Peking Duck

On Saturday our landlady Yuni took us out and about in the town of Richmond.  Richmond is a suburb of Vancouver.  It has a large Asian population, approx. 60%.  It's the place to go shopping and find good deals.  The airport and the IKEA are also in Richmond.  After shopping, we met her friends, the Howards for dinner. The Howards work for a college ministry on the Campus of UBC.  We had such a great time getting to know them and eating one of the best meals I've ever tasted! 

We ate at this local place called Spicy Schezuan Restaurant!   We sat down to order, and Yuni ordered everything for us.   She ordered a traditional family style Chinese meal of Peking Duck cooked 3 ways.  (Basically they take one duck and serve it over several courses)  In my head I was thinking...."I would've ordered the General Tso chicken, I don't know what this food is, I've never eaten duck, I can't even use chopsticks!  How am I going to enjoy this? " That's when I had to think back to my STIM training. (Students Training In Missions-an InterVarsity program where they teach you how to live in another culture and be a missionary.)  After remembering all the things Terri Shell and Amy Phillips taught us, I changed my thoughts to "This is going to be a unique experience and I'm just going to jump right in!" Matt wasn't ever worried...he had limitless bowls of Sriracha!

So our first course arrives.  It's duck skin!  To eat it, you place the duck skin, a green onion, and some hoisin sauce in a Chinese pancake and wrap it up like a tiny burrito!  It was amazingly yummy!

Picture borrowed from http://www.rossjohnson.co.za/wordpress/?p=491

The next course was soup.  They used the duck bones to make a broth for the soup.  The soup again was very tasty!

The next course was duck lettuce wraps.   Think of PF Chang's chicken lettuce wraps.  That's exactly what they tasted like.

The next courses (even though we were already stuffed) were not duck, but also very good.  We had salt and pepper shrimp, honey ginger pork, Kai-lan (Chinese broccoli) with beef, fried chicken, and rice.  With the meal we also had hot tea and water!  Just amazing!  I wish I could share this meal with all of y'all back home!