Ben Hong

Let me make a few of observations on the discussion so far: Joong is not the real pronunciation in Toisanese. We pronounce it "doong" with more or less a soft "d". The proper full name is "guo doong". Pronounce it "joong" and it means a jar or bottle. Joong is recognizable by most Cantonese and Toisanese, though. There must be no compromise in nomenclature when it comes to using the original proper name for anything. A joong or doong or zhongzi is NOT a tamale and should not be compared to such. Joong are rarely found in at yum cha (dim sum), but nor my gai is a popular treat in those restaurants. Joong are more often found in grocery stores, Asian take out snack counters, etc. BTW, if my mother or Aunties had to boil their joong for five or six hours, there would not be joong made in our household - ever, for those ladies could not (would not) reconcile the cost benefit ratio of fuel/product and find it advantageous.

Lycium palladium and lycium Sinense are both called wolfberry plants. The former is a native of the west and southwest of the USA and is not edible. The former is Chinese in origin and is often called the Chinese wonder herb. Those who like it, like it a lot.

Sue-On, yep that is one of my favourite soups. Gotta love the pork liver. I google gowgai and came up with wolfberry. I didn't know that there was a similar, but different plant. Hmmmm

Sue-On, I live in the sticks and our Superstore (Loblaws) and Sobeys mostly bring in whole, roots and all, cilantro. Tree ears and cloud ears also reduce cholesterol and reduce blood pressure...so I am told.

In my opinion, olive oil has that distinctly NON-Chinese taste and odour to it. It has NO place in my cooking. I love it in all types of other cuisines though.

Tony Joe White wrote it and did the popular version: "Poke Salad Annie, Gator's got your Granny Ev'rybody said it was a shame, 'cause her momma was workin' on a chain gang".

Cholestoral medicine.

The ideal way to prepare gai lan is to water blanch them, arrange on a plate, drizzle a bit of oyster sauce over them and finish with a sizzle of hot oil and garlic. Go fancier with the same blanched gai lan, top it with a stirfried beef with ginger, garlic and oyster sauce. Steaming is ok if you are patient. As for doneness, taste test before you serve. The stems should definitely be crunchy.

This l'il old Toisanese boy never heard of vinegar in any kind of rice to be served at the table. After six decades on this earth I am still willing to learn though, so tell me what Chinese style(this is after all a Chinese board) would use a vinegared rice.

There are a couple of different species of fish that is normally called sardines. We in New Brunswick (home of Connors Brothers) know that what goes into a sardine can are small herring. Interesting to note that virtually all of the canned sardines are individually packed by the hands of women at Connors Bros. plants. The packers are paid on a salary and piecework basis.Every year there is a festival and one of the highlights of the festival is a packing race. I was a judge at one of those contests once long ago and it was a real challenge to keep focus on the blur of hands of those women as they would pack up to 10 cans a minute. Not only do they stuff the fish into the cans but they also had to snip off heads and tails with a pair of scissors. The whole process of getting a can of sardines from sea to your dining table is a fascinating one; sardines are caught in the Bay of Fundy (home of 17 meter tides) in giant fish traps called weirs, boats armed with pumps suck up fish by the 10s of tons in a weir on a good day, and transported to the plant. The resultant huge quantities of scales are salvaged for other industrial uses. There is nothing quite as good tasting as a fresh caught herring split and broiled over charcoal with just a dab of butter, a drop of lemon juice and a bit of s&p.

I personally don't think that glutinous (sticky) rice affects the digestive tract more than any other rice, I think that the problem may be the "liu" or haum that is in them, like fat pork, beans, chinese sausage, egg yolk, etc. I am always receptive to corrections of my thought processes these days.

RIGHT YOU ARE!! Sue-On, you are getting to know me too well. BTW, it's the weekend of July 16-17. Joong in Brandon, mmmm.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I propose a JOONG cook off. Strut your stuff, O Ye of stout heart and nimble fingers.

Because it tastes sooo good and earthy, it'sdefinitely TOYSANESE.

Young Julius Caesar Genghis Khan Sun Tzu George Patton General Giap Von Clausewitz

This thread shows how global everything is. In my work, I deal with the company that makes Brunswick brand sardines. They are the largest producers of canned fish products in the world, located here in New Brunswick, Canada. As for use and consumption, we always have a dozen or so cans of various flavours in the pantry. Great for snacks and for meeting the weekly omega-3 quotient. My favourite quick lunch is a can of sardines, scallions, sriracha over cold rice, warmed up in the microwave, a few drops of nuoc mam and some pickle vegs. Ohhhh Yeahhhh.

←

Not an invitation in sight! I heard that UPS has overnight service.

Get thee to a caterer, or pick a nice restaurant that serves real Chinese food. Seriously. I worked in the profession for a looong time, and even with that experience, your "dinner party" would intimidate the hell out of me, if I had to do it at home with equipment of questionable utility. Besides, paying for the honour would free you from worry and work, allowing you to enjoy the company of your guests. The vast majority of Chinese take their guests to restaurants (unless they're family) when entertaining them for the first time. There are cultural and style nuances that I won't get into here.

Roast suckling pigs? Not till I see the "goods".

Gastro Girl: don't forget to show the "cook" making the things. I like to look at all things delicious

Ji-Young, I gotta find out where you live so I can come and hold that sweet baby girl of yours . Drinking and smoking at 97? Hah, there's hope for me yet.

Shiso, or in Cantonese "du ssu" is indispensible when I am cooking bivalves such as clams, mussels, oysters and even periwinkles in black bean sauce., etc. Just don't make the mistake that I committed a few years ago when I sowed some seeds in a patch of earth. What came up was a plant from hell, as it literally spread everywhere. They are perennial so they come up every year in the most unlikely places.

The best way to tell the taste difference between fresh killed and iced/frozen factory chicken is to have "bak chet guy" or white chopped chicken (poached) as the Chinese do when they have a fresh chicken. Other dishes mask the taste. You can use any kind of factory chicken parts for kung pao. Fresh killed chicken does indeed taste more intensely "chicken-y" to us because we in North America have had our tastes "adjusted" by the need for styrofoam trays, sterile supermarkets, semi trained help, instant this and instant that, and ultra rigorous processing at plant. No inherent taste can survive the processing that a commercial chicken undergoes, therefore we are sold the idea that we are getting a true chicken... gleamingly clean, wrapped in stretch cello, blemish free and above all cheap. And, they are all killed before their time, ie: too young to develop that "al dente" springiness to their flesh. There is one more important differentiating feature between the "Chinese" fresh killed chicken and the regular supermarket kind or even the locally available fresh killed ones . The former are what we Chinese call "wong mo guy" or brown feathered chickens. These birds have a feathers all the way down to their toes, almost. Whether they are a subspecies or not, I cannot aver, but they do taste like real chicken.

Filling for my rolls: I use coleslaw mix (pre-chopped cabbage and carrots), onions, LOTS of garlic, waterchestnuts, ground pork, seasonings and don't cook the veggies. ← We had to cook the vegs. as on a good day, we sometimes sold 3-400 of the "eggrolls". We always made and half-cooked them beforehand, ergo if the veggies were not cooked and wrung dry, the things would turn into a soggy mess. And downright dangerous, as the accumulated moisture trapped in the casings would explode when immersed in a hot deep fryer.