Dinner for 7 at 4-5-6

[muckefuck]

First off, mad props to bunj for going out of his way to ferry me back to the North Side last night. Thanks to you, Chief, I scored! You truly are All-Time MVB.

I met up with him, luckymarty, o_nut, lifeandstuff, prilicla, and lhn* at Moon Palace for a yummy Chinese feast. We started with pot stickers, onion pancakes, and something I never even knew existed--sticky-rice shiu mai! I don't know who exactly to blame for the surfeit of chicken--white-cooked chicken, cashew chicken and shrimp, General Tso's chicken--

Read about the real General Tso, a 19th-century military man who ruthlessly crushed the Taiping rebels and all other challengers to the Qing.

--because prilicla and I ordered Sichuan fish and "sukiyaki seafood", respectively,

Sukiyaki? What were they thinking? This dish had nothing in common with Japanese food at all. The Chinese had 沙茶 or "sand tea", which initially confused me so much I wondered if I was misreading 炒 ("stir-fry") and the dish was flavoured with pan-fried tea leaves. I asked the waitress, who said that was just the name of the spicy sauce, "like Thai food". That got me thinking: Most of the Chinese in Thailand speak a Min dialect. "Tea" in most Min dialects is pronounced something like "tay"--it's where we get the word, after all. Could 沙茶 actually be a transcription of "satay"? McCawley's Eater's guide confirms that this is, in fact, the case. According to him, there is a Hunanese version of this sauce that does, in fact, include tea leaves.

and steer-friendly lhn ordered sesame beef. bunj chose the dish with best presentation, a tasty sizzling beef served on a steaming hotplate.

They had all been to see the Qianlong exhibit at the Field Museum and come away with questions they hoped I could answer.

The author whose name I garbled was Wolfram Eberhard, author of many books on Chinese culture including Lexikon chinesischer Symbole (or, in English translation, A dictionary of Chinese symbols). I found my copy at Barnes & Noble, though I first encountred it at the Seminary Co-op Bookstore in Hyde Park.

First of all, there were the ubiquitous bats. Of course, everyone knows that 蝠 "bat" is a homophone (fu2) for 福 "good luck". But why are they always upside down? Because, I suspect, 倒 "upside-down" is a homophone (dao4) for 到 "arrive". Thus, "upside-down bat" = "luck which has arrived". I was stuck on the fish, though. luckymarty reported the captions saying they connoted "abundance", but why? I should know this because we researched it for New Year's last year, but the pun is 餘 "surplus".

Not that the captions should be trusted too much, though. lhn found particularly amusing the description of Qianlong's "long peaceful reign" in one place and the reference to the increased availability of jade after the "pacification of the West" in another. They were all confused by a reference to the "Buddha" Mañjuśrī, who is actually a bodhisattva.

luckymarty asked about the distinction between "Buddha" and "bodhisattva". In the simplest possible terms, a Buddha is one who has attained Nirvana. A bodhisattva is one who has achieved perfect enlightenment but takes a vow to postpone attaining Nirvana until all sentient beings have been liberated from suffering. As I said at dinner, I'm not sure what the functional difference is in modern Buddhism given that many Buddhas, notably Amitabha, are prayed to for liberation.

He is sometimes found flanking the Maitreya Buddha, but also the Amita Buddha. (As one might expect, Buddhist iconography is every bit as complex as Christian and proper identification of a divinity can depend on a detail as simple as whether the bowl in his hand is covered or not.)

*(Note: Names not given in proper Confucian hiaerarchical order.)

Comments

[prilicla.livejournal.com]

Even though I know full well that no one could possibly care, I still feel compelled to give bunj the credit he deserves for ordering the hot-plate beef. I think lhn ordered the sesame beef, which was also very good, though not as dramatic.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Thanks! The appropriate corrections have been made.

[niemandsrose.livejournal.com]

Speaking of iconography, did you see? a Spanish church is removing an image of "St. James the Moor-Slayer". D'oh!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/europe/3680331.stm

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

What's next? Taking down the icon of St. Wlodwig the Jew-Burner from Krakow's cathedral?

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

I have to wonder whether the excellent "General Tao's Chicken" that we had at our wedding reception (and which Kitsune always orders when we go to that restaurant) is supposed to belong to General Tso instead. Given that their sushi menu also offers "avocadeo," I'm inclined to think so.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

They are not the only one's with a belief in the mythical General Tao! I found a recipe for his chicken that assures us "This dish dates back to the Chin Dynasty and is named for GEneral Tao, a governor of the northern Chinese province of Human." I love it!

[niemandsrose.livejournal.com]

What's up with the "named-for" anyway?

When I was in Japan I spent Christmas break up in Hokkaido with a bunch of assorted foreign students in a very small host town (shout-out to Maruseppu-cho, yo!). Anyway, the Japanese have some sort of beef dish they call [can't remember precise pron.] after Genghis Khan, for some reason. The name, once the Taiwanese girls wrapped their brains around it, kept giving them giggle-fits through the whole dinner. I mean, what do Japanese know from Genghis Khan?

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

They know that they KICKED HIS GRANDSON'S SORRY ASS not once but TWICE.

[lhn.livejournal.com]

Or at least that the weather did most of the work for them. :-)

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

SAIRENSU!!

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

What do we all know from Italian composers? Does this mean we shouldn't eat Tornedos Rossini?

Oh, that General Tso

[bunj.livejournal.com]

The bio you link to hits the highlights, but it misses his secret society connections. He was a member of the Elder Brother society, which was popular among the troops. Some could argue this is what made his troops so loyal.

He did have the distinction of being one of the few competent Chinese generals at the time, and he did do a lot of rebellion quashing (or "pacification"). I didn't realize he had also found the time to add a delicious new dish to Chinese cuisine.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

The adding was doubtless done by a personal chef whose name has not enjoyed the same fame. I'd be surprised if Zuo wielded the skillet himself, but you never know!

[bunj.livejournal.com]

I was joking about him doing the cooking himself. I suspect it may not have anything to do with him personally. The highlights of his career were all in the west of China. He was a general in the Hunan army, and attacked the Taipings from the west. The other rebellions he crushed (the Nien, the Muslim rebellion, etc.) were also in the west. Finally, he was very active in Sinkiang. He was heavily involved in making it a province, for example. I'm thinking this dish could have been developed in any of those areas and his name was stuck on it, because when you think of Hunan (or whereever), you think of General Tso!

Re: Oh, that General Tso

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

I'm a member of the Elder Sister society, which, according to Charles Schultz, means that I'm crabgrass in the lawn of life.

[lhn.livejournal.com]

BTW, given that there were 3 chicken dishes, 2 beef, and 3 seafood, is it really accurate to say that there was a surfeit of chicken in particular?

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

More than one (1) chicken dish is a "surfeit" IMNSFHO. Why order chicken when you could have duck, the pork of waterfowl? What we were really low on, though, was vegetable dishes.

[lhn.livejournal.com]

De gustibus-- for my part duck is fine, and can make for a nice change, but I generally like chicken better. (And of course from my POV, subbing in a vegetable dish for a chicken dish would be a net loss.) Certainly I was glad enough to have half the dishes be things I could/wanted to eat.

Not that I'd have discouraged anyone from ordering otherwise-- as long as I'm able to order one dish, I'm fine. But part of the skew you observe may stem from people asking me for recommendations.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

My own fault for getting there late. If people had asked me for recommendations, by G-d, there would've been eyeballs!