UBC Chinese Culinary Arts #2 - Eastern style food at Spicy Szechuan Restaurant, Richmond

Eastern style Chinese food, what's it like? First off, we need to get oriented. As our instructor, Lang Sun, taught us, Eastern style Chinese food comes from the area around Shanghai and his home province, Anhui.

The food is flavourful but not spicy like Szechuan or Hunan food. To me it's generally a bit sweet and not as colourful as Cantonese cooking but just as tasty.

We had a great feast but my favourites (together with their Manadarin transliterations) were:

• Nanjing salted duck (nanjing xianshui ya) dipped in vinegar. Salty but not too salty, just right.
• Shredded tofu jerky (san si chao gan si). I love noodles and I love tofu. The tofu in this dish has a wonderful noodle like texture.
• Stir-fried prawns (Gan shao xia qiu). Excellent hint of sweetness followed by a pleasant note of spice at the end.
• Pork with dried vegetable (Mei cai kou rou). Luxurious, delicious pork with a silky mouth feel in a savoury brown sauce with Chinese cabbage. Mmmm!

And of course rice with eight treasures (Ba Bao fan) for dessert was a wonderful treat. Sweet and lovely with osmanthus flour, dates, red beans and other 'treasures'. This was my first time to eat this dessert after hearing so much about it. Well worth the wait and just as delicious as I expected.

I had never been to the Spicy Szechuan Restaurant (Unit 100-8151 Anderson Road, Richmond, 604 276-9168), but I'll be back even though it's misnamed because it doesn't really serve Szechuan food.

Here are some photos.

Shredded tofu jerky (san si chao gan si):

Stir-fried prawns (Gan shao xia qiu):

Rice with eight treasures (Ba bao fan):