盤菜英文係咩???

盤菜= "Poon Choi"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poon_Choi


Emperor Catering-Poon Choi

The translation of poon choi – a basin of food – may not sound lip-smacking delicious but it is a feast fit for an emperor that you won't soon forget. Though "choi" literally means vegetable, it also is a generic term for food. Cooks today certainly don't take it literally since it's more likely to contain an abundance of meat and seafood than vegetables.

As the story goes, the last Southern Song Dynasty court fled as far south as they could go to escape the invading Mongols and stayed temporarily in Hong Kong. The Song had troupes stationed in Yuen Long at the time and hoped to regroup and claim back the throne. The Yuen Long villagers wanted to honour the child emperor with an appropriately sized banquet, so they cooked up the best of foods and then had to resort to using large wooden wash basins (properly cleaned, we assume) to serve the huge meal. Thus was born poon choi, a dish of nine individual layers of ingredients, nine being an imperial number referring to the first Xia Dynasty emperor's division of China into nine territories governed by local chiefs.

Poon choi is a dish of southern China (anywhere south of the Yangtze River) and can contain a wide variety of ingredients depending on what is available locally. It is highly likely that the lowest layers will contain radish, and ingredients such as dried shrimp, eel, pig skin and tofu as these absorb the juices of top layer foods such as chicken, pork, fish, fresh prawns and mushrooms. Occasionally you may have a layer of green vegetables but it's not considered polite to poke down through the layers to get at them or your favourite bit of food either.

Traditionally, everyone eats standing around the table, usually in groups of eight since that number is a homonym of "faat" which signifies wealth. At big festivities there are several "rounds" of poon choi brought out of the kitchen and people are free to come and go and eat as much as they like.

Photo Credit: Valley
http://www.exploresaikung.com/people/PoonChoi.html

Poon Choi.

盤菜英文係直譯 Pun Tsoi

2006-12-30 15:53:18 補充：
圍村盆菜網：http://yl.com.hk/puntsoi/