r/Cantonese • u/SinophileKoboD • 2d ago
Culture/Food Sicama, A Manchurian Delicacy
When I was a kid growing up in the 60s, 70s, the best sicama in the world was found at a little Los Angeles Chinatown bakery. Back in those days they had slivers of almond on the sicama that were as big as a man's thumb nail. Now with inflation, you barely get any almonds. There are many ways to write the word for sicama in Chinese. Seeing as it's a Manchurian word and many have attempted to replicate the Manchurian pronunciation of the word using the Chinese characters phonetically. They've even got them packaged for sale in Chinese/Asian supermarkets. I even found it once in a Chinese cafe far from Chinatown.
6
2
u/Psychological_Ebb600 12h ago
Even though most people knew its official name, everybody I knew would call it 馬仔 in HK.
1
u/JBerry_Mingjai 鬼佬 1d ago
Delicacy in the loosest sense of the word… Guess I’m just not a fan, and it’s not from lack of exposure. I’ve lived in Manchuria and had the best they offered there.
1
u/SinophileKoboD 1d ago
That's why I said the best is in L.A.'s Chinatown. It was westernized so it is a much more sweeter taste to it than those found in Chinatown.
1
u/Tango-Down-167 1d ago
沙其馬 Sha Kay Ma or sacima or shachima (Mandarin) , just gifted some from a old school bakery from my hometown in Malaysia.
10
u/SinophileKoboD 2d ago
Oh, if you want to see the series from which this clip came from.
Yum Cha series found at TVBAnywhereNA.
The complete 10 part series has finished dropping at their site.