SB and I continued our quest for those super spicy dumplings that he has had in Yunnanese restaurants but may actually be from their spicy cousins in Sichuan. I had never eaten Yunnanese food before SB took me to a particular restaurant here. He liked the restaurant a lot because it had not altered the food to Hong Kong tastes like a lot of restaurants do. I am especially unhappy with the low quality of Vietnamese food here, in case my loud grumbling hasn't made you already aware. Everything just seems so heavy and greasy, which works for those delicious Hong Kong noodle dishes, but removes the fresh layers of taste found in Viet food.
Anyhoo...Sichuan food is well known b/c it is categorized as one of the "Four Great Traditions" that have influenced Chinese cooking. Sichuanese food has four distinct characters: fresh, fragrant, spicy, and hot. the two different categories for spicy and hot allude to the heat value of the food. But heat is not all there is, and that is why it is so loved.
Yunnan is located to the South of Sichuan. It is culturally bio diverse, and contains close to half of China's plant and mammal population in roughly four percent of the country's land mass. All the diversity leads to equally diverse food, but it is unified in spiciness. Most of the soups are swimming in chili, and bursting with flavor. When I first set foot in the Yunnan restaurant we ordered some amazing dumplings that were sweet, savory, and spicy. We offset them with Qi guo ji, a delicious (and not spicy) chicken soup that is well known in Yunnanese cuisine. It is cooked in a unique ceramic bowl so that the chicken steams with tonic herbs. The soup, like many "special" soups, claims medicinal properties. All I care about is how tasty it all was.
This time I went for a spicy soup, and SB tried to order what he thought was a variation of qi guo di. I got my deeelicious soup and he got the shaft. He was served some weird bowl of tasty broth and odd plant and animals assortments inside. He pulled out some chicken livers which I obligingly ate but then I stopped serving as his human garbage compactor when the strange looking bologna slices came out. They may even have buried hot dogs into the dish. SB was not pleased but he was nursing a cold and didn't want my chili bowl.
deeliciousness! Beef shank and noodles in flaming hot broth
SB's un-interesting soup of spare parts
Next, we got the dumplings that we had ordered as an appetizer. One thing to note in a lot of restaurants here, even the fancy ones, is that there is no concept of food order. It comes out when it's ready, and so we often get one entree long before the other, interspersed with appetizers. If SB gets his dish first, I stare hungrily at it while he eats and whacks me with his chopsticks when I try to steal a bite. If my food comes out first, SB will "share" it until his dish comes out and then he won't share his. If he is really hungry, I have seen him practically plant his face into a dish and suction out the food in big slurps. This did not happen with the appetizer. First they tried to give it to us in some soup form. I had been looking forward to the spicy dumplings for so long that I was visibly disappointed. SB tried to tell the server what we were trying to get. Then it came out in some oily mess with some chili in it. Our third attempt yielded some bowl of pungent shrimp paste. At that point we gave up. It was such a letdown, especially since we had eaten the dumplings at this very restaurant earlier. I will have to search for where they originated from and learn the real name for them because they were the best I had ever had at this restaurant.
almost, but not quite. Sigh
Anyhoo...Sichuan food is well known b/c it is categorized as one of the "Four Great Traditions" that have influenced Chinese cooking. Sichuanese food has four distinct characters: fresh, fragrant, spicy, and hot. the two different categories for spicy and hot allude to the heat value of the food. But heat is not all there is, and that is why it is so loved.
Yunnan is located to the South of Sichuan. It is culturally bio diverse, and contains close to half of China's plant and mammal population in roughly four percent of the country's land mass. All the diversity leads to equally diverse food, but it is unified in spiciness. Most of the soups are swimming in chili, and bursting with flavor. When I first set foot in the Yunnan restaurant we ordered some amazing dumplings that were sweet, savory, and spicy. We offset them with Qi guo ji, a delicious (and not spicy) chicken soup that is well known in Yunnanese cuisine. It is cooked in a unique ceramic bowl so that the chicken steams with tonic herbs. The soup, like many "special" soups, claims medicinal properties. All I care about is how tasty it all was.
This time I went for a spicy soup, and SB tried to order what he thought was a variation of qi guo di. I got my deeelicious soup and he got the shaft. He was served some weird bowl of tasty broth and odd plant and animals assortments inside. He pulled out some chicken livers which I obligingly ate but then I stopped serving as his human garbage compactor when the strange looking bologna slices came out. They may even have buried hot dogs into the dish. SB was not pleased but he was nursing a cold and didn't want my chili bowl.
deeliciousness! Beef shank and noodles in flaming hot broth
SB's un-interesting soup of spare parts
Next, we got the dumplings that we had ordered as an appetizer. One thing to note in a lot of restaurants here, even the fancy ones, is that there is no concept of food order. It comes out when it's ready, and so we often get one entree long before the other, interspersed with appetizers. If SB gets his dish first, I stare hungrily at it while he eats and whacks me with his chopsticks when I try to steal a bite. If my food comes out first, SB will "share" it until his dish comes out and then he won't share his. If he is really hungry, I have seen him practically plant his face into a dish and suction out the food in big slurps. This did not happen with the appetizer. First they tried to give it to us in some soup form. I had been looking forward to the spicy dumplings for so long that I was visibly disappointed. SB tried to tell the server what we were trying to get. Then it came out in some oily mess with some chili in it. Our third attempt yielded some bowl of pungent shrimp paste. At that point we gave up. It was such a letdown, especially since we had eaten the dumplings at this very restaurant earlier. I will have to search for where they originated from and learn the real name for them because they were the best I had ever had at this restaurant.
almost, but not quite. Sigh
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