Chinese Comb-oh-no!

Last week the culinary students disappeared from the lower cafeteria, leaving a small handful of graduates in charge of the food preparation.  I had high hopes for the meals this week, as surely the graduates have superior abilities in the kitchen than the students would.  I discovered that I was wrong, however, when I ordered the Chinese combo plate.  It was more like comb-oh-no.

The Chinese combo plate consisted of sweet and sour chicken, a spring roll, stir-fried vegetables, and either rice or noodles.  I had the privilege of trying both the rice and the noodles, and while the noodles and the spring roll were acceptable, they were the only acceptable items on the entire plate.

I was surprised to discover that the Chinese rice I was hoping to get wasn't traditional stir-fried rice.  For that matter, it wasn't even plain sticky rice.  Nor was it plain long-grain rice.  No, the cafeteria actually tried passing off plain minute rice as part of a traditional Chinese combo plate.  If the cooks in the cafeteria think that their customers can't tell the difference in taste between regular rice and minute rice they had better make an appointment with an otolaryngologist.  Unfortunately, the rice wasn't the only serious offence with this meal.  I haven't even mentioned the "stir-fried" vegetables or the sweet and sour chicken yet.

Let's suppose for a moment that you have never had training in how to prepare stir-fried vegetables and you want to make them.  Common sense says that after chopping the vegetables you place them in a wok or fry pan and stir them while they fry (hence the name "stir-fry").  If you wanted to prepare them in the traditional method that a Chinese restaurant would, you then would coat the vegetables in a glaze made from broth, corn starch, and soy sauce.  So how did the cafeteria prepare their stir-fried vegetables?  They steamed them.  That's right.  No stirring, no frying, no other ingredients.  I'm even willing to overlook the non-traditional cauliflower that was mixed in with the vegetables, but I am not willing to overlook the cooking method. Now don't get me wrong, they were colorful and flavorful, but they were not stir-fried Chinese vegetables.

Speaking of non-traditional Chinese food, I must address the topic of the sweet and sour chicken.  Since when is it acceptable to drizzle deep-fried chicken nuggets in sweet and sour sauce and call it Chinese food?  Not in any Chinese restaurant that I have ever been to!  How hard is it for the chefs in our cafeteria to stir-fry (or even deep-fry) some plain chicken pieces coated in cornstarch and top them with a sweet and sour sauce made from scratch just like a Chinese restaurant or home cook would?  And yes, I am accusing the cooks of not making their sweet and sour sauce from scratch.  The neon-red color of the sauce was more like a red flag.  While most traditional Chinese sweet and sour sauce recipes call for red wine vinegar (don’t even think of using ketchup if you're making it in the traditional way), they don’t call for so much of that ingredient that the food would glow in the dark.

On behalf of all the Canadian students at VIU I would like to offer my most sincere apologies to our Asian exchange students for any insult that our cafeteria has caused to you by claiming that this meal was Chinese.  You can take heart in knowing that you were not the only ones who were offended.