When one is on a trip in China and is having his food, one thing seemed certain – there is plenty of non-halal food and Chinese tea (of various grade and quality) to go around (although fast food and other foreign food seemed to be in favour at a certain part of the city especially at the financial district). And there were also the highly nutritious mushrooms.
Read Part 1 here
Read Part 2 here
Read Part 3 here
I realized now that at almost every dish we had for dinner, at least one would be mushroom dish and although we were wary of the possibility of mushroom poisoning (being in China), it quickly became our must-have dish every time we have dinner.
Out of the many mushroom dishes we had, the above dish is our favourite – good enough to be eaten on its own, we had once ordered 2 plates of it. The dish was really simple but what makes the huge difference is the type of mushroom they used to cook and the way they cook it – simple frying of the mushroom with sweet sauce and the juicy broccoli.
When eaten it is almost crunchy with a smoother texture added to it and it is not that oily too. I am trying to find the same dish back home but have not seen one yet.
The above baby mushrooms dish was also good for our taste but the portions of the baby mushrooms were too small for us. The other things in the dish – vegetables and tofu somehow made up for the lack of portion.
Mixed vegetables (can’t recall what else was in there) – Shanghai-style – most of the bowls served is small-sized, so when the waitresses serve our food, it is often served almost overflowing as you can see above and that makes it a bit delicate when one who is used to eat with spoon & fork, is picking the food (which is often made slippery due to the cornflour) with chopsticks.
Larger chunks of mushrooms and light soy sauce – another pure mushroom dish that we had but this time for lunch (we decided to pool our lunch money and go for cooked dishes instead).
Interestingly it was not that salty despite it was rather heavy with the soy sauce (maybe because we had other dishes that compensated the taste or was it the tea that we were having, I am not sure).
Having plenty of vegetables seemed to be a better idea than having meat from an unknown source or fat-laden meat – it was “light” on the stomach too. I rarely take mushrooms when in Malaysia – there are not many Malaysian dishes that go heavily with mushrooms.
The only time I encountered mushrooms (often button mushrooms) these days is when we go for Chinese food for dinner (or when one cooks soup at home).
To be continued…