The Dalles daily chronicle. [volume] (The Dalles, Or.) 1890-1948, 1894-03-06
CHINESE DELICACIES.
Dishes in Which the Pigtailed
Celestlals Revel.
Curious Articles of Diet for Which
There Is No Name in English
Dining in Mongolian
Hashery.

.
Every day in New York you can see a
score of pigtailed gentlemen in the
neighborhood of Mott street each car
rying huge brown paper bag. If you
could open these mysterious packages
you would find desiccated shrimps and
prawns, picked Annoy cabbage, delicate
little tubers known as .'ma-tai' bitter
cucumbers, dried devil fish, Awabi
CLAIMS from Japan, smoked oysters.
preserved sharks fins, pots of sweet
meats, funny looking sausages and lots
of dainties for which, according to the
Herald, there is no name in English
A poor laundryman will spend quar-
ter or third of his income upon these
luxuries, and will devote a half day of
his precious time to cooking them in
approved Mongo1ian style. The table
is a queer work of art. The china and
porcelain are superb, so beautiful that
in this land of collectors they would
be placed in cabinets. There are no
knives or forks. The Celestial mind re-
CARDS cutting and carving a labor un-
worthy of guest, and relegates it to
a cook. In lieu of forks are chopsticlzs
long, slender bars of ivory tipped
with silver or gold. The spoons are
films of porcelain; the wine glasses,
cups Like BAOSC Ill OOlL
houses. Your plate is saucer and
your napkin silk towel held by a
servant. The table is handsome never
theless. 1t is nearly covered with
dainty plates containing hors d'oeuvrcs
piled up in slender pyramids. One pile
consists of peeled bananas, cut into
little drums; another of pineapple,
carved into tiny bars, like miniatures
of laundry soap; a third of crystallized
dwarf oranges, moistened in honey; a
fourth of fine onion sprouts and a
fifth of preserved eggs, dark green and
suggesting cucumbers. Other plates
contain sliced sausage, piclrled cocks
combs, hard boiled pigeons eggs.
sweet picked shredded ginger, sliced
water chestnuts, dried fish segments.
desiccated prawns, smoked fish roe,
and a score of other equally incongru-
Gus dainties.
You help yourself to any of these,
both before and during the banquet.
In the meantime the waiter or the
''sing-song girl has filed your teacup
with fragrant Oolong and your vino
cup with boiling wine. From this
point neither cup is permitted to re-
main empty nor grow old. Fit stands
longer than the time allotted by Mon
golian etiquette it is removed and re-
placed by d hot one. After few min
utes of nibbling and slipping the
courses begin to arrive and continue to
arrive as long as there is a soul at the
board. Soups and steps, omelettes and
entrees, roastS and boiled, ragouts and
fricasseeS, croquettes and vol au vents.
sweet dishes and sour follow one an
other without apparent rhyme or rea-
son. at the end-of every half hour
you take a recess of from five to fifteen
minutes. Everybody lights a fresh
cigarette or puffs a water pipe. A
few retire to one of the hunks and
smoke a pipe Of opium. The sing
song girls perform a brief concert,
vocal and instrumental, and again the
meal proceeds. 1t is a poor dinner
that has less than twenty courses
Some have forty and fifty, and few
pass the hundred mark. You eat what
you please and as much as you please.
Scarcely any dish is simple; some con-
tain twenty ingredients. The average
banquet uses pork, fresh, salt and
smoked; pigs brain, liver and kidney,
chicken, duck, pigeon, quail and goose;
fish, fresh, dried salt and smoked: eggs
of at least four kinds, rice, pastry,
beans, peas, cabbage, millet, lentils,
onions, garlic, leek, cucumber, squash,
melon, gourd, potatoes, white and
sweet; yam, ma-tai, bean, sprouts,
spinach, turnip, parsnip, carrot, devil
fish, dragon fish, fish roe, CLANS, oys-
ters, crabs, sea weed, mushroom and
tree mushrooms, birds nests, sharks
nests, sharks fins, chilliss, orange
peel, ginger, cocoanut, macaroni and
heaven knows what not.