Saturday, May 26, 2007

Ahhhhhhh! A New Chef

I have the pleasant opportunity to taste a lot of excellent Asian cuisine every day here. Fortunately, our factory even has a great chef on staff. Right now we have several on staff. The latest is from the Hubei province, and the meals have been far more colorful and exciting.

Gone is the typical standard fare. Its amazing that even someone like myself from a far different culture and distinctively different tastes can now find that our meals were getting repetitive. I could almost guarantee what would be served on day to day just from knowing who would be in attendance. If there were Western guests, it would be the vegetable soup and sweet & sour pork for starters. If no guests were present, it probably meant fish heads and lotus soup. (I really like guests!)

But with the new chef, it is even adventurous with guests. The other day we had a group from Italy, accompanied by some associates from Russia. The soup was the great vegetable offering, and the sweet & sour pork was served, but there is where all common familiarity ended.

Next out was a dish of a platter of tortilla type shells served with duck. Then came morning glory vegetables. Yes, I said morning glory flowers. Actually tastes remarkably good. Next was hot spicy tofu with ground beef. Between was placed a platter of a mushroom type mixture wrapped in a phyllo type pastry and tied at the top like a special wonton.

But last, was the really unique dish. It arrived, and the Hong Kong staff greeted it with “Ohhhhs” and “Ahhhs.” It is amazing how impressed they are about good presentation. It must be the presentation, because, I usually then ask, “What is it?” To which, I get this, “I don’t know, but it looks great! It’s Sichuan (or Cantonese or whatever).” They always seem to know the style and don’t care so much about what the food actually is.

I used to not care so much, and would dig in and try before finding out the true source of a meat. Then my doctors started warning me to pass on so many foods, that I had to start taking more time to understand the dish before partaking.

Well, I finally got an answer on this platter. It was duck feet! Okay, it doesn’t look like feet. All right, on closer inspection, maybe it does. But it sure isn’t like the popular chicken feet. No these are soft and floppy. Actually tasted pretty good too. At least until I hit the cartilage. I don’t know how they can east so much bone in things. Their teeth sure are strong over here.

BTW, our guests passed on the duck feet. They sure like the sweet & sour pork though.

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posted by A Bryson (formerly) in China @ 12:59 PM Comments: 0