Dejah

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.

An update and a couple of pictures before ANOTHER meeting: The man with the red shirt and cap is Thomas, our main chef. He and his crew are cutting up the pork butts into cubes for sweet'n'sour pork. Maple Leaf is a most generous sponsor. Each member brought his own knife. I wish we had a close up of the handles. Acouple had beautiful dragons on them. They had just gotten off from their night shift at 7 am, went home, showered, grabbed breakfast and came in at 9:30. They finished cutting the 14 cases in an hour. At 1:00 pm, after teaching my morning classes at the university, I met up with my s-i-l and one of my evening students, and we started with the first 44 lbs of ground pork for siu mai. The Hobart mixtures were a blessing. I was able to mix up half of each case per bowl. At first I used a different paddle - one with more "prongs". Even this one was a struggle to pull off once it was convered with meat. It took a while for us to figure out all the little details on using this big fella - timer switch, cage, etc. After the first couple of minutes of mixing, the machine stopped and we couldn't get it to start again. After fiddling around with breakers, plug ins, THEN I decided to check the dial on the side of the machine. Huh! A timer... Finaly, the three of us got started with making the siu mai. There were only three of us until 5pm when I got panicky and made some phone calls. Our first full tray (+200 pieces in 45 minutes) and more in the bowl!

Everything looks perfect, Ellen! I love the colours coming thru' the summer rolls. Looks like you got the technique down pat. 4 lb tilapia!? whoaaa...we only get smallish ones. An oval roaster would work as a steamer for the next big one.

I think the ball is finally rolling: 6 guys went to the prep. area this morning, and in one hour, cut up 14 cases x 20 kg of pork butt. The wonderful surprise was that after the initial 2 boxes, all the others were BONELESS! We thought we'd have to debone all this morning. I went down with my s-i-l and one of my evening Chinese students at 2. We used the Hobart mixers and did up 88 lbs of ground pork with all the seasonings. Between the three of us, we made up 250 siu mai in 45 minutes. A group of 6 came in at 5 pm, and by 7:30, we had 1800 made. We only used up about half of the 88 lbs so far. Tomorrow, we start at 9:30 am again until 7:30 pm. There will be 2 shifts, so we hope to have all the siu mai completed and another 100 lbs of pork cut up. Sunday is a day of rest, then Monday is jiaozi workday. If I have my way, they will be done after Tues. It's ok if we don't get them all done as we can make more during the festival days. Tonight, I'm christening my new Cuisinart food processor with 10 lbs of carrots as the chef requested for the jiaozi. He's also adding Chinese mushrooms and celery. He had originally asked for flowering chives. Now, he doesn't want them, so we'll use the case for the lo mein. Bruce: My brother and hubby took some pictures. Won't get processed tonight, but hope to have some up tomorrow night. Off to shred my carrots!

That's one gorgeous looking duck! Would you be able to steam the scallops together on a platter, then plate onto the shells, drizzle with sauce, and top with cilantro? I haven't even begun to think about CNY! I'll just say definitely NO SIU MAI! For background on my siu mai comment, check out the "Mass Production Dim Sum " thread in this forum.

Had another little bump on the road that stubbed my toe - and that bump was the English language. The newcomers who could speak and understand English (or so we thought), were put in charge of different depts: chef/prep/cooks, set-up, host, servers, etc. However, they didn't grasp the idea of signing on according to the schedule sheets I gave them! They work on the basis of rounding people up for the day! I assumed (wrongly!) that they do shift work and would understand the shift schedule concept. And, I assumed that what they say is what they mean! So, yesterday was to be the day for deboning and cutting the alloted meat for koo lo yuk. (bone-in butts was another little bump we didn't expect. Being free, we couldn't complain!) One of the assistant heads called Tues and couldn't get anyone to come in, so one day was lost. Thru' interpretors (neither my brother nor I speak Mandarin), we think they finally realized the magnitude of the event and the quantity of food we have to prepare. A crew is coming in at 9:30 am today, to be followed by more when they get off shift at 3 pm. and will work until 9:30 pm. If they don't, I'll be in a panic! They've promised full days from now on. We have another dept. head meeting tomorrow as well as dressed rehearsal for all local performers, so we'll see. I'll be going down at 1 pm today, and will be taking pictures of the work, I hope, in progress. The ground pork will be delivered this morning; some will be cutting and others will be making siu mai.

Ellen: Sorry I never got back to you about the name of the tea, and I haven't had any time to go check the package at the store (I put my tea into a canister). If it's japanese green tea with roasted barley, that's the name. I'm looking forward to reading about and seeing your Pan-Asian dinner!

We receive a bi-monthly magazine called Saudi Aramco World. I was excited to read the interview with Chef Farid Zadi in the November/December issue reprinted from the Jan. 10th issue of LA Times. eGullet and members appear in the most amazing places! (mentioned by Paula Wolfert) Very interesting article. Might inspire me to try making tangine! I believe the LA Times article was mentioned in a thread "Tangine Dreams". I was not able to reply as the topic was locked.

The 60 cases of pork butt were delivered to the bakery this morning. A little bump on the "road of progress": the butts are quick-frozen solid and will take 2 days to thaw! So, 16 cases (329 Kgs) were delivered to the meat grinders, and they will thaw then double grind for the proper texture, hopefully Thursday. Friday, the work crew and chef will mix and start making the siu mai. Canucklehead: We will use 2 of the woks for steaming. These are 24 inch woks, and we have 2 sets of double-layer bamboo and metal steamers to do the siu mai. At the front counter is the steam "buffet table" with 5 large inserts. We will have 5 hot items, and that will work well to keep items hot. There will be 3 servers and one controller who will keep an eye on "refilling" these inserts. I was thinking back to when I did my blog - 2004, I believe, when I posted my recipe for siu mai - for 40 lbs of ground pork. Jason Perlow asked if I could scale it down a bit. Now, I will have to multiply it many times! 5 cases of siu mai wrappers are thawing in the walk-in cooler, 6 cases of jiaozi wrappers along with a case of flowering chives for the jioazi. The chef had requested dong goo (Chinese mushrooms)as well as the chives for these dumplings. Instead of boiling these, we will deep fry them for speed. Four of our local Chinese restaurant will be cooking the char siu for us - each doing 150 lbs. The pork will be cut into uniform strips and marinated in hoisin sauce, Chinese wine, five-spice powder, sugar, and red food colouring. These will be cooked, kept in the walk-in cooler, then freshened and dipped in honey wash before slicing. The dessert noodle cake is called Kare Mah in Cantonese. These are commercially made - ordered from Vancouver supplier. Deep fried egg noodles held together with maltose and honey? and cut into small blocks. As for the volunteers working together, most of them already work together at Maple Leaf. Many of them also share apartments. We have constructed traditional entrance gates - like those at the entrance to cities: 2 big red pillars with a golden arch. A calligrapher has written the characters: China Gate (Jong Kwok Moon) on the arch. We have large red lanterns and a huge dragon kite as part of the ceiling decoration.

Dylank: Not sure what shanzha is as I don't read Chinese characters. I just know the chef asked me to order red dates (hung jo). Luckily, the ones we got were pitted, so no lawsuits for broken teeth. The pork will be cut into bite size pieces, deep fried, then added to the sweet and sour sauce. It's almost like the way we used to make kuloyuk. I didn't realize there were round red chilis used in Chinese cooking, but I found them at our only Asian supply store in the city. The owner ordered all the wrappers, noodles, etc for us. At first, one of the cooks was all excited about siu mai. Apparently it's a specialty in their part of China. I asked him what they used for filling, and he said, "Beef." I said no, we have to use pork as that's what the people here are familiar with. Well, his area is mostly MUSLIM, and they cannot eat pork. I knew that, but I couldn't understand how they can then WORK in the hog processing industry! Apparently it's ok to work with pork at the first stages of production, but they can't work with the product when the next step is cooking it!

You have NO idea, Ben, how difficult is was to keep order among 12 men who are not used to the Canadian way of organization! One little difference of opinion can set them off onto a noisy tangent for 30 minutes or more if my voice was not louder than theirs! Not sure what you meant by .From 2005, we've had an influx of +400 new Chinese workers in Brandon with half of them already qualifying for permanent citizenship. Our pavilion volunteer base including local Chinese and students will number +200: entertainers, demos, prep, cooks, etc. I'm teaching every day so it's a matter of getting down to the prep. sessions this week during the scheduled time. I'll make sure someone is taking pictures of the prep. in progress. edited for grammar and clarity

I should add also that we will have demonstrations, not only of watercolour painting, calligraphy, but also handpulled noodles, dim sum making and steaming. I have invited several of our "aunties" to come and show how to make har gow, joongzi, etc, and they will have portable burners to steam them. They may just wrap the joongzi, but may make lotus leaf ones instead.

The daughter and her friend finally made it to Kam Ho after being frequent customers of Victoria Seafood. They really liked the Chinese cruellers wrapped in the sheet of "rice noodle" - don't know the exact name. Otherwise, they were disappointed as everything tasted strongly of and covered with canola oil - even the bamoo baskets. Has your Mom ever experienced that, Rona? Our sons were in Wpg this weekend, and they were introduced to Victoria Seafood by the daughter. I'll have to get a full report later.