Dejah

I think the only time "starch", as in noodles, is ordered for a banquet is when it is a special birthday, like the 60th and onward. "Jeung sau mein" = long life noodles This may be one of the main dishes or in the dessert soup.

Spiced beef cigars: Lean ground beef browned and simmered with onions, garlic, tomato sauce, seasoned with cumin, nutmeg, cinnamon, cayenne pepper, and paprika. Once cooled, add egg, honey and bread crumbs. Make cigars with a tbsp. of meat mixture, rolled up in phyllo pastry that's been brushed with melted butter and sprinkled with bread crumbs( each sheet pre-cut into 3 pieces). Brush with melted butter, sprinkled with sesame seeds and baked at 400F for 20 minutes. You can make these ahead and freeze without baking. When you want to serve them, bake from frozen state and add an extra 10 minutes to the baking time. For a dip, mix curry paste in yogurt. I also like to eat mine with spicy salsa.

My Mom makes the sweet tang yuen at Lunar New Year. I will eat a couple but really prefer the savory one.

I always order gai lan at Chinese restaurants where Chinese frequent. They are always done al dente, without any meat, just a splash of oyster sauce. This is my favourite veg!

That's exactly the way my Mom and I make it. I like lots of lobak. Sometimes we also add slices of lapcheung. I like to top my bowl with lots of cilantro, sprinkle of sesame oil and black/white pepper. I also like a little bowl of light soya with chili oil to dip my yuan in. Ben! I'm surprised at you. I know you can make this yourself!

The end slice of bread fried in bacon drippings. . . Hostess Snowballs and Twinkies. . . Pimento stuffed green olives...the whole jar, including the pickling the juice. Speaking of pastry dough Pinwheels, hubby's Nana always slathered peanut butter and sugar on the rolled out dough, then rolled it up to cut into pinwheels. Sprinkle sugar on top and bake along with the pies.

To de-scale and peel chicken feet, dunk them into boiling water for about a minutes, then cold water and the scales come off easily. To cook: GOLDEN PHOENIX CLAWS I brush my feet - chicken feet, that is, with maltose first, then deep fry until golden brown. This first step makes the feet light and fluffy. Drain well. Boil some water with fresh ginger, star anise, cilantro roots (if you can get them). Add the feet, bring back to a boil and simmer for about 1.5 hours. Then I make a marinade of oyster sauce, sugar, soya sauce, sake or cooking wine, chili peppers (you decide on the heat), minced garlic, pepper, mashed black beans and sesame oil. Marinate the feet for 24 hours. Just before serving, steam feet WITH the marinate for 15 minutes and serve. I have made a big pile at one time, put into plastic containers and into the freezer. When I get the hungries, just thaw, heat and spit! Hubby and the kids can't be bothered eating feet that have been scratching all over a barnyard. I prefer them over popcorn!

Chicken feet... with black bean garlic and chili peppers? You are on! Pier! We toured workingmen and social clubs in Yorkshire area, County Cleveland, as a band in 1976, 77 and 79. We loved it! Shaftsbury Street, Gerrard Street in Soho had good cheap Chinese food in those days. How about now?

hrzt wrote: "Dejah: I don't think Ja Choi is pickled mustard green. Their textures are very different. I think Ja Choi is some other vegetables. Something that is more like Daikon with big roots. Ja Choi is the root, mostly." Uh huh, Elder Brother Ben Hong has corrected Mui Mui on that already. "Salted turnip (or Daikon) is called Choi Po in Cantonese. Perhaps in Toisanese dialect it is called Ham Choi? My wife doesn't know. Perhaps my MIL would." Ham choi is made with daikon/turnip, thus the Toisanese name Hai Toy (Head veg). My s-i-l who speaks Cantonese calls it Ham choi...meaning salted veg, but maybe the name varies with villages? "Is Mui Choi made from mustard green? I thought it is from Bok Choi." I just checked my new package and it said Salted Mustard. Thinking about the shape of the stalk, I tend to think it IS mustard greens. It always has sand , so I make sure I soak it well and rinse a couple times before I cut it up. "All these talks about preserved Chinese vegetables... perhaps we should do that in the China forum...." Hey! The forum is Elsewhere in Asia.... Is China not in Asia now?

Gai choi has such a distinctive taste, you don't really need to make complicated stocks. I just start my soup with the cut up guy choi and ginger. When the vegetables are tender, I add my seasoned and marinated pork or chicken slices. A touch of salt and MSG and you're set! If you think you really "need" stock, try Knor's or Campbell's chicken broth, or their canned Chinese chicken stock. That's what I resort to when I am in a hurry. My s-i-l must have been looking over my shoulder. She was in Winnipeg...capital city of my province, and brough back a big plant of gai choi, 2 fuzzy melons and a package of lotus root! Those will wait until the weekend. I am preparing Sechuan sesame chicken for my Ethiopian and El Salvadorian adult ESL students tonight...for our Xmas potluck supper. Don't think they're ready for guy choi yet!

How were you able to keep the popsicles from melting? The last time hubby and I bought 6, we "had" to eat them before they melted! It was -30C outside, but we couldn't take the chance.

Humbly? I would never "hit" my elder! You are right about Ja choi, It IS knobby and preserved with chili. Sometimes, people slice it for hot 'n'sour soup. Ung choi, I believe, is quite garlicky. Maybe this is the salted garlic leaves you are thinking of? Ham choi, or in Toisanese, hi toy is salted root veg, I think turnip. I always put it in my lotus root soup. The turnip is in packages, usually sliced length wise but still connected by the tops. I also julienne this and steam with beef or pork. The ginger may well be as the counterbalance to the cooling effect, but Mom said if you don't put the ginger in, the soup will have a funny taste...sang?

Now that I have sumac, I want to try all kinds of recipes using this spice. But the link posted by Suvir didn't work. Any other links to try? Purslane or portulaca runs rampant in my flower beds every summer! The first time I saw them for sale was in England. I couldn't believe my eyes! People actually BUY that weed? Now that everyone says it's so "necessary", I will have to cultivate it carefully for a trial run tho' my neighbors may report me to the weed control board and send me for psychiatric assessment.

Now THAT would be a sight! I think they are the ugliest animals I have ever seen...but they might be good eating If one DOES land on my doorstep, I will recruit all of you to come and help!

With mustard greens, if you want to try another one, buy some SALTED mustard in packages on your Asian grocery shelves. With this one, you must soak it until it is soft, then rinse it acouple times to make sure there is no sand/dirt hidden in the leaves. (Not great on the teeth!) Cut it into fine shreds and mix it with either seasoned ground beef or pork, OR slices of same. I love adding fresh mint and hot Thai peppers on top of this! The first time I tasted it made this way was in northern England. This dish is also steamed. I usually add add acouple tbsp. of water to the meat mixture and keep it lose...don't pat it down to make it look "neat"! The pickled mustard green is called JA Choi, the salted version is called MUI Choi, the fresh mustard greens is called GUY Choi. You can also buy salted turnip, which is called HAM CHOI. This you can rinse off, fine juliennes with ginger, and steam as above . . . AHHHHH COMFORT FOOD!

With guy choi, I like to make soup with sliced pork. Marinate the thinly sliced pork with just salt, oil and a little pinch of cornstarch. I use pork neck bones to make the stock. Bring the stock to a boil, add the guy choi stalks first, then the leaf portion. I always put acouple of slices of ginger in for this soup. Can't remember my mom's description of why (taste related), but the ginger does make a difference. I put the pork in at the last few minutes. This makes a light soup with a slight bitter cooling taste. If you think the soup may be too bitter for your taste, you can always blanch the guy choi first before adding to the stock. I find the bigger the mustard plant, the more flavourful the soup. The young plants I like for stir-fry. After Chinese New Year celebrations, I cook a sweet dish with guy choi and "chang tay", a sweet ballon-shaped deep-fried dumpling made with glutinour rice flour.

Many thanks to the generosity of an eGulleteer, namely, Behemoth, I now have a great supply of SUMAC! Finally my family and I will taste the musakhan I made for a potluck supper. Thanks also to all you folks for recipes, suggestions, etc for middle east recipes. I am sure my Saudi student will also thank you. He is staying here for more English classes. The running joke between us now is "when the camel will arrive for the grandest feast of all . . . stuffed camel"! Dejah

It wasn't all the beautiful women? (Apologies for mentioning that if you're married or in a committed relationship.) ← That's ok, Pan. We don't mind the looking Dejah

The first time I did a Lunar New Year dim sum buffet ( yup...buffet!) at my old restaurant, we ordered from a little shop in Winnipeg (2.5-hour drive) that made and froze dim sum for sale to grocery stores. I didn't have the know-how at that time to make thousands of these little treats for the hords in Brandon. The product was good. .. very uniform in size and appearance. The fillings were flavourful and they steamed up nicely. The only complaint I had was the filling for char sui baos...too much dough and not enough filling. I went that route for 2 years, then Mrs. Wong's little shop burned down acouple weeks before Xmas, and that was when I called in my Mom and her little old lady friends. They patiently sat in a back room, spent a week showing me how to make those pesky pleats in har gow and sui mai, and made more than enough for our next event. The left over dim sum was what got me to serve luncheon platters. I froze them individually, then steamed up upon request. Today, I still make ahead when I know I need a large supply...like for my foodblog. The key is to keep them well sealed, but not for too long. I didn't do that for Ben on his visit because he gets fresh all the time?

"Mei=rice / gai=chicken. Why isn't it 'lop' for sausage, instead of lor'??' lor mei or nor mei means glutinous rice, which is used in this dish, as opposed to jeem mei which is long grain rice. I assume they don't use the term "lop cheung" (Chinese sausage) is that it is a "given ingredient" in lor mei gai or lor mein fan.

I was saddened to hear Pierre Burton died. I enjoyed watching him on Front Page Challenge and reading his books and articles. In one of the tributes to this most memorable Canadian, Adrienne Clarkson mentioned Mr. Burton's adaptation of Morton Thompson Christmas Turkey. Has anyone ever tried this recipe? I have it printed out now and will try it out on the family this Christmas. I would like to hear from anyone who has tried out this 4 page recipe.

I really like the idea of the crisped-up turkey skin on top of the jook. I will save all the skin from my Xmas turkey this year before serving! Turkey is a must in our half Chinese household, for Thanksgiving and for Xmas. We don't particulary care for "left-over" roast turkey or chicken flavour in our jook. This may be because it taste too much like "the other chicken and rice soup". I DO save the necks, stripped fresh carcasses/bones, and giblets for making jook. The necks are very good. My daughter likes the stringy texture the neck meat gives the jook. Any other time, she won't touch the neck...just breast meat! It's the Caucasian side of her coming thru'.

Just got some time to check back into this forum. Your recipe looks great, Foodman, and definitely one I will try once I start my Xmas vacation next week! I will have my Saudi Arabian student again in the new year, so this is another recipe I can prepare for him. He was very happy with the musakhan I made for him a few days ago. Any other recipes that you think he'd enjoy, I will try. I just have to make sure I can get all the ingredients. For example, I wouldn't know where to find preserved lemons. I guess I need to explore the ethnic food stores more closely in Winnipeg...about 2.5 hours from me. I think my sense of adventure has returned after many years of being in the Chinese food industry! Hurray!

Dejah: Let me know if you want a good Chinese recipe for cooking lobsters. I just need to recruit some of your foot soldiers for the demonstration. I think half a dozen would do... ← I only have 4 footsoldiers; that's counting my grandson. Give me your best shot, hzrt! I'm always open to new ideas.

So many kuih/goh to eat. . . so little time!