川菜

There’s actually very little to say about my stay in Chengdu – except perhaps the Sichuan food.

I shall elaborate a little.

*******************************

Dandan noodle (擔擔麵): Contrary to what you have in Hong Kong, there's very little soup in the Sichuan version. In essence it is kind of a bàn miàn (拌麵) with spicy dressing. There's no flavour of peanut butter and, in the one that I had, very little Sichuan pepper either.

Twice cooked port (回鍋肉): Honestly I could not recognize the dish when it was put on the dinning table. There were only a few slices of pork, hardly any cabbage or sweat pepper, but a lot of mushroom of all kinds. As I was told long ago: If you forget about the name and just take it as a hot dish, it is fabulous.

Steamed five cereals (五穀豐登): This is a simple but brilliant one. After repeated challenges of pepper, what is better than an assortment of potato, sweet potato, corn, taros, and yam ?

By the way, the order of dishes was in itself remarkable. Unlike Canton and western banquet, Sichuan people serve fresh fruit as the starter, and there's no clear separation between appetizer and main dish - a series of them, cold and hot, big and small, vegetable and poultry and meat, appeared to come in a seemingly random order.

Of course, food is never the focus on the dinner table - but I am no expert of liquor and would not make any comment.