Fine China — Page 2

Cantonese-style cooking has continued to develop over the last 20 years with many worthy restaurants opening in Richmond. Gingeri takes the Cantonese cooking ideals of lightness and freshness to new heights of refinement. Dim sum service at Fisherman’s Terrace tweaks and plays with new dishes while showing the classics proper deference. Sea Harbour has moved local Chinese cuisine forward with imaginative use of local ingredients and flawless execution; Mak’s Noodle House showcases authentic Hong-Kong style noodles.

As the influx of people from Hong Kong has waned in recent years, other parts of China and Taiwan have taken up the slack. Mandarin is now almost as commonly spoken as Cantonese. Outside of Guangzhou (Canton), flavours are deeper and rounder, with a heavier use of spice and sweetness and preparations that incorporate more braising and slower cooking times. These warm and savoury flavours tend to be more accessible to the western palate than the pristine starkness favoured by the Cantonese.

The new standout in the Chinese culinary landscape is Shanghainese, a subset of Zhejiang cuisine in which cane sugar and soy are used to deepen the mellow savoriness of meats. Drunken chicken, steamed in rice wine and served cold, is standard on most Shanghainese menus. Back in the motherland, drunken prawns—live prawns drowned in wine tableside and consumed raw—are considered a delicacy (one suspects they would not be such a hit here). Other classic Shanghainese small plates include crispy smoked fish, fragrant five-spice beef, and jellied pork—a Chinese take on chilled ham. Shanghainese dim sum is served for both lunch and dinner, the most popular item being xiao long bao—delicately steamed soup dumplings with pork filling in a hot savoury broth, dipped in ginger-spiked dark vinegar. Satisfyingly chewy green-onion pancakes, flaky daikon pastries and crispy sesame flat breads highlight the region’s use of wheat rather than rice.

Sichuan cooking, with its heavy spice and searing heat, stands in contrast to Cantonese. The one-two punch of Sichuan peppercorns and dried chillies creates a style of cooking known as “ma la” or “numbing heat.” Piney peppercorns numb the tongue and lips, allowing the heat of the chillies to hit that much harder. Garlic and fermented soybean paste rounds out the pungent mix.

Taiwan has a legacy of varied culinary influences: the cuisine is like a greatest-hits mix of northern savour, Sichuan spice and gentle southern refinement. Though it may sound like mix-and-match cooking, the result is cohesive and innovative cuisine, most famous for the street food and night-market stalls in Taipei. The Taiwanese take on xiao long bao is more refined but retains the sweet broth of the Shanghainese version; Taiwanese beef noodles lower the heat but keep the warm spice of the Sichuan counterpart. Three Cups Chicken is a Taiwanese classic—chicken stew glazed with a slow-cooked sauce of rice wine, soy and sesame oil.

Ever adaptable, the Hong Kong stalwarts have tweaked their menus to reflect these new influences. Lobster gets a Sichuan twist at Kirin, while northern-style dark vinegar has found its way into braises at Sun Sui Wah, providing familiar guideposts for diners while introducing their palates to more classic Cantonese preparations. Vancouver Cantonese cuisine has married local products with traditional Chinese cooking methods; this is not mindless fusion cooking, but the natural progression of a confident culinary tradition that looks to its surroundings for inspiration. Kirin Group’s Head Chef, Allan Liu, notes that “Western approaches to ingredients and presentation have found their way into local Chinese food, while Chinese flavours can be seen in western cooking. By taking the best of both worlds, a distinctive culinary approach has been developed.” He cites “the move towards lighter and healthier foods,” which “dictates the use of local ingredients. The fresher the food, the less that needs to be done to bring out its inherent sweetness and flavours.” Serah Chen, Kirin’s marketing manager, agrees: “Now, more than ever, diners from Asia, particularly China and Japan, want the best local ingredients handled in an intelligent manner, not simply a re-creation of what’s done at home.” Golden Szechuan customers from abroad consistently tell manager Danny Yiu that “the Chinese food in Vancouver is certainly the best in North America and, for certain types of cuisines, better even than Hong Kong.” In particular, dim sum at many Vancouver restaurants continues to be handmade in-house, while scales of production in Hong Kong have resulted in off-site dim sum factories supplying restaurants. (Note: sage diners know to order two bellwether dishes to gauge a kitchen’s dim sum skills. Har gow (steamed shrimp dumplings) should be piping hot with a succulent filling enclosed in a translucent wrapper. Dry-fried beef rice noodles should be hot as a wok, lightly dressed with no excess oil or sauce. If these two dishes are done well, then you can be confident in the other dim sum offerings.)

BACK

PAGE: 1 | 2 | 3

CONTINUE