Finally, here comes my favorite topic: fooooood! And it is Chinese food in specific, which I’ve been with all my life.
To be honest, it is a very broad concept, as China is a large area with a long history. Chinese food as an entity definitely won’t fit into a 5-7 minutes speech. So today I’ll be focusing on a couple of the most available Chinese food styles here in North America, to make this speech an introduction to food that everybody could go and try.
Let’s begin with American Chinese food, or westernized Chinese food. A good signature dish of this style is General Tso’s chicken, which you can find in almost every American Chinese restaurant here in North America. My impression of this style is that it is very formula-ish. Going through the menu, I could tell that most of listed items can be summarized as one kind of meat (beef, chicken, pork, shrimp) plus some combination of vegetables (usually broccoli, carrot, and baby corn) plus one kind of sauce (sweet & sour, black bean, Szechuan, etc), all getting stir fried in a wok and then served. A wok on the fire is what brings life into stir fried dishes, and American Chinese food doesn’t lose this most important part. (Thank goodness!) In general I think this formula is a simplified version of the process to make a stir fried dish. It works well on some dishes, such as chow mein, and not so much on many others.
Did I just mention “Szechuan sauce”? I would be committing a crime if I attempted to summarize Szechuan style cuisine in a sauce. Szechuan style is no doubt the most popular, or I would say “most invasive” style of Chinese food in the world. Dishes with Szechuan genes appear on menus of almost every Chinese restaurant, no matter what style the restaurant claims itself to be. This fact has a good reason behind it. Szechuan is a province in the southwest part of China. Far from the coast and surrounded by mountains, the climate there is warm and humid. People can easily get drowsy in such weather, and really need some characters in food to lift the spirit up and keep the day going. Can you imagine what kind of food would achieve that? Something really intense and unique, of course! Although Szechuan cuisines are kinda famous for being shockingly spicy, they are well-designed masterpieces of seasoning and cooking skills. Strong elements are boldly but also mindfully used to help you land on that invigorating spot in all the dimensions of scents and flavors, right there. One step forward would be overwhelming, while one step backward is somehow disappointing. The popularity of Szechuan cuisines not only comes from the well designed flavor, but also comes from them being very tolerant about the ingredients. Kung Pao chicken, for example, is made of chicken and peanuts, nothing special. But it is able to deliver a complex flavor with a slightly smoke scent that distinguishes itself from anything else. To put Szechuan cuisine in one word, I would say “passionate”.
Another commonly available style of Chinese food is Cantonese style. Canton, the province on the southern coast of China, has its own philosophy of food and lifestyle. As you can imagine, compared to Szechuan, Canton has significantly broader options on ingredients to use for making food, and a large portion of those would come from the sea. Cantonese style cuisines put a lot of emphasis on savor and texture of the ingredients, always trying to bring out the best by pairing them properly, with the right amount of cooking processes, either effectively simple or rewardingly sophisticated. If you go to a dim sum place, one of the must-have items to try is the steamed shrimp dumpling. They are little bags with glossy opaque wrappings, through which you could see the pinky shrimp fillings inside. Each one is like a chubby jellyfish with a pinky heart, which is truly adorable. When put in mouth, the warm silky smooth wrapping just melts to make the stage for the luscious tender shrimp tail to stand out. Savory shrimp juice floods in every corner, while tiny crispy cubes of water chestnuts add more accents for chewing. “Refreshing” is the word that I would use to describe Cantonese cuisines.
I need to stop here now. To wrap it up, I would say: Try chow mein! It’s like pasta dancing off a BBQ grill. Try Szechuan pepper! It tastes like a Christmas tree, whatever that means to you. Try chicken feet in a dim sum place! You’ll see why we shouldn’t make judgments based on appearance. Maybe you’ll love it, maybe you’ll hate it, but you’ll never know if you don’t give it a try.