The Stuffed Peppers at Yangtze in Ottawa were very pretty too look at, but their flavor wasn’t great and I only gave them a 2 out of 5 Rating.
I love little appetizers of stuffed and pan-fried Bell Pepper Chunks. Mostly, though, I have only eaten them after making them at home. They do appear occasionally on Dim Sum menus, but, rather sadly, I think, they are far from being a standard item. The ones you see pictured above were served to me at the Yangtze Dining Lounge in Ottawa’s Chinatown and, though they were very attractive and nicely plated, the execution wasn’t all that great.
The relatively few times I have seen this particular dish in Dim Sum restaurants, it has usually involved a filling of either Pork, or Shrimp, and usually some sort of sauce is served over the pan-fried delicacies. Black Bean Sauce is popular, but Oyster Sauce is used as well.
The Stuffed Peppers at Yangtze were made with fairly small, one-bite chunks, which are about ideal for this dish, in my opinion. They were reasonably liberally stuffed, and pan-fried, filling side down first, and then finished face-up. The pepper itself was properly cooked, being tender, but still very slightly crisp, and it was nicely browned to sweetness in just a few spots underneath.
The filling, unfortunately, was not nearly as good. Unusually, Yangtze used both Shrimp and Pork together in their rendition but, despite what should be a double source of flavor, the blended result was very bland to the point of being almost tasteless. There was very little seasoning, not even a decent amount of salt, and the end result was very disappointing.
Had something like Black Bean Sauce been included as the pepper chunks were being cooked face side up, the dish might have been improved. There was Soy Sauce on the table, as well as some Chili Oil, but neither of these helped overmuch. Yangtze has generally served very good decent dishes at most of my visits but, really, this was a rather poor execution of a very simple dish.