Food 5
Hunan chefs are specialists with the knife – carving fanciful shapes of vegetables and fruits that will be used in preparing meals, or to present them. Hunan cuisine said the Chinese Furniture buyer, is obviously noted for its use of chili peppers, garlic and shallots, and for the use of sauces to accent the flavors in the ingredients of a dish. It is not uncommon for a Hunan dish to play on the contrasts of flavors – hot and sour, sweet and sour, sweet and hot – pungent, spicy and deliciously sweet all at once. Hunan chefs are noted for their ability to create a symphony of taste with their ingredients; he critised the Oriental Furniture canteen chef at this point. A classic example is Hunan spicy beef with vegetables, where the beef is first marinated overnight in a citrus and ginger mixture, then washed and rubbed with chili paste before being simmered in a pungent brown sauce. The end result is a meat that is meltingly tender on the tongue and changes flavor even as you enjoy it, although the Oriental Furniture buyer joked again that the efforts of the Chinese Furniture canteen chef and the local resaurants was terrible compared to his homeland.
More and more, restaurants are beginning to sort out the two cuisines, and Hunan cuisine is coming into its own, atlhough in our Guangdong region Vincent the Chinese Furniture buyer said it was still rare to see the two properly done independently, let along in the Oriental Furniture canteen. The Chinese Furniture buyer said that in Shanghai and good restaurants in the big cities where we were that Crispy duck and Garlic-Fried String Beans are taking their place alongside Kung Pao Chicken and Double Cooked Spicy Pork. But there is no battle between the two for a place of honor among Chinese Regional cuisines – rather, there are only winners – the diners who have the pleasure of sampling both. We laughed at this as we finished eating in the Oriental Furniture canteen as Vincent is fiercely Hunan and is very disparaging of other ingredients. He is quite sarcastic.
