Laksa

The soup was runny, not thick like rice pudding, but it does taste vaguely like rice pudding. There is a single round curd-like piece swimming in the soup that resembles cottage cheese in texture, but it's whole, not crumbly, like a ball of cottage cheese. Does that sound more like Ras Malai or Kheer? Update on the sweets: These were incredible. The white square on the bottom left is the most unusual of the five. There's strong aged cheddar taste, and it's sweet at the same time. Truly amazing. The top two with the orange dots taste very similar, and have the same texture as the "ball" in my soup dessert. The one on the right has a green pistachio paste sandwiched in between. The bottom right has a wonderfully aromatic fruit ester that might be cantaloupe or some kind of melon. The brownie-like piece is topped with slivered almonds and sweetened with brown sugar or maybe palm sugar. We will definitely be going back.

So we left home early thinking that traffic would be a nightmare on the GSP seeing how it's the friday before a long weekend, but it turned out to be easy sailing all the way. We got to Oak Tree Road at 5pm, and found ourselves too early for Moghul or Ming. Moghul Express, however, was open, and was just across the road. Except for "masala" and English words like "shrimp" and "chicken" that I could understand, the menu, at least the Indian parts, presented a challenge. The guy behind the counter was helpful with recommendations, and we ended up ordering the lamb dosa, and the "Chinese" ginger chicken. I was hesitant at first about ordering Chinese food at an Indian restaurant, but the guy assured me that it's Chinese food cooked with Indian spices. That was to me a strangely convincing argument that makes it all ok. Ginger chicken with basmati in the foreground, and lamb dosa in the background. The dosa came with a soup and two sauces, shown in the middle of the picture. The meal was an explosion of flavours. An exquisite combination of pleasure and pain (delivered in the form of hot spices). The dosa, surpisingly, had a sour undertone. I was expecting it to taste like a Western crepe. Cutting open the thin pastry revealed a generous pile of fragrant and strongly spiced minced (or chopped?) lamb. Lemongrass was more prominent in the chicken dish than ginger. Unlike anything Chinese that I've ever tasted, I think it draws more from Thai influences. The dessert was a welcome relief to the tastebuds: I believe what is covered in the cooling and creamy sweet soup, with a flavour that reminds me of condensed milk, is a milk curd. Chopped pistachios topped this delicious dessert. In the counter display cabinets there must have been a thousand pieces of Indian sweets in countless varieties. We took five home: Thank you all for the wonderful recommendations!

Can I float an idea? Why don't you doggy-bag some of wolfgang's porterhouse and sneak it into peter luger for a side-by-side comparison?

If you were to make only one trip ever to Oak Tree Road, Iselin, NJ, where would you go for dinner? I'm passing through there later today, and would like to eat well. I have probably only an hour or so for the meal. What would you recommend? Edited to add: I'm of course talking about Indian food. I don't have regional preferences...

Hey, ya gotta eat! When it comes to food, an advantage the dead have over the living is... they don't gain any weight! Ok, that's sick.

JapanThis has also been brought up in the Chopsticks etiquette thread. In the Seven Samurai, the dead samurai were buried under a mound of earth, with their swords stuck vertically (more or less) in the mound. Incense used for the Chinese practice of ancestor worship are simlarly stuck vertically in a pot of sand. My own superstition is that if you eat more calories that you burn, you'll get fat. It's just a superstition...

Historically, if you're a poor farmer, or a slave labourer, and you cannot afford the more expensive cuts of the animal, i.e. the meat, you have to be imaginative in order to create meals from the scraps and discards. Ironically, my favourite 'part', as well as my least favourite, are served up in the same dish -- ngau chap, or "mixed beef stew", a classic dim sum item. I love beef tripe cooked this way, as well as the tendon, but abhor the lung. I have tried beef lung a few ways, but I don't think I'll ever be able to tolerate the mealy texture.

A point of clarification, in case readers unfamiliar with the practice get the wrong impression. The Chinese have a tradition of worshipping their dead ancestors, not all dead people. I don't want people to think we're morbidly obsessed or anything. My parents would go once a year to the cemetary and tend to their parents' gravesites, and place fresh flowers, etc. It's more about honouring and remembering the dead than what Westerners would consider "worship". The closest it comes to that would, I guess, be asking the spirits for guidance...

What I've been calling Vietnamese hoagie, and what I've been eating for a long time -- in fact my favourite sandwich -- I have only today found out that it's called "Banh Mi Thit Nguoi" (sp?). I just had one for lunch. From what I can identify of the filling, there's two kinds of cold cuts, a meaty red paste, a creamy yellow spread that looks like mayonnaise, coriander (cilantro), a long strip of cucumber, juliennes of pickled carrot and radish (?), and hot chillies. The bread is a crusty white roll, like a small baguette. The cold cuts, one pink and the other a pale off-white, are unlike any Western cold meats I've had. They taste like pork, but crunchy and gelatinous at the same time, reminding me of the cartilage in pig's ear. The meaty paste is stronger in flavor. It looks like a mixture of richly spiced ground fatty pork, and I can smell some liver in there too. Today's hoagie had strong black pepper overtones. What goes in your favourite Banh Mi and where do you get it from? Can anyone tell me the names of the meat ingrediets, and the mayonnaise? I intend to search the asian grocery stores for them. Also, can one buy the pickled carrots or does that have to be made from scratch?

Call me uncouth, but I will pick up as much noodle as I can hold between the two sticks and shove it quickly into my mouth before I drop any. Then with a lot of noise I suck in all the trailing strands. You must either be descended from Chinese nobility... or a girl.

I think you hit the nail on the head. I'm guessing stabbing is verboten for the same reason the Chinese don't use knives at the table. It's barbaric!

Well, I don't blame them. Their chopsticks are as slender as toothpicks.

I remember as a kid that when dining with close friends and relatives, they would use the narrow (business) end to serve others. It's customary for Chinese parents, aunts and uncles to serve food from the shared plates and place it in a child's bowl, even though the child might be perfectly able to serve himself. It is also customary, as a sign of respect, for an adult to serve a parent or parent-in-law this way. Personal hygiene? What are you talking about? I reserve the back end of the chopsticks for dessert! You want to eat the longans with a spoon? What are you, a sissy?

Thanks for the links. As I had suspected, Postpet is Tamagotchi on steroids. I wonder if I can get away with posting silly messages on eGullet and blaming it on my Postpet.

Let me see if I understood you correctly... someone has come up with idea of selling virtual food over the Internet to feed virtual pets on your computer? Genius!! Why can't I think of things like this? Could you point me to a website please? I have to see this for myself.

When you say "strange things", are you talking about the food, or the other aspect of the film? I saw sex (or sensuality) as a secondary and recurring theme throughout the movie. The food was just unfamiliar to me, nothing that I would have reason to hide from my mother , but the sex.... hmm....

Philadelphia Cheese Steak originated in Taiwan? Yes, in the North Eastern part of Taiwan.

Not a spelling error, but I have seen 宝宝盘 translated as pupu platter in many restaurants. 宝宝 (bao bao in mandarin) doesn't sound exactly like "pupu" in the three dialects I have glancing familiarity with, so I'm puzzled as to how the unfortunate name, in a food context, originated. Also, does the name 宝宝盘 exist outside of Chinese restaurants in North America? What is in this dish anyway?

I'm curious. That doesn't look anything like the traditional kimchi. What's in it? And why is it called kimchi?

Are you talking about "tau fu fa"? This is a cantonese (?) dessert with an incredibly soft and silky version of bean curd, served in a sugary syrup. The bean curd is served from a very large pot, where it's actually curdled whole inside, and thin slices are scooped out into a bowl, over which the sweet syrup is poured. The bean curd is so fragile it will break apart at the merest touch. You could practically swallow the whole thing without so much as a chew. Great dessert to have if you have no teeth left.

As a Fuzhouren, not originally from China, but Malaysia, I turned immediately to the Fuzhou cuisine page. I am surprised to learn that Fotiaoqiang has origins in Fuzhou. As a kid, I heard stories of this legendary dish from my relatives, but never put two and two together. Has anyone here eaten it? It must be the Fuzhou blood in my veins but my absolute favourite version of chunjuan is the Fuzhou version, and I have a very strong attraction to anything made from yutou, or taro (dunno why, but we call it yam in Malaysia). My absolute fav dessert as a kid was sweet yutou paste, mixed with lots of rendered pork fat so that it's incredibly rich and fragrant, which was often served at wedding banquets. But I will eat (almost) anything made from yutou, from Cantonese wutaukeuk, a dimsum of deep fried taro stuffed with minced pork; to wutaugou, another dim sum favourite, seared on all sides; to Malaysian "sarang burung" which is taro paste shaped into a bowl and deep fried, that holds a stir-fried mixture of shrimp, scallop, squid, chicken, straw mushrooms, cashew nuts, baby corn, and carrots. Fantastic stuff.

Have you tried Nyonya on Grand St in Chinatown? Like many Chinese/Asian dishes, e.g. pao or buns, zongzi (chinese tamales), there are great regional variations to each dish, in the ingredients used and sometimes method of preparation. By regional, I am thinking of the different regions within China itself, but there is even greater variety when you consider the overseas influences like peranakan. My absolute favourite chung pian (foochow for spring roll) is the one I grew up with, foochow style with bean sprouts, firm bean curd (not the silken tofu but a firmer type), garlic chives, rendered pork fat, lots of ginger, and soy sauce, wrapped in a soft spring roll "skin". The filling is rather wet, and the roll is almost never deep-fried. I've had cantonese, vietnamese, fujien versions, heck even deep-fried bad American chinese take-out version, but for what well be nostalgic reasons, in my mind, nothing beats the foochow chung pian.

I will try to find some... Edited to add: Here's one with a recipe. The pic is kinda small though. If you leave out the optional chinese sausage, I don't see why this dish cannot be made "halal". That second link you posted contains some incredible pics. If some of them actually show what I think I'm seeing, then there's Brazilian rodizio to be had in Kuching? (the Carvery pictures) Wow! as a Sarawakian (but I haven't been there in a long time), I must say Kuching is more cosmopolitan than I would've thought.

kew, that picture of "chai tau kueh" doesn't look like the chai tau kueh I know. It actually looks more like what the cantonese call "lo bak gou", which technically speaking, is also "radish" cake. A variation on "lo bak gou" which I prefer is made from yam. Killer stuff. The Singaporean chai tau kueh isn't served in neat pieces, but a messy, gooey, stir-fry affair with eggs, salted radish, and sometimes dried shrimp and sweet dark soy. Edited to add: Actually, the second picture from the top shows the yam cake that I'm talking about, but this one is steamed (leftmost kueh, blueish-grey colour with brown stuff on top. The unattractive colour actually belies how good this kueh tastes). I like mine seared on all sides in hot oil until crispy, and served with a spicy sauce.

Cockles? yum! Brad, I hope you're up-to-date with your hepatitis shots. Chai tau kueh is my all time favourite Singaporean dish. I haven't seen it done in Malaysia, or anywhere else for that matter, so I believe it is uniquely Singaporean. I like mine with lots of that salty preserved radish, and eggs. My other fav from the region is oyster omelette, or hoa chien. Brad, planning on eating any durians while you're there?