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Michael: Thank you for checking my sanity. Re: Chinese shrimp sauce versus Malaysian/Indonesian belacan/terasi. I have not used the Malaysian/Indonesian counterparts so I have no comparison. But I heard that the Chinese shrimp sauce is milder, less salty. Sometimes it seems to me that the Chinese shrimp sauce is more salty than "shrimpy" in taste. 2 teaspoons should make this dish delightfully flavored without an overpowering shrimpy/salty taste. If one wants it saltier or heavier in shrimp taste, add some more sauce.

2-3 teaspoon is correct. I thought that the short for teaspoon is "tsp" and tablespoon is "tblsp". Is this a standard? No? Are there any abbreviation standards? Maybe I need to spell them out every time? These darn names both abbreviated to ts.

Sure. Sake and Shao Hsing taste very similar. (You mean haven't drunken some of them? ) Sherry may be a bit too sweet. Rice based wine would be the best. Do you mean eating them or cooking them? If it's me, I would mix the salt and Szechuan peppercorn (powder) 1:1. Edit to note: Thanks for the grammar tip. I know "squids" looked weird but couldn't tell what it was. Corrected. Thanks.

I would too if the squid are bigger. With the small ones, one cross cut from the chef knief would cut them in half. Oops!

#16, Squid Stir-Fried with Shrimp Sauce (蝦醬炒鮮鱿)

Squid Stir-Fried with Shrimp Sauce (蝦醬炒鮮鱿) Shrimp sauce is commonly used in Southern coastal Chinese (e.g. Cantonese) cookings in stir-fried dishes. It is especially good with squid, ong choy [Cantonese] (hollow vegetable), and pork. This recipe features using shrimp sauce to stir-fry small squid. Note: Cooking with shrimp sauce will produce some strong smells in the kitchen. It may take some getting used to. Serving suggestion: 2 Main ingredients. About 2 pounds of small squid. It may sound like a lot, but after cleaning and shrinkage the edible portion of the squid is not that much. Other main ingredients: garlic, ginger, green onion and shrimp paste. With each small squid, cut off the tentacle portion. Trim and discard eyes and beak. Make a cut along the body. Remove and discard guts and tear off the outer purple-color membrane. This cleaning process is very labor intensive. I would advise you to buy the preclean squid packages. They cost more on a pound-for-pound basis. Considering the unedible portions and the labor saving, it's well worth it. Clean all squid and drain. Boil a pot/pan of water. Add squids and about 5 slivers of ginger. Boil for about 3 minutes. Remove. Drain the squid on a strainer. You can see that the squid shrink quite a bit when cooked. Prepare other ingredients. Mince about 3-4 cloves of garlic. Chop up 2 green onions, 1/2 inch in length. Cut 5 slices of chili (e.g. jalapeno). Shred some ginger, about 1 inch in length. Prepare 2-3 tsp of shrimp paste. 1-2 tsp of Shao Hsing cooking wine (contained in the cap). Use a pan/wok. Heat it over high setting. Add 2 tblsp of cooking oil. Wait until oil starts fuming. Add minced garlic, sliced chili, shredded ginger and shrimp paste. (Note: no need to add salt because the shrimp paste is very salty.) Stir well. Cook the shrimp sauce for about 10 seconds and let the fragrance develops. Quickly dash in the cooking wine. It may induce a small flame which lasts a fraction of a second. Keep stirring. Add 1/4 cup of chicken broth into the mixture. Add 1 tsp of sugar. Stir well. Continue to heat until boiled. If the sauce is too runny, use a small amount of corn starch slurry to thicken the sauce. Re-add the squid. Add chopped green onions. Keep stirring and cook for another few minutes. Done. The finished dish.

I am sorry. This site does offer the same set of recipes in English. Click on the above link and you will see a list of recipes. Click on individual recipes of your interest. The default Chinese recipe version will come up. But you can click on the "View Recipe In English" icon to obtain the English version.

Fengyi: I am glad that you find this useful. Dashing in some Shao Hsing cooking wine on a wok to induce a flame is a very common technique in Cantonese stir-fries. In Chinese, it's called 贊酒.

I typically chew on about 6 to 7 of the dry chilies. That's all I can handle and still be within safety limit. I could chew more if I somehow can skip the seeds. And why is so much oil used to cook the dish if it's not meant to be consumed?

I remember serving a dish like that when I worked as a waiter in a restaurant in San Diego. We had to move very quickly from the kitchen to the dining table, with both the sizzling plate and the sizzling rice ("War Bar" [Cantonese]) on our trays. Once set on the table, pour the sizzling rice, then pour the shrimp and sauce (made with tomato base) on to the iron plate. The smell was wonderful... always made us waiters hungry too! I think the Cantonese black pepper sauce is a Hong Konger's twist on the traditional Cantonese "black bean sauce" and combining the ever-so-popular "steak with black pepper sauce on sizzling plate" dish in Hong Kong western restaurants.

I was browsing the web and looking at food pictures. I found these 3 pictures from a food forum site in China: (Note: The site is located in China so the speed will be slow accessing from North America.) http://www.10ke.com.cn/viewthread.php?tid=466&fpage=1 The first 2 pictures are on "Hot Fish Filet". The third picture is "Ma La Ribbit". "Ma La" in Chinese [Mandarin] means numb and hot. Look at the quantity of dried chilies used! That looked like 30, 40 of dry chilies. Most Cantonese do not like hot food. Our tolerance of heat is almost zero. I am one of the few exceptions and I do like hot food. It's funny that we I recently had the "8th moon 15th day" dinner at Zen Peninsula in Millbrae, there was a "Crab with Fermented Black Beans and Chilies" dish. Before I took my bite, everybody at the table shouted and warned me "it is hot!". I looked at the dish. They used only about 2 dry chilies, chopped. LOL! When I look at these pictures, I would say: "Now That is hot!" Do you like "Ma La" dishes? Is it typical that one uses 30 to 40 dry chilies in a dish? Do you eat most of the dry chilies or avoid them?

Yes, in Chinese "肉" just means "meat" - a generic description. You need to have another character, such as 牛 or 鶏 in front of it to specify what kind of meat. However, the word 肉 without any specification of what kind of meat implies that it is pork. You will find that used often in Chinese menus. The reason for that: In the old days, China was an agricultural based society. Pigs and chickens were raised and slaughtered regularly so pork and chicken were common. Beef was not. (Cows - in generic terms - were used to plow land.) Are Japanese characters similar to the Chinese ones? Yes, of course. The Japanese "kanji" characters were imported from China (about a thousand year ago was it?).

Wow... I don't know what to say, Irwin, except "THANK YOU" and blush. (Oops, how come there isn't a blushing smilies?) Stacking the fish, putting the sauce in a squeeze bottle... of course that's just joking not for real. You and many posters in the "Presentation difference" thread have a very good point, that the Chinese style is to serve the food hot as quick as possible from the kitchen to the dining table. Except for some pre-carved animal figures with carrots and cucumbers alike, no Chinese chef would monkey around with squeegie bottles to splash random graffitis on the plate. And almost never with deliberately stacking food - they are burning-finger hot, who are you kidding? Thank you for all your support! My wife is supportive of what I do too. Sometimes when she randomly walked in to the kitchen, she'd say "you are taking pictures again!" But she benefits from it too as she gets to try a great varieties of dishes - something that was lacking with my routine weekly menus in the past year because of my working full time and taking 3 classes.

I just had lunch at my neighborhood favorite New Hong Kong Wok Restaurant. From their lists of specials (not in regular menu), one item that caught my eyes was "Mutton cooked with Tsing Tao beer" (青島啤酒羊). I asked the waitress about it. All she could tell me was the dish is served on a mini-wok with mutton and sauce. I probed what kind of sauces is used on this dish: soy sauce? Nam Yu? She could not tell me. Because it was during the busy lunch hour, I did not question any further. I know of a recipe to use Coca-Cola to cook chicken, Cantonese style. Sure beer is used in many southern US recipes. I don't think I have ever tasted, seen or ever heard of using beer in Chinese cooking. Has anybody even had a Chinese dish cooked with beer? Can you recall what it was? The taste? What kind of sauce was used to make the dish? How was it served?

I think that was referring to pork "sung" [Cantonese] (肉鬆)- dry pork shreds. Very popular in Taiwan. Some images from Google: Images of dry pork shreds The one image labelled "肉鬆です 日本で言う田麩です" seems best.

Ben: LOL! Yeah yeah... I need to stack the fish vertically. Now if I can just learn how to scoop the brown sauce into the darn squeeze bottles... and not to let the ginger/green onions clog on the nozzles.

carswell: Thanks for the funny story! LOL! I could imagine everybody in the restaurant choking on the smell of hot chili except you guys. The hot sizzling platters do cause a domino effect. One customer orders one, the others all watch. The people who just come in and see it, a lot of them would say: what's that? Smells so good... I gotta have one too!

The fish might look big in the pictures, but they actually were quite small. Two fish together weighed only 1.5 pound. Two for two, with room to have a third one! Are you playing word puzzle with me too? 1711... 1711... 1711, want could it be??? More than 700 posts from now. It may take a while! Are you sure?

MY dog Atticus doesn't like fish... ← Arrrrrr!!!!! How did I do that??? Must be the eye sight thing again. Where are my bifocals???? Oh, I don't have a pair. Notes corrected. Thank you!

I tried that once. I think it depends on the type of fish. Bass is very delicate. (See I broke one of the tails). If I recook the fish in the pan again, I risk tearing the fish meat apart. The fish meat is already cooked, so re-adding to the pan may not serve any purpose other than heating the fish up. If I make the sauce fast enough, I woudn't need to recook the fish.

Thanks Michael. Yes I took the pictures and cooked at the same time. Slowed me down a bit but this is just a low budget production! Yeah, I do want to write a cookbook someday. I just need to build up my portfolio to attract publishers.

#15, White Bass Braised with Bean/Soy Sauce (酱烧鱼)

White Bass Braised with Bean/Soy Sauce (酱烧鱼) Jo-mel: To celebrate your 1000th post, I have created this pictorial for you. Sorry I should have posted this sooner. I learned that you just had tried this recipe. Tepee: Sorry I missed your 1000th. Let me know what Cantonese food you would like to eat. Perhaps I can create one for you to celebrate your 1111st post, or 1268th post, or 1288th post, or 1388th post. Braising with bean sauce and soy sauce is typical of Northern Chinese cooking. It is not a Cantonese style. In Northern Chinese style, one will typically find brown sauce (bean sauce and soy sauce), sweet and sour sauce or "five willow" (five shredded vegetables). Serving suggestion: 2 I have found these beautiful White Basses in a local Asian grocery market. I have decided to cook them with a sauce based on chili bean sauce, brown bean sauce, soy sauce and hoisin sauce. Because they are so small, I needed to purchase 2 of them. Together they weighed only 1.5 pounds. Ask the grocer to cut and clean the fish for you. It is messy to do it at home. Wash the fish thoroughly and pat dry. Make a few slightly diagonal cross cuts on both sides of the fish. Rub a small pinch of salt on the fish body. In a pan/wok, use medium heat, add 2 tblsp cooking oil. Pat on some corn starch on both sides of the fish. Fry the fish over medium heat for about 5 minutes on each side. Gently turn the fish over and fry the other side. Be careful not to let the fish fall apart. Oops! I broke the tail of the small fish! Remove from pan after browning. Lay the fish on a plate. This picture shows what you need for the sauce. Chili, garlic, ginger, green onion, dark soy sauce, chili bean sauce, brown bean sauce, chicken broth, and (not shown) vinegar and sugar. Use 3 green onions, slice diagonally. 3-4 cloves of garlic, minced. 1/2 chili (e..g jalapeno), sliced. 1 inch in length of ginger, shredded. Use the same pan, add 2 tblsp of cooking oil. Set for high heat. Wait until oil starts fuming. Add minced garlic, sliced chili, shredded ginger and green onion. Stir-fry for a few seconds. Add 2-3 tsp of chili bean sauce, 2 tsp brown bean sauce, 4 tsp hoisin sauce and 1 to 2 tsp of dark soy sauce. (No need to add salt because the fish have been salted and these sauces are already salty.) Dash in 2 to 3 tsp of white vinegar. Stir the sauce and cook for about 20 seconds over high heat. Add 1/4 cup of chicken broth and 1/4 to 1/2 cup of water. Add 2 tsp of sugar. Wait until the mixture starts to boil. Keep stirring. Add some corn starch slurry to thicken the sauce until it has the right consistency. Scoop and pour on top of the fish on the plate. Finished dish.

There had been a few discussion threads on Xiao Long Bao in this forum. Here are 2 that I could find: Soup Dumplings (Xiao Long Tang Bao) Xialong Bao, Broth Secret?

jo-mel: Congratulations on your 1000th post too! (Tepee, is the cake ready???) Irwin: Thanks for the history brief. That makes a lot of sense. I grew up hearing the name "Jimmy's Kitchen". I grew up in Tsim Sha Tsui and I often smelled the garlic, melted butter, fried potatoes and curries coming up from the exhausts from whatever restaurants. The sizzling steak with black pepper sauce (western style)dish was quite common in the 60's/70's in Hong Kong. Did it go from there and spread around the world? Wow! What an honor! Fajitas too? It's amazing how one copies from another and morphes into slightly different things.