Hunan Food (湖南美食)

It's always a good thing to explore the cuisine whenver we travel to another place outside of Singapore, even the MacDonald or KFC.

KFC in Changsha, Hunan, China

The food i had in Hunan was generally.... healthy. I had mainly non-meat dishes while i was there.

Why?

Because i find that their pork dishes had a really strong, raw porky taste (and really fatty), their chicken was usually soup based, which by the way, was way too oily though palatable (but bad for my weight!) and their fish had too much bones!! Not the big, thick needle sized bones but hair-thin choke-induced ones hor!! Please look below for the lunches and dinners i had.

I fared much better with Hunan snacks:

The Miao (minority tribe) fragrant spicy tofu, which added a certain warmth in the chilly weather. The dragon beard candy, unlike those in Singaopore, literally melts in your mouth.

The garlic candy was so tasty (beside garlic, sesame seeds and malt candy were used) i wondered why no one brings it to Singapore! It was one of the specialties in Feng Huang Old Town (凤凰古镇) and though the snack was now too commercialised, there were still a handful of stalls manufacturing it the traditional way; which is really labour intensive.

Though you can find some stalls selling 3 bags for RMB10, the quality is really not there (they use flour, chilli etc to lower the cost). Find the shop named Zhen Gan Zhang Shi (镇竿张氏), in existence since 1896! Just to warn you, it cost a high RMB25 a bag. Please disregard the fact it looked like wood chips (above)!!

We stumped into this delectable snack called Gao Cao Ba purely by coincidence when we reached this small town called Wang Village, 王村 (famously known as Furong Town, 芙蓉镇 due to a film that showed the ever first kiss on China screen lasting a minute plus plus). Anyway, it was drizzling and hungriness had seeped into our bones!! A steaming basket of this Gao Cao Ba proved too much for us to ignore any further!

At RMB1 a piece, it had a pretty rough greenish texture filled with peanuts and wrapped with a leaf that most of you should be familiar with. Tasted like a bigger peanut tangyuan, it was a throat warmer and hunger quencher for us.

Although i was not that suitable to Hunan food (yes, it was my fault, my problem!), there were 3 occasions the food was surprisingly palatable. I am going to spare the details (which will be very lengthy, I guaranteed) and provide only pictures (above)!

OH!! Almost forgot!! While i was dining at Feng Huang Old Town, there was a promotion on this meat sauce called Wild Boar Meat Sauce. A godsend from heaven, it made my meal much more scrumptious and bearable!

It was so good I bought two bottles back!!