Another Fish Story

Remember the guy in the video removing scales from the live fish? Well, Tuesday night we had a fantastic time dining on one of those fish at his restaurant!

I mentioned that I thought it would be fun to eat there since I greet the owners every day as I walk by. Within days, the gals in Christine's office set up a little dinner party there. So thoughtful! It was of course like no meal I've ever eaten before, and  my pictures don't do it justice.

The big surprise was how the fish was presented. Twas a large fish that had definitely already been through the scaling and cleaning routine, and then split in two from the mouth between the eyes, and all the way down to the tail. It was no doubt seared in a very hot giant wok. Then look how it came to our table in three layers of pans!

The fish of course is in the top, with a generous amount of broth and gorgeous fresh vegetables. The bottom pan is empty and sits directly on the table, and the middle pan has braised coals that stayed red hot during the whole meal. Keeps the fish and the broth boiling hot.

They have this large metal pot on the sidewalk where they heat the coals, and you can see the trays they use for the fish next to them.

We told our Chinese friends to order whatever they I thought we would like, and they did a great job. They thought we would like chicken with peanuts, and they were spot on! Our first chicken that wasn't laced with bones, and Christine, Kynza and I loved it. I think this may become our new go-to chicken dish. Kynza and I have decided we want to order it take-out so we can have chicken at home, although we still need to learn how to say the name of the dish, and we especially need to learn how to say not spicy, since this is a Szechuan restaurant.
 As beautiful as the fish was, the question remains, how do you attack this with chop sticks? There's a ladle for the broth, but where's the knife and fork?? The fish was delicious, but I still haven't mastered deboning and eating fish with chopsticks. Our Chinese hosts delicately use their chopsticks to lift off a morsel. But even if i try to pay attention to what I'm doing, my technique always results in way too many bones in my mouth. My mind wanders back to the demonstrations I've seen of best methods for fileting a fish on a plate using a knife and fork, but this skill is irrelevant in China. The Chinese have no use for a knife, a fork, or even a plate. Chopsticks and a little bowl work just fine. Still have a little over two months to try and master this!