What exactly is the allure of fried dough?
It seems that not only every country has its own version, but its various regions and cities all has their own variety, and there is always a debate about whose fried dough is the most superior. May the fittest fried dough win.
In Taiwan and China there’s yuo-tiao (油條), which is a fried dough shaped 12 ~ 18 inches long and is has a cross section of about 1.5 inches by 2.5 inches. It’s made with flour and water, fried in oil. It’s not to be eaten by itself, but to be sandwiched between two stir fried pancakes (燒餅). Sometimes they’re used as croutons instead, ripped into little pieces and thrown atop congee, or rice porridge (粥). There’s a variation of it that is round and short and served sweet (sprinkled with granulated sugar) but I believe that is actually a knock off of a doughnut and don’t consider it genuinely Chinese.
In Spain, there’s churro and porras. I had the best churro today from a truck parked at the end of the La Mata flee market. The way they serve it was awesome too; they take a piece of paper and roll it up into a cone, then load up your half a dozen or a dozen churro in it, then it rains sugar for the churro before they get eaten. I thought I had the best churro and porras in Madrid at this little place called San Segundo, guess things just keeps getting better and better and you just never know. Apparently the secret to a great churro is the temperature of the oil in which you fry them, and the temperature of the water with which you make the dough.
In the states, we have doughnuts. The southerners take their doughnuts way seriously, they even have a chain of designer doughnuts called ______. My roommate was actually dating one of that family’s heirs a while back. I would like to think I came up with the nickname Doughnut Prince for him, but sadly he’s been stuck with that one for much longer than I’ve known him. I can probably count how many times I’ve had a doughnut with my fingers. Not my favorite thing. Doughnuts have a bad reputation because cops like them. Nobody knows where this whole stereotype originated, probably because doughnut places tend to stay open 24 hours and cops working all shifts can rely on them for a caffeine and sugar high. The cops seem to have embraced this association well, I actually see them hanging out in doughnut shops all the time. Of course no one ever paid any attention to what other types of people hung out in doughnut shops, because making fun of regular fat people is just no where near as fun as calling a policeman a doughnut-chomping pig. It’s the same as a bad driver, you secretly smile if they turn out to be Asian because that’s what you were uttering under your breath in the first place. You might not even secretly smile but shout and whoop in your seat because you were right in thinking that kind of driving has got to have been an Asian. Sure, I do it all the time. And, apparently, I’m a pig when it comes to churros too.
