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Dining
Guide / Chinese Cuisine
Of all non-Thai
cuisines Chinese is the most prevalent in Thailand - actually
there are many similarities between Thai and Chinese dishes, and often
it cannot be distinguished whether a dish was originally Thai or Chinese.
A unique Chinese
food is dim sum. Actually dim sum is more than just
a category of dishes; it's an eating habit. Dim sums are small dishes
taken for snacks or tea time (in Chinese: yam cha); they
are served in restaurants on a trolley. Most of the dim sum dishes
are steamed but they may also be fried or braised. Common to all
dim sums is that they are small portions, in bite size, and normally
strongly flavored. Dim sum is of Cantonese origin and very popular
not only in Thailand but also in Hong Kong.
As it is the
case in Thai cuisine, noodles occupy an important position
in Chinese cuisine. Actually, the Chinese were the inventors of
noodles, and they were brought to the European noodle country, Italy,
by Marco Polo only in the 13th century.
Unlike the
Italians who can't explain why their spaghetti are impractically
long the Chinese do have a seemingly very logical reason why the
longer the noodles are the better; to the ever superstitious Chinese
long noodles mean long life. Making noodles the traditional
Chinese way is an acrobatic art. The dough is pulled and whirled
through the air in order to stretch it through centrifugal force;
but today machines use other techniques.
There are two
kinds of noodles in Chinese cuisine, egg noodles or mien,
and rice noodles or bijon (in English sometimes referred
to as glass noodles because they just look like they were made of
glass). Whereas egg noodles are mostly in the shape of thin spaghetti,
rice noodles are also commonly served as ho fan (wide noodles
like the Italian fettuccine and tagliatelle).
In Chinese
cuisine, noodles can be served three ways: in a clear soup with
meat and some vegetables, or mixed with meat and with a thickened
sauce poured over or without sauce; whereas for noodles with sauce
egg noodles (mien) are commonly used, it's bijon noodles
if served without sauce.
Egg noodle
dishes with sauce appear on Chinese menus with English translations
often specified as fried. This is grossly misleading as they
are mostly just barely sauted. There is nothing crisp in such a
"fried" dish, and the rather tasteless cornstarch sauce
gives the dish a porridge texture.
Those who want
to eat dishes that are fried by Western standards must order deep-fried
dishes in Chinese English terminology. Deep-fried dishes include
spring rolls, shrimp, and prawns.
Except for
the already mentioned clear soups with noodles, there also are many
thickened soups in Chinese cuisine. The thickening is produced
normally from cornstarch. Like clear soups the thickened soups may
contain meats, fish, seafood and vegetables. In contrast to Western
cuisine, Chinese cooking commonly uses lettuce in soups but not
in salads.
The two most
famous Chinese soups, shark fin soup and bird's nest soup
appear to be thickened but the glutinous texture does in neither
case result from the addition of cornstarch but from the two main
ingredients, shark fin and bird's nests which are simmered for many
hours.
As the Chinese
are the only people who can make a sensible use of shark fins
they are imported by Chinese traders from all over the world - to
Hong Kong and also to Bangkok.
The nests in
making bird's nest soups are exclusively those of swallows.
They are built by the birds mainly of sea weed that is cemented
together by their own saliva. Swallow nests are mainly found in
high cliffs as for example on the Southern Chinese coast. The Chinese
term for swallow nests is ni do. A rich area for bird's nests
is Northern Palawan in the Philippine archipelago. There a town
meanwhile famous for its cliffs has been baptized in honor of the
bird's nests: El Nido.
As rice is
processed into noodles, another common Chinese agricultural product,
soy beans, is processed into bean curd. Bean curd
didn't make it as far as Italy. It was, however, also integrated
into Thai cuisine. Bean curd (in Chinese: to kua) accompanies
original Chinese meals as normally as potatoes accompany German
dishes (where they are not taken as vegetables). However, bean curd
is used in Chinese restaurants in Bangkok less as an independent
side dish but rather as an ingredient in many dishes.
As bean
curd is not commonly known in the Western world, it may be described
shortly. Bean curd has the appearance and texture of soft cheese
and is produced by milling soy beans and forming large cakes of
it that can be stored for quite a while. It can be cut into slices,
and as it is fairly tasteless by itself (just as noodles), it easily
adopts the taste of sauces and the other ingredients of a dish.
A by-product
of bean curd which has a less stable texture (like thickened milk)
is commonly sold in Thailand by ambulant vendors. They walk through
the streets, equipped with two large aluminum baskets, the one containing
the bean curd by-product, and the other some sauces, syrups, and
other toppings.
Prominent as
noodles may be in Chinese cuisine, the most basic staple food is
rice. The Chinese word for rice is fan (remember the ho
fan - wide rice noodles).
Chinese restaurants
in Thailand offer a wide variety of fan loi dishes. Fan loi
dishes also play a dominant role in Thai cuisine, here named rat
khao. Fan loi, just as rat khao, has been literally translated
as "rice with toppings", and this basically means that
it is a bowl of rice with some bits of meat and/or vegetables on
top.
However, to
serve food in portions for a single person is very untypical
of Chinese dining habits. Usually, the side dishes to rice are not
served individually but family style with large plates placed
in the center of a table. This eating order is still strongly reflected
in the way Chinese restaurants are furnished. Often there is inadequate
space for people who come alone or in pairs. Mostly large round
tables can be seen, with a round board in the middle that can be
turned so everyone, using the chopsticks, can help himself or herself
to a few bites from every plate.
It's commonly
known that the Chinese invented chopsticks as a set of instruments
to be used when eating but the reason behind that is not commonly
known. Actually, the Chinese where taught to use chopsticks long
before spoons and forks were invented in Europe (the knife is older,
not as an instrument for dining but as weapon). Chopsticks were
strongly advocated by the great Chinese philosopher Confucius
(551-479 BC).
He reasoned
that, as a matter of advancement in civilization, instruments
used for killing must be banned from the dining table. Therefore,
knives cannot be permitted, and that is why Chinese food is always
chopped into bite size before it reaches the table. The Thais,
originating from a region that is today China, have fully adopted
the Chinese philosophy on cutlery (if one wants to extend this term
to encompass chopsticks).
Chinese cooking
is not complicated in the manner that French cuisine is complicated.
Much less depends on temperatures of ingredients and exact timing
for frying, baking, or cooking. Most Chinese dishes are just cooked
in water or oil. Of course, there are many delicacies but most of
them do not require such an elaborate processing in the kitchen
as does one of China's most famous dishes, Peking duck (thin
slices of barbecued duck, wrapped in thin pancakes together with
onion, radish, etc and eaten with a sweet plum sauce).
But while Chinese
cuisine may not beat French cuisine in the degree it is complicated
to prepare dishes, Chinese cuisine certainly wins the prize for
stranger ingredients.
Now, while
the French have their strange and hard to find ingredients like
truffles, they cannot come up with an ingredient like the
previously mentioned bird's nests.
The Chinese
have a refreshingly unemotional approach to edibles. One may think
that as long as eating something doesn't cause a disease there must
be a way it can be prepared deliciously.
Therefore,
birds nests are not the only strange food stuff used in Chinese
cuisine. Others include sea weeds, shark fins, etc. There are no
forbidden foods like pork in Islamic countries and beef for
Hindus. On the contrary, many foods are recommended in the Chinese
cuisine for a variety of medical purposes, several of them
to restore sexual power.
This goal,
for example, allegedly is achieved by consuming Soup No 5
which contains the testicles of various animals and which is served
in a number of Chinese restaurants in Bangkok.
Many animals
with a phallic look are also supposed to help men's sexual
power, as for example eel and snake. Snake meat is highly
valued in Chinese cuisine rather for a number of alleged pharmaceutical
effects than the taste (it tastes like chicken). Snake is supposed
to be particularly good in winter because it is regarded as heart
warming. Eating the snake's gall bladder is supposed to bring
sure relief from rheumatism. A dish named Dragon, Phoenix, Tiger
is prepared of snake, chicken and cat and is supposed to be an especially
powerful agent to restore youth and vigor.
Of course there
is nothing wrong with eating cats, snakes, and bird's nests; most
probably these foods are even nutritious; it's just the idea
of it that cannot convince Westerners to enrich their diet with
these delicacies. Especially cats, being considered pets, receive
in Western tradition sympathy to a degree that is never afforded
less cute animals such as pigs or chickens.
Furthermore,
what criteria makes some kinds of animals a clean food and
others unacceptable to the Western diner are just perceptions based
on ignorance. Shrimp live in mud and preferably near sites
where waste is drained into the sea, and those who believe chickens
only eat clean food may observe them pecking on dung-hills. Who
after these elaborations doubts that the Chinese have a more
enlightened approach to food than Westerners.
China is a
vast country and it is therefore no surprise that there are many
regional variations in Chinese cuisine. In general one can
say that the Southern Chinese, Cantonese, cuisine puts more
emphasis on fish and seafood and the Northern Chinese, Peking,
cuisine includes more meat. Of all meats pork is most common in
all Chinese cuisines. Actually the pig is so respected by the Chinese
that the Chinese character for "home" is a combination
of the characters for "roof" and "pig".
The central
Chinese regions of Sichuan and Hunan have the spiciest
food in all of China. Garlic as well as chili are extensively used.
Helmsman Mao Zedong who was Hunanese once claimed that the
more chilies one eats the more revolutionary one becomes. It was
meant as a joke (most probably) but the statement is in accordance
to the Chinese belief that diet makes a great difference in the
well-being of a person. Anyhow, Mao Zedong's theory fails to explain
why Thais who certainly eat loads of chili are in general
rather conservative than revolutionary.
In the case
of exclusive dining, Chinese have a different orientation
than Westerners. First, the ambience of a restaurant is much less
important; even first-class Chinese restaurants tend to be simply
and inexpensively furnished. Second, unlike European custom a dish
doesn't become much more expensive when prepared by a much better
cook.
In Europe
a certain meal (for example baked duck) can cost many times as much
in an exclusive restaurant than it does in an ordinary restaurant;
in the case of Chinese restaurants it's less the particular preparations
that make a restaurant first-class but more the use of fancy and
more expensive foods.
An exclusive
Chinese restaurant for example will serve foods like abalone
(a large marine snail; only the foot, about fist size, is served)
which cost many hundreds of Baht per dish.
But it's not
the preparation that makes these foods so expensive, it's just the
price of the raw material. Many more ordinary Chinese dishes
do not cost much more in first-class Chinese restaurants than they
do in plainer kinds.
Tea is
preferred by the Chinese as a drink during all meals less for it's
own taste but to clear the palate of a former dish before proceeding
to the next. And as proclaimed by the Hong Kong Tourist Association
in their official guide, "the Chinese don't ruin the tea with
such alien substances as milk, sugar or lemon."
A typical addition
to the names of Chinese restaurants is Garden. Usually, Chinese
restaurants designating themselves as Gardens are better class.
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