Laksa

House Special <insert ingredient> is the Chinese menu writer's way of saying, "I can't think of an original name for this dish".

What are Wife's cake and Pai Dan So?

Nude male or female?

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I agree that the CDC and the USDA are often overly conservative when it comes cooking recommendations. Good to know that 137 deg F is good enough, but the same website goes on to say 155 or 160 deg offers a better safety margin. Would some of these countries be exporters of produce to the US, say?

Without going into too much detail, in parts of Asia, "seafood" and "animal parts" are used to infuse Chinese wine.

How safe is it then to eat cured pork products, like salumi, that were never really "cooked"?

Good news for those who like to eat medium-rare pork. Simply freeze the pork for 20 days at 5 deg F prior to cooking. From the same website:

I've seen Thai mangoes at my local Thai grocery store and other Asian grocery stores. The Thai store lady swears by her mangoes. She claims, and I can attest from prior experience, that Thai mangoes are less stringy than the Mexican varieties, and sweeter and more fragrant. She also has these whopping softball sized guavas from Thailand. The bigger the guava, the more flesh you get that's not peppered with those pesky guava seeds.

From CDC's website: 60 minutes or 20/20 carried a story last year about a woman who ate undercooked infected pork (in a foreign country, not the US), and the worm (might've been the trichinella worm) travelled to her brain and laid eggs there. She died.

Is that the same Tiger beer from Singapore, part-owned by Heineken?

I like taking the simple approach to Chinese cooking, and I also like to experiment. I think there are a few basic (bottled) sauces and ingredients that are essential to any Chinese kitchen that you can use in combination to come up with your own creations. The basic ingredients I keep in my kitchen are: Sauces: soy sauce(light and dark) hoisin sauce oyster sauce black bean (either dry, or bottled in a paste form) Asian chilli sauce or paste shaoxing rice wine white vinegar sesame oil (for flavoring) Dry ingredients: garlic ginger white pepper sugar corn starch If you have those things in the kitchen, you have almost everything you need to cook stir-fry. I wouldn't ever put everything into a dish, but pick two or three of them. For example, to make a chicken and broccoli stir-fry, I could fry some garlic and ginger in oil until fragrant, then add the chicken that's been seasoned with sesame oil, white pepper and corn starch and stir fry till brown. Stir-fry the broccoli separately and add salt, oyster sauce and shaoxing wine to taste. Add a slurry of corn starch in water if more thickening is required. Combine the two and voila! For a beef stir-fry, you could try garlic, corn starch, black bean paste, soy and maybe a little chilli. A vegetal stir-fry can be as simple as just garlic and salt. A little shaoxing wine or vinegar may be added to change the complexion of the dish slightly. Feel free to experiment.

This is the current link to the article. Not sure how long the link will stay live. I think it's misleading to say Nyonya food is fading in prevalence. That seems to imply that people are forgoing Nyonya food for "Western" fast food. Some of the best (and most popular) "fast food" to be had in Malaysia and Singapore are Nyonya food, like mee siam, rojak and laksa (!). Perhaps it's the long hours of cooking at home that's giving way to the convenience of eating out. Michael, as Malaysia's cultural ambassador to NYC, how about organizing a NY eG get-together at a Malaysian restaurant? The last one you organized at S&T was such a success!

The Chinese take puns very seriously, don't they (we)? What surprises me is that the owner of China 46 would allow "46" in the English version of their name. 4 shares the same sound as "to die" in Cantonese, and the more superstitious would avoid it like the plague.

That site is fantastic. If the author is going to make updates to the website, I would like to see more coverage of offal and the more exotic ingredients. These items don't usually get translated well on bilingual menus, if at all. Spicy and Tasty in Flushing, NY has at least 3 items that aren't translated on their bilingual menu. If I remember correctly, they were a turtle dish, pork kidneys with sichuan peppercorn, and double-boiled black-skinned chicken. I think it's also worth mentioning that the Chinese have a penchant for "poetic language" in naming dishes. Oftentimes, the name of a dish has nothing to do with the ingredients used or the way it's prepared. Some are well known, e.g. "phoenix claw" for chicken feet. Some are truly cryptic. I'm looking at a takeout menu from a local restaurant now that has an item called: 牛郎織女, literally translated as either "cowboy (or gigolo) weave(-ing) girl". The English translation on the menu is given as "Lover's Nest - Beautiful bird's nest containing beef & chicken with carrots & celery in a delicate sauce". Okay, I get it, there's beef, yeah? Oh, and the woven basket/nest, sure, sure. I think I get it. Where else can you get a meal and a brain-teaser? There are many other examples from the same menu - a small sampling: 七星伴月- "Seven Stars Around the Moon" 富貴雙仙 - "Ying Yang Delight" Names like those confound me, and I'm glad that there are English descriptions as well as translations. However, I don't pretend to be an expert on the Chinese language, but far from it. There's probably some guy out there, steeped in Chinese history, myths and legends, reading this and muttering, "Ying Yang Delight? How could you not know that's 'shrimp and black bean sauce on one side and scallops and broccoli on the other side of the plate'? That's just sooo obvious, you dumbass!"

Let me guess: The core (grass jelly) is black but it's coated with white milky (soya milk) substances? Is that a little bit similar to calling America Born Chinese "Jook Sing"? I had guesses, but I wasn't sure... I have heard "bananas" used in reference to Chinese who have embraced a Western culture or have become completely assimilated. Yellow on the outside, white on the inside. What is "Jook Sing"? My cantonese is not that good.

Is there a logical explanation as to why the soy milk and grass jelly combo is called Michael Jackson?

Rice noodle is a tricky thing to prepare. Are you talking about the dry rice noodle sticks that you rehydrate, or soft flat rice noodles from the fridge or freezer? Either way, they're both tricky. Even the dry rice noodle comes in two varieties, one finer than the other. The finer one can end up being a big gooey mess if not handled properly. The soft flat noodle is usually stir-fried but you need quick and experienced hands and a super hot wok.

Sashimi. Sushi if you have some left-over rice. Vegetarian nachos with sour cream, salsa or guacamole. Melt the cheese in the microwave instead of the oven to generate less heat.

Don't quote me on this, but I've heard that if you use it instead of salt on all your food, it will improve your blood pressure.

It's been almost 8 years since I lived in Melbourne, but I remember having these truly indulgent breakfasts at greasy delis/coffee shops in the city. Seating is in booths that invariably have those mini-jukebox thingies you put coins in to dial up your favourite tunes. If memory serves, they're called "mixed grill" breakfasts. The mixed grill breakfast will send your cardiologist into shock. You get a steak or lamb chop, fried eggs, sausages, bacon, fried tomatoes, toasts thickly buttered on both sides, baked beans, chips and I'm sure there are other things on the plate that I don't recall. Nothing like a mixed grill breakfast to bring comfort at the end of an all night drinking session. Ok, maybe there weren't that many items in a mixed grill breakfast, but that's how I like to remember it.

Yes, they taste sweet, with some sour aftertaste. Try popping a dry one in your mouth. Some people make a drink out of it. How much did you put in your soup? I'm guessing maybe you didn't put enough to make a difference. Often, wolfberries and red dates are used to balance the bitterness of Chinese herbs in some recipes.

How well does the salmon hold up to "rough" stir-frying? I could imagine flaky and broken pieces. hzrt8w: Thanks, and help yourself to the XO! The bottle has been sitting in my cabinet for over a year, only making appearances when I cook with it. I prefer to drink scotch whisky.

New York City, yes. Wappingers Falls, NY, no. On Thanksgiving day last year we felt like some Chinese food. Every restaurant we went to was closed! And others that we called on the phone were also closed. I bet that one in Greenland would've been open.

You're lucky if those places are still open at midnight. Where I live, none of the Chinese restaurants stay open past 10pm. It's little consolation but I think... it's not good to eat so late at night anyway.