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benlehman at 10:09pm on 05/07/2004
benlehman at 10:09pm on 05/07/2004So, at risk of having this entire journal be blabbering about my emotional state, I will now tell you what I have been eating:
On Arrival: A bowl of cold noodles which were seasoned with some sort of peanut-chili sauce. You have to understand that the Chinese have an entirely different view of peanuts than we do. When I say peanut, I mean {angelic voices singing in perfect harmony}Peanut{/angelic voices singing in perfect harmony}. A perfect little packet of peanuty flavor that stays crisp and crunchy even when submerged in a bowl of cold chicken broth.
I followed this up, a couple of hours later, with a bowl full of shrimp wontons. These were lovely as well. I haven't really done a lot of wonton eating in China, and I was not entirely surprised to find that they taste entirely different from wontons in the states. I believe that they are spiced with a little coriander. Also good.
The next day I head down to a vegetarian resturaunt, and eat the following dishes:
Vegetarian Spareribs
Vegetarian Fish in Pepper Sauce
The spareribs are outstanding which, by comparison, makes them just okay. It's a stick of deep-fried taro with deep fried onion wrapped around it. Sort of like eating your french fries and onion rings all at once. The winner here is the salt for dipping them in, which is not actually salt at all, but a mix of numb pepper, black pepper, red pepper and salt, and deserves to replace salt on all french fries ever. I will be making an distributing this when I get back to the states.
The fish... Oh, the fish... I was expected a little bowl of things done up to look like fish chunks. Imagine my surprise when a *whole fish* is placed in front of me, doused in a red and green pepper sauce with little bits of 'pork' in it. It isn't really fish, of course -- it's better. Tofu skin wrapped around potatoes, fried crisp, then broiled in sauce until the potatoes are soft. Somehow the skin retains its crispness, yet the potatoes have sucked up the flavor of the pepper sauce and have been cooked to that perfect potato state where they appear firm, but instantly melt into mush at the touch of your tongue.
I eat the whole thing, and do not eat for the rest of the day. Except for ice cream, which does not count.
A brief ice cream interlude -- My favorite ice cream here is a little frozen white thing on a stick which tastes exactly like yogurt-based cake topping (you know, the sour-type, not too sweet.) It costs $.06 a stick. This will be my undoing.
Today, I went to a Muslim resturaunt for lunch (there are a lot of Muslims in Kunming -- influence from SE Asia.) There, I had steamed Bok Choi and Beef Ganba. Since I told the waitress that I wasn't afraid of spicy, everything had red peppers in it. The Bok Choi was cooked in garlic sauce and just dripped garlic flavor from every pore. It was also very fresh (I got to look at it before the fried it) and crunched in that satisfying way the green vegetables do when they are cooked right.
The Ganba gets its own paragraph. What, you may ask, is Ganba? A local Yunnanese dish: It is beef that has been wind-dried (so sort of like jerky, but no smoky flavor, and no spices or anything, just beef) and then cut into thin strips and fried. Its texture is very similar to a slightly thicker beef bacon. In fact, eating a bowl of thick, lean bacon is pretty much the only way to describe it without trying it yourself. (For the vegetarians around, there is also a mushroom version, which is just as good, although I haven't had it locally yet.)
Hope you all enjoyed the food review.
On Arrival: A bowl of cold noodles which were seasoned with some sort of peanut-chili sauce. You have to understand that the Chinese have an entirely different view of peanuts than we do. When I say peanut, I mean {angelic voices singing in perfect harmony}Peanut{/angelic voices singing in perfect harmony}. A perfect little packet of peanuty flavor that stays crisp and crunchy even when submerged in a bowl of cold chicken broth.
I followed this up, a couple of hours later, with a bowl full of shrimp wontons. These were lovely as well. I haven't really done a lot of wonton eating in China, and I was not entirely surprised to find that they taste entirely different from wontons in the states. I believe that they are spiced with a little coriander. Also good.
The next day I head down to a vegetarian resturaunt, and eat the following dishes:
Vegetarian Spareribs
Vegetarian Fish in Pepper Sauce
The spareribs are outstanding which, by comparison, makes them just okay. It's a stick of deep-fried taro with deep fried onion wrapped around it. Sort of like eating your french fries and onion rings all at once. The winner here is the salt for dipping them in, which is not actually salt at all, but a mix of numb pepper, black pepper, red pepper and salt, and deserves to replace salt on all french fries ever. I will be making an distributing this when I get back to the states.
The fish... Oh, the fish... I was expected a little bowl of things done up to look like fish chunks. Imagine my surprise when a *whole fish* is placed in front of me, doused in a red and green pepper sauce with little bits of 'pork' in it. It isn't really fish, of course -- it's better. Tofu skin wrapped around potatoes, fried crisp, then broiled in sauce until the potatoes are soft. Somehow the skin retains its crispness, yet the potatoes have sucked up the flavor of the pepper sauce and have been cooked to that perfect potato state where they appear firm, but instantly melt into mush at the touch of your tongue.
I eat the whole thing, and do not eat for the rest of the day. Except for ice cream, which does not count.
A brief ice cream interlude -- My favorite ice cream here is a little frozen white thing on a stick which tastes exactly like yogurt-based cake topping (you know, the sour-type, not too sweet.) It costs $.06 a stick. This will be my undoing.
Today, I went to a Muslim resturaunt for lunch (there are a lot of Muslims in Kunming -- influence from SE Asia.) There, I had steamed Bok Choi and Beef Ganba. Since I told the waitress that I wasn't afraid of spicy, everything had red peppers in it. The Bok Choi was cooked in garlic sauce and just dripped garlic flavor from every pore. It was also very fresh (I got to look at it before the fried it) and crunched in that satisfying way the green vegetables do when they are cooked right.
The Ganba gets its own paragraph. What, you may ask, is Ganba? A local Yunnanese dish: It is beef that has been wind-dried (so sort of like jerky, but no smoky flavor, and no spices or anything, just beef) and then cut into thin strips and fried. Its texture is very similar to a slightly thicker beef bacon. In fact, eating a bowl of thick, lean bacon is pretty much the only way to describe it without trying it yourself. (For the vegetarians around, there is also a mushroom version, which is just as good, although I haven't had it locally yet.)
Hope you all enjoyed the food review.