The Mara of Taste

Colanders of summer vegetables cover the countertop of my kitchen. The people who sit with me on Sunday morning are joining me for a Labor Day lunch tomorrow. Two couples that I had wanted to join us couldn't make it so this morning I revised my grocery shopping list. With Thakor not coming I don't have to have a strictly vegetarian menu.

At lunch I went to Feng's Sichuan restaurant in Carmel. I have been assiduously eating meals at home and had not been there in a month. 8 China Buffet re-opened a month ago and it was great having their Saturday special lunch buffet to indulge in again. Their Sunday seafood dinner is wicked cool, the best seafood treat in the city, Asian or otherwise!

The recently concluded Olympics in Beijing has filled us with images of a resurgent, vibrant new China. The marathon raced through the city's avenues lined with impressive buildings old and new, and landscaped with trees and shrubs. The games were an explosive coming-out party for the most populous country in the world that appears now to have caught up with the industrialized West. China moreover has the advantage of its massive human resources and a socio-political history of a strong-armed central government. The people however seems to have sincerely bought their government's perception of the rest of the world. They are no longer just automatons. They have assimilated the politics of Mao while the country's opening to Western ideas in the last 15 to 20 years combine with that recent history of restraint and control has combined into what perhaps is the most dynamic socio-economic force in the world today!

These two Indianapolis restaurants embody for me the new China.  There are still dinosaurs of Chinese-American restaurants in the city like Chinese Ruby with its old-style menu items. These two new Chinese restaurants are much more inventive while also, because of the availability of authentic Chinese ingredients, expressive of China's incredible culinary heritage.

8 China reminds me of the coastal fast-paced Chinese cities like Shanghai and Hongkong. Sichuan food to me is food I would encounter if I toured the inner towns and villages of the country. The 8 China buffet is a magnificent display of hundreds of dishes including specialties we only usually expect at specialty restaurants—shio-mai, lotus-leaf-wrapped sticky rice, white-cooked, cold cuts of chicken breast, tiny chive pockets, pig knuckles in brown sauce, etc. 

Having just sampled the Sichuan offerings celebrating that restaurant's food is the reason for this blog entry. Eating there turns me into a food poet. Tiny morsels of food embody delicacy and elegance of flavor that makes me grateful for human civilization. Mara or no Mara, the gustatory experience for the moment defeats what aspirations I might have to reduce craving! A sliver of green onion is a veritable taste sensation. That tiny piece on my tongue invokes all the richness of Chinese cuisine. There are the usual flavors of garlic, chives, fermented black beans, ginger, hot chili peppers, and the more unusual flavors like that of star anise, but all are seamlessly combined for what I can only describe as heavenly and ambrosial!

After Mike and I come back from Lowe's, I'll start cooking. My menu is not Chinese. This being the official celebration of summer's end in Indiana, my eyes were drawn to summer vegetables when I shopped at Wal-Mart this morning. I have two kinds of tomatoes, zucchini, green beans, acorn squash, and celery. I plan to make an Italian stew of my own devising, a Midwest American three-bean salad (to evoke summer picnics), tomato-Jalopeño pepper salsa, corn tortillas, and, if I get around to it, Mexican pinto beans cooked in fried garlic a la Philippine mung-bean soup.