HKDave

Macau's African Chicken and Portuguese Chicken are variations on a theme. The former is darker and hotter thanks to the chili; the latter milder and soupier. While Portuguese Chicken used to be seasoned with curry powder, these days, as served in HK's cheap cha chaan tengs (casual diners, where the dish is ubiquitous), it's mainly just turmeric. I haven't encountered it made with condensed chicken soup; the liquid is usually coconut milk and chicken broth. If it has cheese on it, it'll be a bit of bland (and cheap) mozzerella or the like, not parmesan. That said, Kevin Pang's Mom's recipe sounds delicious. The Pangs' "Very Chinese Cookbook" is worthy. Their family left HK in the booming '80s, and their recipes sometimes reflect that, in a good way.

I had no idea when I posted the above that it would become something of a standard for this dish, re-appearing sometimes with little or no alteration, or attribution to Gourmet, in articles, blogs and even a cookbook over the years. If you searched the web for an African Chicken recipe in 2004, I guess this is where you ended up. In retrospect, it sounds like a ridiculous recipe. A cup of minced shallot? Half a cup of minced garlic? I later tracked down a copy of the Gourmet magazine this appeared in (August 1991), and yes, what I posted was more or less correct. But as I said upthread, by 2004 Henri's Galley was using a different recipe. I still spend time in Macau, and in the decades since the original post I've encountered several versions of the dish, including two accompanied by claims that their (different) families had invented it (both in post-WW2 Macau; it's not an ancient dish). That's a dispute I don't want to get involved in, but the Gourmet recipe I posted was nothing like either. So it's time for an update. The dish seems to have 2 main schools... with peanuts or peanut butter in the sauce; or else just coconut-and-chili based, without peanuts. Neither of the "inventor" dishes had peanuts, and the version taught and served at the IFT, Macau's government tourism school, also doesn't. Me, I prefer it with peanut. Here are simpler recipes, the first with peanut, the second without: This is more-or-less the current Henri's Galley recipe (from Macau News, March 2023): 1 small Chicken (abt 1kg), halved and flattened 2-3 cloves garlic, chopped 100g med-hot fresh red chili pepper, chopped (see note below) 1 litre chicken stock 1 small plum tomato, chopped 2t tomato paste 1T peanut butter 30g ground coconut cooking wine Olive oil for frying Brown chicken well in a saute pan. Set chicken aside. In the pan you used for the chicken, soften garlic and chili in olive oil. Deglaze with a glug of the wine, then add the stock and all remaining ingredients. Add the chicken back to the pan, bring to a simmer Lid on, cook +/- 12 min (depends on chicken size) til done (can also chuck in oven) And this is more-or-less the current IFT recipe (from a demo by an instructor, so not exact): Sauce: 1 red med-hot chili pepper (see note below) 3 cloves garlic 1 shallot grated coconut lemon zest, paprika, white pepper, salt to taste Puree all above w/ 1 can coconut milk 1 small (abt 1kg) chicken, halved (IFT serves boneless in their restaurant, but I wouldn't) Brown chicken in butter in an oven-safe pan, then add the above sauce. Bring to a simmer, then put the pan in a 200c oven for 15 min. Note for both recipes: the red chili pepper used here is similar in size and heat to to a red "Anaheim" chili pepper in North America. If needed, you can sub red bell pepper for colour/volume, with a smaller quantity of a hotter pepper (or a red pepper powder, such as cayenne) to taste for the heat. And why is it called "African", despite being invented in Macau? I used to assume it was because of the from-Africa peanuts, but finding out that the dish probably didn't originally include peanuts quashes that. The most plausible story, of many I've heard, was that when it was first put on a menu here, the restaurant wanted a name that warned people that it was spicy (by Macau standards), and it was thought "African" would be exotic enough to do that - despite the fact that chilies are from South America, not Africa.

If a vendor doesn't say otherwise, it's almost always Turkish bay. "Spice Islands" is the only widely-available brand I'm aware of whose bay leaves are California bay laurel, and it would be nice if they clearly labelled it as such, but they don't. I have no problem cooking with either; I just use far less when it's California.

Here in Hong Kong, "congee" is the English name. It's "juk" in Cantonese. Here's a good article on the origin of the word: https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/2119163/where-word-congee-comes-answer-may-surprise-you

If the product has been hanging long enough to have cured and you're now at the weight you want, I'd suggest the next step is to taste it. If you're happy with the result, vac-pack.

The recipes in Ruhlman and Polcyn's "Charcuterie", to cite one widely-used beginner book, are in the 2-3 week range for 30% weight loss in hog casings (which I think you're using? hard to tell from the photo), and maybe a week more for something in beef middles. And that agrees with what you've just found. In the real world, the time will vary with the amount of moisture in the recipe, the humidity of the cure room, and the diameter of the casings, so that's why we weigh.

Bumping an old thread... In the end I bought a Braun 600w "Turbo", the made-in-Spain big brother of the one in andiesenji's post here: https://forums.egullet.org/topic/80222-immersion-hand-blenders/?do=findComment&comment=1089108 It came with a whisk, a beaker, and a 500ml mini-bowl-chopper thing. 14 years later, I'm still using it. Braun still make similar models, now in Eastern Europe, so parts are available. The top of the mini-bowl-chopper broke a few years ago, and I found the part at ereplacementparts.com for under US$10. Now the main wand thing is getting shaky, so that's the next part I'll need. The all-plastic shaft version I have doesn't seem to be available any more, but a stainless one now is. And I should probably get a new mini-bowl-chopper blade. It's also available. Yes, at some point it's cheaper to buy a whole new rig, but I don't like throwing out things that still work, especially when everything newer is invariably junkier. Observations: - I use the "turbo" speed 90% of the time, "regular" speed 10% of the time, and the variable-speed dial never. - I don't regret spending more for a more powerful model. - The plastic shaft has held up to blending hundreds of hot soups, and doesn't scratch non-stick. I like. - I didn't use the beaker for years. Then I found the 2-minute-immersion-blender-mayo trick. Now I use it regularly. - The 500ml chopper bowl is incredibly useful. I don't have a food processor any more. - Braun sell these with less-useful 350ml choppers in North America, where they assume everyone owns a food processor. In the rest of of the world, we usually don't. I'd want the 500ml. - Braun has been through 3 different owners (currently it's owned by DeLonghi, who also own Kenwood) since my unit was made.

Three weeks is a fairly normal length of time to get this kind of weight loss with salami in hog casings. What do you want to achieve by aging it longer?

1 - assuming your curing chamber wasn't too cold, you fermented your salami; your neighbour dehydrated his (because not much fermentation happening at 4 degrees Celsius). There should be a difference in taste. 2 - doesn't make much difference. Did you soak your casings in non-chlorinated water, and mix your M-600 with lukewarm non-chlorinated water? That makes a difference. 3 - I'd say there was no point taking them further. That's at the upper end of weight loss for most formulations.

Joe, did you see my post (from 2011!) above? If you're getting liquid fat, it probably means things got too warm at some point. Re moving it to the fridge, what weight loss were you aiming for? For most dry salami, I'd probably bag and fridge at around 33% weight loss. Over 40% will usually give you pretty hard salami. Re dark vs light, most people (and I) cure in the dark. Not sure about the science. Re vac-bagging, obviously moisture loss stops as soon as you bag it. I don't think you need to worry about further aging in this case. One thing I've noticed with vac-bagging is that if you've got a "case hardened" salami, where the outside is hard from moisture loss but the inside is still a bit soft, vac-bagged for a time lets things even out.

B.cereus won't grow in the fridge. It grows between about 4c and 50c (per US CDC), although most health departments say 4c-60c. It reproduces fastest around 28-37c, hence the need for reasonably rapid cooling after cooking. The main somewhat-common food pathogens that can grow in the fridge are listeria and yersinia, but both of those are killed by cooking or pasteurization. The problem with b. cereus is that it can survive cooking (and re-heating).

There is no special safety issue with leaving rice in the fridge for a few days. The main safety issue with rice is that it may contain pathogic spores that can survive cooking, and which could then multiply if the cooked rice were to be held for several hours under 60c/140f, but still warm, like on a buffet. If you have a rice cooker with a "keep warm" function, it's holding the rice above this temperature for safety. The solution is to cool cooked rice reasonably quickly. Health Dept. guidelines here, where we eat a lot of rice, say that cooked rice should be cooled from 60c to 20c "as quickly as possible (within 2 hours)", and then to 4c (fridge temp.) in under 4 hours. Personally, I aim for 2 hours from cooked to fridge temperature throughout. Spreading it out on a tray greatly speeds cooling. Note that I'm talking about safety here, not esthetics.

Cathy Erway's "The Food of Taiwan" is pretty good, and widely available. I'd also recommend Tsung-Yun Wan's "Home-style Taiwanese Cooking". Both have recipes for niu rou mian (beef noodle soup).

This is pretty much correct. The variety is always piper negrum. "Tellicherry" are the 3 largest grades of Indian black pepper. They are: Tellicherry Garbled Special Extra Bold (TGSEB), 97-98% larger than 4.75mm diameter, no more than 0.5% "extraneous matter", no more than 11% moisture, Tellicherry Garbled Extra Bold, same other than 4.25mm+ Tellicherry Garbled , ditto, 4mm+ Malabar pepper comes from the same plants, but is made up of smaller and/or unsorted peppercorns. "Malabar Garbled Grade 1 (MG-1)" is roughly the same spec as Tellicherry for corns larger than 3.25mm. Lower Malabar grades have no minimum size specs and allow increasingly higher amounts of "extraneous matter". With (reasonably fresh; old corns are always garbage) black pepper, size matters. The reason Tellicherry commands a premium is that larger corns have a citrus/floral aroma and milder heat; smaller corns are hotter, but one-dimensional. The aromas in the larger corns are largely lost with cooking, and larger corns are a lot more expensive, so I use them for finishing, and cheaper/smaller corns for cooking. As an aside, the largest sizes don't work in all pepper grinders. I have seen (and, sadly, bought) pepper being sold as TGSEB that obviously wasn't, so if you're paying for Tellicherry, knowing which grade and having a trustworthy supplier is essential. I haven't found one here, so these days I'm using Tellicherry-sized, but ungraded, peppercorns from a small domestic supplier in Vietnam. They're at least as good.

UK retail sausage meat is spiced. It's 70-90% fairly fatty pork, plus flour or starch as a binder, sometimes some onion, usually mildly seasoned with pepper, nutmeg and maybe a bit of sage. If you're subbing shoulder, I would add fat. Generic US pork shoulder is under 20% fat. UK sausage meat is probably 30-40% fat.