Dim Sum Mismatch
In celebration of the end of the semester, a friend of mine and I undertook an expedition to Emerald House Chinese Restaurant in Mississauga, Ontario where we ate many and varied things. For example, I got to try tripe! It was a wonderful experience and the restaurant probably deserves its own review-type write up. However, this is not that.
You know those sensory driven moments when you smell or see or hear something and it reminds you of something else, but the memory of what it reminds you of gets caught in the machinery of your brain and you can't quite recall it because the ringing of the bell, if you will, in the present isn't quite in tune with the past so you are incapable of perfect recall?
I had that experience whilst eating dim sum. Specifically, while eating this:
Now, it looks like some sort of fried dumpling. Crispy on the outside, filled with goodness on the inside. Great. No problems there. I was exciting about trying this, the only fried thing we ate. And, then I bit into it. It was a pork dumpling, which was great as I enjoy eating pork. Except, there was something off about it. Something that just didn't belong as part of the experience. And, I just couldn't put my finger on it. The pork was in some sort of gravy that was creamy and a little sweet and it was surrounded by some dough that had the consistency of mashed potatoes. I puzzled over this for a really long time and then it hit me: this fried dumpling tasted a little like the Chinese equivalent to biscuits and gravy. Only, instead of the biscuit (made from dough with a consistency similar to mashed potatoes) being smothered in sausage gravy it was surrounding it. And, because everyone interprets the dish a little differently, the gravy was made with chunks of pork and mushroom instead of pork sausage and it was slightly sweet and not at all peppery. This little dumpling was one the oddest food experiences I've had in a good, long while. It even trumped my first experience with tripe.
