Dejah

Congratulations! This thread has achieved page 30 now! Would you like to celebrate it with: Indian curry (so many to choose from) Malaysian curry (coconut milk!) Vietnamese curry (lemon grass and lime juice and fried shallot) Chinese curry (the green pepper, onion, patoto stuff) Thai curry (red, green or yellow?) Japanese curry (MSG!) English curry ??? ← All of the above! Last night, I made Beef Chili Curry ( bade aur mirch ki curry) from Meena Pathak' Flavours of India. To make this Chinese related, we had it for supper with jasmin rice. Just now, we ate the leftovers with cheung fun. That curry sauce was so good with the rice rolls! I was going to make Grilled Lemongrass Pork Riblets from Into the Vietnamese Kitchen, but the meat needs to marinate for 24 hours. I will have to wait until the weekend. I am enjoying the two new books I bought. The photos in both are great inspirations. I always like to see what the food should look like even if mine don't look as pretty. Have to keep remembering: Professionals paint their food. Edited to add last night's Beef Chili Curry.

Couldn't you just use an orange like somebody suggested? And, is there a special process for drying them, if you don't have a radiator? ← Yes, you certainly can use an orange, but the variety that was used in the original and still preferred today, is the Chinese Mandarin orange. These oranges are not available all year round, and may not be available to some of us at all. So, we save the peelings when we do get to enjoy them. You don't have to have a radiator. I turn the pieces inside out, single layer them in a basket, place in a well ventilated place, and let them dry out. It's good if you remove the pith before drying. You can also buy packages of dried peels in Asian stores.

Bruce, Hubby says the trips to Wpg. are too expensive - on his wallet and on his waistline. I think I'll forgo anymore shopping trips, save his $, and go live at your house. That will at least save his waistline... Lovely looking supper. The beef looks very inviting, especially with that mix of flavours. What cut do you use? I'm going to have to ask you to refrain from listing the books you cook from! THAT'S why my trips to Wpg are expensive! I have Barbara Tropp's China Moon book, and was so excited by it I went looking for her restaurant when we were in San Francisco in the '90s. We found the location; it was all boarded up. I found out just a couple of years ago that she had died before we made the trip. Does anyone else have cravings for curry? What is it about curry? I go through spells where I crave it! We've had curry something 4 nights now: chicken, shrimp, lamb, then beef and cauliflower tonight. It all started at the International students dinner last Wed with butter chicken.

Interesting that this topic should come up today. My Korean students were giving a demo on making kimbap. They also used a knife to peel the cucumbers. Now, Fat Guy, do you peel the whole cucumber or segments? These ladies used my chef's knife, and used a slight sawing motion as they moved around the whole cucumber lengthways. These were slicing cukes, about 8" long with the ends trimmed. They also "sliced" the cukes this way before they cut them into thin strips for the kimbap. I can work with 4 - 5" English cuke segments, but worry about slicing off my thumb.

It all depends on whether you want crispy beef or stir-fried. With ginger beef, you can stir-fry the beef with lots of fresh ginger and green onions - or as I did in post 749 of the Chinese eats at home thread. So, I suppose you can do the same with orange beef - stir-fry with orange zest and orange segments, or per recipe above. You just have to remember that they are different dishes! I was in a restaurant once, and assumed ginger beef to mean spicy, crispy ginger beef. I was quite shocked when it came out stir-fried!

Here are some of the arrowheads I bought in Winnipeg, but haven't eaten yet. So pretty...maybe I should just plant them. A couple of dishes we've enjoyed this week after my Winnipeg Chinatown shopping trip! Monday night: Gai Choi ham dan tong (mustard greens and salted egg soup) I thought I picked up dow miu, but it was gai lan miu. It was very good with char siu for hubby and pig stomach for moi. I made a thin sauce with oyster sauce for the blanched vegetables. The cheung fun was bought. It had ha mai and green onions - great microwaved with sweet soy, sesame oil, and ma la oil. Tonight: Seaweed/siu choi tong I made the kuo yuk a la Tepee - for tomorrow. Had some wutau left, so, a treat for the students' lunch tomorow. The fading daylight from the window gave a surreal colouring to the picture. Kinda pretty. I know. I know. So much lieu la! For supper, we had curry shrimp, zuchinni, and onion over jasmine rice. It was pretty and delicious, but I was in too much of a hurry to eat and get to work. So, use your imaginations. Finally, a treat hubby picked up while browsing down the candy aisle - sesame ginger shreds. This is packed shreds of ginger, topped with sesame seeds. It's hell trying to get a piece, but really, really good stuff. I've never seen this before. I want more!

The tangerine peel that I buy and use is dried. We can't always get fresh tangerines. It is also said that the older the dried peel, the more flavour. My mom had always saved her peelings, dried and stored in a glass jar. The bags one buys in the store are nothing compared to the fragrance of her stash. Unfortunately, she hasn't been collecting for years, and this unworthy daughter hasn't kept up the tradition.

I just use ordinary white vinegar. Maybe others use rice vinegar, black vingar, but the main flavour you want to stand out is orange. Edited to add: Check post 749 in the Chinese Eats at Home thread, Priscilla. I made the ginger beef, but my orange beef looks like that...except orange flavoured.

I do the marinade with an egg, seasonings and orange zest (or orange essence), and an equal mixture of cornstarch and flour. This makes the meat pretty sticky. Then, I bread each piece with fine bread crumbs before deep frying. The beef is crispy on the outside but tender inside. For the sauce, I just use vinegar, sugar, chun pei (juliennes of rehydrated tangerine peel - pith scraped off), whole and crushed dry chilis, and a touch of 5-spice powder. Bring to a boil, simmer, then thicken with cornstarch slurry. I usually have all the ingredients for the sauce simmering in a wok as I deep fry the beef. Once the meat is ready, thicken the sauce and toss in the beef to coat. Don't drench the meat in copious amount of sauce unless you like it like that. Put some of the sauce aside in a dish and add more if needed. I like sauce and crispiness in my orange beef. I still have large bottles of orange flavouring from my restaurant days. Sometimes the tangerine peel just doesn't give enough punch. I used the flavouring more when orange beef was on the buffet.

Woks are not brand driven. Just go to Chinatown and buy the basic spun carbon steel wok, or if you're strong, the cast iron one. If you check thru' hzrt's Chinese cooking tutorials, you'll see he's just graduated to a wok! Most of his food had been cooked in a deep fry pan prior to his wok. Both of mine are from Wal-Mart.

The tuber/corm commonly referred to as the see koo, popular at CNY cooked with lup yuk is in fact of the "arrowhead" plant or sagittaria sagittiflora. The Algonquin Indians of North America made use of the tubers (wapato) of a similar plant. This latter plant is indigenous to North America. ← Ah....there we go! But, I still need suggestions besides pairing with lap yuk.

Thanks, Peony. I thought that was the name, but when I did google on arrowroot, it showed me a different looking tuber. Don't think I'll be deep frying them. If anyone has any other ideas, please post. Edited to add: That water chestnut cake looks so good! My s-i-l makes this, and after telling me how much muscle power one needs, I decided it's tradition for her to make it.

Lovely looking leen gnow, Habeas, as is the dish! I bought a bag of "see goo" on the weekend. I can't remember the English name for this "corm"? The only way I've eaten this was steamed to accompany lap yoke. Suggestions? If no one can understand my Toisanese, I'll get a picture of them later and post for identification.

Thursday's supper: Habeas' Szechuan Green Beans with Pork/Pork Hubby was very happy with the pork/pork. The plate is one of a set of three varying sizes that Superstore had on sale for $2.98! How could I resist? Friday, as I mentioned in a previous post, was the International Students Banquet. There were some dishes made by the students, but they were long gone by the time our table got to the food line. Other food was catered to by a local Chinese restaurant. Not to be arrogant, but no wonder people miss Soo's! The other items came from our new East Indian restaurant. The butter chicken, curry shrimp, curry chickpeas, and vegetarian basmati rice was worth waiting for. Made me crave for more, and you'll see the results of that craving further down this post! Saturday was bloody cold - windchill temps of -45, but we headed off to Winnipeg anyway to catch our son's gig at the Academy Eatery and Bar. Thru' various emails from the daughter and son, they were missing Soo's curry chicken - #36 on our menu. For supper on Friday, we braved the cold (-40C as well) and had supper at the English Pavilion - part of our annual Winterfest . The choices were steak and kidney pie, English pasties, steak and stout stew. Dessert was Spotted Dick and Custard. It all went down well while listening to some of our buddies perform songs by the Beatles. By 9 PM, I was cooking #36 with six chicken breasts, 4 medium size onions, bulk curry powder from SERCA distributing (gotta have the old authentic Soo's taste, and it does have a good curry flavour), fresh red chili peppers. The chicken was marinated in seasonings, oil and cornstarch. I cooked it in 3 batches, resulting in 4 Ziplock sandwich-sized containers for the kids, and nice snack portions for hubby and myself - eaten at 10 PM! What trip to Winnipeg, especially in this weather, would be complete without a visit to Chapters and Chinatown for groceries? After seeing c. sapidas' beauties from The Vietnamese Kitchen, I HAD to have that book! First stop - Chapters and the book jumped out at me. Beside it, to feed my craving for more curry, I found Curry Cuisine - Fragrant dishes from India, Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia. I've been browsing in both books and they were well worth the trip to Chapters. Next on the agenda was Sun Wah Grocery in Chinatown. The parking lot is always a hazardous place. I was worried that all the BBQ meats would be gone by 2pm, but I was lucky as they were just bringing in a new batch from their kitchen. I picked out a duck (for my freezer for later use), lots of char siu and siu yuk for the kids, and 2 pig stomach for supper tonight. There were many displays of CNY candies, treats. I picked up packages for Mom, the students' treats, and ourselves. Now to keep our hands off until NY! For vegetables, I got dow miu, baby bok choi, baby Shanghai bok choi, leen gnow, fresh bak hap, Thai basil, Thai chilis, pomelo, as well as cheung fun, and a mango sponge cake for Mom. Now, I've been watching you guys with your bellys - pork bellys, that is, and what I've found in our meat counters have been disappointing in quality abd price. What did I see in Sun Wah's fresh meat counter for a total of $3.78 but this 1.8 lb. beauty: I was undecided on how to use this pork belly, but having enjoyed the beautiful crispy-skinned siu yuk from the BBQ specialists, I will probably braise this and attempt Tepee's with wutow, if I can find wutow at the store. If I had been able to buy two pieces of pork belly, I would have attempted sheetz's siu yuk. My main excuse is that I don't have a convection oven.

Dang, Pam! It's cold in Winnipeg! We went in this morning and had planned to stay overnight. But, my daughter's apt. complex doesn't have visitor's parking with plugins, so we came home - got in an hour ago. Brrrrrr.....-47C windchill. My daughter was invited to the Tu Bi'Shvat dinner - but had to miss it. She was kicking herself after she saw your pictures. Do you shop at Sun Wah in Chinatown? Inspite of the weather, the place was packed and you can imagine what the parking lot was like. They were lined up at the BBQ counter, and the 2 cash out lanes. I was checking out the tabletop burners like the one you used for your hotpot dinner. Do you like it? Does it give off fumes?

Gastro Mui: Do your parents still have the restaurant? If so, where is it located?

Thanks, Daniel, for linking sheetz's picture of the crispy pork. I red braised a pork butt, and a pork shoulder a while back, one with dark soy sauce, star anise, cinnamon stick, and cane sugar (Chinese rock sugar) crystals, and the other with sweet soy sauce and Thai chilis. Both were great as pulled pork sandwiches on crusty rolls.

Daniel: That slab of pork belly is a thing of beauty! I was checking them out in our supermarket and for $27.00, it was miserable looking. I'm heading to an Asian market in the city this weekend, so I'll be on a hunt! Meanwhile, check out a post by Chinese forum egulleteer sheetz for her take on siu yok - Chinese crispy pork made from pork belly. I always enjoy a siu yok sandwich, crispy skin and all. Sorry I don't know how to post a link to the picture in question, but it's post # 688, page 23 of the Chinese Eats at Home thread.

Wow! Thanks for the picture of the Paddle Wheel Cafeteria, Pam. The food looks the same as it did when I used to eat there in the mid-sixties! I had forgotten about that place. We still shop at the Bay, but mostly on the floor with the women's clothing. I remember sitting at one of the U-shaped counters. Are they still the same? Do you like the malts at the food bar in the basement? They are thick and chocolatety. Once in a while, we'll remember and take the escalator down for one. Eaton's Grill Room was classier. I miss Eaton's!

Nooooooooooooooooooo! Don't let her do it! The addition of sweet chili sauce makes it more appetizing. The rice wine vinegar would also add a flavour as opposed to red food colouring, sugar, water and vinegar.

I have never made this "Christmas sauce", as my kids call it, but the recipe TJ Harris posted is what I would suspect. It's cheap, quick, sweet, and sour. The red flecks could well be undisolved red food colouring. Can't understand how people can soak their food in this red glue.

I don't need to cook tonight. The international students are putting on a "foreigner food buffet" at the university. I love their wording. Not sure what the foreigner food will be, but some will be Chinese. The teachers are all guests, so we don't have to take food. Some of the students were disappointed!

Good Grief! Too time consuming? When you retire? Why you young whippersnapper! I ought to take the gai mo so to your butt! Salting your old ham dan is NOT time consuming. You buy some eggs, duck eggs if possible, or double yolk chicken eggs, or just extra large chicken eggs. Mix up brine strong enough so that an egg will float in it. Use a non-metallic container big enough to hold a couple dozen eggs. Add the eggs, place a plate on top so the eggs are all submerged but not packed down. Leave it in a cool place for a month - VOILA! Check the eggs after about 3 weeks. How long it takes depends on how strong your brine solution is. Retire...hrumph!

Egg yolks are high in Cholestrol; therefore,..................... The ham dan you get is cooked? I've never heard of that. Are you thinking they are cooked because the yolk is firm? They wouldn't keep very long even in the fridge

Welcome to the forum! Shengcai. Your first post looks mighty good. I'm wondering if your surname is "Cai" is another pronunciation of Choy/Choi/Tsai, and so on. We have some distant relatives here in the city named Cai. Written in Chinese characters, it is Choy. Are you of the Toisanese clan?