[Harrogate] Orchid

[klyeoh (Peter)]

@Harters

Then a main course of “gan ma row”, the menu indicating that this was a Sichuan dish but Google only finds this name linked with the restaurant, so I’m unsure what dish they were trying to cook. It’s basically a stir-fry of belly pork, spring onions and peanuts with Sichuan peppercorns, red chilli and garlic.

They just gave it a fancy name (in Mandarin): “gan ma” means “godmother”, and “row” is “meat” (belly pork in this case), so they named the dish “Godmother’s Meat”.

Funnily, your belly pork dish was almost similar to the one I had at Guizhou Garden (Kuala Lumpur) from a while back, but which I’d just posted on this morning. Guizhou cuisine is a close cousin of Sichuan cuisine as the two provinces are neighbours.

[Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia] Flavors of Qian at 𝗚𝘂𝗶𝘇𝗵𝗼𝘂 𝗚𝗮𝗿𝗱𝗲𝗻

Guizhou (or Qian) cuisine is a close counterpart of the more widely-known Sichuan and Hunan cuisines. In the landlocked central part of China, Guizhou province is sandwiched between Sichuan and Hunan provinces, and all three cuisines share a common love for spiking their food with copious amounts of dried chilis. Guizhou cuisine’s trademark characteristic is the combination of spicy and sour flavors of most of its dishes. The tongue-numbing chili levels in Guizhou’s trademark dishes easily matc…

@Harters

I’d expected it to be quite fiery as Sichuan dishes often are but, in fact, this was fairly muted in its use of spice.

You’re lucky!
The version I had in KL didn’t even bother to mute the hellish levels of its chili-spiciness, and our gastronomic journey there was more like a descent down Dante’s inferno.