RECIPE
November 5, 2018
THE ASIAN REPORTER n Page 13
China building boom uncovers
buried dinosaurs, makes a star
By Christina Larson
AP Science Writer
Y
SPICY SPROUTS. Pictured is a serving of Spicy Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Kimchi Dressing, a recipe
by Katie Workman. (Sarah Crowder via AP)
Cooking on deadline: Spicy
Brussels sprouts, kimchi dressing
By Katie Workman
The Associated Press
A
couple years ago a neighbor of
mine noticed I called for
gochujang, a Korean hot paste, in a
recipe on my blog. She was excited that an
ingredient she had grown up with was
making its way into recipes in more
mainstream American outlets, getting its
deserved recognition in the spicy-ingre-
dient pantheon. She even delivered a big
jar of gochujang to my door so I could
continue playing with it.
And I have. A lot.
Gochujang is traditionally made with
chili peppers, fermented soybeans, brown
sugar, glutinous rice, and salt — but that
may not make your mouth water. Think of
spicy, a hint of sweetness, and a bit of
umami (thanks to the fermentation)
smooched up together.
Umami is commonly talked about as the
fifth taste, in conjunction with salty, sour,
sweet, and bitter. Its simplest definition is
“savory,” and to ponder what that means,
think about how your taste buds respond
when you are eating foods such as
mushrooms, Parmesan cheese, soy sauce,
anchovies, miso, meat, or a rich soup.
Sometimes the taste of umami is
actually described as meaty or brothy. The
word umami is derived from the Japanese
word “umai” meaning “deliciousness.”
The fish sauce, made with fermented
anchovies, adds to the whole umami thing
as well. Both gochujang and fish sauce are
available in Asian markets and well-
stocked supermarkets, and both are
readily available online. If you don’t have
gochujang, you can substitute other hot
sauces and add a hefty pinch of brown
sugar. And if you don’t have fish sauce, soy
sauce will do in a pinch (different, but still
delicious).
Hey, listen, I’m aware that many people
reading all of this might think,
“Whaaaaat?” For many western cooks,
words like “fermented anchovies” don’t
spark joy in our hearts. But boy, if you like
foods like a great Caesar salad or a spicy
ramen soup, then take a little chance and
give this dish and these ingredients a go.
And by all means, let me know what you
think — my neighbor and I want to know.
Katie Workman has written two cookbooks
focused on easy, family-friendly cooking,
Dinner Solved! and The Mom 100 Cookbook.
Spicy Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Kimchi Dressing
Servings: 6
Start to finish: 30 minutes
2 pounds Brussels sprouts, trimmed and halved
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 cup fish sauce
2 tablespoons sugar
3 cloves garlic, chopped
2 tablespoons peeled, chopped fresh ginger
2 tablespoons gochujang paste (spicy Korean paste)
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes (use Korean
chili flakes, gochugaru, if you can find them)
6 scallions, trimmed and thinly sliced (white and green parts)
1/2 cup minced red onion
Preheat the oven to 400º Fahrenheit. Spray a rimmed baking sheet with nonstick
cooking spray. Place the Brussels sprouts together on the baking sheet, drizzle the
olive oil over them, sprinkle with salt, and toss. Spread the Brussels sprouts out on
the sheet and bake for about 20 minutes, until they are just tender and browned in
spots.
Meanwhile, place the fish sauce, sugar, garlic, ginger, and gochujang paste in a
food processor and process to combine. Turn the mixture into a large bowl and stir
in the chili flakes, scallions, and red onion.
Add the cooked Brussels sprouts to the bowl and toss so they are well coated with
the dressing. Serve warm.
Nutrition information per serving: 158 calories (46 calories from fat); 5 g fat (1 g
saturated, 0 g trans fats); 0 mg cholesterol; 1,182 mg sodium; 26 g carbohydrate; 7 g
fiber; 11 g sugar; 7 g protein.
ANJI, China — At the end of a
street of newly built high-rises in
the northern Chinese city of Yanji
stands an exposed cliff face, where paleon-
tologists scrape away 100 million-year-old
rock in search of prehistoric bones.
Like many fossil excavation sites in
China, this one was discovered by
accident.
China’s rapid city building has churned
up a motherlode of dinosaur fossils. While
bulldozers have unearthed prehistoric
sites in many countries, the scale and
speed of China’s urbanization is
unprecedented, according to the United
Nations Development Program.
Perhaps no one has seized the scientific
opportunity more than Xu Xing, a diligent
and unassuming standard-bearer for
China’s new prominence in paleontology.
The energetic researcher has named more
dinosaur species than any living
paleontologist, racing between dig sites to
collect specimens and further scientists’
understanding of how birds evolved from
dinosaurs.
Matthew Lamanna, a curator at the
Carnegie Museum of Natural History in
Pittsburgh, said Xu is “widely regarded as
one of the foremost, if not the foremost,
dinosaur paleontologist working in China
today.”
“Xu Xing is A-M-A-Z-I-N-G,” Kristina
Curry Rogers, a paleontologist at
Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota,
wrote in an e-mail.
Two years ago, Xu’s colleague at the
Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing,
Jin Changzhu, was visiting family in Yanji
when he heard talk of fossils uncovered at
a construction site. A preliminary
inspection yielded what appeared to be a
dinosaur shoulder bone.
Less than an hour drive from the North
Korean border, the midsize city has been
erecting residential blocks quickly. Seen
from a plane, Yanji looks like a Legoland of
new pink- and blue-roofed buildings, but
there’s one long empty lot of exposed rocky
hillside — the excavation site.
When Xu arrived at Yanji, he recognized
the site could fill gaps in the fossil record,
noting the relative paucity of bones
recovered from the late Cretaceous period,
which was around 100 million years ago.
An analysis of the layers of volcanic ash
revealed the site’s age. Xu is now
overseeing a team of scientists using picks,
chisels, and steel needles to study the
exposed hillside, where geologic layers
resemble a red and gray layer cake.
The site has yielded partial skeletons of
three ancient crocodiles and one sauropod,
the giant plant-eating dinosaurs that
included some of the world’s largest land
animals.
“This is a major feature of paleontology
here in China — lots of construction really
helps the scientists to find new fossils,”
said Xu as he used a needle to remove
debris from a partially exposed crocodile
skull.
Born in 1969 in China’s western
Xinjiang region, Xu did not choose to study
dinosaurs. Like most university students
of his era, he was assigned a major. His
love for the field grew in graduate school in
the 1990s, as feathered dinosaurs
recovered from ancient Chinese lakebeds
drew global attention.
When Xu and Jin discovered fossils in
Yanji in 2016, city authorities halted con-
struction on adjacent high-rise buildings,
in accordance with a national law.
“The developer was really not happy
with me,” said Xu, but the local govern-
ment has since embraced its newfound
claim to fame.
The city is now facilitating Xu’s work,
and even built an on-site police station to
guard the fossils from theft. Once the
excavation is complete, a museum is
planned to display recovered fossils and
photos of Xu’s team at work.
It’s not the first museum to com-
memorate Xu, whose prodigious fieldwork
has taken him across China and resulted
in a flurry of articles in top scientific
journals.
Toru Sekiyu, a paleontologist from the
Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum in
Japan who assisted on the Yanji dig, called
his Chinese colleague “a superstar
paleontologist.”
But Xu is quick to point out the role that
good fortune has played in his career.
“To publish papers and discover new
species, you need new data — you need
new fossils,” he said, adding that finding
new species isn’t something a scientist can
plan.
“My experience tells me that you really
need luck, besides your hard work. Then
you can make some important dis-
coveries.”
With digs in Inner Mongolia, Liaoning,
Yunnan, and other Chinese provinces, Xu
patiently oversees excavations, sometimes
chiseling for years before he knows their
ultimate significance.
While his finds are wide ranging, much
of his career has focused on understanding
how dinosaurs evolved into modern birds.
China is an ideal location for that study.
Two decades ago, rare dinosaur fossils that
preserved traces of feathers were found in
the ancient lakebeds of northeastern
China. This discovery, which helped
scientists
demonstrate
that
birds
descended from dinosaurs, was possible
because the mixture of volcanic ash and
fine-grained shale in the lakebeds had
preserved bits of soft tissue, including
feathers — unlike the majority of dinosaur
fossils, which contain only bone.
Since then, a flood of new dinosaur bones
unearthed in China has helped scientists
rewrite their understanding of the tree of
life in various ways.
Xu has been at the forefront of research
into how dinosaurs evolved feathers and
flight. In 2000, he described a curious
pigeon-sized dinosaur with four feathered
limbs, apparently early wings that allowed
the animal to either fly or glide. In 2012, he
detailed a carnivorous tyrannosaur, which
also had plumage — raising questions
about feathers’ original purpose.
Xu now believes that early dinosaur
plumage may have played a role in
insulation and in mating displays, even
before flight feathers evolved. He
co-authored a 2010 paper that examined
fossilized melanosomes — pigment
packets that give rise to color in modern
bird feathers — to deduce the likely colors
of dinosaur feathers. Some species likely
sported rings of white and brown tail
feathers; others had bright red plumage on
their heads.
Embracing new technology, his team
also uses CT scanners to study the interior
of fossils and builds 3-D computer simula-
tions to make inferences about what range
of motions a dinosaur may have had.
One of the fossils Xu is now examining,
found at a construction site in Jiangxi
province, will shed light on how modern
birds’ reproductive systems evolved from
dinosaurs, he says.
In addition to professional accolades,
Xu’s work has attracted attention from
schoolchildren in multiple countries, who
mail him handwritten notes and crayon
drawings of dinosaurs, several of which
hang in his Beijing office.
Xu replies to every letter, e-mail, and
text message with a question about dino-
saurs. “I feel it would be weird or impolite
not to,” he said. But in an era of social
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