- Suanla chaoshou
"Suanla chaoshou" is a dish of
Szechuan cuisine that consists of a spicy sauce over steamed, meat-filleddumpling s. "Suanla" means "sour spicy," and "chaoshou" is what these particular largewonton s are called in the Chinese province ofSichuan ."Chao shou" translates literally as "folded hands" [McCawley, James D. (1984). "The Eater's Guide to Chinese Characters", p. 118 (L3a.4c). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-55591-7] ; in Sichuan dialect this refers to a style of dumpling whose square wrapper is folded into two points, one crossed over the other. According to Peter Hessler (Beijing correspondent for "The New Yorker" and former Peace Corps teacher), "In most parts of Sichuan, you can walk into a restaurant and order "chaoshou" without making a sound. Cross your arms and they will understand exactly what you want." [Hessler, Peter (2001). "River Town", p.254. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-060-85502-9] One native speaker claims the Sichuan-only name for these dumplings may have originated at one time by a dialectic transpositionFact|date=January 2008, i.e. "chao shou" was originally "shou chao", meaning "hand-folded".
A restaurant in
Cambridge, Massachusetts named Mary Chung's serves a dish called "Suan La Chow Show", which are dumplings in a spicysoy ginger sauce on top of a bed of rawmung bean sprouts. This popular dish is slightly different from the authenticFact|date=January 2008 Suanla Chaoshou, which has a hot garlicky peanut sauce on top of dumplings. A local restaurant reviewer noted the first version of the dish was introduced to Cambridge as Shanghai street food, by a nearby restaurant, Colleen's Chinese Cuisine [Zanger, Mark H. (1978). "Robert Nadeau's Guide to Boston Restaurants". Cambridge (Mass.): World Food Press (private imprint). ISBN 0-930-92200-X] ,where Mary Chung worked in the 1970's.References
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
