In lieu of a book party, which authors customarily use to promote their books, I usually opt for throwing a supper club or “pop-up” restaurant whenever possible.  In addition to allowing people to sample the food, such an event also appeals to my DIY roots in independent music. Create a program that is fun and unique, keep it small, and people will want to come out and be a part of it. Plus, I like cooking for people, and throwing dinner parties in different cities across the country is a great way to introduce people to Sri Lankan food, one plate at a time.

The buffet line

This time, I packed up my spices and headed to Chi-town, the “Windy City,” in the dead of winter, no less. My cousin Raj graciously agreed to host the dinner at his newly renovated digs in the hip neighborhood of Bucktown. Though we had originally decided to invite 20-25 people, my cousin has a lot of friends, so the guest list kept growing. In the end, I served 56 people a typical Sri Lankan “rice & curry” meal, which consisted of the following menu:

The Sri Lankan Supper Club – Chicago

Saturday, January 28^th 2012

Menu

Appetizer

Fish Cutlets – deep-fried croquettes of fish, potato, & spices

Main Courses

Saffron rice

Chicken Curry

Beef Curry

Fish Ambul Thiyal – chunks of fish cooked in a tangy sauce

Parippu – yellow lentils stewed in coconut milk

Ala Thel Dala – potatoes sautéed with onions, chili and Maldive fish

French bean curry

Beet Curry

Radish Salad

Mango Chutney

Papadum – thin, crispy lentil-flour wafers

Dessert

 Caramel Pudding (flan)

Click to view slideshow.

Skiz chefs it up in Chi-town

For me, this dinner was a first, feeding so many people. I wanted to make sure everything was on point, so I started cooking the day in advance. I can usually handle all the work by myself, but when I discovered how much food I would really have to make, my cousin enlisted the aid of some friends. Thanks to the help of Voula, Arianna, Jessica and Carol, I was able to get the last dish made just as guests were filtering in and enjoying cocktails.

Skiz with a couple of his helpers, Arianna and Voula

All in all a very successful event: I had just enough food and everyone went away happy and satisfied and with a new appreciation for a cuisine which has been below the radar for too long. I also sold a lot of books.

As I belong to a community of food bloggers know as Food Buzz, The Chicago Sri Lankan Supper club was also chosen to be a part of that organization’s monthly series called “24×24″ in which 24 different dinner parties are thrown across the country on the same night and then documented on blogs. As far as I know, this is the first time Sri Lankan food has played center stage.

This soup requires chopsticks!

To set the tone for this brand new, third season of Pan Asian, I wanted to return to the essence of what the show is all about, which is to present a simple, quick, delicious, and healthy Asian meal in under 15 minutes that you can make in your own kitchen. As always, the food is the star, not me, and I would hope that my simple instructions will encourage you to bring your I-pad into the kitchen and make this dish along with me.

The most important thing to keep in mind is to never be intimidated by new ingredients or techniques. Once you gain familiarity with them, you will continue to use them. I have incorporated such ingredients as rice wine and fish sauce into my regular cooking, and always look forward to the opportunity to try something different that I have not used before. In the case of this particular recipe, however, I had everything on hand already.

I have long enjoyed these simple Asian soups–usually on the street in Thailand, Cambodia or Vietnam–but to make them home is a thrill because it takes you back to those places and unlocks a treasure trove of memories. This last point also underscores the fact that this dish qualifies as Asian fast food–unlike any fast food we are accustomed to in the West. For this is good food fast, even contributing to better health, unlike your greasy burger.

So while those New Years’ resolutions are still fresh, take a step towards a healthy lifestyle with this amazing soup!

the fixins bar: Cilantro leaves; fresh minced garlic; chopped green chilies; crispy, fried shallots; scallions

The Recipe

1 1/2 cups water

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 lb. boneless chicken breasts, diced

1 lb. baby bok choy, quartered lengthwise

1 lb. dried egg noodles

Broth:

6 cups chicken stock or 2-3 chicken bouillon cubes dissolved in 6 cups of water

3 tablespoons crushed coriander roots and stems

4 stalks Chinese celery, chopped to yield 1 cup

1 small red onion, diced

2 teaspoons ground white pepper

3 tablespoons mirin, rice wine or sherry

2 tablespoons soy sauce

salt to taste

1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lime juice

Garnish:

crispy fried shallots*

2 spring onions, sliced

bunch of coriander leaves

2 green chilies, chopped (optional)

2 cloves garlic, minced

1. To make the broth, bring chicken stock to a boil in a stockpot over high heat. Add coriander roots and stems, celery and onion, and simmer for 10-15 minutes. Remove from heat and strain out solids. Discard solids and return broth to stove to simmer over very low heat. Add other broth ingredients and stir occasionally.
2. In a saucepan, bring 1 1/2 cups water and salt to a boil, and poach the chicken over medium heat for 5-10 minutes until cooked. Remove from heat, drain chicken, and set aside to cool.
3. Bring another pot of water to boil over high heat. Blanch baby bok choy for about 2 minutes. Remove, drain, and set aside, but reserve water.
4. In the same pot of water, blanch the egg noodles until soft, about 3-5 minutes.
5. To serve, place egg noodles in bowl topped by bok choy and chicken cubes. Pour over broth and top with crispy fried shallots, spring onion, and cilantro leaves.

Serves 3

* Note: crispy fried shallots are available in packets or jars in most Asian food stores

The author with NBC News4 Host Barbara Harrison

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of being on the NBC midday news in Washington D.C. for a cooking demonstration on what else but  chicken curry, one of my favorite Sri Lankan dishes. Thanks to my long-running cooking show on Youtube, Pan Asian , I’m very comfortable with cooking in front of a camera. No matter that I had to bring in everything that was necessary for the dish’s preparation (including a portable butane burner) or work on a very low table, but the one thing that totally threw me for a loop was the time limit. When they originally told me that the whole segment would last four minutes, I thought that was plenty of time to at least get the chicken started before finally pulling out the already prepared dish for the host to taste. But four minutes in TV time, might as well have been four seconds! The host, Barbara Harrison, chewed up much of that time reading the recipe’s ingredients, so when it cut back to me, I had to work quickly. In addition, there was just the slightest bit of pressure as she kept on asking me if it was time to add the chicken in the pot. When I finally did, I forgot to put in the curry leaves (not to mention the water, coconut milk, salt, and tomato paste, which come later anway)! No big deal in the end, however, as she liked the dish, and gave my book a nice plug. But it’s amazing how a good day’s worth of prep went into making that four minutes of TV happen.

I should also add that it was a great experience simply to see the newscast and weather report from inside the studio. The atmosphere was remarkably calm with surprisingly hardly any people around. Even the three huge cameras were remote controlled.  No wonder unemployment is so high at the moment.

You can check out my cooking demo at the following link:

http://www.nbcwashington.com/video/#!/on-air/as-seen-on/Cooking-Lesson–Chicken-Curry/137114833

But to see how this recipe is really made, please use this:

A lovely bunch of king coconut

It would not be an exaggeration to say that I am Koo-Koo for coconuts. I love everything about them–the milk, the water, the oil, and, of course, the white “meat,” all of which is heavily utilized in Sri Lankan cooking. Until recently, the coconut’s highest profile in the west most probably came in candy bar form–either Mounds or Almond Joy (or for you Brits, a Bounty). But today you see coconut water everywhere. Whether due to a Hollywood trend or health craze, numerous brands of coconut water have hit the market with a vengeance, and while it’s great that it’s finally available here, paying $2.50 for a 16 oz. carton, is, well, slightly loco.

some of the popular brands of coconut water or thambily as it is known in Sri Lanka

What if I were to tell you that you can get this stuff all over the streets of Sri Lanka–and sip it straight out of its natural container–for only about 40 cents a pop. Not only that, but the soft, jelly-like lining of this fruit (not botanically classified as a nut), is also yours to enjoy, gratis. In fact, in Sri Lanka, the man who cuts open your king coconut with a huge machete will also fashion a spoon from the outer shell so you can scrape out the delicious innards.

cutting off the top

to expose the inner skin

I have always heard that coconut water is supposed to be an excellent health tonic, filled with electrolytes. It’s prescribed for a variety of ailments in Sri Lanka including upset stomach. Did you know that in a pinch, it may even be used in a drip as IV fluid? But all that aside, I don’t drink 3 or 4 coconuts a day when I’m in Sri Lanka for my health. I drink it because it tastes bloody good as well as being so refreshing on a hot, humid, tropical day.  And did I mention it only costs about 40 cents? Come to Sri Lanka and I’m buying. Thambily  for everybody!

Ain't nothin' like the real thing, baby

As someone who makes my own curry powder, I can appreciate the time and care it takes to convert raw spices into a complex, multi-dimensional flavor enhancer capable of transforming meats and vegetables into a sublime dish. Though these ‘spices’ are essentially nothing more than the fruits, seeds, roots, and bark of various trees, bushes, and plants, they are valued as much for their innate properties as for their flavor, especially in India and Sri Lanka, where spices have practical applications in the ancient Ayurvedic system of medicine. In Ayurveda, food may be viewed as medicine, or a means to promote good health.

I was not aware of this fact before I started getting interested in making rice and curry, but it becomes quickly apparent when you learn about the spices from which a curry is made.  Turmeric, for example, is anti-bacterial, while black mustard seed aids in digestion. Goraka (gamboge), a dried fruit that lends its signature tart taste to such dishes as fish ambul thiyal, turns out to be an excellent preservative. In addition to the health benefits of the individual spices, I also became interested in where these spices were sourced, and how they were processed. Grinding mills, where people can purchase raw spices and have them ground and blended, are common all over Sri Lanka, but I wanted to visit a proper spice factory. Going by the brands popular on store shelves, I chose McCurrie Spice, manufactured by Lanka Spice Limited, which runs a processing plant about an hour outside Colombo in the town of Kottava.

McCurrie Spice, founded in 1985, presently constitutes a large share of the market for prepared spices in Sri Lanka. They export as well to Canada, Australia, and the UK.  Their line has also grown to include a full range of chutneys, pickles, pastes, sambols, and sauces, which save a lot of time and trouble. Now it is possible, for example, to buy a jar of seeni sambol or lime pickle (additive and preservative free) without having to make it yourself.

Before visiting the factory, I had no idea of the various steps involved in actually processing spices and making them ready for the market. Fumigation, for example, is the first step in order to kill bacteria and remove any microscopic eggs from pests like the weevil. The spices are then sorted, washed and dried. In Sri Lanka, they use both roasted and unroasted spices depending on the dish. Unroasted spices are usually used to prepare vegetable curries, while meat and fish curries use a roasted preparation. Roasting helps to release the essential oils stored within the spices as well as giving them a smoky, more complex flavor. After individual spices are roasted they are then ground to a fine powder, and blended according to precise recipes. The final step in production is packaging. All facets of production are handled at this one factory though McCurrie also maintains another facility in Dambulla, which is responsible more for ready-made, bottled goods.

McCurrie's bottled offerings

For someone who loves spices as much as I do, to see each step along the ‘assembly line’ was a very gratifying and illuminating experience. While much of this process is mechanized and involves heavy machinery, I was surprised to find out just how much was done by hand as well. I was also surprised to learn that while most of the spices McCurrie processes are found in Sri Lanka, there is not enough grown domestically to meet the demand–with the growing season also varying from spice to spice. In order to maintain steady production, the company must then import much of its raw materials from India.

In Colombo you may purchase McCurrie spices at any supermarket or at their retail outlet:

McCurrie Spice

93 Maya Avenue

Colombo 6

Open 10:30 am – 6 pm weekdays

9 am – 1 pm Saturdays

Tel. 5556731, fax 5505051

Email: mccurrieshop@hotmail.com

Skiz on the radio

I had the pleasure of going down to NPR’s main headquarters in DC yesterday to appear on the show “Talk of The Nation,” to discuss what else?–rice and curry. As an old radio hack myself (from my days at WHRB in Cambridge, MA), it was great to get back into the studio and also check out NPR’s grand operation. Shout outs to my friend and former Columbia Journalism classmate Wilma Consul for making it all happen!

You may check out the full audio here:

http://www.npr.org/2011/12/29/144442096/learning-sri-lankan-home-cooking-a-family-affair

overlooking the NPR newsroom

]]> http://riceandcurry.wordpress.com/2011/12/30/rice-curry-on-nprs-talk-of-the-nation/feed/ 3 skiz1 DSCN2425 DSCN2422 http://riceandcurry.wordpress.com/2011/12/21/burma-superstar-oakland/ http://riceandcurry.wordpress.com/2011/12/21/burma-superstar-oakland/#comments Wed, 21 Dec 2011 19:04:34 +0000 skiz1 http://riceandcurry.wordpress.com/?p=1869 ]]>

Whoa! Slow down. Wait a minute! Who forgot to tell me about Burmese food? I did, after all, date a girl from Myanmar once, and I have eaten at at least one Burmese restaurant in New York, but nothing I have experienced up to now could prepare me for my first real Burmese meal at Burma Superstar, Oakland. As an Asian food freak, who has tried practically every cuisine of the continent and subcontinent, I can now say that Burmese ranks up there as some of the best. It’s not quite like Chinese and it’s certainly  not like Indian, but somewhere in the middle–as reflected in the geography of the country of Myanmar itself–there lies the perfect fusion, which is Burmese food.

I  first heard about Burma Superstar through my friends Bill & Gigi. Bill having dined at their San Francisco location only had great things to report. Gigi’s sister Tiyo, managed the place, so when I was looking for places in the Bay Area to have my book party, it was a no brainer. You already heard about how well that event went, but I have a secret confession to make: one reason I wanted to have my book party at Burma Superstar was so that I could try their food. In fact, I had to purposefully abstain from eating the Sri Lankan food that I had prepared for the party in order to have room for a full dinner at the restaurant–a small sacrifice which was well rewarded!

out front at Burma Superstar Oakland

Joining me for dinner were 9 friends from the Bay Area (I didn’t know I even had that many friends in the Bay Area), who were all veterans of Burma Superstar. While  we perused the menu deciding what to have, Tiyo just started sending dishes out to us from the kitchen.  First came the salads–the legendary tea leaf and rainbow salads–both of which were featured on Food Network. I had more than one recommendation to try the tea leaf salad, especially since it was dressed with a unique paste of fermented tea leaves. How do I describe the flavor of this special ingredient other than to say it was…singular…and most delicious! The salad comes with all of it’s individual ingredients–including fried garlic, peanuts,  sunflower seeds, tomatoes, romain lettuce, and dried shrimp–unmixed and the waitperson tosses them together at the table, which also adds a nice touch. The rainbow salad came with a similar presentation, helpful in identifying all 22 ingredients it is composed of, before being quickly devoured.

The dishes kept coming in such quick succession that all of us were kept very busy, spooning delicious tidbits onto our plates and making room at the table for everything. “Ooohs” and “Aaahs” replaced regular speech as we voiced our collective foodgasm over the great dishes we were tasting. So greedy was I that I forgot to take notes about individual plates, but much of my recollection of that evening is imprinted on my tongue. The curry pork with potatoes was incredibly moist and tender; the fiery tofu with vegetables, spicy/sweet; the sesame beef had a tanginess from the added tamarind; and the tender strips of chili lamb had a serious kick. The mango shrimp, a dish I had seen prepared in the kitchen also had the spicy/sweet combination, which I have come to associate with Burmese food.  No where was there any coconut milk or curry leaves like Sri Lankan food, or kaffir lime leaves and galangal, like Thai. Simply Burmese cuisine in all its glory!

After such a feeding frenzy, I don’t think anyone at the table was in any shape for dessert, but we had to go for it anyway. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen 10 stuffed people share one dessert, the sticky black rice with coconut ice cream, which was, of course, another victory. Eating at Burma made us all feel like superstars.

For The Love of Food and Heritage

S.H. Fernando who lives in the States and has cooked up quite a fan club with his cooking blog, in an email interview with Smriti Daniel discusses his book ‘Rice and Curry’ which he hopes will give young Lankans living abroad a taste of our local flavours

  S.H. Fernando – Skiz to his friends – has spent years quietly amassing a following on his blog and youtube channel. Online at www.riceandcurry.wordpress.com, he serves up an eclectic mix of reviews and recipes. On youtube, this amateur cook stars in the self-produced series ‘Pan Asian’ where he dishes up some of his favourite recipes for an audience. His repertoire covers “every country in Asia” along with other cuisines including Iranian, Jamaican, Trinidadian, Japanese and even African. Now with the publication of his cookery book ‘Rice & Curry’ (which earned him an honourable mention in the New York Times last week) and his own line of curry powders, he is closer than ever to being able to do what he loves for a living.

S.H. Fernando

Skiz says he began blogging in 2008, after he spent three months guiding the crew of ‘No Reservations with Anthony Bourdain’ around Sri Lankan cuisine. He first caught Bourdain’s interest when the latter read a cook book Skiz had self published on Blurb.com the year before.

(He lives in Baltimore but is currently on tour, promoting the book which was published by Hippocrene Books in New York. A full colour paperback was released last month.) The experience was an interesting one and when Skiz started his own blog he decided he wanted it to be a tribute to rice and curry. Over the years, it expanded to include the author’s other great passion – travel. “I go all over the world to Europe, Japan, Africa, and I love to check out really local spots in these places – what I like to call ‘Off the Eaten Path,’” he says in an email.

Skiz is careful about identifying himself not as a chef, but as a proud ‘home cook’. “Chefs cook for a living. I cook purely out of love and also because it’s another way to express my creativity, and believe it or not, to relax. For him it all boils down to immediate gratification – I can pour myself into making a dish, and when it’s done, I can sit down and devour it. What can be more satisfying than that?”

He inherited his love of cooking from his mother, and says that as an American immigrant he found that food represented the “main connection to your culture.” The book serves as an introduction to the tastes of the island but for Skiz it’s also an offering that’s intended to help other young Sri Lankans living abroad master the traditional cuisine of their parents. “Second generation kids, like myself, can be proud of their Sri Lankan heritage and share it with those around them through this amazing food we have called rice and curry.”

The 208 recipes in the book are for most part family property, given to Skiz by his parents, aunts, uncles and cousins but there are also a few provided by friends. “I spent several hours a day cooking when I was living here (in 2006), and then taking the finished dishes to various relatives houses for lunch. From people like my 85-year-old Aunty Dora, who is sharp as a tack and not afraid to voice her true opinion, I was able to get good criticism and thereby develop the recipes in the book,” he tells me. His cooking philosophy appears to be anchored in simplicity. His menu is composed of dishes from many different cultures – not just Sri Lankan – but they’re all straightforward in preparation as well as ingredients. “Why make things complicated?” he asks.

In keeping with this philosophy, he’s also created ‘Skiz’s Original Spice Blends’. ”I realized that most Americans would not have the patience to make their own roasted curry powder, which is used to make many of the dishes in the book, so using a family recipe, I decided to make my own and market it.” He actually began by selling it to friends and family, and their positive feedback gave him the courage to turn it into a commercial operation. He currently sells his powders through two gourmet food sites in the U.S., but is hoping to begin supplying some retail outfits as well.

The whole business represents a professional sea change for Skiz. After graduating from Harvard and the Columbia University School of Journalism, he worked as a music journalist. He was the author of ‘The New Beats: Exploring the Music, Culture & Attitudes of Hip-Hop’ (Anchor/Doubleday, 1994). He followed his foray into writing by starting his own label WordSound Recordings, in December 1994. He describes the WordSound catalogue as composed of 64 “diverse and eclectic” releases which run the gamut from dub and hip-hop to drum ‘n’ bass and electronica.

As a filmmaker, Skiz wrote, produced and directed the ‘Crooked’ in 2001, a behind the scenes docudrama about the music industry, and in 2004, he released ‘The Greatest Thing You Never Heard’ a ‘dubumentary’ about WordSound, to coincide with the label’s 10th anniversary. His latest, ‘Made in Brasil,’ about the music of Brazil, is touring the international film festival circuit.

Skiz is now gunning for television stardom. He hopes to take his youtube videos up a notch and to actually star in his own show on cable T.V – he’ll settle “either for The Food Network, Cooking Channel, or Travel Channel.” While he’s very much the one man act with the Pan Asian – he’d love to get the backing of a reputable studio. “I do everything myself – write, produce, shoot, edit – in my very own kitchen. I also use just a tiny Flip camera. Can you imagine if I had a real budget and a crew to help out? I could produce some top notch TV.” Skiz has filmed around 30 episodes over the two years since he began and the series now boasts a modest fanbase – the episode on chicken curry, his most popular, has over 14,000 hits. The demand for spicy food aside, Skiz thinks that American T.V with its all-white host of celebrity chefs could use “some colour in the mix.”

In the meantime, he’s intent on leveraging the full might of each of his platforms: “I’ve set everything up to cross-promote everything else. For example, the book will promote the website, and the website will promote the curry powder, etc. etc. I’ve united all my interests into this food thing and hopefully something will come out of it because up to now I’ve put everything I’ve got into it and have been operating out of pure love,” he says, keeping his fingers crossed.
]]> http://riceandcurry.wordpress.com/2011/12/20/extra-extra-from-the-sunday-times-of-sri-lanka/feed/ 1 skiz1 http://riceandcurry.wordpress.com/2011/12/18/skizs-original-spice-blends-featured-on-maryland-public-television/ http://riceandcurry.wordpress.com/2011/12/18/skizs-original-spice-blends-featured-on-maryland-public-television/#comments Sun, 18 Dec 2011 18:51:48 +0000 skiz1 http://riceandcurry.wordpress.com/?p=1890 ]]>

I originally started making my own curry powder just for fun. As someone who’s always been interested in spices, it was a way to recreate the flavors I’ve known since childhood when my mother used to make rice and curry. Then I started to get really positive feedback from family, and then friends about my spice blends (Sri Lankans use a roasted blend for meat and fish curries and raw blend for vegetables). Why not package it and sell it, I thought.

Now with my cookbook released, this is the perfect opportunity to take advantage of my pre-made spice blends, which are hand-crafted in small batches, salt-free, and gluten-free, and sold through two online gourmet food sites:

www.foodzie.com

www.foodoro.com

Since most of the recipes in the book use these blends, my spices will save you a lot of time when you actually get down to cooking some rice and curry in your very own kitchen.

Maryland Public TV got a whiff of my curry powder at a local store where I sell it. They contacted me soon afterwards to do a small piece about it in their show “Your Money And Business.” My segment starts at around 19:40.

http://video.mpt.tv/video/2172993846

Skiz's Original, available online at Foodoro.com or Foodzie.com

Beneath the awning of Old Mandarin Islamic

I had not been to San Francisco since the first annual FoodBuzz convention in November 2009, and I was ready to get my grub on. Thanks to all the food TV these days, I had in my mind an image of a place that seemed eerily familiar–an Asian restaurant, off the beaten path, with some very spicy and delicious dishes. Anthony Bourdain or Andrew Zimmern or one of those TV hosts had eaten there, and it looked to be right up my alley. My friend Gabe and his Chinese-American wife Kelly had already chosen a spot for our dinner that night, and as we rolled up to it from dark, nearly deserted surroundings, I could see that this was the place I had pictured in my mind’s eye: “Islamic Old Mandarin,” as its lighted sign proclaimed in English sandwiched between Mandarin and Arabic characters. If there was any place I wanted to eat at tonight, this was the one. I just smiled at my hosts and said, “Great minds think alike.”

Inside the well-lit interior, there were only a few tables. At a large round one, a group of elderly Chinese men shared a Beijing Style hot pot–one similar to what I had just had in Sri Lanka at Juchunyaun Restaurant. Thinly sliced meats and plates of veggies and noodles, which were meant to be cooked in soup broth in the punch-bowl shaped object in the center of the table, gave their meal the air of a real feast.  A couple of Chinese girls picked at some stir-fry dishes at another table. The smells were, of course, tremendous, and my  mouth was already watering before I even opened the menu.

I must say, I have never seen so much lamb on a Chinese menu, and this must have been the Islamic influence. We ended up getting the stir fried lamb with scallion as well as the boiled lamb with preserved vegetables in a warm pot. We also ordered  an onion pancake, the egg plant in spicy garlic sauce, and one of the chef’s specials, a dish that definitely had my interest piqued, the “extremely hot pepper.”

for starters: a scallion pancake and boiled lamb w/ preserved vegetables in warm pot

stir-fried lamb with scallion

Chef's Special: "Extremely Hot Peppers"

Eggplant in spicy garlic sauce

I have not eaten such tasty and flavorful Chinese food in a long time. From the first bite into the layered pancake, which was crunchy 0n the outside and moist within, this was a meal to savor and remember. The lamb warm pot was rich and soothing, and the preserved vegetables gave it a nice sour flavor–almost like sauerkraut. The tender slices of lamb in the lamb with scallions dish practically melted in my mouth, as did the eggplant. And the extremely hot pepper, a dish of different kinds of chilies, chopped up and stir-fried with pieces of egg and slivers of chicken, certainly lived up to its name. As spicy as it was, however, it had a depth of flavor that you do not find in dishes that are meant to scorch your mouth. I think it was the addition of the sichuan peppercorns, which slowly numb your mouth to the capsiacin (i.e. active ingredient) in the peppers, and which also allows you to eat more of the dish. Washed down with a cold Tsing Tao beer, this was a perfect first meal for San Francisco.

the aftermath

Gabe checks out the next table

Gabe and Kelly, who live in the predominantly Asian enclave of Innersunset, pointed out a lot of great places to eat as we drove to Old Mandarin. But Old Mandarin itself has a pretty extensive menu as well, so there will be plenty of new dishes to try the next time around. And there definitely will be a next time!