Sichuanese Food in Marina, California by Ruth Paget
The Chinese say that food is medicine. They also think their medicine should be delicious, which is why I like Chinese food.
My favorite Chinese food comes from the central-western province of Sichuan in China. Sichuanese food iis known to be very spicy due to the presence of many spicy red chili peppers used to stir-fry it.
Both of the Chinese restaurants in my neighborhood of Marina (California) serve one of my favorite Sichuanese dishes – Kung Pao Chicken. Kung Pao Chicken honors an honest public servant who served in the not-so-reputable Qing Dynasty about two hundred years ago.
Kung Pao Chicken is usually a reasonably priced item on restaurant menus and boosts your immune system with stir-fried vegetables and tonic spices and aromatics. The spice combination that flavors the pounded flat pieces of chicken breast includes:
-garlic
-fresh ginger
-light and dark soy sauces
-rice vinegar
-sugar
-several spicy hot red chili peppers
At Marina’s Lee’s Garden Restaurant, they serve Kung Pao Chicken made with green pepper squares, onions, carrots, and zucchini cubes for fresh flavor. Lee’s Garden puts 9 red hot chili peppers into its Kung Pao Chicken for kicky flavor. I like it this way, but also like the milder Kung Pao Chicken made with 3 to 4 red hot chili peppers that Marina’s Ho-Wah Restaurant does as well.
Ho-Wah uses celery, zucchini, carrots, and onions for freshen its Kung Pao chicken. Ho-Wah is easy to spot with red lanterns dangling from its roof. It is famous for serving Marina’s mayor and has made the newspapers for serving Chinese vegetarian food.
Both restaurants offer extensive meal options, but during pandemic times I like to think the Vitamin C in the vegetables and spicy peppers and the iron in the chicken help boost the immune system.
For more information on Sichuanese food, see Fuscia Dunlop’s book The Food of Sichuan.
By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
