[Sca-cooks] Chop, chop, Master A

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Laura C. Minnick:
>So, Oh Wise and Wonderful Master A (scrape forehead on floor)- what is
>proper technique for picking up large pieces, like big pieces of breaded
>chicken, or egg roll or such? Fingers? Very careful with sticks? Spearing
>them?

Well, it depends. Foods like egg rolls, which are really street food
anyway, and which no self-respecting Chinese would serve at dinner
(it would be kind of like corn dogs for Thanksgiving dinner), you
really should eat with your fingers. If it's something like the
chicken pieces mentioned previously (which should be no more than an
inch across), then you eat them with chopsticks. When necessary,
choke up on the bat for greater mechanical advantage: note that
Chinese chopsticks are longer than those of most other cultures that
use them, and among the Southern Chinese, at least, it is considered
bad manners to hold your chopsticks so close to the business end, so
if it's against the rules, I assume it is done, at least sometimes.

I think spearing is generally frowned upon, mostly because it causes
juice to be lost. Then again, in the case of things like dumplings
(another item you wouldn't be seeing at dinner in China, for the most
part), where preserving the juice is a big deal (some of them are
traditionally eaten held in the chopsticks, with a soupspoon
underneath with the other hand to catch any dripping juice) the rules
are a bit smudged anyway.

I'm probably a bit hampered by the fact that some of the traditions
I've been exposed to may be Toysan-specific, what amount to
superstitions, and which may be unheard of elsewhere in China.
Although the eating-dumplings-with-a-soupspoon thing is a Shanghai
thang, AFAIK.

My chopstick table-manners are apparently decent enough to pass
muster at a table full of little old Cantonese ladies. Apparently one
of them commented (in Cantonese, of course) on my perhaps somewhat
over-eager approach to grabbing chunks of lobster off the serving
platter, causing the oldest (and therefore most authoritative) little
old lady to respond (also in Cantonese), "Shush. Yes, he's grabbing
all the big pieces of lobster, but he's shelling them and putting
them on the plates of his wife and son. _He's_ eating his rice. I
wish _your_ son had manners like that!"

Adamantius