Every once in a while I open a can of dace in black beans. This was something my grandmother made when I was growing up, so it has a nostalgic quality for me. What are dace in black beans exactly? Well they’re sold in the canned food section of asian grocery stores and come in short oblong cans similar to cans of sardines but a little taller. The ones I buy have a yellow label and a picture of a fish on it (the brand my grandmother always bought). The can has two small preserved fish with fine edible backbones still intact, and they come in an oil with fermented black soy beans. Because they’re preserved they have a pretty dense flesh and are salty. I can’t say any of my friends have ventured to eat this dish, so it may be an acquired taste…
In fact eating canned dace also reminds me of the time I opened a can and microwaved it in my shared dorm room. Needless to say my roommate (and still very good friend of mine) was horrified by the smell. I know…who microwaves fish in a tiny dorm room? She made me promise not to ever do that again. Haha!
Anyhow dace in black beans are still something I like to prepare by heating it in a pan and serving with rice and veggies. My grandmother always made a handful of shared dishes to go along with rice for dinner at our house. It was usually a fish, a meat, veggies, and rice. She had a large garden in the back, so we always had fresh asian vegetables like Gai Lan, green beans, wintermelon, or some other leafy green. Growing up people always asked me if I ate chinese food at home since my family was from China and we owned a restaurant. They thought we ate chopsuey and sweet sour chicken all the time. But in reality we ate fairly simple dishes for lunch…chicken and rice or beef and green peas. On Sundays my dad would order pizza or take us to McDonald’s. Dinners were probably the most authentic Chinese meals I had, mostly because my grandmother was a farmer and she loved to cook (and was a phenomenal cook at that). I always laugh a little when I think of how she sometimes made Devil’s food cupcakes from scratch…I think the only non-Chinese food she ever made and liked.
Because of my habitual eating of this fish, I was also able to use the word dace in a few word games to win. I taught Adam about dace. And shortly thereafter I was playing Animal Crossing, a Nintendo DS game where there are a variety of fish to catch, including dace! When you catch one, your character will shout “Dace in the hole!” I’ve learned many food terms from the translations in the asian grocery aisle. Next time you’re in one, take a look around and learn a thing or two. That’s how I first heard of agar, gluten, and durian.
