I love appetizer meals like the Middle Eastern Meze, Spanish Tapas, and Chinese Dim Sum. This was only my second real dim sum experience (the first was in Hong Kong a long time ago), but I was with a friend who knows dim sum, and he helped me order. We got steamed pork dumplings, shrimp dumplings, soup dumplings, shumai (which is a ground pork filling in a thin pasta-like wrapper), and bamboo sticky rice (rice wrapped in a bamboo leaf with sweet beans). All were delicious, but I think my favorite was the soup dumpling. You make sure it's not too hot, and then when you bite into it, soup squirts into your mouth. It's amazing! My friend ordered hot mustard, like they have in Japan, so we could spice up our soy sauce based dipping sauces.
Location: Cie Sichuan Cuisine, 45682 Towne Street, Indio, California. Date: April 8, 2023.
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This was mostly a seaweed soup with pork ribs for some protein and flavor. Most of the meat was still on the bone which undoubtedly helped flavor the broth. The seaweed was kelp, and it was soft but still a bit chewy. I enjoyed the texture of the kelp and the umami flavor of the broth. It was also nice to knaw some meat off the bone. It wasn't a one note soup, and I'm sure it was extremely healthy.
Location: Cie Sichuan, 45682 Towne Street, Indio, California. Date: March 11, 2023. This was an interesting dish featured at a Chinese vegetarian restaurant that my sister discovered. It came with crunchy bamboo shoot slices and sliced carrot, soft mushrooms, and scored “kidney” that had some chew to them. These ingredients were served in a savory brown sauce with aromatic basil that tasted of anise. I asked the waitress what the kidney was made of, but she couldn't (or didn't want to) say. My sister thought they were mushroom, and I can see that if you peeled, scored, and cut portobello mushroom into wedges before lightly cooking, that you could come up with something quite similar.
Location: Happy Family, 2150 South Waterman Avenue, San Bernardino, California. Date: January 26, 2023. This was succulent pork slices with rehydrated black mushrooms and slices of Chinese lettuce stems. The Chinese lettuce was a revelation; it's nothing like the lettuce I've been eating all my life. It's called celtuce, and it's primarily grown for its stems. The black mushrooms and the lettuce stems were crunchy, and the flavor of the dish was savory with some ginger, and it was also a little lemony. Basically, it was just delicious, like everything else I've had at Cie Sichuan.
Location: Cie Sichuan Cuisine, 45682 Towne Street, Indio, California. Date: December 31, 2022. On the menu at my favorite Chinese restaurant, this spicy dish was called Potato Pot, but on my receipt it was called Sliced Potato Wok, which is more descriptive of the dish as sliced potato was cooked in a wok and was served in a mini wok. The potato slices were cooked in oil that had pieces of dried red chile in it, which were too tough to be edible, but then sliced jalapeño was added, and they were definitely edible. The potato slices were slightly under-cooked by Western standards, as some of them were still a bit crunchy, but in this spicy dish that really worked. There was a little scallion in the dish as well as a spice that I think may have been crushed coriander seed, and that really made the flavor pop. There was just the right amount of salt, probably from soy sauce or a proprietary mixture. This was the first Chinese potato dish I've had, and it was a delicious way to eat potato, but you do have to like spicy.
Location: Cie Sichuan Cuisine, 45682 Towne Street, Indio, California. Date: December 17, 2022. I had no idea what to expect when I ordered this Chinese dish. What I got were about eighteen medium shrimp fried in a thin batter that was so crispy it all but shattered when I bit into it. The crispy shrimp were coated in a thin layer of slightly creamy and sweet sauce, and the dish was served with candied walnut halves. The overall profile was sweet and crunchy. Although I ordered this in a Sichuan restaurant, this dish is Cantonese, and I was told that it should not be served with hot sauce. The pairing of shrimp with walnut was interesting, but the incredibly crisp thin batter on the shrimp was definitely noteworthy.
Location: Cie Sichuan Cuisine, 45682 Towne Street, Indio, California. Date: December 3, 2022. For my cold appetizers, I selected Rice Noodles with Carrot & Seaweed, Eggplant, and Pork Ear; however, I went with a friend, and he wanted nothing to do with a pig's ear, so I'll eat and blog that one another time. The rice noodles were chewy and almost as crunchy as the carrot and the seaweed. It also came with garlic pieces and some fresh ginger, and it was dressed with soy sauce, chili oil, and vinegar. It was refreshing and delicious. The eggplant, cut into straight pieces (like little logs), was steamed with skin on, and it was succulent. The dressing was soy sauce and oil with a touch of sour. My sister said she doesn't like Chinese food, and my mother said she doesn't like eggplant, but they both tried this dish and changed their minds!
Location: Cie Sichuan Cuisine, 45682 Towne Street, Indio, California. Date: October 22, 2022. This is my first food blog of 2022, and I wanted a good one, so it was off to my favorite Chinese restaurant, Cie Sichuan, where I ordered the festive-looking Spicy Combo Pot. My pot contained thin and tender slices of beef and chicken, melt in your mouth sausage, chewy seaweed, bits of smoky cauliflower, slices of a root vegetable, crunchy pieces of celery stalk and water chestnut, and little bits of tripe and intestine. For heat, there was a load of fresh jalapeño pepper slices, seeds and all, and lots of dried red pepper pieces that were not edible but added more heat and color. The tripe was chewy but not at all unpleasant, and the one piece of intestine I found was just mildly stinky. There was also some chopped scallion, garlic oil, and a spice that I finally convinced myself was coriander seed. My sister is not particularly fond of Chinese food, but when she tried the leftover that I brought home, she declared that it was delicious.
Location: Cie Sichuan Cuisine, 45682 Towne Street, Indio, California. Date: January 8, 2022. These were cleaned whole boiled frogs chopped up and served in a dark and delicious broth, bones skin and all. The broth featured sprouts, fresh ginger slices, napa cabbage, and red pepper flakes. It was very savory with some crunch and spicy heat. The frog skin was gelatinous but surprisingly good. There were rice noodles in the dish that has soaked up the flavor of the broth; they were some of the best noodles I've ever had. Every time I come to this amazing Chinese restaurant, I always think that the dish I'm having is one of the best, and this frog dish ranks right up there. I swear I could taste a hint of the pond.
Location: Cie Sichuan Cuisine, 45682 Towne Street, Indio, California. Date: December 11, 2021. My friend and I were driving a 20 foot U-Haul from Washington to California, and we found this motel in Oregon that let us park our truck after we were turned away from another motel who wouldn't. The hotel had a Chinese restaurant on the premises, and because of the cool wet weather, we both had the same idea: hot and sour soup. Sure enough, they had it, but because of their Covid hours, we had to take it to go (no big deal as our room was just steps away). Our soup contained little bits of tofu and crunchy carrot, seaweed, and black mushroom. It came with egg drops in a thickened clear broth that was both hot (spicy) and quite sour (which I loved). The flavor was such that we both had to keep on eating until it was all gone. Not only was it addictive and comforting, but we found it entirely by chance. It came with fortune cookies, and when my friend opened his, it read “You will soon receive an unusual gift of food for your health.” Since I'd paid for the food, I exclaimed, “You just got it!”
Location: Royal Crest Hotel, 411 E Bonnett Road, Medford, Oregon. Date: November 14, 2021 |
AuthorChef Roland has been a legal resident of seven countries and has travelled in over thirty, documenting food along the way. He currently resides in the desert in Southern California. Categories
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