I have been watching the Food Network this evening, so my mind has wandered to some of the food that I ate while in China.

You hear over and over again on the Food Network that presentation of food is important and that we eat with our eyes. I thought of how much different the presentation of food is in China versus here in America. For many Americans, the food presentation in China may be offensive. We are not used to seeing complete animals on our plates.

One of the big differences in presentation is how the Chinese serve fish. You often see a complete fish on your plate. The fish is usually very fresh and you can often even pick out which live fish you want to have cooked for you.

Tonight I will share a few fish from the trip.

This fish was served during the first lunch of the trip. I really like this presentation, and have seen it on several of my trips to China. The sauce that the fish is cooked in a similar to a sweet and sour sauce. The way that this fish looks after it is artfully sliced and cooked is incredible. Plus, the taste is really good. The fish is also very easy to eat with chopsticks as the pieces are bite size and just firm enough to hold together as you remove them from the fish. The fish was the star of a wonderful lunch with a former colleague and her family.

This next fish is also beautifully presented. The meat of the fish had great consistency and was very flaky. The flavor was also very nice. We had this one for lunch in Suzhou. After our lunch we went and looked at the tank room to look at some of the other fish that we could have had for lunch. They had a lot of variety.

On one of our last evenings in China our dinner included this nice fish. Shanghai is at the mouth of a river flowing into the Pacific and the local cuisine includes a lot of fish and other seafood. I really like the presentation of this fish.

We do not often see fish heads on our plates in America, but some of the best meat of the fish is from the head. The cheeks of the fish are very tender and flavorful and they were the first bits that I ate from this fish. They are very easy to remove with chopsticks when the fish is cooked properly.

Of course when you are eating a complete fish you also have to look out for the bones. However, using chopsticks it is easy to remove the fine little bones as you eat the delicate flesh of the fish. Here we see the fish near the completion of the meal after we had removed large quantities of delicious meat.

For me, I really like this presentation. The fish are visually stunning and the flavors are complex as the whole fish has been cooked and not just a small portion.

Steven