Crouching snacks
(Witty bakery goods: Suzhou, China)
The bakery had been open for just a day or so when Ying and I visited it within an immense shopping precinct. These malls seem to spring up every few weeks in the SIP area of Suzhou and I assume the pattern is similar all through the growing coastal cities. The name of this particular snack had me in stitches, obviously. I have never seen such a ridiculous name for a food, and even better, that it actually related to a Chinese topic. Many of the other items were named with a similar witty turn of phrase, but this was the crowning glory of them all.
We didn’t buy this particular one as I reckon it sounds better than it tastes, but we did buy a pandan cake, a pork floss bun and a Singaporean style snack with a name I don’t recall. Pandan leaves dye the cake a rich, lime green colour and it has a springy, airy, almost rubbery sponge texture. The floss bun was the most intriguing – I’ll introduce you to that before I wolf down another one (since I was so ravenous at the time, it never saw the lens of a camera). To me, ‘pork floss’ seems to be effectively a kind of jerky dust, scraped from spiced, dried pork. It sounds bizarre, but it has a dry, hairy consistency, yet it almost melts on contact with my mouth. Rather like crackling or pork scratchings, it dissolves yet remains crunchy, and to be honest, I rather enjoyed it.
- In case of confusion, I don’t actually think this product contains Tiger or any Tiger derivatives, just pork, really.
Hidden bacon is my favourite type… YaMYaM! bring on the porkery darlin…
no, of course not, the product can have nothing to do with the tiger.
I guess it is because ‘bacon’ rhymes with ‘dragon’, that inspired them to use the saying “crouching tiger hidden dragon’.
Ha… it reminds me of the tiger calender.
The abovementioned saying is very well known in Chinese culture.
Here, the tiger is linked with dragon which only used to symbolise the emperor.
In this saying both tiger and dragon referred to people with super wisdom.