Yummy Yum Cha

Chinese cuisine to me has always meant spicy ChowMein, Manchurian and Fried rice. Last week however, I was introduced to the concept of Yum Cha, a Chinese custom of eating small servings of different foods in a tea bowl with…chopsticks…help!!! Unfortunately it happened to be at a team lunch with a group of Australian team mates who could dexterously work magic with their chopsticks and tiny tea bowls. The food to me was incomprehensible. The dishes looked like nothing I had ever seen before. Everything looked revoltingly raw or undercooked. Urged by my team mates I proceeded to try a dish that looked like bacon. Using one my chopsticks I tipped a few pieces of the bacon into my tea bowl. Using a fork (that a waiter kindly brought) I proceeded with first bite…surprisingly it was quite good. Encouraged by the good start I looked towards the table that was already laden with an assortment of unusual dishes. Slowly I started working my way through a few equally gross looking dishes that turned actually out to be quite nice. Somewhere along, came a plate of dimsums and for some godforsaken reason still unknown to me, I decided to pick up a dimsum using my chopsticks (which I had abandoned, thanks to the fork). I jammed the chopsticks between my fingers and heroically proceeded to pick up the pale dimsum which turned out to be a lot more slippery than it looked. Imagine my horror when one of the chopsticks swooped out of my hand, narrowly missed hitting the guy sitting next to me and fell onto the floor. All I wanted at that awfully embarrassing moment was to disappear into the bowels of the earth. Any way, that ended my vain attempt to show off my non existent skills with chopsticks. I went back to work with my good ol’ fork and thankfully the rest of the meal passed on quite uneventfully. As it turns out my first experience with Yum Cha was pretty good. Discovered that there’s more to Chinese cuisine than Chilli Gobhi and Chicken Manchurian. Although the food may not look too appetizing, it’s all about gritting your teeth and taking that plunge…the first bite. And yes, chopsticks are a lot more trickier than they look. If your not sure of using them, you'll be better off using a fork.