Chinese banquet: the coral reef community hates me

So the purpose of my visit to SF was to attend E's wedding, and she had a traditional Chinese banquet for the reception. Even though a lot of my high school friends are Chinese, I've never gone out to have Chinese dinner with the whole gang, so it was fun to share dishes we all knew well, but traditionally only have with squabbling family. Since we've known each other for so long though, we fought over the dishes just like we were squabbling family, which I guess, in a sense, if what we really are.

Not sure what the item on the left is, I'm guessing tongue, but the rest is pork with the crispy skin (favorite), cha siu (bbq pork) and jellyfish (my mom's favorite). Jelly fish is great. It's a bit crunchy, and cold with a bit of sesame, quite refreshing.

Shark fin soup. Woe is me. Just a few days ago, J, who I credit for helping me begin my scuba diving hobby, chided me for eating shark fin soup. I definitely felt guilty about it, but not guilty enough to turn down the soup. It's a Chinese banquet, and there were a lot of E and J's older relatives, and it's a bit expected to have shark fin soup, but it's still terrible. And to add to the conflicted guilt of my conscience, I don't normally like shark fin soup, but this one was actually quite good.

But shark fin is more texture than anything else, sort of similar to jelly fish. It doesn't make sense to have it as a dish because in my opinion it doesn't add that much flavor-wise. I'll have to start listening to my own advice.

Creamy shrimp with toasted walnuts. An old standby and so delicious with all of that mayonnaise. It's not really authentically Chinese in my mind, but I'm always excited to see it on the table.

Lobster. I went for the tail, and even though it was a wedding, it felt fun being able to go at some crustacean in a fancy dress.

Roast peking duck skin in a bun with hoisin sauce and thinly sliced scallions. Some restaurants serve this with a thin crepe-like pancake, but I much prefer the soft fluffy bun.

Fried quail with msg salt. I love quail. I really need to bring out my recipe for bacon-wrapped quail. It's been years, since I've made the dish.

Abalone and mushrooms with greens. I don't like abalone that much. It's a delicacy amongst Asian foodie circles, and my parents being bona fide members go out to get them from Tomales Bay and around. You haven't lived until you've seen a half dozen middle aged Cantonese people squeezing their girth into wetsuits they bought second-hand from the flea market because of course they are all too frugal to buy brand new, and then spy them clambering down the side of a cliff to get to the rocky shore where the abalone like to hang out. After a wave comes crashing on them, you'll see them chattering excitedly with their thick glasses fogging up in the mist and their thinning hair plastered to their bright shiny faces.

You may not know it, but you would be looking at completely happy people who have made it in life. My parents and most of their friends escaped from Communist China, and for them, to be able to hang out with friends and catch this Chinese delicacy (it's like a grab and run foie gras farm, limit 3 per person, think about it) and be outdoors and healthy, is probably more than any of them ever hoped for their own lives back in those dark days when they were trying to get out just so they could go to a place where they could work and earn enough to be keep themselves fed.

But what this means for an immigrant's daughter is that she has had abalone sashimi, abalone stew, abalone steak pan fried in butter, abalone stir-fry with scallions, abalone congee, abalone leftovers, abalone everything, and she does not get what the hype is about. So I just ate the mushrooms and greens.

Ah, the always necessary steamed fish. It's very important that your seafood have been alive only moments before you cook it. You can taste the difference in the flesh between a crab that has been dead for several hours before cooking or one that was thrown into a pot alive. In order to tell if a fish was fresh when prepared, the flesh of a steamed fish should curl back on itself and almost look like it exploded a little. That's how you can tell if a restaurant is cheating you. If they take out a fish from the tank to show you it is alive and flapping vigorously, but the plate that comes up is a steamed fish with a completely smooth side, then you know the old bait and switch happened in the kitchen.

Dinner was delicious. It's a good thing I don't have any scuba trips planned soon because I'm not ready to look any of those creatures in the eye today.