Two courses more than the Italians

We had an unbelievable 9-course lunch today at a restaurant near the university:

I. Appetizers:

1. Fried Bamboo-shoot. Yum, spicy!
2. Water-nuts of some sort, stuffed with rice, in sweet sauce. (Honestly: That’s a far guess. I didn’t really manage to understand what it was)

II. Duck and Mushroom Soup. Very Chinese flavor.

III. Mains and sides:

4. Steamed Asparagus (both the white and green varieties).

5. A great friend Tofu Dish, in spicy sauce

6. The high-point: Chinese-style cooked fish. They cook it intact, to preserve the juices, in a spicy brown sauce, that I think included Miso or something similar to Miso. You eat it by tearing pieces off with your chopsticks (skin and all). The thing is extraordinary, and very hard to describe. For more about Chinese Fish-cooking Here

Desserts:

7. Papaya, steamed, served in its original shell, partially emptied, and filled with a whitish sweetish substance, which I couldn’t exactly recognize. It’s served with milk and honey which you pour in according to taste. You scrape the papaya from the shell, and eat it with the savoury liquids. One of the best desserts I have ever had.

8. Whipped-Cream filled rice-balls: Huge rice balls (Japanese style — those who know Japanese desserts know what I’m talking about) filled with freshly-made whipped cream. Yummy.

9. Chinese Baklava. Indeed. Leaf-dough pastries, filled with pumpkin mash. This looks and feels exactly like a Baklava, except that the filling is made of (possibly sweetened) Pumpkin. I don’t think it’s a coincidence: the Arabs probably brought Baklava around here, and this is probably a local adaptation. It’s not that surprising: during the Ottoman empire, the Turks spread as far as Mongolia.

I had this lunch with a Professor here, who I may write about on another occasion. Yes, she paid for the whole thing. No, I wasn’t happy about it. Yes, food is very cheap here. No, this restaurant didn’t look particularly cheap (in local standards).