Gourmet Birthday

 It so happens that a colleague of mine, named Lin Jian, and I share the same birthday.  He is about 14 years younger than I, so the birth years don't match.  He is a Tiger,  according to the Chinese Zodiac.  By the lunar calendar, the twelve months beginning 23 January 1974 were the year of the Tiger.  I, being born in August of 1960, am a Rat. 

I could not imagine a less auspicious animal than a rat.  The Chinese, though, assure me that rats have many redeeming and endearing qualities.  Of course, the Chinese are extremely courteous... to the point of telling white lies to maintain your self-esteem.  For example, any attempt by a Westerner to speak Chinese, no matter how badly mangled, will ALWAYS produce a compliment.  "You speak Chinese very well !", they will say.  They are lying.  They are taught from an early age that, sometimes in life, courtesy is more important than veracity.  I suspect that, in their hearts, they pity the poor bozos who are born in the year of the Rat.

Snake with Chili Peppers

 Our Chinese co-workers were kind enough to take us out for a birthday celebration.  Lin Jian likes spicy food, as I do.  So a restaurant was chosen that specialized in the cuisines of Hunan and Sichuan provinces.  Lin Jian also has a predilection for some of the more exotic cuts of meat, as I do.  For that reason, Theresa decided not to go along to the restaurant.  She prefers the more traditional cuts of the pig and the cow and the chicken.  Those were not on the menu for our birthday feast.  (She arranged another party later on at Zapatas for the less adventurous.)

For appetizers we had some cold items - some marinated lotus root and chicken feet.  The star of the show was the cold, thin-sliced donkey meat.  There was also a pretty good mix of sliced, marinated cow stomach, cow tongue, and duck gizzards.  (Though the animals are different, the chewy textures of these organs complement each other.) Then we moved on to the hot dishes.  (The photos show some of them.)

 

Sichuan Spicy Bullfrog

The snake with chili peppers had a very nice flavor and spiciness.  The snake skin was left on the meat, which produced a very nice chewiness.  The only downside was the bones, which were many and tiny - like the small bones in a small fish.  This restaurant used a small snake for this dish.  You might find street food made from larger snakes, which afford a boneless filet to be cooked on a skewer.  But you will not find a more tasty snake-based dish.

Spicy bull frog is always a winner in my book.  The frogs are skinned and gutted and the meaty parts are cleaver-chopped into bite-size chunks and then fried with onions, garlic, and peppers.  As with the snake, one has to deal with the little-bitty frog bones.  Luckily, Chinese table etiquette allows you to spit these out onto your plate.  The spitting of bones offends no one.

Fish Heads with Red Pepper

 Fish heads don't have a lot of meat on them, but what little there is is considered by the Chinese to be the best.  I'm starting to understand why.  Firstly, the head has more bones and connective tissue, which produces a richer and more gelatinous quality in the meat.  Secondly, muscles in the head are smaller, more delicate, and more globular and fixed to large facial bones.  When cooked, these muscles become tender, boneless chunks of meat that can easily be pulled away with chop sticks.  We had a wonderful dish of fishheads cooked with red peppers.

Pork Belly in Garlic Barbecue

Then, there was the pork belly.  Pig meat is the most popular in China.  And if you want to impress a guest, then at least one dish with pork-belly is de rigueur.  This is, essentially, a big slab of bacon which has not been cured nor smoked nor sliced thin.  Instead, the pork belly - with skin - is chopped into cubes and slow cooked with a dump-truck-load of garlic in a barbecue-like sauce  Each cube (about one inch on each side) consists of a layer of chewy skin followed by alternating strata of meat and fat.  Each cube probably has a calorie content bigger than a Big Mac and more cholesterol than a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken.   Each cube is a cardiac surgeon's nightmare.  But it tastes.....oh-so-good.

This was my birthday dinner.  Though it probably took 5 years away from my life expectancy, I would not trade it for all the world.