Chinese diagram: cooking chicken with beer

Virtual China spotted this hand-drawn Chinese diagram of how to cook chicken with beer. Warning: Don't add any salt!!! Link

• [DEStrath]

  The Xiangru may also be Xiang Ru, otherwise known as Rubia tinctorum radix or Madder root, which may be added to impart a red colour

• [Registrado]

  You’ve gotta tell them! Xiangru is people! We’ve gotta stop them somehow!

• [brightblue]

  This took a while for me to figure out. I find it visually attractive but unnatural to read after years of recipes and lab procedures.

• [Bob]

  Velocity Girl, check out Cooking for Engineers.
  http://www.cookingforengineers.com/

• [hansk]

  That hand drawn mind map is beautiful. I found this article on creating mind map recipes:

  http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/making_mind_maps_with_freemind

  Not as pretty as the hand drawn map though.

• [johnrynne]

  To Bo Bo Boing,

  The “English fellow” is Tony Buzan. See his site for a gallery of mindmaps.

• [Bo Bo Boing]

  this “Chinese Diagram” is a Mind Map. The only thing Asian about it is the language. Almost all the questions about it can be explained by learning about the process of Mind Mapping, invented by an English fellow.

• [mayagrafix]

  could be soy sauce maybe?

  >>> EllisGL , February 14, 2008 3:34 PM

  >>>What kind of sauce????

• [EllisGL]

  What kind of sauce????

• [stinglessbee]

  but how does it taste!?

• [Rick.]

  It tastes like chicken.

• [Takuan]

  @6
  some Cooking for Engineers site – first recipe I look at (shrimp scampi) it doesn’t specify temperature in F, C or K, the pan diameter isn’t specified, acceptable dimensions/weights for shrimp not given, and no lonely singles website advertising.

• [Ethan]

  It could be a variation of red-cooked chicken, in which case the sauce might be dark soy (tastes like regular soy sauce mixed with molasseses).

• [yt]

  Nice!

  It looks like a mind map.

• [DeWynken]

  How cool, we just had chicken cooked in with honey wine tonight. Pretty easy..put frozen chicken breasts in pan, dump in honey wine, and cook. No diagram needed.

• [Milarepa]

  Is this method of writing down recepies common in parts of asia? Might be interesting for cognitive science. If you have any interesting on this subject please tell me about it! [e-mail]

• [arbitraryaardvark]

  >>>What kind of sauce????
  A. Cock sauce (sriracha.)
  B. Duck Sauce! Wabbit sauce! Duck Sauce!
  C. Stop asking for sauce; this isn’t 7chan.

• [Kyle Armbruster]

  I love the way cooking for engineers organizes recipes. I have a lot of them in my kitchen. They are so easy to read.

• [Tian]

  The ingredient written as “Xianggu” in the diagram is Lentinus edodes, aka. Shiitake mushroom.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiitake

• [velocity girl]

  That’s awesome.

  I think I would be naturally inclined to write and follow recipes that way if I hadn’t been socialized into following the conventional form.

  And I bet I would’ve found math a whole lot easier in school if it had been taught visually in a similar manner…(sigh).

• [gimpols1908]

  The recipe is so right brained.
  Perhaps if i was better at cooking it would make more sense, is there a color coding i am missing?
  As far as i can figure I have raw onions, garlic and a chicken fried in beer and (fish?) sauce.