Dejah

Try using deep fried tofu sold in squares. They are great for soaking up the juices!

I was just joking about Ben and his love for hunting upland birds. But yes, I suppose sometimes birds are cleaned of their feathers by skinning them. Is that correct, Ben? I know my brother uses that technique whenever we get wild ducks. This is used especially when we cook wild geese or ducks with herbs. With chicken and BBQ duck, the skin and the bones are my favourite parts. FLAVOUR! Turkey skin I can leave because I ate so much of it when I first came to Canada.

Health inspectors can be a real pain in the @@#*. One newby tried to make me put the bags of raw rice in the cooler to keep the bacteria at bay. In air drying, using a walk-in cooler may be possible? In the cooler I had, the fan going inside kept the air moving. Just have rotating lots in the cooler. BBQ ones from yesterday and replace with a new batch glazed today.

Ken, We want pictures! Or better still, a video of your progress.

Are you serious??? I bought this can for US$5.00. And I thought it was high... ← Ah Leung: Since I became interested in under utilized species it's apparent how wide spread it's become adapted: King Topshell and Abalone Type Shellfish are not ABALONE. Irwin ← Thanks for confirming my thoughts, Irwin. Can't read Chinese but when I saw the shape of the whole "abalone", I didn't think it was abalone...There is a smaller type which I think my mom calls ocean clams that we have used as "ga ba yu" - fake abalone. I have never tasted fresh abalone, but canned, I'd rather eat the mushrooms and the lettuce soaked in oyster sauce.

Pretty luxurious looking dish, Ah leung. How much is a can of abalone now? The last time I checked in Winnipeg, I think they were around $50.00/can. They keep them on a shelve behind the cashier. Another new phenomenon in the big Asian store in Wpg is seeing the quality seafood freezer covered with plexiglass and locked! "Visions of a little old Po-Po in a big coat smuggling 2 boxes of 8-10 shrimp out of the store"...

If you're suggesting oyster sauce may not have existed 50 years ago, I've got news for you. ← I remember having oyster sauce as a child in HK before emigrating in 1958. I don't COOK raw veg. in the microwave. I use the microwave for blanching - veg in a big bowl of water. I do it mainly to free a burner on the stove for others bits of cooking.

You don't need a perpetual stock pot for effective blanching. I just use water, a bit of salt and sesame oil at home. In my restaurant days, vegetables are stir-fried for a few minutes, then a scoop of stock is added. As the stock comes to a boil, this finishes cooking the firmer vegetables. Because of the intense heat, a lid is not used, nor is it like boiling vegetables as we would with potatoes. At home, I blanch veg. in the microwave, except for gai lan. This veg. is touchy. On top of the stove, I can watch it more carefully; otherwise, it turns brownish or has a bitter taste. A quick shock process under cold running water, drain, add garlic cooked in and with the hot oil, topped with heated oyster sauce lightly diluted with stock, and it's ready to go. Oyster sauce may be used as a quick fix because many restaurants think the customer wants a flavour up front. They don't give the customer enough credit to be able to discern more subtle flavours. Or, they don't take the time to make good stock. At home, if one really enjoys the flavour of oyster sauce, it may be used as a marinate for many ingredients. My daughter, for example, loves oyster sauce on many things, whereas I prefer without. As Ben says, everyone has different ideas. We can all learn from someone's recipes, use them as is, or change according to our own tastes. But, I prefer to use a recipe that has been tested.

She lives near the North Pole. At least much closer than I am. Take a look at her profile brief (on the left under the screen name). ← Ah Leung is a cheeky silow! I am on the Canadian prairie, close to the border with North Dakota. When we lived out in the country, I had a huge garden with raised beds ( in my hippie days ). Then, I grew mostly bak choi, gai choi, snow peas, kolhrabi, gau gai, bak hap, spinach, a big variety of herbs, and lots of flowers ( to wear in my hair... ) Now, we are in the city, and I have limited space This is all dedicated to flowers except for a small corner with Chinese chives, gau gai (this year) and bak hap. Our stores, Safeway and Superstore carry most other varieties. A new little Chinese/Latin grocery store opened recently. They have lemongrass, fresh curry leaves, Vietnamese herbs, tiny fiery fresh peppers, ong choi (too expensive), so I am happy! Chinese/Latin, you ask. We have a large pork processing plant in the industrial park. They have been "importing" workers from Mexico, El Salvador,and China to fill the shifts. 61 single Chinese men just arrived last week, and they are expecting another hundred or so in the new year. They are permit workers now. After one year, they can apply for landed immigrant status under our provincial nominee program.

Happy to welcome you in your "coming out", Raj. You've had good eating experiences if you have had oyster sauce in only a select few dishes. I've never used it as a flavour enhancer for most of my restaurant cooking. Instead, I used good chicken stock, and a little MSG ( ) In my cooking, I use this sauce only with steamed vegetables, tofu, and rice noodles because these ingredients are basically bland by themselves. If you want to spotlight oyster sauce as the main ingredient, cook iceberg lettuce with it. THAT is one of my favourites. Chinese mushrooms, abalone - no one can say they are bland, but oyster sauce complements these ingredients - not flavour them. When using meat in a stir-fry such as beef and gai lan, I would use a little oyster sauce with the gai lan but not with the beef. I also use a good grade of this sauce as a dip for crispy pork or simmered chicken. In most families, and as Ben said, good oyster sauce is a luxury item, so it is used sparingly. I am SO picky!

I don't like this topic! Visions of little fluffy balls ( not hair balls) floating around yeowing in my dreams last night. Or, was that the neighbor's cat in heat? Let's just shut the "restaurant" - thread, down. Please?

I THINK gau gai is called wolfberry( gau gai); at least, the one variety that yields the red berries is called wolfberry ( gau gai zee) . The one your f-i-l grows is just gau gai. I have never heard of it being sold in stores. I get bagfuls from the elders in our Chinese community. This year, I rooted the stripped stalsk and stuck then in a sunny spot in my flower bed. I will have my own supply next spring, altho' I don't knwo why I bother! Our growing season is not long enough for winter melon or dow jai, both are my favourites. The ladies DO vie with eachother for the biggest mo gwa, fu gwa, snow peas, gai choi, choi sum, and a shorter version of dow jai. They always share their bounty with us. The mo gwa they grow are the size of a newborn baby! We were out at our country home today. The wolfberry bush that has been growing for 20 years is still hale and hearty inspite of rampant grass.

We had crab in black bean, garlic, and chili sauce with a twist tonight for supper. It was a recipe from a small Malaysian cookbook published by Periplus Editions. The recipes are from the cooks of Bon Ton Restaurant, KL, and Jonkers Restaurant, Malacca. The recipe is called Black Pepper Crab. The crab pieces were deep fried first. Shallots, garlic, smashed fermented soy beans, black pepper, curry leaves, fresh chilis, and roasted ground dried prawns (I used hai mai) were then stir-fried in butter until fragrant, and it WAS fragrant! The crab pieces were then returned to the wok with a little sugar, a touch of oyster sauce, and dark soy sauce. This recipe took black bean garlic chili crab up a whole bunch of notches! It was spicy, sweet, salty. We ate small bits of jasmin rice and quick stir-fry of bean sprouts, ginger and green onions with this. What a delicious mess! I took a picture, but our son borrowed the camera tonight, so I will post tomorrow.

Nail the sucker through the head onto a sturdy plank, cut a circle around the neck only through the skin, separate a couple of inches of skin from the flesh, wrap this free end around the nose of a pair of long nosed pliers, and strip the skin off. Takes some strength. Either coat your hands with salt or wear cloth gloves to hold on to the slimey buggers. It is better to eviscerate the beast first. Eel is never tough, and the bones are soft enough to eat. ← That's quite graphic, Ben. Is that how you skin your birds after a good hunt?

I still say test your recipe, that is, COOK IT, before posting. I can probably offer three or four suggestions, but I think I'll let YOU figure them out by cooking the soup and reporting back.

I would like to see salted shark. Whole. ← It's possible because the smallest shark is less than 10" long. Don't you be cheeky with Ben Sook!

"...teeny tiny fishies"? Isn't it usually a slice from a larger fish like mackerel? ← No. These are teeny tiny fishies. They are white and you can even see their pinhead -size eyes! The bag is still sitting in my pantry even tho' Ben told me to steam them. One of these days.....................

It's great that you decided to create your own version of Suan La Tang. My only suggestions, jhirshon, is to TEST your recipes before posting. For example, did you check to see if 1 cup of mushroom soaking liquid plus 4 cups chicken stock is sufficient for the amount of ingredients you are adding? Do you realize how big wood ears become once they are rehydrated? I have always been adamant about "NO SUGAR!" in my hot 'n'sour soup, so sweetened black vinegar would not be in my recipe. As for chopping the cloud ears, I would thinly slice them so they are the same as the lily buds, bamboo shoots, and mushrooms. Szechuan preserved vegetables is an authentic ingredient for hot 'n' sour soup. I hope you will make this recipe you created and report back on the results.

Exactly. Attempts on presentation. I agree that the ingredients should be as one orders...whether it's veg. combinations or simple one two. There should also be variety in combinations of vegetables. One of my pet peeves is to add oyster sauce to everything!

NO, NO, NO. You must be thinking of something else. Edible amaranth is very tender. If you finely chop it before cooking, it will turn to mush before your eyes. Leave the leaves whole as the stuff "disappears" on meeting heat, ie: loses its water content and shrinks. The ratio of raw to cooked volume is about 20 to 1 . ← It's as Ben says, amaranth is very tender, even more so than baby spinach.

Dejah, I hope you remembered where you hid them all! Looking at Eileen Yin Fei Lo's recipe I guess that the honey/maltose would caramelize the skin more, but what would the cornstarch do? ← Luckily, I remembered that I had 20 hens, and they were all accounted for at supper time. As for the cornstarch, I wonder if it is to help the liquid mixture adhere better to the skin?

I LIKE having the different textures and tastes of all the different vegtables in "Dai dap wuy"! If the list above were stir-fried and bound together with a light stock for sauce, that is, no soy, oyster, or hoisin, the different textures and taste is delightful. This is no different than when we do sand pot with mushrooms, chestnuts, bamboo shoots, fat choi, bean curd, sea cucumber, ha mai, dried oysters, scallops, black beans, oyster sauce, etc, etc. This is what I call real comfort food! There are times when we feel the need for a single vegetable focus: the whole bundle of gai lan. Other times, we want it all: a medley, like a salad. I think that's the purpose of the many restaurants that offer "dai dap wuy".

For scallops, I like to sear them in oil with aromatics until they are about half way done. Remove the scallops, add the wet sauce ingredients, bring to a boil, return the scallops, add the cornstarch heavy slurry, and toss gently to thicken. The scallops would finish cooking quickly without fear of becoming a tough hockey puck. For clams in the shell, I like to toss them in with the aromatics, stir fry them together, then add the wet sauce ingredients. I love the sound of the shells clattering against the wok! The lid would go on then to steam the clams open. Thicken with slurry and serve. When I make the cornstarch slurry, I use stock rather than water. There is more cornstarch than the usual ratio(can't remember what Ah Leung uses), so the thickening process is very quick.

The ones I eat are green with the purple in the centre, The red ones are plants that I use in my flower beds. Apparently, they are also edible, perhaps as young plants? In the past, people also collected the seeds for food.