Street Dim Sums in Shanghai-Paigu Niangao

Do you know what the most distinguished thing about Chinese food? This is a sentence that I just read from a Shanghai expat’s blog:

“Chinese can have thousands of ways to cook one kind of food. Thousands of pork cuisines, thousands of beef cuisines and the same goes with chicken, fish, shrimp and vegetables.”

That’s true. Here I want to introduce another cuisine of rice cake which is also a kind of street snack. This one is really really delicious and “Shanghai-featured”.

It is called “Paigu Niangao” and if translated to English, it should be called “Pork Chop and rice cake with sugar and soy sauce”.

People firstly apply a lot of seasoning on the pork chops like some green onions, cooking wine, soy sauce and flour and then fry it. When the pork chop is almost cooked, makers just move it out and then pan fry some other seasonings and spices like Chinese cinnamon, ginger, pepper and cloves. Then, they put them onto the pork chop and add water, salt and sugar to it to make it like a soup. When the soup is cooked, rice cake is added in and let it cook for a while. This step may take long because the soup will continue boiling until all the liquid become a kind of thick juice. Eventually, makers move out the rice cake and pork chop and then apply the thick juice on them. It seems like a dish, but actually it is a kind of traditional dim sum in Shanghai.

One thing that amazed me much was that this food is not available in other places in China. I don’t know why. Maybe this is the reason why the “Paogu Niangao” is considered very “Shanghai- featured”. I can’t describe what its flavor is really like but you will understand only when you actually try it. I can only say, “It’s really amazing! Everybody should try it. All Shanghai people like it, all Chinese people from other cities compliment it and all foreigners will definitely like it!”