Dejah

I have never made these with fish paste, but do make them with a mixture of ground pork, chopped shrimp, minced ginger and cilantro. Sometimes, I omit the sauce and we just dip the triangles in hot sauce.

Definitely not green leafy vegs cooked in the microwave. As you said, blanching and reheating is very convenient. I DO cook veg such as carrots and cauliflower for non-Asian dishes in the microwave. Again, this is more of a steaming process in the microwave rather than dry cooking. If I may ask, muichoi, are you involved in the restaurant biz or an avid, knowledgeable home chef? You've added fresh interest to the forum. Thanks!

You can achieve the crispy and bouncy texture without the baking soda. I do this by using my chopsticks and stiring the mixture vigorously round and round in the bowl after I've added all the seasonings, a little cornstarch, minimal amount of oil and stock or water. This method incorporates air pockets which in turn creates the bouncy texture. I do this with my beef dim sum balls...with my Kitchen-Aid and it produces great results. Have to be careful with the baking soda. If not incorporated well, you could get a bitter tasting morsel. Welcome muichoy. My maiden name was Choy. I have a cousin named Mui Jin...and the poor kid was was always teased and called Jin Mui Choy.

Of course it's a very sensibly Chinese thing to understand that bones and dark chicken meat are the best...but try and convince some people of that is impossible. My half Chinese daughter does not like the texture and taste of dark meat where as my son (of the same mixture ) loves dark meat. I will eat anything! Even breast meat will taste wonderful if it is prepared well...silkened, seasoned and not over-cooked. How many restaurants use only the very finest artisanal raised birds? What are these? You mean like the beef raised in Japan, with beer and massages? How many restaurants can afford to use these and keep prices reasonable?

To prevent yellowing, you must do the cold water bath step. I never blanch my small bok choy or gai lan on the stove. I do it in the microwave while I am cooking the rest of the ingredients. As soon as the timer goes off, I rinse the veg. in a colander under the cold water tap, and top with the stuff from the wok. If I start them too early, I forget about them, THEN they turn yellow. With the large bok choy, I just cut them into bite-size pieces and cook them a little longer in the wok with broth. The leaves are thrown in when the stalk is nearly done. I am like Tepee when it comes to gai lan Shanghai bok choy. I like to arrange them even when I don't have compnay.

I think you'd get more of the garlic flavour if you tossed the blanched bok choy in the pan with the garlic, oil and salt.

Forget clean-up jo-mel. With your extensive knowledge of Chinese food, and teaching Chinese cooking classes, I think we'd need you on the menu planning team. Perhaps we should start a new thread....plan the restaurant from base up...then menus...daily specials, pictorials to go with that... and even recipes... With what hzrt's been showing us, there seems to be real interest in home style cooking rather than banquet fare. What cha think? Guys and Dolls? Would be fun!

Hey! With your love of food, knowledge, and skills, anything is possible! Let's see what we can do here: Wesza can bankroll and advise, as he is a food and restaurant consultant... You can cook and boss the kitchen, and I, well, I would love to work the front of the house 'cos I've had my run in the kitchen... Tepee can be our master baker: mooncakes for Moon festival, bday cakes, all things sweet... torakris can be our Japanese "fuser"... Pan our flutist... Suzi? Are ya in? Gastro? Ben Sook will want to be the food taster... Who else want to be in this venture? Virtual Chinese restaurant?

hzrt! Does your wife realize how lucky she is! And, does she realize how you are flirting with our taste buds? You are doing a great job. keep it up I always fried our pork chops on the grill. Used sliced pork butt for the mix of fat and lean. After frying, we'd make the sauce with water, lots of local honey (bought the stuff in large pails), chopped garlic AND garlic powder. This was made in a large 24" wok...served for the buffet only. We made honey garlic spareribs per order. These were first boiled in the honey garlic water mix...drained and cooled, egg washed, breaded individually in cracker meal, then deep fried. These were prep. every couple of days and refridgerated. When we need the order, we'd quickly heat them up in the deep fryer, make up the sauce and toss them in for a quick coating. Sesame seeds were sprinkled on as a final touch. The honey garlic flavour is right through to the bone!

hzrt: I can't read ANY chinese other than my name. Just finished grade 2 when I came to Canada. It would be wonderful if you could just translate the names of the dishes in Maria Lee's website. Knowing what they are can lead me to try and cook some. Tomorrow, however, will be Caribbean food for me...I'm taking a cooking class! What should I leave - slowly cooking - Chinese - for the hubby and daughter?

I agree with you, Pan. The western world was certainly more familiar with Cantonese/southern Chinese food than northern Chinese. This was due to the immigrants who were from that area. Didn't Peking duck only gain notoriety when Nixon visited China? When I say gai choi has a strong flavour, I meant that the taste is stronger than, for example, bak choi or suey choi.

How many jars of fu yu, nam yu, and ham yu do you use in a month, hzrt? Looks like you are trying to educate the world about these ingrdients! I love mustard greens, ham yu and garlic, but would never have thought to stir-fry them together! I have lived such a sheltered life! Three very strong flavours together - did they complement eachother? I can't imagine any of them being "buried". I usually see 2 different kinds of mustard greens. The ones you used, are the ones I get from my "aunties", small mustard green. I can see these being stir-fried. The larger one with the big stalks have a more pungent taste. I love using these in soup, with pork bones, sliced pork, and a big hunk of ginger. Ginger is a must in making this soup. Po-Po said if you leave ginger out, the gai choi soup will taste "sang", or fishy. And then, here is hzrt, who puts ham yu with guy choi!

Have never used pineapple juice in my sweet 'n' sour sauce. Ours always had vinegar as one of the base ingredients. We did add pineapple chunks if the request if for pineapple sweet and sour spareribs. I think our sauce had a nice balance of sweet and sour taste...at least my customers all said so and loved it.

The aroma of my chicken and mushrooms must have reached all the way to Sacramento! Daughter just finished off Tues's leftovers yesterday for a snack. White fungus pungent? Really? I would think the black mushrooms would be pungent and the white odourless. This is the first time I have seen the white in this dish. Must be a HK thing. I usually cut my black mushrooms into strips, add ginger and lapcheung. Seasoning is only salt, sugar, MSG and perhaps a little lite soya sauce. Your choice of seasonings and added ingredients makes for a more robust dish. I must make it this way next time!

Maybe it was all a dream...as hzrt said "This would be like a dream comes true. The Shark Fin soup (the real one) and H/S soup prices differ by ten fold."

Hmmm, have these people tasted xiaolongbaos? These are of Shanghai origin... I can't imagine anyone can take a broad sweep over one region's cuisine and say that IT is the worst in the country!

Great pictures, Tepee But remember this?

Oh thanks! Just what I need to see while blurry eyed and hungry!

In Hong Kong cooking practce, I have never heard of steaming the fish paste then frying it. Typically raw fish past is putty on to bell pepper, tofu, egg plants, etc or by itself, and directly goes to the fryer. No re-cook. ← Instead of steaming, make like they do with flavoured butters: Scrape fish onto cling wrap, roll and wrap by grasping both ends. Pick the "tube" up once the wrap is around the fish paste several times and twirl to tighten the tube. Tuck the ends tightly under and freeze. Slice discs while frozen and fry immediatedly. Wonder if that would work?

I made a Sour Cream Plum Kuchen from last month's Canadian Living magazine. The top is glazed with apricot jam. It's one that you can freeze after baking and pull out when you need it. It was very nice. The cake wasn't too sweet, light in texture (sour cream?) With the glaze, it would certainly have eye appeal in your showcase. When plums aren't in season, pears would work, I think?

You mean you JUST noticed???! Have you checked out the work on her website?

In black bean garlic sauce, beef or chicken is how I usually cook bitter melon. I love it! This is great with rice or rice noodles (haw fun). With rehydrated dried oysters, pork neck bones, a WHOLE BIG CHUNK of pork butt, chun pei and ginger, "cooling soup"... I haven't tried cooking it stuffed with ground pork, but I love that too!

What's happening to this forum? Ah Sook, GaJeah turn their attention elsewhere and the kitchen turns into a comedy club!? I imagine the eggs would evaporate...dry out? Don't they cover these eggs in ash and lime for the "preserving"? So, ashes to ashes...........

Well! Blow me down and pick me up with your chopsticks! hzrt! You are cooking up a storm here. Delicious pictures. This is better than a "cook-off" I have used chicken drumsticks, thighs or whole chicken for this dish. Because my s-i-l makes such excellent soya sauce chicken, I never make it these days.

The mind boggles - a new aromatic, not to mention tasty, inflight skin treatment! All the glitterati will want one! ← That's the best TYPO and response I have ever seen!