Sichuan Restaurant - not hotpot!

A few days ago, we went to a Sichuan restaurant in our neighborhood for lunch. Famous for pandas, mountains, and the notorious 2008 earthquake, Sichuan (a.k.a. Szechuan) is known as one of China's two spicy provinces (the other being Hunan). Perhaps Sichuan's most consumed cuisine is Sichuan hotpot, which I have had many times and which I regard as one of the most enjoyable dining experiences you'll find; slowly chowing on plates of meats and vegetables cooked in a pot of ultra-spicy boiling liquid that is shared by you, eight friends, random Chinese well-wishers, and an always-growing stack of beer bottles is terrific. (A note of warning: when finished, you have a gut full of fire and you stink like a spice rack; hotpot is best consumed when you have adequate time afterward to change clothes and take a nap).

All that is fine and dandy, except that the Sichuan restaurant we visited was not hotpot. It was just delicious Sichuan food. Spicy, simple, savory, and served family style. We're still working on learning menu Chinese, so some of what we ate was ordered via "eeny-meeny-miney-moe."

The first dish - we actually got a double order because the servings were very small - was spicy beef.

Beyond soy sauce, I have no idea on the sauce flavoring...though I can say confidently that the numbing, slightly metallic-tasting Sichuan peppercorns were making themselves known. From the way the dish was served, I would assume that it was cooked in a bamboo rice steamer, but I don't know if there were other preparatory steps. The tender, slightly sour (perhaps some fermented rice and/or soy?), salty, and spicy beef was just splendid on top of a bit of rice.

We managed to order wonton soup.

This was not the wonton soup you'll find at your $7.95 lunch buffet in the States; it was proper, with pork, squid, mushrooms, and amazing boiled wontons (basically dumplings, with extra strands of dough).

The next dish was good, if unremarkable. I ordered it unknowingly - oh well!

Green beans, potatoes, seaweed (wakame maybe?), and chunks of bone-in pork (of course!) all simmered to perfection in a fairly standard broth. At first I thought it was a little boring, but then our friend Luke made the point that most vegetables you get in China are stir-fried in oil and covered in soy sauce; that is to say that simple, lightly-seasoned al dente vegetables (such as those pictured above) are actually a refreshing change of pace. If you subtracted the seaweed and switched the pork out for lamb, it'd be downright Irish.

Now for the dumplings, a.k.a. jiaozi.

Wow. This was a real crowd pleaser. I've never seen dumplings served like this before. What you're looking at are 12 dumplings that have been carefully placed in a very hot, oiled wok, and browned on the bottom. Then (I think) the chef poured some sort of batter into the wok around the dumplings; the screaming hot oil then bubbles up through the batter, quickly crisping it and giving it this sort of sunburst effect. The dumplings and concomitant batter are then dumped upside down onto a plate. Voila! The crisped batter retains the shape of the wok (or other cooking vessel), giving the whole thing a kind of crispy umbrella effect. This is just my guess at the preparation...I could be totally wrong, so please correct me if you know otherwise. The dumplings were tasty, but their real star power came from their presentation and their texture - soft and moist on one side, perfectly crunchy with little bits of batter on the other.

We also ordered ma po tofu, but I neglected to get a picture of it. It was delicious, with both the spicy hot pepper flavoring and the numb of Sichuan peppercorns. You can find this dish in many Chinese restaurants, including very dumbed down (but delicious) versions at western Chinese restaurants.

Also ordered at random was a bowl of dough balls. No picture, and I wouldn't even know where to find them on the internet. Basically, they were gumball-sized spheres of gooey rice dough with a bit of sweetened bean paste in the middle, cooked and served in warm, slightly-sweet sugar water. It sort of looked like half a dozen misshapen golf balls sitting in a bowl of water. Apparently they are usually eaten for breakfast. They were fine.

Finally, we unknowingly got a bowl of steamed eggs. As opposed to the other dishes which found their way onto our table 10 minutes after we ordered, this dish took about 30 minutes.

Steamed eggs, in texture, are sort of reminiscent of an egg custard or a stiff pudding, though steamed eggs are much lighter, usually savory, and served warm. Soy and Pepper, a food blog I read from time to time, has a pretty good rundown on the preparation of one variation of this dish. As with omelets and quiche, I would guess that steamed eggs can be made with all kinds of ingredients; the version we had was just steamed eggs with a drizzle of unidentifiable, salty-sour brown sauce (I suspect the sauce was the same base for the sauce in the spicy beef dish mentioned above). Its almost buoyant consistency and understated flavor served as a sapid counterbalance to the rest of the heavily-seasoned dishes we ordered. In other words, not stupendous, but a good capstone to delicious meal.