Dejah

June: Would you share your Dad's bao recipe? Boneless pieces are ok. Just don't use "stewing beef". I find they fall apart, but stringy and never melt in your mouth yummy. It's the bits of fat and gristle that makes red-braised beef so delicious. Our Soby's had leg of pork on sale @ 1.00/lb. I use this cut for red-braised pork when I can't get pork belly. These cuts were skin-on. This layer really melts in your mouth, oozing-down-your- chin goodness, cholesterol, and saturated fats!

This is another wonderful and informative blog! I am enjoying the read on different kinds of foods, scenery, everything! Thank you. I will look forward to your dessert with the sea buckthorn berries. These are just starting to be commercially grown on the prairies, I think. I've only heard about their use in "health food" extracts, etc, but never used as dessert.

Another version of baos: chicken and mushroom with lap cheung: I think your bao pastry is fluffier than mine.

You don't need an Asian market for beef short ribs. This is the season when they are readily available at meat counters. If you can't get short ribs, you can use beef chuck or blade roasts - something with some fat and gristle. I like the gristle part. Your char siu and baos look great! Do you use pre-mixed flour or your own recipe for the baos? How about the dumpling skins? Commercial or home-made?

The red-cooked beef shortribs were very good. I only used 1/2 cup of red wine (homemade chokecherry wine, actually), soy sauce, star anise, ginger, scallions, cinnamon, rock sugar, dried tangerine peel (sent from China!). For the last hour, I added chunks of lobak. It was braised in the oven in my sandpot. My Mom loved it, and it was even better at lunch today over cheung fun. The meat was tender, flavourful, and I loved the burst of citrus when I bit on the piece of tangerine peel.

Thanks all! I'll pass on the balut and larks in the shell. There were balut eggs beside the duck eggs in the cooler. Not sure I'm ready to try those. And yes, larks are short in supply at the moment. I've copied down the sponge cake and pound cake recipes, and they will be something for me to try. I was told that they have a gamey taste. Would that taste come thru' in the "most luxuious pasta"? I think I'll try one for breakfast tomorrow - poached and broken over mix field greens with a bit of mango dressing.

It's probably tied to promotion of healthier eating habits. Bananas on unsweetened cold cereal provides potassium, a fruit, and sweetness. I usually have banana on my cereal in the mornings, but they give me heartburn if I eat them in the evenings.

Dylan: I'm sorry that you are feeling so lost in your new home. It must be difficult to leave all that is familiar to you. You mentioned being in the middle of Canada. Are you on the prairies? Are there no other Chinese people in your area? What about Chinese restaurants? If you search them out, I am sure they would try to make you feel at home, and maybe even cook you something that is familiar. Look on the bright side, you can really explore your cooking skills, and adapt your recipes to whatever ingredients are available here. These days, most of what we need for homestyle cooking is available, even in small cities like mine - with only +45,000 people. Imagine what it was like for those who came before you! We had access to only cabbage, onions, celery, and dried and preserved ingredients are what we were able to bring with us when we left China. By the way, your "reassuring meal" does look reassuring, and delicious! As it is fall weather, I am preparing "Red-Cooked Beef Shortribs" from a new book: The Shun Lee Cookbook. Good Grief! I just checked the ingredients and it calls for five (5) cups dry sherry or red wine for 2.5 pounds of shortribs! It'll be more like "Drunken Beef Shortribs" or drunken cook.

Rona: You can ask for "bak jam gai" - literally "white chopped chicken". This is poached and usually served with fine threads of ginger and shredded scallions. Or, you might ask for "yeem sui gai" - salty water chicken". This is the yellow-coloured cooked chicken you'd see hanging at the BBQ shop at Sun Wah and other BBQ places. When I buy this, it always comes with little containers of grated ginger in seasoned oil. Ah Leung has a pictorial on the latter if you want to make it yourself.

prasantrin said: The crispy chicken was not on the dim sum menu. I guess their focus at lunch time is dim sum, so we were not given a dinner menu. But, being the kind of person to always have something to read while waiting for food, hubby picked up a take-out menu on the way in. I don't see a steamed or poached half chicken, but there is an item called "Ginger and green onion Chicken with Chinese mushrooms". This would be chopped pieces of bone-in chicken steamed. If your mom goes often, maybe she can call ahead and they could make it a special order? The crispy chicken, I think they must have them cooked, either steamed or poached before hand, then pour hot oil or immerse in hot oil to crisp up. I was glad there wasn't a "stale oil or over-used oil" taste to the chicken as it happens sometimes. There weren't any cross-over flavours. As I look over the dim sum menu now (I asked for a copy so I can study and be better prepared in ordering next time ), I wish I had ordered the curry beef tendons! I haven't seen tendons offered at KK or DSG. Have you noticed how many Chinese take-out menus have the same format and same spelling mistakes? I remember when one of my former cooks bought his own place, came in and "snuck" a copy of our take out menu and used it as his own with changes only from Soo's Deluxe Fried Rice to *** Special Fried Rice. In the Kam Ho one: staty beef, fired rice rolls, or consume soup. Would I find similar spelling on take-out menu at other restaurants.

These eggs are quite a bit bigger than the x-tra large eggs I normally buy. According to Google: I bought packaged cooked duck eggs when I was making joongzi (only kind available at that time ), and I found the yolk was surrounded by a ring of oil - richer taste. In light of what Gabriel and Google said, I'll probably use some in a sweet custard pie and also make a steamed Chinese custard with salted duck eggs. But, new suggestions are always welcomed as I don't think I'll use up all 24 by next weekend.

I love their bubble tea, but only the fresh fruit ones (their young coconut is sooooo decadent!). When they first opened they had a very good cook, but after she left, their food was so-so except the little meatballs on a stick (I've always loved those). My parents loved their banh mi, too (as did all my mother relatives). They're such nice people that I really want to support them, even if their new place is sooooooo far from me! I hope they do well with their new place! ← My daughter agrees that Asia City's young coconut bubble tea and banh mi are delicious. Hubby and I took a drive to Winnipeg today and went to Kam Ho for lunch. The place was just starting to fill up at noon. The clientele was mostly Asian. We ordered the large hot 'n' sour soup - piping hot, lots of ingredients except for Chinese mushrooms, just enough spiciness and tang. Good stuff! For dim sum, we had deep fried tofu stuffed with shrimp (3 pieces). The outside was crispy topped with a tablespoon size "patty" of shrimp. The inside was hot but soft and creamy. It was very good with the "gravy". The beef tripe with black pepper was very good. It was flavourful, tender but still a little chewy, and the bits of black pepper were great for that bite. Pan fried dumplings (4 pieces)were the best! The pastry was "blistered", crispy and light. The filling was generous, silky and contained just a tiny bit of cabbage. I wonder what kind of pastry they used - commercial, homemade? Crispy chicken with ginger and green onions was crispy and tender. It would have been better if they used finer threads of ginger, long strands of scallions, and poured hot oil over the whole thing just before serving. As it was, they topped the chicken with finely diced scallion and chunky strands of ginger. ETA: we also had a half order of gai lan. It was tender and still bright green with just enough oyster sauce for dipping. Our bill came to $41.00. And yes, staff definitely needs improvements. BTW, they are closed for holidays starting Sept. 16th to the 23rd, I believe.

Bought a box of 4 moon cakes in Winnipeg today. The tin was labelled "Macau Specialty", mixed nuts with double yolk. The cakes were filled with nuts, and real yolk, but it must have come on a slow boat from China because they were a bit dried out compare to another brand we tried last week. The hint of chun pei turned out to be kumquat - kinda nice, but I was disappointed - $21.99 down the drain. They had tins of abalone and egg yolk for $40.99. I wasn't tempted. Wesza sent me some 2 years ago?, and I tried the shark fin, durian, green tea ones. They were nice and fresh. The first tin I bought was Riwei brand from Kowloon, HK. I wonder if the Macau tin was last year's!

I was pleasantly surprised this evening when I found fresh duck eggs (beside the balut eggs - ) in our little Asian grocery store. Not having seen them for such a long time, I bought two dozen! Now, what can I make with them? In the past, I've salted them for Chinese joongzi, but that season is past. Besides, I can buy salted duck eggs at Superstore. Ideas?

Yum, June! My whole family loves lotus root soup - WITH OCTOPUS! Heading off to the big city tomorrow and will most likely come back with some fresh lotus root. We went out to our house in the country today, and I picked quite a bit of gow gai gee off the bush in what used to be my garden. It is overgrown with grass, so I am surprised that it is still so prolific! I'll cook some in a light broth on Sunday when my Mom comes for supper. A branch broke off while I was trying to clear the weeds, so I brought it home and will take a picture of it and the berries tomorrow in the daylight. There are still a lot of green berries on the bush, but we got frost last night, so I don't think I'll be getting anymore.

Long beans - dow gok - becomes fibrous and dry if not used fairly quickly. String beans are more fleshy, so don't dry out as fast. Gow gee - not sure if we are using the same pronunciation - to mean wolfberry - the leaves or the red berries? The leaves will last for acouple of weeks if taken off the stalks, kept dry wrapped in newspaper and kept in the fridge. The berries are best used fresh off the bush, or dried. They spoil quickly after being picked and left in the fridge - turning black.

I've never heard of "fake egg yolks" When I was making joongzi this summer, I couldn't find any fresh salted duck eggs. They are usually readily available at our Superstore, but I got there too late - sold out!. The local Chinese grocery had packaged cooked salted duck eggs, and said fresh ones were no longer available. That turned out to be wrong. So, I bought dozens of the cooked eggs, carefully split the shell and painstakingly dug out the yolk for my joongzi. I had 3 dozen cooked salted egg white - returned them to the store owner as he and his family loves them. The following week, Superstore got a supply of fresh ones, and have them in stock all the time now! You don't HAVE to use duck eggs. If you can get double yolk hen eggs, they can also be salted. They won't have that "richness and favour" of the duck eggs, but once inside all that sweetness, carbs, and lard, they will still taste good. You won't be in time for Harvest Moon Festival, but hey! anytime is moon cake time, especially if you are making them yourself!

Great! Hope you'll do a pictorial, of course.

Hey, Dejah, when's the Moon Festival this year? ← It's September 25th (lunar calendar 15th day of the eighth month).

Bought my box of 4 mooncakes last week. There were 4 varieties: Lotus paste with double yolk, green tea lotus paste and egg yolk, sea coconut, and 5-nuts egg yolk! This last one is my favourite. I wish I could just buy this variety as I could do without the others. It's nutty, chewy, yummy carbs and cholesterol!

Daughter said Asia City is on McPhillip before Leila. She used to live by Seven Oaks Hospital and stopped there for their bubble tea. Said it was good stuff but hadn't tried their food. Since then, she's moved down to Notre Dame in the Medical Apts. by the hospital.

Grand Garden has been closed for at least a year. Apparently the original chef retired, and had refused to teach anyone his recipes and techniques. The quality must have suffered as the business closed. I was told this by the owner of the grocery downstairs who is a sister to the restaurant owner. I think KKG contributed to GG's demise - new and better facilities. The wait staff at GG was, as I stated in a previous post, arrognant, unfriendly, and did not appreciate a la carte orders during dim sum. KKG was always friendly whenever I've been in, except for Smiling Johnny at the front desk who, I am sure, has never cracked a smile. He is sombre-faced to everyone. Dim Dum Garden is small and I've only been there recently during Happy Hour when every item is 2.25 (used to be half price). They have many items on carts, but others, are ordered and they bring them fresh from the kitchen. The last time I had the tripe there, it was rubbery, so had probably been sitting for a while. The sticky rice was very good even tho' the filling was mainly meat and mushroom. I've only been to Victoria Garden once. I don't think we gave it a fair try because it was far out of our way and late in the evening. It was interesting listening to the older couple beside us. They had just returned from a tour of China, and after eating the food there, they just had to get to VS for their wonton soup and egg rolls! At KKG, my favourite dishes are the curry octopus and the shrimp wrapped with meat, shredded taro,and deep fried. Not sure about the ingredients, but I believe it's called phoenix shrimp. The recipe was presented by the KKG chef in the magazine Taste or some similar mag about Winnipeg. I'm upset 'cos I couldn't find it right now, but I DID find the 2003 issue that featured eGullet's Fat Guy: "Ethnic Food: A Critic's Tour". He said, Fellow egulleteer Ben Hong thought that KKG rivaled the best places in Toronto. I will definitely have to try Kam Ho next trip in. On St. Mary's Road, you said

Let me add a couple to your list: Short shelf life: dow gok - Chinese long beans. If left for a couple days, they will turn fibrous. Long shelf life:: fuzzy melon - I still have one large melon from last year's harvest! It is 15 inches long, about 13" around, wrapped in a double layer of newspaper, and kept in our cool basement. I made soup with the second last one last week. The fibres in the centre holding the seeds was a bit dry, but the melon itself still tasted fresh. It is known to be beneficial for health to simmer it for long period of time - low faw - with ginger, a piece of chun pei, and rehydrated dried oysters.

It took me 8 hours to render five pounds of beef fat. The crispy bits were very tasty, so I dump them before I was tempted to make myself sick. Then I used my old restaurant batter recipe and did up some cod, shrimp, zuchinni, carrots, and cauliflower. I wish I had some broccoli florets as they make the best battered vegetable. The flavour from the beef fat took me back to the fish'n'chips we enjoyed at Whitby on the North Sea coast! The fat was cooled, poured into quart jars and into the fridge. I think I'll have to do up a roast and yorkshire puddings soon!

Guess I'll have to try it one of these days. My sister gave me some dried ones, and they've been sitting in a jar in a dark cool room.