Yuki

Wait, are we saying that we are tipping waiters and waitress because they give us good servics and without those extra moeny, they can not survive with those below standard wages. But from what I know in Alberta, Canada, waiters and waitresses' minimum wages are the same as any kids starting out in the job market(I think $5.90 is the minimum wage). Many kids are earning around $7.00 to $10.00 per hour and they are still putting themselve through Universities. Do they really need that 20% of the bill to make a living? I thought the reason why so many teenagers try to become waiter and waitress is because the cash can come in really fast if you are friendly and good looking.

I just steamed it for one hour and thought I didn't steam it long enough since it is really wobbly. The neen go turned out to be lighter than I though neen go are suppose to be, maybe the white coconut milk made it lighter in color.

Yuki, your neen goh is killing me. I want some NOW! About your comment on the coconut flavor, do you use coconut milk in cartons or fresh coconut milk? I find there's nothing like the fresh thing, so much more fragrant. And you might want to line your pan with banana leaves. Dejah, your goh is so loaded with liu (ingredients). I'm the greedy type, I love my goh generously filled, and yours look sooooooo good! ← I used coconut milk from a can and it was a really cheap brand. I need to go the store to stock up the good kind with more coconut flavour. Umm... I don't know how I am going to get banana leaves. Do they have to be fresh?

I still don't think the recipe I got was great so it might be better to ask for other coconut neen goh recipe. It is like basic neen goh but just with the addition of coconut milk. Dejah, it is interesting how you shredded the turnip, my family just cut them into thick strip of around 1 cm. We used to shred them with the machine but then one time the machine broke down so we had to cut them by hand. Since I am the youngest so I got the work of cutting them. I was lazy and cut them all that big.... but it actually turned out really well. So from then on, my family uses thick strip of turnip to make loh bak goh.

I think this might be too early but I made coconut neen goh yesterday and is now having them for breakfast. They turned out really soft (I like that) but there is not enough coconut flavour. I will need to search for a new recipe. If I can get good daikon this weekend, then I will make loh bak goh. Please don't mind the messy kitchen... I will really clean the house up before New Year.

There are four different types of chopsticks in my house - wooden, mostly for cooking. Although I prefer to eat with wooden chopsticks. - plastic, everyday eating - ivory, engraved with our names but are mainly for display - speical chopsticks used when offering food to the ancestors My parents were not strict about how I hold the chopsticks but my uncle was. When I was living with my uncle, I would get a light slap on my hand when I was not holding the chopsticks the "proper" way. After a couple meal, I learned the "proper" way to hold the chopsticks. I have no problem with other people using other utensils to eat Asian food but just do it in a way that will not harm the food or bring more trouble to yourself. It just seems wrong for me to stab a piece of sashimi with a fork or eating rice off a plate with chopsticks. I hope that the restaurant would offer the traditional utensil since it usually makes the meal more special. Also, I think the people that invented the utensils also made sure they would match the cuisine well. Imagine eating a small piece of bone on chicken, with chopsticks, you can rotate the chicken to every possible angle to bring the meat to your mouth.

Of course it is the rabbit candy, I think I could just eat the peel and be happy. Also the swiss candy, that are like starbursts. The swiss candy are probably not Chinese but I see them as Chinese candy. Black sesame and peanut candy is also my favourite too. There are probably more but this is all I can come up with for now.

It is nice to hear many of you are bringing leftovers since it saves time and money. Although since I can not always make it to the microwave, I would try to bring something that taste good when cold(No, I am not going to bring a sandwich). This would usually be some vegetable sticks, fruits, onigiri, pizza(I like cold pizza more...), and granola. Today I brought Green curry with eggplant, green & red peppers and Chicken and some rice. I hope that no one was offended by the smell of the curry.

It is almost that time of the year where everyone in the family is busy steaming goh and deep frying snacks. Some popular food eaten during Chinese New Year are: Neen Goh, Loh Bak Goh(Turnip Cake), Taro Goh, watermelon seed, dried and sweetened fruit, deep fried dough like things(油角, 煎堆, 笑口棗), dried lotus seed, and many more. Every family would have a box that contains little snackcs like rabbit candy, chocolate coin, watermelon seed, and various dried fruits and nuts. My family always make neen goh and loh bak goh every year even though it is a lot of work. The loh bak goh always taste so much better than the one in dim sum restaurant because we add a large amount of turnip. Although now my favourite is taro strips goh, it is made entirely of striped taro and a bit of chinese sausage. They are so good pan fried until crispy.... So what does your family eat and make during new year?

hehe... maybe we should start a thread about the various types of goh and sweet/salty snacks that we eat in new years or when the craving comes. I think I am going to do that now! I like coconut milk neen goh fried with some eggs, fried loh bak goh, and taro strips cake.

They have over 700 restaurants in China... must be really popular.Seems like they have some shops in Hong Kong too, and they offer hot pot, lamb shao long bao, mongolian dumplings and shumai, and many other things to do with lamb. Seems like the broth contains over 60 different herbal medicines: 桂圓 - I think this is dried longan 黨參 - dangs hen 當歸- Dang gui 枸杞 - the tiny red fruit(or is it a seed) that is shaped like rice grain 草果 - cao guo

I finally got to try the Pan fried Ponzu Salmon, the ponzu is great at cutting the fattiness of the salmon. Next time, I will try it as a dumpling dipping sauce and marinating pork butt before baking them. Maybe a cold noodle dish can be made with it.... so many possibilities.

I know lots of people bring food to work but how do others view it? In my dad's work place, it is not recommended for men(with higher position) to bring lunch from home since it is "unmanly". Most of the women in my mom's office bring their own lunch, they even have their own rice cooker. What is the office/workplace politics about home made lunch? Is there any food that you would not like your colleague to see you eating? I know that heating up Chinese preserved fishes can bring a very distant smell in the whole room. Do you usually eat by yourself or in a common room? Let's open the room for discussions now!

My gosh, hot pot doesn't require any cooking skill. All it takes is to be good at using a knief to slice up the ingredients. ← EXACTLY Try to imagine someone who has probably never handled a knife until they came abroad to study! On top of that, can you imagine them slicing a piece of jiggly meat paper thin? My students tell me that they are learning how to cook by talking to Mom while they are preparing their meals. I am thinking of giving a course on basic cooking along with their academic studies. ← I know this is out of topic but.... From my observation in the university, Chinese students are the most likely to bring a boxed lunch from home and heat it up. From the line up in front of the Microwave, I would say 80% of them are Asian. It is mostly lots of rice with some vegetable and chicken or pork. I am too cheap to pay $5.00 for a dish of teriyaki beef with rice that I could cook at home for around $1.00.

Maybe I am not looking hard enough, but in the Calgary superstore, I can not find any thinly sliced meat. A reason might be that we got a little China town and some Chinese groceries store spread around the city. I prefer to slice the popular meat like beef and chicken myself since it is cheaper but I will buy the lamb since only I will touch it. The trick is to cut them while they are semi-frozen and sharpen the knife first. I now own a pot with a divider so one side is satay while the other one is usually cilantro and thousand year egg. Normally, I don't find the need to dip my food since they already gained so much flavor from the broth. Although my friends' favorite dipping sauce is made from raw eggs, soya sauce, chili, sesame oil, green onion, and satay sauce. They each use up 3-5 eggs during the meal...........

Heh, I have no clue about what makes a dish a salad. I don't understand why do people have to look for a dish to label it as "salad". Usually, I consume the most vegetables at Shanghai style restaurant where a lot of the hot and cold dishes are already vegetarian or can be made into one.

I know of a Shanghai cold dish that has some really finely diced bean curd and boiled green leaf vegetable(it has to be that type of vegetable which I can not find in Calgary). Actually, there are lots of vegetarian cold dish in Shanghai. Another common one is edamame bean and green bean skin(or is it made out of rice?). The reason I think there is not much of a salad type dish is that most of the vegetables we normally eat is not really suitable for raw consumption. Imagine eating raw bak choy, gai lan and shui choy....

I guess complimentary seasoning would mean that it is usually used with other seasonings to bring a more flavour to the dish. Just like soya sauce, most of the time you would not want to make a dish with only bean paste(the taste would be too strong). Seems like your jar of bean paste came from a really famous bean paste producing region. It is commonly used in hot pot, stir fry, and especially some famous dishes like bean paste fish, mapo tofu, and the fatty pork(don't know its English name). The pork dish is made with fatty pork, fermentated pixian bean paste, sweet bean paste and young garlic shoot. When I use the bean paste for stir dry, I usually fry it up in some oil with lots of garlic, chili, and a bit of sugar before adding in other ingredients. It is really god when stir fried with sliced up fish cakes and beans. Good luck with it!

I can listen to Mandarin and read simplified Chinese(it is usually pretty close to traditional Chinese), but the biggest problem is speaking it. There is no course available in my city for people with intermediate/advance background in other dialects of Chinese to learn Mandarin. I actually think that Mandarin would be easier to learn than Cantonese since there are more definite rules in speaking, writing, and perhaps pronounciation too. Cantonese is all about slang and there are just too many different "weird" things that are not really taught in school(I guess they just don't want us to learn the improper Chinese grammar but the slang are getting more popular these days in writing too. Although you would get an F if you write like that in an exam.).

Sorry, I only have English to Chinese and Chinese to Chinese dictionaries at home. But I would suggest to make use of the dictionary(could input both Chinese and English, and give Chinese and English definitions) in Hong Kong Yahoo when you have lots of word to search up. Speaking of which, I forgot how to write most of the Chinese so I use the online dictionary a lot to find out how to write something. Good Luck in learning Cantonese! Actually I thought that Mandarin would be a more popular choice but..... Edit: not Chinese to English, it should be English to Chinese.

In Hong Kong, I go to tea buffet for family meetings. We can stay there for 3 hrs undisturbed with decent food and drinks and only pay around $5-8 per person. There is usually a couple chefs out preparing fresh dishes like crepe, stir fried/soup noodles, and sushi. We don't go to buffet to kill ourself by exploding our stomach, but it is a great place for big families with many different likes and dislikes. Also, dessert buffet is my favourite because there are so many tiny desserts around so I can taste more. The average size of the dessert is around 2-3 bites and the cake is around 4-5 bites each.

I am sorry but I am not a fan of Japanese cheesecake. The type of Japanese cheesecake I know of is baked in the oven though.

If you are making the wanton then you might want to save some of the shrimp shells for the stock. For a easy soup, just make basic chicken stock with some ginger, and sprinkle some young chives when serving. The more traditional soup is made with pork bone, da dee fish(大地魚), and dried shrimp roe.

Thanks for the idea, I have some fresh shittake and frozen salmon. It is -40C with a strong wind chill here so it will probably be baked in the oven. I thought all ponzu are made with ponzu or is that just my imagination?

I have a bottle of Ponzu that I need to use up pretty quickly. What can I use it in other than as a dipping sauce and salad dressing?