Shanghai butterfly

Updated: 2013-04-01 14:20

By Pauline D. Loh ( China Daily)

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red-braised belly pork with eggs. Photos by Pauline D. Loh / China Daily

First up is the classic spring vegetable, minced malan tou garnished with three half-moons of orange. The bright green taste of the season of new growth freshens the palate and our mouths enjoy the occasional crunch of the finely diced bamboo shoots.

Our order of red-braised belly pork, hongshao rou, comes with well-marinated hard-boiled eggs that are deeply colored to the core by the rich soy sauce. The pork itself is only for the heart-healthy. It is meltingly rich, pleasingly sweet and goes with a large helping of steamed white rice.

A lighter offering is the poached Chinese river perch, or mandarin fish. Snow-white fillets are speckled with dark green minced potherb mustard, another spring vegetable that is a Shanghai favorite. The flavors here are light, but still flavorful.

No meal in a genuine Shanghainese restaurant would be complete without two more benbang dishes - the braised wheat gluten salad, kaofu and the signature soup, yanduoxian.

Yanduoxian is almost untranslatable, but the three characters simply point to the ingredients of this soup, which always includes smoked salted pork and dried tofu knots and may also include radishes, bamboo shoots or Chinese ham, according to the cook's fancy and availability of ingredients.

Kaofu is simply a sweet braised dish that uses a combination of wheat gluten cubes, black wood ear fungus, day lily buds and peanuts. To me at least, it represents Shanghai and is almost always the first cold appetizer that is placed on the table.

The Shanghainese also loves eels. Not the thick creatures so favored by the Japanese, but tiny eels that are hardly more than elvers, quickly stripped and boned with a dexterity that has to be seen to be believed. Again, the most common way of cooking them is to stir-fry them in a thick, sweet sauce, garnished with a dollop of minced garlic. Pepper is often generously added.

The result is a dish of savory strips that have plenty of bite which is as much tactile food as it is a flavorful sensation.

We ended our benbang feast with a platter of "young ladies in red", otherwise also known as "soft-hearted delights" - red Chinese jujubes stuffed with a delightfully soft, chewy glutinous center. It was the perfect bookend to a meal, and it promises to linger on in my memory - until the next time I go back for yet another sampling of classic Shanghainese.