Ben Hong

You really don't need head(s).

Errr...5-spice powder with salt fish and meat patty? Truly Chinese cuisine is evolving before our very eyes. Btw. that fish that Prasantin posted is definitely NOT sturgeon. I don't know what it is from the picture as it is distorted by the preservation process (but I am not an ichthyologist).

Hmmm. Interesting question. If I were cooking a meal that was to be consumed by mostly older Chinese folk, I would try to stay as "authentic" as possible. Another scenario is cooking "real" Toyshan dishes. But if my party is younger and mostly non-Chinese, I will adapt, change, improvise, "improve", and generally ad lib, in the Chinese style, of course. Good food well prepared is good food, whatever the appellation or "style" or category. Otherwise, how is cuisine or any other art form going to evolve? For example, most people would not associate cold salads with Chinese food, but has anyone ever tasted a salad made of bean sprouts, green onions, some celery topped off with some leftover chicken? Top it off with a dressing of light soy sauce, a bit of sugar and rice vinegar, red chili flakes, sesame oil and you have a lunch that really, really is tasty. It's Chinese because it's made by Chinese hands. Early in my impoverished youth living in a northern Quebec mining town, there were not many veggies to be had. To be sure, there were cabbage, carrots, turnips, onions, celery, iceberg lettuce, potatoes, and parsnips, not what one would call "Chinese" or exotic, but the family had "Chinese" food, nonetheless. Lo foh soups of carrots, a few pork bones and a piece of chin pei; substitute turnips for lobok in gnow nam lo bok, potato soup with pork bones and jah choy, black bean potato (or squash) and spare ribs, etc. Foods that I still make and consider as authentic as any.

Great looking results, Ah Leung. I have made this three times this year, BUT I just trussed the bird as watertight as possible after "stuffing" and make a "nest" in 5-7 lbs. of preheated coarse salt that is in an all metal pot, or wok. Then I lightly moisten the bird with water (no wrapping) and put it into the nest, cover and bake for the required time. When done, use two sturdy spatulas and lift the bird out onto a plate, brush off the loose salt. The salt that is next to the skin has formed a crust, which you would peel away and discard, leaving a crisp, dry skin.

Try to find your way north of the 401. Richmond Hill, Markham, Scarborough, etc. have some large Chinese owned Strip Malls that have become the new "Chinatowns" and each mall has at least 3-4 Chinese restaurants. In one of the threads in this forum (Toronto), you will find Jan Wong's list of the "Ten best" restaurants (Chinese) in Toronto. The thread is titled "Dim Sum in Toronto, the best Places" about 7 threads down. For good (sometimes great ) and cheap food head for the Old Chinatown of Dundas/Spadina. Just don't expect folded linen napkins and white tablecloths.

I took a look at the recipe. Calling for 1/2 cup of brown bean sauce. That's almost 3/4 jar. It seems a lot for cooking a pig's head. It also calls for 1 cup of honey for basting. It also seems a lot too. And just one tiny teaspoon of five spice powder. Seems disproportionated. ←

Spoken like a true Hoi Saan Moi. Me too Another quickie dish that really soothes me is steamed eggs with gow choi, haam ha.

A lot of people are using oyster sauce pretty indiscriminately now as a "boost' in flavouring up a dish. The propensity to do so has a lot to do with the recommendations in a lot of the new cookbooks. One would think that with all the "liu" that RJ has put into his rice, oyster sauce would be more of a "mask' instead of enhancement. With the amount of liu depicted, a bit of soy sauce is all that I would need. I want to taste the constituents and not have them overwhelmed by oyster sauce. It is a "rice" dish after all. Besides the usual lop cheong, lop yook, and mushrooms, my favourite green crunchies are diced yard long beans, or diced jicama, or diced kohlrabi. I also like to top off my bowl of this rice with a few bits of green onions. The best version of this dish is made with dried duck (lop app), as the duck fat is sinfully and unctuously delicious. The dish would be just as tasty, maybe tastier, when cooked together with the liu on top of the rice . It certainly would be softer to the palate. We call this rice dish "yau fan", and I normally associate it with the fall around the harvest in China.

I really can't give an answer...yet, because I haven't tried it all But I will tell you that it's not for the fancy presentation that I go there, it's the plain homey goodness of the food.

As you all can see, I get on to this site very late at night, just before bed time. Now here I am trying my darndest to shed a few pounds by abstaining from eating midnight snacks. It doesn't take a whole NASA team of rocket scientists to deduce that my mission is nigh on impossible, what with Tepee' s posts and lovely (drool) pictures (slobber) and (mmm) good prices. Unfortunately, I can't just put on my slippers and slide down to the hawker centre (McDonalds does not count, it is not food), so in order to surreptitiously fill my gut (sshh, mustn't wake Linda) I am doomed to a plain bowl of bran flakes and yoghurt gaaAAaKkkk. From now on, I'll try to open Tepee's posts only after a big meal.

double post

Mimi and Pho Hung are good places but Pho Hung is inconsistent as heck. My favourite place for Vietnamese food (besides pho) is Saigon Palace, lots of food prepared well and at a great price. Their extensive menu is real home cooking and my, those ladies in the kitchen can really cook.

Right you are, Sue-On Moi. And, in my 6+decades of eating "Chinese" food, I never heard of using lop yoke in lo mein. Must be that there "fusion" (or is it "fission"?) thing young folks are always talking about.

Haha. On the menu, there was a mention that the lobsters were Maine lobsters. In reality, they are New Brunswick lobsters. We have been supplyng the traditional markets for Maine lobsters, ie: NYC, Boston, etc. sporadically now for quite some time . Maine is adjacent to the south of us, and lobsters in southern Maine waters were hit with a disease these past 2-3 years, shutting off that supply. So, they buy and sell New Brunswick lobsters, which are the same thing...but healthy. That cold Canadian water sure makes for a delicious, and healthy, crustacean. I am so glad that those "Maine" lobsters are so well received. OTOH, TP, what you have posted got my salivary and gastric juices into the free flow mode. Stunning!!!

Anyone hear tell of Tommy again?? Or did he get Shanghai'd in Hong Kong???

Why pickled indeed?

Or start with firm dou fu.

I would love to say that my trips to Toronto were of the "culinary discovery" variety, but, not so lucky. But, I do incorporate a certain number of Chinese dinners/yumcha when I am with my kids who work in the city, and if some of the HK, Chinese, or Taiwanese diplomatic types that I work with "treat" me . With the latter, we never go to Chinatown, as their tastes are more "refined" than mine . My children love the prices and the funkiness of the place though. If I am near Chinatown for lunch or breakfast, I normally just pop into one of the noodle houses, Goldstone and Ho Kin being two of my favourites on Spadina. There is a little dumpling place on the west side of Spadina, halfway between College and Dundas, that really gives good value in quantity and quality. Some of the better seafood places in and around Spadina and Dundas are really quite good, but consistency in all places is a problem. I have been to a few of the places on Jan Wong's list (Globe and Mail, above), and while they are very, very good, they are virtually inaccessible to me when I go to TO on short business trips. Soooo...if I stay in a downtown hotel, I am "doomed" to eating in Chinatown (if I want Chinese food) .

I am in Toronto at the moment and I cannot help but agree with comments about the Bright Pearl. It's way past it's best before date, although I haven't eaten there in a year (disappointing). There are a few very good "Chinese" restaurants in old Chinatown still, at least the staff are Chinese speaking. The best places are up "north " - Markham, Richmond Hill, The Don Mills/York Mills area, Scarborough, etc. "Ambassador" is very, very good overall.

We chinese have so many festive and special occasions to celebrate throughout the year, why not just go with the flow and "endure" the dry turkey, the fresh simple vegetables, the desserts? It's not as if it's all starvation food. It's nice to go cold turkey on the soy sauce once in a while.

I think a lot of aspiring cooks should clean out their kitchen drawers and jettison a lot of the toys therein, and really start to learn techniques. Like you said Ah Leung, is there really a need for egg beaters, garlic presses, 5 different tongs, mandolines, 20 different knives, etc., ad nauseam? A pair of chopsticks, a sharp medium Chinese cleaver (or a heavy 8" chef's knife) will meet 95% of my needs. I absolutely hate wasting time looking for, setting up,and washing the "toys". Garlic press indeed

Ditto. For those with tender fingers, you too can achieve great feats of daring-do like those old cooks who grew up in a commercial kitchen (Dejah, me). Please, try this at home. Dip your fingers/hand in very cold water just before you lift the plate out of the pot. If you do it quickly, no one gets burned. Soon you'll get to be like all us "grown-ups" who have asbestos hands , skipping the cold water process.

One would never wash a wok or pan, whatever the material it's made of, with soap or soapy solutions. Just soak with water and wipe off, or, if the thing is really crusted, use a bamboo or natural vristle brush. I find that the plstic scouring pad does a good job without taking the patina off the pan/wok. In our weather, we are condemned to inside cooking in the winter. There are really good exhaust fans for the home that can be had...up to 400 cfm, which is a goodly volume. Regardless, if you want to cook"real" Chinese food, there will be a certain amount of grease vapour floating around. Constant cleaning....

Using a wok takes you to another level. In other threads, "wok hay" is spoken and is the holy grail for capturing that elusive, Hong-Kong (substitute with your favorite authentic restaurant or place) flavor. You can only attain that with a wok. So yes, a pan will do, but if you want "wok-hay", the wok's the only way to go! ←

Haam yu fried rice with pork/chicken, and haam ha fried rice with fatty belly pork are my personal "staples" and have been a maternally induced love from almost infancy. Both must have lots of ginger slivers and green onions, though. I had always thought that it was a "home" dish until a friend of mine introduced me to the "commercial" version in HK about 16 years ago. (First question in my mind was, Why go to a restaurant and "pay" for something so simple and basic?? How wrong I was. ) As for woks, I agree with Ah Leung, one doesn't need a wok to cook Chinese food. For small dishes I prefer a flat steel pan (not stainless steel, sticks too much). If you don't have a high BTU burner, a flat pan on the large burner of an electric stove works very, very, well. But the burner has to be at max heat, cherry red. A wok on a weak domestic gas range is worse than useless, but a flat pan on the same flame gets better results. Someone mentioned taking the grates off a gas burner to get the wok into the flame. I don't know your particular stove, but generally a gas flame is hottest at the very peak of the flame itself, not low in the middle of the flame. Besides, there might be some safety issues with interfering with the combustion process. Gas burners, like everything else, are engineered to perform at optimum efficiency. It is not wise, sometimes, to monkey around with gas + flames.