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HKDave

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Everything posted by HKDave

  1. Coming back to the orginal question, I wonder if jerk might have originally used cassareep, the seasoning syrup made from cassava root. While there are Chinese and East Indian populations in the Caribbean, they arrived later than the Africans and obviously later than the indigenous Amerindians. I'm thinking if this dish existed earlier, it may have used a local seasoning. Anyone seen an old jerk recipe with this ingredient?
  2. For a solo carnivore near the Grand America (a situation I experience twice a year), I agree with Rooney on the New Yorker. Expensive, but first rate. If you're by yourself you can usually get a seat in the bar/cafe area without reservations, and then order off the main restaurant menu. If you want a tablecloth, definitely get reservations. I've been treated very well as a solo diner here. I usually go for rib-eye prepared as a pepper steak, and their chopped salad, and a couple of manly cocktails and a bottle of the well-priced Guigal Cotes du Rhone, a full bottle of which is cheaper than ordering 1/2 bottle of anything else. I'm sure the dishwasher doesn't let the remaining 1/2 bottle go to waste. They've got a website (with decent recipes) here: http://www.gastronomyinc.com/ny/ Closed Sunday, along with much else in downtown SLC. An Italian option is Baci, same owners as New Yorker, also nearby. They have a few bar-style seats at the pizza station that are great for soloists. I did a small SLC report a while ago here: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=38408
  3. Yunnan ham, from China... Good info on ham types (w/photos) here: http://www.foodsubs.com/MeatcureHams.html
  4. In Korea, traditional restaurants put it over a big ceramic pot full of coals, inserted into a hole in the middle of the table. But these days you're more likely to see it on a tabletop butane cooker like the one lower down on this page: http://www.stpaulmercantile.com/glowmast.htm The advantage of having it on the table is that everyone can cook their meat together as they eat it. Korean BBQ tastes best hot off the fire. For stovetop, a grill pan would work fine.
  5. Well, inspired by Capt Hongo's adventures above, on my last trip to Vancouver, the delectable Ms A and I booked ahead and did the chef's table/tasting menu thing at West. We let the sommelier do the pairings for each course. I'll avoid doing a course by course food porn description here (several of the dishes we had are descibed in the posts above) but the food was very, very good. The wine pairings were skilled, but not exactly daring (foie gras w/Sauternes...) and were unrestrained in terms of price. The staff knew I had come from Hong Kong, maybe they think we're all rich here or something. There was one 'miss' - the meat course, where we were talked up to a Canadian Wagyu tenderloin at an additional price. When I asked what the alternative would be, the waiter said 'I don't know'. OK, I get it, I'm supposed to go for the Wagyu. It was good, but the main benefit of Wagyu is the marbling and tenderness. You can see and taste that in the loin or rib, but there's not as much difference in the tenderloin. Nothing wrong with it - still was a fine piece of meat, perfectly cooked and presented - but I knew it wasn't a great idea when I ordered it, and it wasn't. One thing I learned was that I can't eat as much as I used to. Despite requesting less courses than Capt Hongo, we still ran out of room well before dessert, which we had to skip. We were charged for it anyway. The kitchen was impressive. They were slammed all night but everything seemed entirely under control, almost silent. I saw the sous giving one of the line cooks shit for running. Chef Hanksworth hires his line straight out of VCC (local gov't vocational school), he figures they haven't had time to pick up too many bad habits that way. Overall, a great meal, with great wines, but simply too expensive (since you asked, $650 for 2) for me. But I had a look at the regular menu and wine list, and next time - and there will be a next time - I'll choose (fewer of) my own courses and wines and the bill will be quite a bit more rational. More than half of the tasting menu courses were also on the regular menu, and there were much better values available in the wines.
  6. Are you sure it's a Vietnamese product? It sounds very much like the thing often used for grilling Korean bul go kee or kalbi over a fire or charcoal.
  7. The Slate article is just plain wrong on that point. There is far better Chinese regional cuisine in the mainland than there is in Hong Kong. Mainland cites have the demand (in the form of internal migrants) for regional cooking, and skilled regional chefs who work for peanuts. Hong Kong lacks the demand, lacks the chefs, and most regional cooking here is watered down to suit local tastes. I can't think of any street corner here where I can stand and choose authentic food from 3 different regions of China, let alone 6. It's getting better now, but there's still no comparison. Hong Kong isn't even the best place in the world for Cantonese cooking. Vancouver, maybe, where you'll get better quality ingedients prepared with at least the same skill at 1/3 the price. There's good food here, to be sure. There certainly are enough restaurants to choose from. But thanks to extortionate rents, Hong Kong is an expensive food city that has some highlights, and a lot of pricey mediocrity. HK certainly does have a wider variety of non-Chinese restaurants than anywhere in the mainland, or most of Asia for that matter. Edit: grammer
  8. Janet, a good starting point might be the reviews of several Asian spirits (especially sojus) on the Shrine to the Spirits website here: http://www.physics.uq.edu.au/people/nieminen/chiew.html Sojus are not all dry, and the higher end labels are quite drinkable. They're usually served cold. Koreans sometimes mix cold soju and cucumber slices in a teapot as a summertime drink, a cross-cultural version of a Pimm's Cup. I like it. On the other hand, the Chinese liquors are, IMHO, more of an acquired taste, and despite valiant attempts, I don't think I'm ever going to aquire that taste. Obviously there are a couple 100 million people in China that disagree with me, but that may have something to do with the fact that the local liquors here cost a fraction of anything imported. I'm with Gary on this, I'll take the beer instead any day. You might want to add Thailand's Mekhong or Sang Thip 'whiskey' to your list of Asian spirits to try. They're not bad mixed with soda... on a beach... in Thailand.
  9. HKDave

    Cooking for Yourself

    If there's nobody to cook dinner for, I'll head to the bar for a Guinness and a sandwich, hold the sandwich. As much as I enjoy cooking for others, I have almost no interest in cooking for myself. If there ain't no audience, there ain't no show. What song is that from, anyway? Google just failed me.
  10. HKDave

    Saving basil

    I've been doing it tomweir's way. For me, basil lasts at least 6 months this way. It's easy to use as needed, and I haven't had a problem with flavour transfer. If you're getting freezer funk, there may be another problem. Make sure it's cold enough in there (no more than 0 degrees F, or -18 C, use a thermometer rather than trusting the built-in one) and maybe check that you don't have any more duck fat 'science experiments' in the back! If the basil's already frozen, I wouldn't thaw and re-freeze, because that seems to take something out of the flavour. Just put the cubes in a jar, wrapped in clingfilm if you don't want them to stick together.
  11. A 'secret ingredient' in many Middle Eastern dishes is sumac. I've seen it in a few Baba G. recipes, and it's often what gets sprinkled on top as a garnish. It's a reddish powder, looks like cayenne, but tastes completely different. I confess to using both roasted and raw garlic in my baba g. I roast Japanese eggplants (the only kind I can get here) in the oven, and I don't squeeze out the water or remove seeds, that's not needed. Tahini, lemon j., EVOO, sea salt, maybe a pinch of cumin. Granish w/sumac (impossible to get in Hong Kong but I bought some last time I was overseas) and parsley.
  12. My house brands are pretty stable, dictated by a) the insane retail price of liquor in Hong Kong, and b) what's stocked at the duty free locations I most frequently pass through (various China ports, Vietnam, Thailand...) and c) what I think my guests will like, in that order. Blended scotch: Johnny Black. Malt: The Dalmore, when I can find it. This is for me, not guests.... Bourbon: Jim Beam Rum: Havana Club 3 yr old Gin: Tanqueray Export , or Plymouth if Mark or Bob recently visited from the UK. Vodka: Stoli Vermouth: Martini Tequila: Don Julio, only when Susi comes to visit from California. Out at the moment. Plus a bottle of Pimms, Gran Marnier and a cheap US sherry that the delectable Ms. A likes to sip but is supposed to be used for cooking. There's also a bottle of soju (Korean liquour) and a bottle of sake in there. And 35 bottles of wine. Under the terms of my relationship, I'm not allowed more than 36 bottles of wine in our apartment at a time.
  13. African Chicken, Macau style This dish remains popular in the 450 year old former Portuguese colony of Macau, on the China coast. It shows the influences of Portugal on Asian cooking, most notably by their introducing ingedients like peppers and peanuts to Asia. Macau was for centuries a place where East met West, and that is reflected in the cooking there to this day. This recipe is supposed to be the version formerly served at Henri's Galley in Macau. Henri's still exists but the dish there has changed. A similar recipe appeared in an article on Macau in Gourmet Magazine in the '80s. If anyone still has that article, please PM me. A 3 -3 1/2 lb. Chicken, halved, quartered or cut into pieces. Marinade for Chicken 1 tsp minced dried hot chile pepper 1 tsp minced garlic 2 T minced shallot 1 tsp paprika 2 tsp Chinese five-spice powder 2 tsp crumbled dried rosemary Salt & Pepper to taste. Sauce 1 c minced shallot 1/2 c minced garlic 1-1/2 c minced red bell pepper (or smaller qty of hotter red peppers if desired) 1/4 c canola oil 1/2 c sweet paprika 1 c grated coconut 1/2 c natural peanut butter 1-1/2 c chicken stock 2 bay leaves 3 T canola oil 1 baking potato (or 4-5 new potatoes) Mix marinade ingredients, rub into chicken and marinate covered in fridge overnight. Adding a little oil to the marinade helps the rub stick to the chicken. Sweat shallots, garlic and peppers in oil over medium low heat, stirring occasionally, until the peppers are softened. Add paprika, coconut, peanut butter, bay leaf and chicken stock. Bring to a boil, and simmer, stirring occasionally, for about ten minutes. Discard the bay leaves. Keep warm. Heat oil medium high in a frypan and brown the chicken well with the potato cut into one inch cubes. Even better, grill the chicken, and brown potato seperately. Transfer chicken and potatoes to baking dish, spoon 2 cups of the sauce over, and bake in a 350 degree oven for about 30 minutes if in pieces, a little longer if in halves. Finish with remaining sauce, and serve. Keywords: Main Dish, Chicken, Spanish/Portugese ( RG1085 )
  14. African Chicken, Macau style This dish remains popular in the 450 year old former Portuguese colony of Macau, on the China coast. It shows the influences of Portugal on Asian cooking, most notably by their introducing ingedients like peppers and peanuts to Asia. Macau was for centuries a place where East met West, and that is reflected in the cooking there to this day. This recipe is supposed to be the version formerly served at Henri's Galley in Macau. Henri's still exists but the dish there has changed. A similar recipe appeared in an article on Macau in Gourmet Magazine in the '80s. If anyone still has that article, please PM me. A 3 -3 1/2 lb. Chicken, halved, quartered or cut into pieces. Marinade for Chicken 1 tsp minced dried hot chile pepper 1 tsp minced garlic 2 T minced shallot 1 tsp paprika 2 tsp Chinese five-spice powder 2 tsp crumbled dried rosemary Salt & Pepper to taste. Sauce 1 c minced shallot 1/2 c minced garlic 1-1/2 c minced red bell pepper (or smaller qty of hotter red peppers if desired) 1/4 c canola oil 1/2 c sweet paprika 1 c grated coconut 1/2 c natural peanut butter 1-1/2 c chicken stock 2 bay leaves 3 T canola oil 1 baking potato (or 4-5 new potatoes) Mix marinade ingredients, rub into chicken and marinate covered in fridge overnight. Adding a little oil to the marinade helps the rub stick to the chicken. Sweat shallots, garlic and peppers in oil over medium low heat, stirring occasionally, until the peppers are softened. Add paprika, coconut, peanut butter, bay leaf and chicken stock. Bring to a boil, and simmer, stirring occasionally, for about ten minutes. Discard the bay leaves. Keep warm. Heat oil medium high in a frypan and brown the chicken well with the potato cut into one inch cubes. Even better, grill the chicken, and brown potato seperately. Transfer chicken and potatoes to baking dish, spoon 2 cups of the sauce over, and bake in a 350 degree oven for about 30 minutes if in pieces, a little longer if in halves. Finish with remaining sauce, and serve. Keywords: Main Dish, Chicken, Spanish/Portugese ( RG1085 )
  15. The most confusing of all worlds occurs in places like Hong Kong, where a western-style Asian line cook may have learned his trade from a European chef or from an American chef. Depending on which restaurant you're at - or even who is in the kitchen at a given time - an order for medium rare will come out anywhere between bloody (most often), properly cooked or medium. There's almost no common standard.
  16. Got close at one point. Decades ago, as a teenager doing useless volunteer work in the most fucked up country in South America. Got back home weighing about 100 pounds and had open running sores on my legs from malnourishment. I ate plenty of stuff on that gig that I would not eat now. Ever had chicken feet on rice for a week? A month? Later on in life and location, I felt that as a polite guest I had to eat whatever was put in front of me. So I've had whale and horse sashimi, fugu from an unlicensed fugu cook, snake, turtle, pig snout (any food where you can still see the nostril hairs...), blood, tripe, bugs, durian and several other things I'm blocking from my memory. Put it in front of me and I can probably get in down. There are plenty of things I'm glad nobody has offered me yet. I'm in Guangdong Province, the heart of Cantonese cooking, every week, and everything is considered food here. Everything. Rat restaurants? Got 'em. Endangered species? The more endangered, the better. There are even restaurants still selling live (banned) civit cat, the animal thought responsible for the jump of the SARS virus to humans. Would you like a global epidemic with your meal? But last year I discovered my absolute, can't do it, even getting one bite down is impossible limit. In a French restaurant in Saigon. The culprit? Andouillette. The horror...
  17. HKDave

    Emeril on steak

    Thanks Dave! This is hard for me to imagine since I've never bought a rib roast before. But I'll have to try it out. Is it possible to cut the bones yourself at home? Do you need some sort of saw to do this? Not easily, because you have to cut through those thick rib bones the long way, and that's a slog. You could try it yourself with a butcher's handsaw (basically a hacksaw, about $30) but it would take a huge amount of time and you would likely make a mess. Your butcher can cleanly turn a bone-in roast into bone-in steaks with her bandsaw (that noisy vertical silver machine with 'ButcherBoy' on the side) in just a few seconds. If this is a problem, just start with a boneless rib roast instead of a bone-in. But I like that bone...
  18. HKDave

    Emeril on steak

    It's true. I did this for years in Canada. All you need is a good knife. I can't stand watching Emeril but I find myself using a lot of his recipes.... Ask for a well-marbled bone-in rib roast, from the 'prime' (smaller, more tender) end of the big rib primal cut. A 2-bone roast will be maybe 6" thick. I'm not 100% sure if these terms apply in the USA, but 'prime' rib is the first 3 or 4 ribs from the small end of the roast, and 'standing' rib is the next 3 or 4 at the bigger end. Then cut the bones off in one slab for a great BBQ-able or roastable rack of beef bones, and slice the rest into rib steaks of whatever thickness you like. Or alternately keep the bones on, and slice into 3" thick 'cowboy' bone-in rib steaks, which you grill or blacken and finish in the oven, and can serve sliced for sharing between 2 carnivores. Only trick is if you want individial portion bone-in rib steaks, which is my favorite cut, you have to talk the butcher into running it through their saw. If you've got a vacuum bag rig, you can then seal the steaks and they'll keep for weeks (heck, they'll actually improve - I've had steaks up to 3 months old this way) in the fridge, no need to freeze. Strangely, in Hong Kong, a rib roast usually costs MORE than rib steaks, and it's not easy to find one! Roasts are a premium cut here because few people have ovens or BBQs, so most meat is sold in small cuts suitable for Chinese style cooking. The same concept usually applies to chicken - buying whole ones and spending a few minutes cutting them up is usually a lot cheaper than buying parts. Plus you get all those great bones for stock. I find that the few remaining supermarket butchers love to be asked to do special stuff. I always make friends with my butcher. That way my hamburger comes from the fresh-ground stuff in the cooler, not the day-old stuff on display....
  19. Word. If I'm grumpy, the delectable Ms. A will brightly ask "How about making cassoulet?" (or jambalaya, or roasted garlic soup made from fresh stock with goat cheese croutons, or...) knowing that a nice complicated dish will keep me busy humming a happy tune in the kitchen and safely out of trouble.
  20. Scott, I'm not arguing, I'm simply making a quantifiable observation. I'm now reading the WSET advanced certificate course text and reviewing their mock exams, and they are without question heavily oriented toward old-world and especially French wine. I've also been talking with F+B friends here that have done WSET courses, who have advised me of the same. I don't think this is a bad thing, it's just that I'm equally interested in learning about New World wine, so the object of my post was to find out if the ISG courses differed in this regard. It appears I may have upset you somehow, if so my apologies. 'T', thanks kindly for your response, you've answered my question.
  21. The Fraggles ate the radishes. The Doozers built with radishes. The Gorgs grew the radishes.
  22. It shouldn't be a problem. Use your nose - if the board smells fresh, I'd just keep using it and let the veg oil work out of the wood on its own over time. The next time the wood seems to want oiling, use lots of soap and hot water (cleanser if it's really gucky), let it dry, then mineral oil. If the board smells at all rancid, go to soap and water etc right now. But if the oil's not rancid, there's no big risk. The wood will be happy with veg oil, the issue is just avoiding rancid oil coming into contact with your food. I'd follow phaelon56's suggestion to use mineral spirits only if it really won't clean up with soap/vinegar/whatever else, plus I was sure I'd be sanding the surface off afterward. Edit: spelling, again...
  23. Not sure I understand what you're saying. While the Brits do like their claret, there's a lot of decent 'New World' wine being consumed in the UK, so it seems to me that an open-minded UK wine trade qualification would still require reasonably broad knowledge. Also, according to WSET's site, their courses (in 2002 - time to update the home page, WSET guys) were run in 4 languages and 24 countries - including here in Hong Kong. They present themselves as much more than just a UK trade qualification. Back to my original question - anyone know how WSET and International Sommelier compare, especially as to ratio of France/rest of the world content?
  24. How were the International Sommelier courses on France vs the rest of the world? That's my concern with WSET program - their textbook has 170 pages on European wines (80 of which are on France), and only 26 pages on the entire rest of the world.
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