The Food Update

After talking with Daisy we decided to do some writing on our experiences about eating our way around China. There are a couple of reasons we wanted to do this. First, from the “Panda Express” and “P.F. Chang” perch in America you really don’t understand the depth and incredible variety of Chinese food. Make no mistake about it, most of the dishes these places serve are reasonable approximations of a dish you can find here in China. Kung Pao seasoned meat and Orange chicken are actual dishes you can find here in China. However, there are so many great dishes that you will never see outside of China unless you know somebody in a back alley Chinese food speak easy. One aim is to provide of this section is to provide some greater understanding of Chinese food.

Second, while eating China is not for the faint of heart, there are also so many dishes that are very recognizable to western palates but with a decided twist. For instance, cucumbers in a Chinese dressing with oil, soy sauce, some vinegar, and sprinkled with garlic. Think of something like a Greek cucumber salad with a different dressing and no feta or tomatoes. Braised cabbage in soy sauce (I think) is served with a small sprinkling of red peppers. Hopefully, you’ll see what we eat and it won’t be so intimidating.

The first meal we’ll talk about is this Sichuan restaurant down the street. Sichuan restaurant is known for being spicy with lots of peppers. The pictures of the food outside showed a medley of vegetables and meat covered with a variety of fresh and dried peppers. That morning we had passed the restaurant as they chopped all the vegetables in front of the restaurant on the sidewalk in preparation for dinner that night. I don’t think the Los Angeles health inspector would give that food preparation process an A.

We had 5 dishes at dinner, four of them pictured. The best one and the only one not pictured was the braised cabbage. Now I am a fan of numerous styles of braised cabbages, but this was truly excellent eating. It was braised with oil, a light soy sauce, and we think some type of vinegar and sprinkled with dried red chilies. I don’t know exactly how they cooked it, but I am guessing they braised the cabbage with oil and stock of some kind and added the soy sauce and vinegar later because the natural cabbage flavor came through clearly without the soy sauce and vinegar dressing overpowering. The dried red chilies added just enough heat to let you know they were there but not much else.

The second two dishes were the spiciest and were peppers with chicken and peppers with shrimp. The peppers with chicken was mostly peppers with a little chicken thrown in. The green peppers and green onions were cooked long enough with soy sauce, I believe, to take the crunch out but not long enough to begin falling apart. In American terminology we would call it wilting or glazing the peppers. This took a lot of the heat out, as any seasoned pepper eater knows, but still left plenty of spice. Very good but with some real kick. The peppers and shrimp was good and with less kick. The peppers in this dish were red and green with more onions and maybe some regular bell peppers. The shrimp were little tiny shrimps with the shell still on which you ate whole. The shrimp might be fresh water but I don’t know that for sure. I thought the shrimp, more pepper variety, and more onions brought a better depth of flavor to this dish than the straight up peppers and chicken, but each was tasty.

The last two dishes were sautéed green beans and the egg pancake. The green beans were lightly cooked with soy sauce (?) garlic and just a small sprinkling of dried chilies. Very nice and balanced the two spicy pepper dishes well. The egg pancake would almost be what we called an omelet. It had herbs and vegetables but was served round like a pancake. I also think they added something to strengthen it up so that it was simply eggs, but at this point I don’t know what that might be. Serving omelet and crepe like dishes is very common though they have herbs and seasonings that is distinctly Chinese.

One last point is that most things at this specific restaurant were cooked long enough to get hot, but not long enough to be crisp or start breaking down. Even the cabbage for instance had a little crunch to it rather than braising it into cabbage mush.

I have attached two pictures from the pepper dishes and you can see just how many peppers we are talking here. It is important to note that both of these pictures are AFTER I finished them off and ate a lot of peppers. You can also see pictures of the green beans and egg dish in the back ground. I promise better pictures of the food for future editions.

Here’s to good eating.