Ben Hong
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Posts posted by Ben Hong
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Very high heat.
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This is a generic homestyle dish where anything at all can be put on top of rice and cooked.: beef and ginger, haum yu and meat patty, chicken and mushrooms, etc. Let your imagination run.....
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The only animal protein/meat that I remember eating was yu sang, raw fish dish at a celebration. Of the twenty+ people at the party, only 3 others beside myself tried it.
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we usually don't eat freshwater fish raw, except some.
I admit that there are some Japanese who like to eat any fresh fish raw.
Beggin' your pardon, Hiryuki-san. You are absolutely right in that only some Japanese eat any kind of fish raw. A few years ago, I hosted a few Japanese diplomatic types at a posh salmon fishing lodge. Hmmm, the salmon and trout that were caught disappeared without ever seeing the grill or stove.
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Fruit is always served at the end of the main meal (supper). Serve whatever is in prime season. Fruit at the end of a Chinese family meal (also in restaurants) may consist of a platter of orange, melon , pear, apple, etc. cut in wedges to be passed around. The routine is to eat them out of hand.
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Chris, a certain amount of free juice is not necessarily a bad thing. As kids we used to fight over the juice to pour on our rice, my kids were the same way.
Bamboo, by its very nature, does not create as much condensation as metal does. A bigger bamboo steamer will solve some of your problem. Dejah's solution of wrapping a dish will solve all of it.
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There is actually another that I can recall from my parasitology courses at university , oh so many years ago. Chlonorchis sinensis or the so-called Chinese liver fluke is usually benign if the infestation in the human host is light to moderate. Heavy infestations are more problematic. Although it is commonly called the Chinese liver fluke the parasite is prevalent all through East and Southeast Asia. Most Chinese do not eat raw fish on a regular basis.
Enjoy your sashimi.
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They are intestines, but are chewy like rubber bands.
Kent, all birds, except for a few like the the American woodcock scolopax or philohela minor have gizzards. Gizzards or in Cantonese "kin", are where the food is predigested with the aid of grit that every bird needs.
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This may sound like a silly question... but wouldn't the pork be tough if you just steamed it for 20-30 minutes? I thought spare-ribs were a tough cut that required long braising (i.e. 1 hour +) ?
Thanks!
There are two approaches to steaming black bean spareribs. Depending on the diners, I prefer homestyle ribs to be on the chewy side. Restaurant style calls for very young ribs and making use of the cartilage ends which are generally more tender. If you are using the long boney ribs from normal supermarket offerings and desire a tender meat, let bicarb be your friend. In fact I suspect a lot of restaurants use that ploy.
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Ling your reputation as an accomplished cook and as an upstanding member of the eG is beyond reproach. If there were errors in the recipe, I am positive that they were errrors of transcription, not intention.
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Back in the village a lot of mothers and grandmothers used to chew whatever they were having for dinner and feed it to the weanling. Sounds gross but maybe a lot more nutritious and chemical free than modern bottled baby foods.
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The Quebecois have their cretons. Addictive!!
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The question is centered around China and its food compared to the "west" because much of what is eaten in either place is very different from the other.
Different yes , but mainly in the preparation as 95% of the ingredients are the same. We Chinese are not a complicated people and we all abide by the same admonishments that all mothers from all races and cultures lay on their children "Eat it, it's good for you", (implicit is the threat "or else!!) . If a particular dish seems strange and a kid decides that he really doesn't care for it, nothing much is said about it because it won't go to waste. Eventually we all grow up and our tastes change and we learn to actually like foods that were offensive when we were young, whether by deliberate attempts or by osmosis from watching others eat the stuff with relish. For example, as a child my daughter abhorred the idea of eating olives, but now in her adulthood she craves them as much as I do.
But jaysuss you ask complicated questions, too much analysis and introspection usually destroys my appetite for a certain food/dish.
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What kinds of things will most Chinese from China as opposed to ethnic Chinese who were raised in Western culture not eat?
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They are steamed pork dumplings with broth inside.
Most difficult to do well.
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Saan choy = gross vegetable. Gaaacccckkkk. I'd rather eat okra...NOT.
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Sue-On Mui, shiso (Toysaan: Doo Thloo, sounds like purple beard) can be grown very easily. But they propogate like mad and behave like weeds so be warned. A lot of seed catalogues now carry the seeds.
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Ah Leung, as Dejah says your soup is indeed a meal by itself. As for me, I have not travelled far enough yet to have ever encountered a winter melon soup incorporating beans in it. But it could "work" I suppose.
My view on the thing is that the salient point of any winter melon soup is the essential clear broth, otherwise why would one do a first blanching of the bones and meats? Beans, if not done properly would really cloud the issue.
I always thought that mut zho (Toysanese: "mit doh") is dried fig.
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i don't think that is tofu. looks like Kao Fu to me, which is wheat gluten.
It sure looks like kao fu.
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Health inspectors can be a real pain in the @@#*.
I'd like to stick their (cold) thermometers up their @@#* sometimes.
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Ideally, I would like to pluck all birds that I cook. But the reality of hunting is that sometimes birds are too badly shot, so skin would be the procedure then. There is nothing like the taste of some wild gamebirds to sharpen your appreciation for the "natural" unadulterated taste that is still to be found by us lucky few.
"Sahn gai gook fan".
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Why bother fixing them? If you live anywhere near a Chinese/Asian store, you can replace for $10+/- If you tried fixing them, like I have and it leaked like a sonovagun, you are always going to be worried that it will crack again.
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Oyster sauce ,like fish sauce were known to the southern Chinese almost forever. The origins of fish sauce are pretty well centred in and around SE Asia. The origins of oyster sauce are a little more muddy
.My complaint was never against oyster sauce per se, just the over use of the stuff by everyone, usually as a shortcut. Why, even my own usage of it has increased over the past 45 years, mainly for expediency.
Let's as adults, be perfectly frank here. Since the MSG "scare" of about 35 years ago when some fool published a hocus paper on the deleterious effects of MSG (as found in Chinese food) on people everyone clamoured to have MSG free Chinese food, while they were gorging on flavoured potato chips, tortilla chips, canned meals, TV dinners, etc. all foods that contain, on a volume/weight basis much more MSG than Chinese food. Much of this xenophobic attention was focused on Chinese food, while almost everyone else got off scott-free. Just read the labels, folks.
But what has this to do with oyster sauce, you ask? Everything, because with the exception of one or two premium brands every bottle of oyster sauce has MSG or its derivatives as a major flavouring component. Again, read the labels. Soooo, what's a resourceful Chinese cook going to do when his food is criticised as bland and flavourless? Yep, EUR-FRIKKEN-EKA, Y'all. Ta-daa, oyster sauce to the rescue. Now when asked, the same Chinese restauranteurs will roll their eyes and with aplomb, answer "No we don't use MSG". And he will be absolutely right, technically.
So, there you have it! I've let the cat (live and unboiled) out of the bag. It's all about avoiding the pointing fingers of the gwei loh public and levelling the playing field. If you haven't got the time, inclination, or skill to do things from scratch (it's alright, btw) and you are going to use MSG, don't beat around the bush, come out and say so, like Dejah does and I do sometimes. A tiny bit of MSG will allow you to retain all the clean natural flavours of your dishes without muddying them up like oyster sauce will do. (Meat trimmings and bones are so cheap these days, why not make concentrated stock?)
A little goes a long way.
Curing Lop Yuk (Chinese Bacon)
in China: Cooking & Baking
Posted · Edited by Ben Hong (log)
Chris your lop yook looks like the best that can be found in any Asian market and I am sure that they taste as good as they look.
BUT, it's not the meat that's of interest to me, but your vinyl RECORDS. My esteem for you has escalated by a few notches after seeing those albums. I like my CDs but I LOVE my vinyl.