Dejah

I always enjoy my "bak jam gai" with hot mustard, and oyster sauce with my "sew yook". Everyone here seems to think that hot mustard is not Chinese. Some of my well travelled customers used to request "Chinese mustard" meaning the hot mustard. I used Keen's powder, the same stuff they used to plaster on hubby's chest when he had croup. To this day, he won't eat the stuff!

Nope, dehydrator would not work! Wind dried . . . must be wind dried. This term was used in my Immigrant Cookbook's recipe for lobak goh. Amazing! My Mom and I decided that "hong yuen" is what we are having for lunch tomorrow. I am using rehydrated scallops, velvet pork, lapcheung, lobak (lots of this!), cilantro(lots of this too), and a dipping sauce of light soya and fresh ground pepper. YUM!

Thanks, arbuclo, for a wonderful blog! I have been spending about 10 minutes of my morning break with my Saudi student reading your posts and pictures. After the first 2 days, the rest of the class, all international students mostly from China, all crowded into the cubicle too! Turki told me before that he used to drink camel milk every morning, so it was interesting for me to see the picture comparing cow's milk to camel's. All the pictures were great. Turki thanks you too!

Very pretty colour, Gastro. Will we see a picture of you IN the cheongsam? My Mom used to make lap yook years ago. She marinate the long strips of pork in soya, spices and wine. Then she'd poke a hole at the top so she can string each and hang them out in a shady place to "wind dry". They were so good because lap yook was not available commercially on the prairies. This was a real treat for my dad who hadn't had this for about 9 years!

Ah, Irwin, you are a "Hoy Saon Doi" at heart . . errr... at stomach. Dried duck gizzards, duck feet, "honey date - meet dow", Chinese almonds - lan dee in dried bak choi tang . . . YUM! Here's another candidate for "honourary Toisanese" along with Auntie Yetti!

Re Chinese food in UK: I remember very good Chinese food in Durham, Yorkshire, in the mid-70s. We were in an upstairs restaurant with a table by an open window. We enjoyed steamed beef with mui choy, fresh mint and chilli peppers. I've never had this before and it is now one of our family favourites. Other dishes we had were steamed fish with ginger, scallions, and black beans, and stir-fried snap peas with chicken. The day happened to be Miner's Gala in Durham. We watched and enjoyed the collier bands as they marched to the cathedral. While down in London, we found some small Chinese restaurants on Shaftsbury that were quite good. These were small, packed with Chinese customers on community tables. I was pregnant at the time and had a craving for beansprouts just about every hour! Don't tell my Mom as she told me absolutely NO BEANSPROUTS when you are pregnant. They thin your blood and it's not good for the baby!

judyfoodie, WELCOME ABOARD! So far on this thread, we've been saying" Toisan" , "Toysan", etc. But in Hoisaon wah, , my family always said" Hoi Saon". I think Toisan is Cantonese pronunciation.There are also regional differences in this dialect . . . I say Hoi Saon, Ben may say "Hoi San", etc. . . I need to check with my mother about our village: Hoi Saon, Lung Pan, Oi Gong Huay. Family name: Choy We need to make a list of the dishes our parents made. Then we can pool our recipes! I haven't had goy lung for a long time. I wonder if my Mom is up to teaching me this while I am Po-Po sitting . . .

Sweet and Sour Pork: I agree that you will probably find this dish with different incarnations in different parts of China. It is a common dish in Cantonese cooking. I like the Sweet and Sour Pork prepared in Hong Kong. But in the States, it's a different story. It's the same story that while some of these dishes indeed originated in China, they turned into something quite different in the USA (or elsewhere around the world outside of China). Orange Beef (sweet sweet sweet), Chicken Chow Mein (where "mein", or noodle as we know it, is optional), and Egg Foo Young (can't stand that they put so much flour in the egg mix to make an omlette, and oh, with the terrible "gravy") came to mind... ← Some memories from my restaurant days: One of our favourites with the customers were the deep fried breaded spareribs. We would egg wash the ribs, then hand bread them with cracker meal. This is like bread crumbs except not as "porous" if that is thr right description. The ribs were deep fried and some menus list them as "bonbons"? I still can't understand why. For sweet and sour ribs, we'd bring a stockpot full of the deep fried ribs to boil in water, vinegar, and sugar. The ribs were then strained and ladled into a holding unit in the steam table and kept hot. The "rib juice" as we called it, was strained and put into a large pail into the cooler. This is what we used to make our sweet and sour sauce. It is not just vinegar and sugar. It had the flavour of the ribs in it. Ketsup and soya were never used. The sauce was thickened with cornstarch slurry and kept in another holding unit. The colour was a light amber with a nice balance of sweet and sour. Other restaurants all used ketsup AND red colouring in their sauce. The customers always wondered why ours looked better and tasted more flavourful. They have been known to order a container to take home. They are missing it these days. Our westernized "chow mein" was the same as the chop suey: shredded cabbage, onion, celery, mushrooms with the exception of made on site crispy egg noodles on top of the veg. My son was very good at making these and it was hard to keep hands out of the bin when they are freshly made! The noodles were also used to make Chinese noodle cake: keh mah. Cantonese chow mein was on the menu where soft or crispy stir-fried noodles are at the bottom of the dish, or lomein. For egg foo young, we served the westernized and Cantonese style. The westernized one, we used the same veg mix as the chop suey, choice of meat, with a tablespoon of cornstarch mixed in as binding agent. And yes, we used "the brown sauce on the side. I didn't mind it as it was like meat gravy (wonderful on white rice ) The thing to do was not to make it thick like glue! The Cantonese style had just eggs, beansprouts and onions, BBQ pork and baby shrimps. No binding agent was used and you had to cook each patty carefully and slowly so that it would set without burning. These were cooked on the side of the wok and never on the bottom. I loved these with chili oil. Orange beef: sweet, sweet, sweet!? Never! Crispy, spicy, sweet AND sour, full of citrus aroma and chun pei flavour. We kept a pail of sauce base of boiled vinegar, water and sugar. With each order, we'd put a ladle into the wok, add orange extract, rehydrated julienned chunpei, chilis, 5-spice powder, simmered then thickened with cornstarch slurry. It has to be just thicken enough to lightly coat each piece when you toss in the lightly floured and breaded deep fried pieces of meat. Ooooo, I think this made up for my 2 days of silence on this forum!

is that the same thing as edamame? because that's what they look like to me ← I agree with both of you. What a wonderful meal! We are doing a mixture of stuff tonight . . . dim sum and sizzling hot plates. Hope to post later.

Mmmmmmm....Gam towh lam

I grew up with salty/ licorice flavoured dried olives. They have a light brown colour and are chewy. These were treated as snacking food. We also use olives that have been fermented in soya sauce then dried, like the fermented soy beans, in cooking. These are used in steamed dishes with fatty pork, and in a vegetarian dish called JIA.

Yuki, That looks great! Ooooo now my mouth is watering and my tongue is waving at the goh in my fridge! Breakfast, I guess

I like the way Taiwanese make this as snacks: Soak the dried fish in water for a few hours, drain. Get some pressed tofu (flavored with soy already). Cut into thin shreds. Sautee some minced garlic, and slices of jalapeno/chili-pepper, stir-fry the dried fish and tofu shreds together. At last drizzle on sesame oil and soy sauce shortly before serving. You can add sesame seeds too if you like. ← This sounds good too, hzrt. I'll try them this next week.

I made my third one last night. The first two were devoured by my international students most of whom are Chinese. I took a 1/4 wedge to my Mom and brother's house today for my New Years visit, along with fruit, candies and hong bao for my great neice and nephew. I fried up neen goh for my students. Took a picture, now I'll see if I can upload it.

This is one of the foods that I'm dying to learn how to make, but where I live right now we don't have candied winter melon. Never thought about using candied papaya and pineapple. I might try that! Also, I think lo poh beng would be good with sweetened coconut. ← Sweetened coconut and sesame seeds! So I am wondering if I can use the candied wintermelon that I bought for toon hap?

Oh Shoot! Double post! Who knows how to delete double posts?

Anxiously waiting for your results, Yuki. Just out of curiosity, was it just the top think layer that was watery, or was the whole cake watery? I thought my cake wasn't done the first time I made it, but the layer firmed up as it cooled. What proportion of flour to water did you use? My notes said 3 cups rice flour to 2.5 cups water.

Anxiously waiting for your results, Yuki. Just out of curiosity, was it just the top think layer that was watery, or was the whole cake watery? I thought my cake wasn't done the first time I made it, but the layer firmed up as it cooled. What proportion of flour to water did you use? My notes said 3 cups rice flour to 2.5 cups water.

ok, Ben Dai gaw-gaw, I want to know how to eat those little transparent fishies with the black dot eyes! My sister gave me a big bagful of these and she said to steam them with the rice? or deep fried then put on the rice? or as you said . . . They keep staring at me from the cupboard. I'll try them during my break this week.

Gastro, Foo yu is different from nam yu. They are both fermented tofu in rice wine, but nam yu also uses red rice in the process. The latter is used mainly for braising whereas fu yu can be eaten out of the jar OR for stir fries. Sometimes when I'm eating by myself, I will just have rice with a couple squares on fu yu on top. My daughter's favourite is green beans stir-fried with fu yu. Some people add fu yu to their char sui baos. I've never had them like that. Supposed to be very good but I'd think that would detract from the BBQ flavour. Comments on this?

Origami, How much prep. are you allowed? How many burners/woks are you allowed? If you have 20 minutes for the COOKING part, and the prep. time is on top of that, how about "seafood in bird's nest"? The whole presentation is colourful AND edible.

Neen goh keeps very well if you wrap it up and put it in the fridge. Do you have Grace Young's Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen? Her recipe is good as well as being simple. There's also a recipe in www.epicurious.com We just had some fried up at my s-i-l's. It was really good! I found the recipe somewhere for her. Maybe it's the one from epicurious.

Our ancestors didn't eat at McDs, KFC, Krispy Kremes, Pizza Hut, etc. etc. Gastro, You should have ordered one size larger in anticipation.

Just got back from CNY supper at Kam Lung restaurant. They had a special buffet: wonton soup, hot and sour soup roast duck, salty chicken, lightly breaded shrimp, spicy squid, Chinese mushrooms in oyster sauce, Hawaiian pork, mapo tofu, nice and crispy mixed vegetables, lotus root, wood ear, snow peas and chicken, sesame chicken and ginger beef for the more timid, Shanghai noodles, Yangchow fried rice, shrimp and cashews, BBQ pork, kung po chicken and a couple more items I can't remember! They had red bean lotus seed soup, mini custard tarts, mini fruit tarts, fruit in custard. I really enjoyed the soup. It was ok for buffet...certainly not like the feasts you guys have been showcasing.

Oh, Wonderful! I will look forward to trying out your recipe for gai jie bang! That's what so intriguing about this bang...meaty yet a sweet pastry. It's a flavour that's hard to describe, at least, it is for me. But, I love them! My sister usually brings them from Vancouver. I try to ration, but I just can't help myself!