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My cousin who lives in Hong Kong is visiting the USA/Canada. Last weekend we met up in Millbrae (California) and have a family reunion dinner at: Zen Peninsula 1180 El Camino Real, Millbrae, California http://www.zenpeninsula.com/ We had one of their dinner packages (and there are many to choose from). Here is a picture of the 8 course meal (plus fried rice). The dinner was excellent. The dishes they made were very close to what they presented on the website (except that the fish is steamed and not served raw as in their pictures, of course ) Here is the picture posted on Zen Peninsula's web site: http://www.zenpeninsula.com/images/zen368-2.JPG Zen's special banquet for 10: - Zen's special platter (suckling pig, jelly fish, pork leg?) - Stir-fried dual clams (two kinds of clams) - Golden seafood roll (scallop and shrimp, bit of mayo wrapped in tofu skin and deep-fried, delicious!) - Braised shark's fin with conpoy & shredded chicken (shark fin!!!) - Sliced abalone in oyster sauce (abalone with whole mushrooms) - Stir-fried lobster with ginger & scallion (hmmm, lobster!) - Green tea chicken (don't let the name fool you, just the same as Cantonese Fried Chicken (Zha Gee Gai). The skin is very crispy and the meat very tender. 10/10!) - Steamed live whole fish (they do serve it steamed, not raw. ) - Ham & seafood fried rice - Braised e-fu noodles - Daily dessert soup & Dual petit dessert (the dessert soup is the run-of-the-mill red bean dessert soup. But the "dual" petite dessert is interesting: (1) miniature Gai Jai Beng. They made them the size of a quarter for each. Really small. But the taste is unmistakable. (2) Kuih! - Mango flavor? Shapped like a small marble ball.) - Their desserts are quite pretty. Too bad not in their photo gallery. We ate very well! One of the best I had in the US West Coast for a long time...

Of course. Use mui choy, chung choy, dai tau choy (the "big head" vegetable), or zha choy (the one preserved with chili). Steam them (choose one) with your minced pork patty. If you make the porty patty with ham yue (salted fish), I would advise not to mix in the salted fish with the pork because it would just "dissolve" into the pork patty and you cannot feel the texture of the fish at all. Best to lay the salted fish on top of the patty when steamed. I don't put extra water in the pork patty when marinating because during the steaming process, there will be plenty of water condensation deposit in the dish already. I found that in modern days, using a food processor to grind/mix the pork patty is a good substitute to the traditional "throw it on the floor" method. Whether one should use double cleavers or meat grinders or food processors would depend on the preference on the "graininess" of the pork patty, from coarse to smooth. You can also add a salted egg to the pork patty: separate the yolk and white. Mix the egg white in the pork patty when marinating. It will hold the patty better. Leave the egg yolk on top to steam with the pork patty.

*cough* *cough* That was Tepee's Malaysian-twisted Cantonese. My family would agree with yours in describing "ba-ling ba-long". I still have the double yolk lotus seed paste mooncakes from AA Bakery, San Francisco... waiting for the occassion.

Chu Hou sauce is different from brown bean paste. I think that Chu Hou has other ingridients blend in besides fermented soybeans. You will find Chu Hou used in Cantonese BBQ and beef stew often.

Hmmm.... Tepee... I need to suggest you to live in Hong Kong/Guangzhou/Shenzhen for a few years to retrain your Cantonese pronounciations... the official, proper way. No, no, approximation doesn't count. I would imagine that the spoken "Cantonese" in Malaysia or Singapore have transformed somewhat over the centuries. I can see that being a master of 5 Chinese dialects, it's easy to get confused. The orthodox Cantonese pronounciation for beans is a D. And for "white", it's a B. Not a cross of B-P. Pure B. I may be a banana in thinking... but my linguistic training is based on official Cantonese.

Welcome, mflo. I look forward to reading your perspective of Chinese cooking. One small note: In Cantonese, as in Mandarin, the pronounciation is "Dau" (with a D instead of a T - In Mandarin it is Dou) for beans. "Dau See" [Cantonese] - fermented black beans.

There is a whole thread on how to hold chopsticks a while back: Adventures in chopstick etiquette

You guys are bad. I am good. You guys go ahead and do cook-offs. I will do eat-offs... just watch and eat...

Mid-Autumn Festival... aka Mooncake Festival... Chung Chou Geet [Cantonese]... Lantern Festival... 8th month 15th day on a lunar calendar: September 18, 2005 Just 10 days away. Or 9 days if you are in M'sia.

But... but... Tepee, I only saw the description of drying the meat (in the oven with low heat - 100F? such a low temperature does not kill the bacteria I believe)... is this the same as cooking? Some pork yuk gon are not grilled.

The grilling add charcoal flavor to the yuk gon. Very tasty!

Tepee: When you make pork yuk gon, is the pork also raw? Do we need to worry about e-coli and other bacteria for eating raw meat? You said the meat is roughly grounded. How can the ground pork hold up in sheets?

If I want to make beef jerky, do you cook the beef first? Or just leave it raw with the marinade, then dry it in oven? Also, how "low" is "very low" temperature-wise?

Thanks for the explanations. That's intriguing. I thought that the rocks are used to throw at customers who did not pay their bills! They use plastic sheets, not plastic bags. How do they wrap it up? Would the sauce spill all over? The char Hokkien noodle looks very much like the Hong Konger's Gon Chow Ho Fun. Do they cook on a real charcoal stove? Would it be hot enough? It looks like there is an air pump or something blowing from underneath the bed of charcoals.

Great pictures, Tepee! One question: Why were there a few rocks on the stainless steel kitchen counter? (And the stacks of old newspapers) How did they used the rocks and newspapers? (Just seemed a bit out of place, but must have practical reasons.)

If you are a fan of restaurants named after the TV networks, you may want to try out NBC: NBC Restaurant, Monterey Park, CA NBC also serves dim sum. I had been there in the 80's, and it was the only game in town at the time (Monterey Park, just a 10 minutes drive from Downtown LA along I-10), with a 30-60 minute waiting list. Haven't been there for over 10 years, not sure what it has become. But the eateries in this vincinity are very authentic and competitive. Harbor Village used to be on Atlantic X Garvey, another good dim sum place. But I heard that they had changed hands... Where are the ABC and FOX?

And I thought Las Vegas was popular with the Chinese because of the gambling... ← Gambling first! If you win big, you dine at the 5-stars eating abalone and drinking shark-fin soup. If you don't... well, you can at least stuff yourself up on the house!

I passed by the 99 Ranch Market in Richmond last weekend. I saw a small eatery selling joongs. Couldn't resist, I bought a couple of them to try. They were labelled as "Taiwanese style zongzi". They shaped more like a long pillow than a triangular pyramid. (Sorry, no pictures). I opened up one. The glutinous rice is dark brown. It looked like in Taiwanese style, they mix soy sauce with the glutinous rice before boiling. The saltiness flavor is already there. No need to drip on soy sauce. I must say that I was quite disappointed. There was only one piece of pork inside the joong. No mung bean, no black mushroom, nothing else other than glutinous (with soy sauce flavored) and pork. Is this truly the Taiwanese style zongzi? Seems too simplistic. Dejah, what is your mail order address again?

I think it is more than the soft drink. The fast food industry is boosting the consumption quantity at an alarming rate. 20-30 years ago, a big mac was a "not-so-big" mac and a whopper was a "normal size" whopper. One of these would be considered a lunch. Nowadays, not only do you find the extra large "value" meal, you also find these triple decker hamburgers, these Six Dollar Burgers, along with the extra large bag of french fries, washing it down with a 32-64 oz soft drink. Once one chain starts doing it, all other fast foods follow. Can you imagine eating xiaolongbao the size of your fist? Or wonton that's the size of a tennis ball? Or 2 plates of rice for your pick-up-stick lunch special? That's the direction America is heading.

Why wait? Just go and cut one up right now! Leave 1 for your family, you have the rest that's in the box.

I think he was hallucinating from hunger - deprived of mooncake crumbs.

Yeah yeah. We worship the moon every moonth during the 15th 1/30 moonth in a lunar calendar. And every 12th moonths, in the 8th moonth of the 12 moonths, the 15th 1/30 moonth, we get together and eat moon cake to celebrate. Teepee is the mooncake wizard. Dejah is the apprentice wizard. hz is just a waterbody.

Yeah. We can finish off each other's sentences...

Oh, Dejah, you are asking for it.....

Jack: you made it look so easy! Tempting tempting!!!