Chaoshou

Chaoshou
Chinese	酸辣抄手
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin suānlà chāoshǒu

Suanla chaoshou is a dish of Szechuan cuisine that consists of a spicy sauce over steamed, meat-filled dumplings. Suanla means "sour spicy," and chaoshou is what these particular large wontons are called in the Chinese province of Sichuan.

Chao shou translates literally as "folded hands"; in Sichuan dialect this refers to a style of dumpling whose square wrapper is folded into two points, one crossed over the other. According to Peter Hessler (Beijing correspondent for The New Yorker and former Peace Corps teacher), "In most parts of Sichuan, you can walk into a restaurant and order chaoshou without making a sound. Cross your arms and they will understand exactly what you want." One native speaker claims the Sichuan-only name for these dumplings may have originated at one time by a dialectic transposition, i.e. "chao shou" was originally "shou chao", meaning "hand-folded".

A restaurant in Cambridge, Massachusetts named Mary Chung's serves a dish called Suan La Chow Show, which are dumplings in a spicy soy ginger sauce on top of a bed of raw mung bean sprouts. This popular dish is slightly different from the authentic Suanla Chaoshou, which has a hot garlicky peanut sauce on top of dumplings. A local restaurant reviewer noted the first version of the dish was introduced to Cambridge as Shanghai street food, by a nearby restaurant, Colleen's Chinese Cuisine, where Mary Chung worked in the 1970's.