Ants on the Tree; more from Bohemia

[Laurence Horn]

Barry writes from Prague

>BOHEMIAN FOOD
>
>     A Chinese restaurant here in Prague offers:  Hong-Kong style chicken
>(hot), Chicken Paris & O.K. Sauce (hot), Duck Paris & O.K. Sauce (hot),
>Hong-Kong Duck, Shanghai Duck, and Beef Japan (hot).
>    There's also:
>
>THE SPARROW'S NEST (chicken)
>THE SQUIRREL (Veverka)
>PLAYING DRAGON AND PHENIX (octopus, chicken, vegetable)
>ANTS ON THE TREE (noodles with meat)
>
I can't vouch for the others, but the last two have been Chinese restaurant
and cookbook staples for decades.  Dragon and Phoenix (without the verb)
is, I believe, standard usage (at least in restaurants) for a variety of
dishes mixing seafood and meat, while Ants Climb/Climbing a Tree (mayi
shang shu) or its variants are used mostly (in my experience) for dishes
involving cellophane noodles (the Tree) and ground meat (the Ants), with of
course lots of (ideally) hot spices and other ingredients
(soy/sesame/scallions/ginger).  According to my Szechuan cookbook (Mrs.
Chiang's, highly recommended), the former is a typical flowery haute
cuisine type metaphorical name, the latter  a typical peasant image (cf. Ma
Po Dou Fu, "pock-marked Ma's bean curd").  Nice to know the same metaphors
are used in the Czech Republic.

larry