Variegated magnetism

[muckefuck]

Turtle wanted dim sum and her wife was willing to drive despite the dusting of snow, so that's how we ended up in Chinatown today. I wasn't thrilled with our last visit to Phoenix so I Googled dim sum places and found positive reviews of Cai (彩蝶軒). I'd actually been in there before long enough to inspect a menu, but it was evening and I wasn't thinking dim sum. It was near eleven when we arrived and the place was packed, so they offered us the unusual choice of sharing a table.

That worked out very well for us. The table easily sat twelve and, as they were another party of four (a young couple, toddler, and baby) they were no closer to us than if we'd sat at two different four tops. It was a little awkward being all in row, but there was enough of a curve that we could all see each other and since the table was up against the window in a semi-private room off the main dining hall, it was more than quiet enough for conversation.

Some might consider it a disappointment that there were no carts, but I've learned that the best dim sum places dispense with them so they can cook food to order. This meant foregoing the instant gratification that's generally a hallmark of doing dim sum, but the compensation was a number of freshness and variety. There were several dishes I'd never seen before, so of course we had to order them.

The standout winners were the fried green chive dumplings. This were much finer and flatter than those I've had at Thai restaurants and, as a result, much crisper. I'm not a huge spare rib fan, but theirs were tender and tasty and contained a surprise ingredient: gravy-soaked chunks of some starchy tuber, possibly kabocha. The only real misfire was the "pork wrapped in bean curd crepe", which looked amazing but tasted just okay. The ordinary vegetarian bean curd rolls were every bit as good and easier to handle.

One desert would've been plenty, but since I'd neither seen Malayan sponge cake with papaya nor black sesame dumplings before, we had to get both. We had the problem that our order sheet had already been marked up, plus we changed our selection and I didn't know how to make sure we didn't accidentally order something we didn't want. So I just flipped the tally sheet over and wrote out the names of the dishes longhand in my awful Chinese calligraphy. The waiter was amused.

I double-checked the typed version he brought back for accuracy and noticed an odd discrepancy: Where I'd written 黑麻糍, the slip had 黑麻磁. I was thrown because (a) I thought I'd copied it exactly and (b) I thought I recognised 磁 as a character meaning "magnet(ic)". I was right; it is. But I noticed that 糍 is unusual enough that for its entry in the Lin Yu-tang dictionary, there's no encoded character, only an image. So possibly the word processor had to substitute a homophone.

Lin Yu-tang doesn't even have a definition for 糍 on its own, only as part of the compound 糍粑 cíba which is glosses as "a glutinous paste, which can be steamed or fried". 粑 also lacks its own entry. I suspect it may be a variant of the 巴 in 鍋巴guōba "rice crust [on the sides of a rice pot]". This in turn raises the possibility that the etymological meaning of the first character is "magnet", in the sense of a paste so sticky that it clings to the pot like a magnet would.

Whatever the origin, it's a must-order for this place. The inside is a mellow custard. Turtle wondered if the sweet wasn't a sort of visual pun on a thousand-year egg, the purplish rice paste resembling the stained white. The sponge cake was as light as any I've had and the papaya was sweet but not sugary. It was the last dish to arrive, after everyone had sworn they couldn't pass another bite. It made liars of us all.

I can't speak to price because, in an impressive display of reflexes, Turtlewife swooped onto the check before monshu could make a move. He was equally unsuccessful in his attempt to buy some Suntory Yamazaki at the local liquor store, but I found my sweet olives at Aji Ichiban. On the way down, we had discussed pulling up to the side of the lake to watch the whitecaps slam into the rocks, but after our excesses, we all just wanted to be snug at home before the food coma hit.

Comments

[tyrannio.livejournal.com]

Do you know the difference between "Sauteed Bitter Melon in the Egg Paste" and "Sauteed Bitter Melon with Egg" in the menu?

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

We didn't look at the regular menu at all. I'll try to remember to check it on our next visit to South Chinatown.