Dejah

Aiyeeah! Ah Leung! How can you make such comments about the raw garlic with the eel when you, yourself, blendered up 10 cloves of garlic for your nam yu roast chicken! I know you said to temper the raw taste with salt and sugar, but still...10 cloves! Sheesh... I'll cook with garlic, and use it on garlic bread, but I wouldn't be allowed in the house if I ate raw garlic as with the chicken or eel! I can sympathize with hubby who doesn't handle second-hand garlic well. I face that with my morning ESL class - from my Korean and Beijing students. I swear they eat raw cloves for breakfast!

Leftovers work well, with congee or non-Asian soups. "replacing the water during cooking"?! No, no. You want to keep the starch so the congee would have body and not watery. You would lose that "rice" flavour also when you replace the water. Aiyeeah!

Pressure cookers are great, but it's like a having a big pot of stew or hearty soup sitting on the back of the stove for hours - the process, the aromas and the flavours are every bit as enjoyable to me as the actual eating of that bowl of congee.

If the above is directed at my comments, then I would say," Read my Lips..errr words, Uncle Ben!" The potato would remain neutral if boiled because water is a neutral element. BUT, deep fry it to a crisp, it would not lose its neutrality, but would be moderated by the deep frying and oil factors.

I think both Pan and Ben are corrected in their, um, "assumptions". The humour in unripe fruit would be different only because it would intensify as the fruit ripens. It would remain yin or yang no matter the age and cooking time (a thousand points for Pan.) However, with watercress as an example, if it is too mature, it will take longer cooking time to make it edible. With maturity, watercress can become bitter or retain less flavour, but still yin. Upon increasing the cooking time to make it edible, the cook would add other ingredients: pork bones, dried oysters, gingko nuts, etc. to make it more palatable. In doing so, the yin effect would be MODERATED, unless the cook chooses all yin addtional ingredients! (Equal points for Ben. )

Is that the same oil with flavor built-up from being used over and over again for deep-frying stuff? ← Exactly! But, we changed our deepfryers more frequently than McDonald's so we need the soya sauce for colour!

In my mind, it's not so much in the taste as knowing the inherent qualities in a food. However, some foods with a bitter taste, such as bitter melon, would be considered yin - (leung)cooling tonic. Nuts, especially roasted chestnuts, pistachios,peanuts would be yang - (yeet hay - gawn) if you eat too many of these. Sometimes, you need a combination of foods: such as ham jeu tow and tofu soup for lowering fever, dong gwa with the peel on and dried oysters for when you have yeet hay... Whether there are other food groups where the taste would indicate yin/yang, I don't know.

Omit the lettuce, tomato and mayo, toast the bread and that's a Denver or Western sandwich when I make it at home. In a restaurant, that patty would be egg, diced onion, bacon or ham. Gotta have ketsup to dip the sandwich in!

I am having a hard time visualizing oil at a "rapid boil"and deep frying egg foo yung. So, this method would be more like fritters?

Perhaps Dejah knows this better than I, but when they are deep fried, the oil is boiling and a ladle of mix is carefully tipped into the oil and then the ladle is used to immediately splash (or pour) the hot oil on the top surface so as to harden the top before turning. I guess some restaurants also pan fry them. ← jo-mel: We didn't deep fry the egg foo yung. The western style was always done on the grill, and the Cantonese style was done in the wok.

I'm impressed! You make ja gwai for congee! I tried it once and decided it was much better and easier to buy them ready made. 1.5 hours is enough for congee if you are in a hurry - and you have stock on hand. I have used store bought stock - Campbell's Chicken stock - and it turns out well. My s-i-l on the other hand, uses her rice cooker and puts the congee on at night before she goes to bed.

With the omeletes, as Ben Sook prefers to call 'em, we'd stir-fry up an order of "chop suey" - shredded cabbage, onion, celery, mushrooms, bean sprouts, then add it (no liquid) to 3 eggs with a tsp. of cornstarch beaten into it. This helped the omeletes hold its shape when we put the mixture onto the grill. The shallow Chinese soup ladle used was the perfect size for each of the 5 patties for each order. The gravy was made with the flour roux because it held up better than the cornstarch thickened method, which would turn watery if it sits for any length of time. The gravy was kept hot in a double boiler on the stove. We didn't have the luxury of making gravy for each order that came in.

I made a roux with flour and oil from the deep fryer - the one used for cooking breaded meats. To this, I added stock, water, seasonings and soya sauce for colour. Always made a big potful in the morning, for the egg foo yung or boneless almond chicken. This stuff was good. Customers were never able to duplicate it 'cos they didn't have the same oil as I did. I didn't mean to say there was anything wrong with the bean sprouty pucks. I love eggs and bean sprouts!

Gravy is not part of this dish in my experience. I called this Cantonese Egg Foo Yung on our menu. Sometimes I add diced BBQ pork and baby shrimps. Then it was the "Deluxe" one: add $2.00. Brown gravy was typically served with BarbaraY's "bean sprouty hockey pucks!"

What he means is, " I don't know the characters!!" and, neither do I. However, Ah Leung is well on his way to fulfilling your request, Susan.

Oh, I know the alcohol boils off; it's the flavour I was thinking about... Perhaps you can rename it as Drunken congee!

If I am being questioned, I just say, " Po-Po said so." I don't really think about what my body needs, I just feel it when I need to make a specific tong. Must be all the years of "indoctrination" through the generations. Po-Po is 97.5 and healthy as could be, so the "old ways" must work!

1 cup of wine??!! (Dejah staggers back to bed)

It's even better with diced lap cheung, diced onions and peas! And, we like to eat it dipped in sweet hot chili sauce.

And it doesn't matter that I myself am a granny, MY Mom has been bouncing my "yin and yang" around for the last week. One more week of Po-Po sitting and I should be young and healthy like Gastro, tepee, I_Call_the_Duck.......................... Just pulled out a book from my shelves: The Chinese System of Using Foods to Stay Young by Henry C. Lu., Sterling Publishing Co., Inc. New York ISBN 0-0869-9460-6, 1996. It's never been opened because I have a "living book" close to home. It discusses Chinese food remedies, deficiency and excess diseases, energy Tonic foods, blood tonic foods, Yin Tonic foods, Yang tonic foods. There are chapters on foods for eleminating toxic heat, damp heat, sputum. The final sections deal with getting to know your system and how to correct your weaknesses.

These were available around Dec. - plump and juicy. I sit and peel them for my grandson as we watch TV - brings back fond memories of MY Po-Po doing the same thing for me in Hong Kong, as we ride the trams on a warm evening. Right now, we have dragon eyes (loong gnan). I don't eat as many of these as I do lychees. Neither causes any disharmony to my body.

Please send ASAP FedEx so I don't have to make it myself for Po-Po. Sorry, Tepee. He's already calling me Dai Ga Jeah, so you must be...niece...or, I suppose you COULD be Mui Mui. But then, you'd always get the drumsticks!

Not at all. A bit of ketchup is what I use all the time. And I am authentically Chinese. ← Funny thing, a while back, I was making tomato/beef for supper at Po-Po's. I was about to add some ketsup as she had shown me years ago. This time, she stopped me and said "No, No. Don't add ketsup!". I swear she changes her mind each time she catches me cooking...just to keep me off balance. Now, I just use vinegar and sugar. Next time, she may tell me to add ketsup.

Yes. Ah Leung, Silow: Great job! I think I'll attempt this next weekend as a surprise for Po-Po. I just picked up a new jar of nam yu in anticipation of this pictorial. We can get small chickens, but usually 2-3 lbs. I'll need to do 3 for my family... Mizducky: Cornish hens would work, but as Ah Leung said," Adjust your cooking time".

jo-mel, I DO remember that discussion, but can't remember in what thread! Wasn't it just store bought frozen bread dough that was used? I don't remember it being frozen bun dough from Chinese store though.