[Sca-cooks] Further adventure at the impromptu open-air Chinese market

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Hullo, the list!

Those of you who've been on this list a while may remember my account of
visiting a rather peculiar sidewalk-based Chinese produce/fish/whatever
market that mysteriously appears for a couple of hours each Thursday
morning in clement weather. A couple of guys in trucks just appear at
around 8:30 AM, set up their crates of produce (except for the fish guy,
who keeps his wares on ice in his truck, to keep it all in the shade),
and sell it right from the sidewalk. This can include anything from huge
winter melons that would be prizewinners if they had been pumpkins, from
which they cut chunks [roughly] to your specifications, fresh water
chestnuts with a texture, flavor and aroma something like coconut,
mangos, papayas, durians, five or six types of tsoy (leafy green veg),
the works. I picked up some huge white peaches, some President plums,
some white champagne grapes, and three large bunches of asparagus for
under $5.

The fish seller either wasn't coming today or had not yet arrived, so I
missed him, but the _other_ occasional vendor, the man that sells tea
and cakes, was. Among the unusually large assortment of flour-based
goods (most still warm), which included steamed pork and cabbage buns,
baked custard buns, rice noodle rolls filled with dried shrimp,
scallion, and peanuts, some kind of sesame buns I had never seen before,
and I have no idea what else, was something that caught my (okay, my
son's) eye.

The man was also selling bags which contained five or six items that
looked a bit like halves of sandwiches, triangular cakes presumably cut
from a sheet and stacked in layers with a filling inside. Upon closer
inspection these proved to consist of what looked like some kind of red
jam and a pale buttercream inside, with traces of a dusting of powdered
sugar on top.

My lady wife said to the man, in Cantonese, something like, "Oh, don't
those look nice!"

He smiled and responded a little too quickly for me to follow, but I
think I caught the gist and a couple of untranslated words. (My wife
later confirmed my suspicions.) He had said that this was an old Hong
Kong specialty, known as Vik-tawwi-ya Aspunge Asannawich...

My ribs hurt...

Adamantius
--
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com

"It was so blatant that Roger threw at him.  Clemens gets away with
things that get other people thrown out of games.  As long as they
let him get away with it, it's going  to continue." -- Joe Torre, 9/98