KARACHI: The Chinese year of the goat was ushered in with a delightful Chinese food festival inaugurated by the consul general of China in Karachi, Ma Yaou, at Pearl Continental’s Tai Pan restaurant on Thursday.

“I prepared a special new year’s menu with lots of seafood dishes for the occasion as fish is quite popular in China,” said chef Xiao Bing, asking everyone to try his ribbon fish.

The chef, who has been working in Pakistan for almost 12 years now, agreed that Chinese food outside China tasted different from actual Chinese food in China. “See, we use indigenous ingredients which taste different from the ingredients we use for cooking in China. These, of course, bring in their own identity which blends in beautifully with our recipes while creating a fresh identity. Chinese food in Pakistan also wouldn’t taste the same as, say ..., Chinese food in America,” he said.

“Then of course, I am particularly careful and respectful of religious beliefs. So the oil used here would be vegetable oil and no cooking vine, which I replace with vinegar.”

The chef himself has settled in quite comfortably in Pakistan. Many of his colleagues don’t even call him by his name, Xiao Bing. They call him ‘Ziauddin’. “We have asked him to put aside his Chinese passport and apply for a green one,” a colleague said with a smile.

The soups, Chinese hot pot, dim sum, Chinese gruel, fried fish, fried prawns, prawns with pickled chilli, ribbon fish, braised chicken with black mushroom, steamed squid with glutinous rice stuffing, Yung zhor (fried rice), Chinese chilli with lotus root, etc, all were enjoyed by the guests comprising mostly Chinese people.

Still China isn’t famous for its sweet dishes. Therefore the desserts comprised cakes, custards, pudding and ice cream. It would have been interesting to note how the guests, who ate with chopsticks, were going to handle the desserts with the same but no, when helping themselves to the sweet dishes, they reached for the spoon!

Published in Dawn, February 20th, 2015

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