', and dig, 'pot'; the crust forms under the chelow rice and is served as a specialty in its own right.

Fesenjan, the dark, sweet-sour Iranian stew for duck or chicken, combines ground walnuts with the paste of which fruit?

Pomegranate paste, narsharab, gives the sourness; an 1881 Persian cookbook already listed ten fesenjan varieties, including almond, quince and pumpkin.

Ghormeh sabzi, the herb stew called Iran's national dish, is soured with which pierced and blackened ingredient?

Dried limes, pierced and blackened Persian limes, simmer whole with the herbs, red kidney beans and turmeric-seasoned lamb.

Faloodeh, a half-frozen dessert of starch vermicelli in rosewater syrup, is most associated with which Iranian city?

Shiraz lends its name to faloodeh Shirazi, the best-known version, whose noodles are chilled in syrup until at least half-frozen.

Which Levantine blend of wild oregano, sesame and salt tops manakish flatbreads and makes an olive-oil dip?

Za'atar is both the herb, Origanum syriacum or Bible hyssop, and the mixture made from it, which also seasons labneh and hummus.

Pineapple cakes, Taiwan's top-selling souvenir, traditionally stretch the pineapple filling with which vegetable?

Winter melon bulks out the pineapple jam so cheaply that in modern bakeries its presence is read as a sign of lower quality.

Taiwan's beef noodle soup was created by Sichuanese Kuomintang veterans in the veterans' villages of which city?

Kaohsiung's veterans' villages produced the red-braised, Sichuan-style version that is now known abroad simply as Taiwanese beef noodle soup.

Yuenyeung, the Hong Kong coffee-and-milk-tea drink, is named after which birds, a Chinese symbol of married love?

Mandarin ducks, yuanyang, appear in pairs with strikingly different males and females, much as the drink pairs two unlike halves.

Which Filipino rice cake, cooked in a terracotta oven lined with banana leaf, is a traditional Christmas-season food?

Bibingka is eaten for breakfast or as merienda, the mid-afternoon snack, and is most associated with the run-up to Christmas.

Which Bhutanese national dish is a fiery stew of hot peppers, spring onions and farm cheese?

Ema datshi can use green, red or white chilies, the white ones being green chilies scalded and then sun-dried.

Po cha, the salted butter tea of the Himalayan plateau, is traditionally churned with the butter of which animal?

Yak butter and salt are shaken into strong tea in a cylinder, though cheaper cow's butter is increasingly used because it is easier to find.

Which oily fish, the bulk of whose world catch is landed in Bangladesh, is the Bangladeshi national fish?

Hilsa, or ilish, accounts for about 12% of Bangladesh's fish production and over 1% of its GDP, and is also the state fish of West Bengal.

Ambuyat, the bland, starchy paste that is Brunei's national dish, is made from the interior trunk of which palm?

Sago starch comes from the palm's pith, and the same dish is eaten as linut or pinantung in the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak.

Kecap manis, the thick, syrupy Indonesian soy sauce, can be up to half made of which sweetener?

Palm sugar, gula jawa, can make up 50 percent of the sauce, which starts as a fermented paste of black soybeans, roasted grain and Aspergillus mould.

Gado-gado, the Indonesian vegetable salad in peanut sauce, is named from a Betawi verb meaning to eat something how?

Without rice is what menggado means, though gado-gado itself often comes with lontong, compressed rice cake wrapped in a banana leaf.

Which parsley-based Levantine salad has had its own national day in Lebanon, on the first Saturday of July, since 2001?

Tabbouleh is dressed with olive oil and lemon, and the Syrian Jewish version flips the proportions to make the soaked grain, not the parsley, the main ingredient.