Dejah

I never put mung beans in my joong, so can't comment on that. But, mung beans are green. Definitely get the dried chestnuts because you are, I presume, making savory joong. You'd need to soak them overnight to rehydrate before using.

Yet another version! Thanks, Ce'nedra.

I'm not sure how safe it is with salt curing pork for 2 - 3 days, but I've been doing it for years, as has my Mom. Would salting completely raw pork be different than with half cooked raw chunk of meat? I cover the slabs with a layer of coarse salt and leave the container on the counter for 3 days. By the end of 3 days, the meat is firm to the touch and has a greyish tinge. I use finger size pieces in my joong, but this last batch I made for the pavilion demo, I've been using up as cubes cooked with our rice. The climate would definitely affect the safety issue. In Canada, it is dry and cooler.

As is paella traditionally! I guess there are variations of this dish all over the world. Would biryani fit into this catagory? Even tho' I love paella, I've made it so many times that zhua fan is going to be a nice change.

Here's the recipe that Ping sent me:

I enjoyed this zhua fan at a party last weekend. The cook said it was not Chinese but is Asian. She sent me the recipe and it contains shredded carrot, lots of cumin, cubed lamb, onions and raisins. The whole thing was done in a roaster in the oven. It was very good. Anyone familiar with this?

Stir-fried then simmered until tender with onions and fu yu - great on a bowl of freshly cooked rice. I usually end up eating the cold leftovers before the end of the night.

Where have you been, origamicrane? What a great "re-entry"! Looking forward to the results!

Thanks, Everyone! I thought I had recuperated, but I think the adrenolin has worn down and I am feeling very tired. Glad it's nearly the weekend. The counts and reports are in, and the "new kids on the block" were the hit of the festival! Kinda made everything worthwhile.

Both hubby and I are hectic with our university students writing midterm exams, so we won't have time to process and post the many pictures from the other photographer: David Xu. He is one of our 400 new Chinese in Brandon, and he did a great job roaming around the three days plus chairing the sanitation department. He's got the pictures up on a site, so have a look. Food is pictured on "Chinese Pavilion 10". http://david-xu-ca.spaces.live.com/default.aspx Photo 15 is the group slicing up the char siu. Photo 3 and #94 is David himself. # 56 is my s-i-l and myself - lovely hairnets #61 is my big brother #62 is my DH - our sound tech and webmaster #92 and 92 are our head Chef Thomas and one of his assistants - Bob #95 - 99 is the group of performers, volunteers at the end of Sat night singing My China Heart. It was very moving. The rest of the "albums" show crowds, performers, etc. There is a Spring Festival event in Winnipeg at the Forks on the 17th. Several Chinese performing groups are participating. We may go in as a committee to scout out talent for next year (Can't believe I'm actually talking about 2009!). The acts from China, Magic Face and the young lady doing the spinning plates, were hits, as well as the lions from Winnipeg. They hope to have a dragon for next year.

Let me make sure I understand you correctly, chappie. You are buying some jelly fish in some plastic packages in the Asian market. You want to know know how to turn it into something ready to eat. Right? (Note: I am not sure if the boiling part is necessary. I followed their instructions to boil the jelly fish but found that the resultant jelly fish was quite chewy.) ← I think chappie is looking for a way to prepare Chesapeake Bay Sea nettles (a type of jelly fish) from fresh out of the water into edible jelly fish like those packaged and sold in Asian markets. I've always bought the packages of ready-to-eat jelly fish - with sesame seed oil and sliced red chilis. I'm the only one who really enjoys them, so the small packages are perfect for me. Everyone else say they don't like eating rubber bands.

A quick clarification! The peanut butter was not for the ku lo yuk; it was for dan dan mein! Chef made the sauce for the noodles but again, I couldn't stick in the kitchen long enough to watch him make it. He stopped making it and we just had lo mein once he understood the nut allergy issue.

I love the gizzard, stir-fried with ginger and green onion. Chicken livers with ginger steamed with my rice. My Mom made "new mother" soup with chicken guts, peanuts, wine, etc each time I had a baby. I miss that but ain't about to have another just for that soup!

Last night was our big night: 7000 people went through our pavilion from noon until 11 pm when we closed shop. People filled all the seats as well as standing from one end of the mall to the other. As it was a business day, there was no limit on capacity. We only had to control the liquor so it doesn't move out of our licensed area. We didn't plan on serving food until 1 pm official opening time, but people wanted, so we cooked. Luckily, chef Thomas had already been working since 9:30 preparing. The serving committee was not expected until 12:30, so we pulled on our hairnets and rolled up our sleeves. We are processing hundreds of pictures, and will post on the website as they are ready. If there are any specifically food related ones, I'll post again here. Our association's website is: www.westmanchinese.com My hubby is our token non-Chinese member as he's our webmaster, one of two photographers, and stage technician during the pavilion. Food wise, we have leftovers. I looked in the walk-in freezer, and we have about 1000 each of siu mai and jiaozi leftover, a 44 lb box of ground pork, and 4 cases of uncut pork butt, and BBQ pork was down to the last 10 lbs. These will be used for our Chinese Students Association Spring Festival event on Feb. 23. They postponed it until then as New Years was so close to this event. Their capacity is 250 only so we will definitely have enough food for that. The chefs for that event will be headed by Chef Thomas again, and the pavilion committee chairs will assist with whatever the students need. We will have a party for all the volunteers after that. We didn't anticipate so many Tsingtao drinkers - duh! 50 cases of Tsingtao, 10 cases of Yanjing (not a favourite), and six cases Great Wall Cabernet was really low by Friday. We had to fill the gap with Labatts Blue. The entertainment was incredible - both local talent and imported from Winnipeg and China. They were all impressive, but outstanding were the Magic face Changing and the young lady with the twirling plates from China, and the dancing lions from WuShu Manitoba. The lions were manned by performers as young as age 9! You could feel the excitment from the moment they arrive in the mall - two hours before their first perfomance. I think I was the most excited as I hadn't seen on up close since 1958! From all reports, and from our books, the first Chinese Pavilion for the 5th Annual Lieutenant Governor's Winterfest was a resounding success! Will we do it again? We'll think about that.

Just got in from our second day of WinterFest. Word had gotten around that the Chinese Pavilion was the place to be this year, and it was! The venue was packed to the rafters for two nights - clicked about 1000 Thursday night between 6pm and 10 pm, and +2000 tonight between 6 pm and 10 pm. The secret Ku Lo Yook was very delicious! The siu mai and deep fried dumplings were a hit, as were the lo mein and BBQ pork. Everyone wanted to $8.99 combo. Line ups were incredible but patient. Our seating capacity was 350, so the line-ups were out to the street. The 9,000 siu mai, and 9,000 jiaozi will be just enough(600 lbs ground pork). We had prepare 600 lbs BBQ pork 1300 lbs of pork for s's'sour, and cut and deep fried another 4casesx20 kg more for s'sn'sour early this afternoon. We have many pictures, but just no time to process and post at this time. Will do so next week. The pavilion opens tomorrow at 1 pm until 11 pm. I will have to pick up vegetables for lo mein, then it's off to the pavilion again. Tsingtao beer is the big seller. It is much more popular than the Yanjing.

I think we've pretty much hit our target for dim sum. We ran out of wrappers at about 8250 jiaozi, and just put out the final 18 pkges to thaw for today. We might make them up, but looking at the size of each, we might just need 2 jiaozi per combo. We have around 30 lbs filling mixed up but we will freeze it in layers in case we need to make more during the festival. I must get pictures taken of the freezers today. The first step of kooloyuk is done, and chef will cook some up for taste test roday. Unfortunately, I have to teach all day today and evening as well. But I do know the ingredients that he's putting in the sauce as I had to pick them up: fresh ginger, star anise, cinnamon, dried round chili peppers, red dates, peanut butter?... I trust him as the filling for the jiaozi was perfect! The volunteer schedules are all in! They will start set-up this afternoon with the Chinese gates, lanterns, cultural displays, mini-store, etc. The only concern now is the D@#* weather. It's been blizzard conditions since yesterday afternoon - is -27C at the moment with windchill factor of -45C or so. It's to dip to windchill -54 tonight. I just might have to cancel class tonight. Long range forecast, however, said it will warm up by Thursday when the festival begins. We're luckier than most pavilions as were are inside the mall with a parkade, and no line-ups needing to wait outside. The city is providing free bus service to all the pavilions. It's definitely a city supported event. Hurray for Brandon! Let'em come!

My method is the same as aprilmei's except I don't turn the heat back up. I'm always afraid I'll crack the pot. I leave my clay pot rice on low heat for a longer period (half an hour) after it's ready to serve. That's when the oils from the cured meats like lap yuk starts to brown and crisp the bottom layer.

Brandon's Superstore is getting in more and more Asian products and produce, but their flyers often advertise items we smaller cities do not get. At least they are sending out larger quantities of gai lan, wintermelon, etc as the Chinese population increases. I can get many of the grocery items like fu yu, fu jook, basic sauces. Our one and only little Asian grocery is packed to the gills with Chinese, Korean, Vietnamess, and Spanish products. More "outlandish" sauces, gooceries I get from Li. I support him whenever I can. Fresh vegetables are a problem for him - he has to order huge quantities before they ship. He will have lotus root, see goo, etc for CNY. When I hit the big city of Winnipeg, I make sure I have my credit card! Always come home with my car loaded with these items: ham yu, lap gnap, lap yook, ho see (dried oysters), my preferred brand of foo jook, shirataki noodles, fresh ho fun, cheung fun, Thai basil, lemongrass, vegetables like guy choi, ong choi, soybean srpouts, fresh bak hap (lily bulb), BBQ meats from the shop inside the market, and always, more bo jai yuen for my Mom at the herbalist. I need a trip to the city!

I cooked a 3.5 lb chicken last week sometime... In the morning, the chicken was seasoned inside and out with salt. In the afternoon, I brought a pot of water to boil with slices of ginger, stalks of scallions, and a few star anise. The chicken came straight out of the fridge into the boiling water. I took the chicken out when the bubbles stopped. (Kay's double dip method). Once the water came to a boil again, I put the chicken back in. When the water came to a boil again, I left it bubbling for 15 minutes, then turn the heat down to simmer - with the lid on the pot. When we ate at 5 pm, (1.5 hours in covered pot) the breasts were perfect, but the thighs were still pink. I took the thighs off, put them back into the broth with the heat on high. By the time I cut up the rest of the chicken and the vegetables cooked, the thighs were ready. The whole chicken was silky, tender, and juicy. I followed Ah Leung's pictorial for the ginger/oil dip with the spice mix. I'll be making this more often!

Assistant Jack is off to the walk-in freezer with another tray of jiaozi completed. They had to take apart the shelves in the freezer and replace them with tray racks so we could have enough room for all the trays. We will use +100 trays by the time we're finished with 18,000 dim sum items! We are really lucky to have the use of this vacant bakery - a double door reach-in freezer, a walk- in freezer, 2 double door coolers, a single door "beverage" fridge and refridgerated showcase. The last 2 are in the front of the bakery and will be used as the bar during the festival. This was the last tray of the night - Saturday. We estimated 2000 jiaozi made. Hopefully, tomorrow and Tues will be the last days for prep. You can see there are different styles of pleating. The women shaped theirs like har gow, and very well made pleats. The men tended to do as the picture of the 4 jiaozi in the previous post. Others put 2 or 3 little pleats only at one end, and I did 3 pleats in the middle. When we deep fried some for lunch, we didn't notice the differences as much because the skins puffed up. We decided to deep fry them as boiling would take too long, Besides, the siu mai are steamed. This will give more variety. We'll have to wait now to see what tomorrow will bring! Edited to correct number of trays

More jiaozi! Gung hai! Gung Hai! This is called group work! I'm happy with the crew, and Chef is happy with the flavour after a taste test!

The start of the second dim sum item: jiaozi. I christened my new Cuisinart food processor5 for this event. After processing carrots, celery, and Chinese mushrooms, I would consider it well broken in. Thomas the chef used the Hobart as well to mix the filling for jiaozi. The texture and flavour are different from the siu mai (a recipe I used in my restaurant). he didn't have any trouble removing the attachment as the filling was "wetter". The work crew gathers... And more...

A couple more pictures of the siu mai: Another tray ready for the freezer! Lovely siu mai. Onward to the jiaozi line!

Off to the meeting - more pictures to come tonight. We DID get the 9000 siu mai done by 7:30 last night, as well as +2000 jiaozi.

By 5 pm, more and more volunteers arrived! Most just finished day shift, home, showers, lunch, then came to help out. Most of these folks have not made siu mai before. We started with everyone scooping their own filling, then we noticed that there was no uniformity. S-i-l decided we must use an assembly line method, for speed as well as for uniformity. Jing, my student used the fist method to portion out the meat, then, she and s-i-l, "trained" leaders with each new group as portion controllers. They squeezed, scooped the portions onto a wax-paper lined pan, and each worker used a plastic knife to place it on their wrapper, then formed each siu mai. We even had a non-Chinese volunteer (Gayle in the red plaid) - a friend of one of the workers. She loved the activity. We also used it as a mini-ESL lesson - pronunciation mainly. There was a lot of laughter.