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Unable to find time to make joong this season, last weekend I picked up a couple of them in a restaurant on Stockton Street in the heart of San Francisco China Town. Thinking... it's from China Town... must be good! Wrong! What a big disappointment! Each joong is wrapped with 4 bamboo leaves. I suppose they could have done it with 3. One of them has sticky rice, peanuts, 2-inch cut of lap cheung, and a piece of fatty pork (this one has no mung bean). The other one has sticky rice, mung beans, 2-inch cut of lap cheung, and a piece of fatty pork (this one has no peanut). No mushroom, dried shrimp, salted egg yolk in sight. The sticky rice is very soft. It feels as if they had been in the boiler for over 8 hours. The rice "fell apart" as soon as I unwrapped it. This goes to show: if you want something done well, you might just need to do it yourself! Or you should call 1-800-dejah-I-want-your-joong!

Dejah: You sure use a lot of "liu" for your joong. No wonder that you need to use 3 leaves to wrap it.

For a few minutes, I kept thinking you got your crab and beef+gai-lan for under $7-10 (including tax a& tip). Where can you find restaurants like that!? Sam Woo is my favorite place too in my days of living in the Los Angeles area.

Yeah, I have seen that kind of setting before. I used to work as a waiter in a Chinese restaurant in San Diego. The owner was a Chinese-French later immigrated to America. It may be an European-oriented set up? The idea is to serve the appertizers or salad - yeah, "Chinese" chicken salad - to the customer, then remove the small plate on the top. The big dinner plate will be used for the main course. Must be cultural differences. In Hong Kong you will not find settings like this. Mostly in restaurants in Hong Kong, they give you a small bowl (with a Chinese ceramic spoon). I mean really "small". The size of what Americans consider "a cup". No plate at all. The modern ones now provide a small plate and then put the small bowl on top. You are not supposed to scoop your food on the plate. The plate is for "holding bones" only! A bit more courteous than spitting on top of the table cloth.

Isn't persimmons originated from China? My late father loved the Cantonese braised ducks (Chan Pei Up [Cantonese]), with skins and fat and all. In his later years, he had to watch his diet because of his heart problem. And we always asked him not to eat the skin/fat. So once a year, he used the opportunity at the Father Day's dinner to enjoy his favorite dish... and he knew that's the only day that nobody would say anything...

Happy Father's Day, everyone! Took my wife's father to a regular dim sum brunch. The place was packed!!! I guess everybody feels guilty for not treating his/her father often enough throughout the year and today is the day to make up for it! I think Chinese Dim Sum and Seafood restaurants all across the country have a terribly busy day today. My FIL just took the usual - a bowl of congee with pork and pei dan [Cantonese] - thousand year old egg, and he's happy. Where did you take your father or in-law? Did it involve Chinese food?

Found some pictures of some home-made joong. Look pretty good! http://www.basil.idv.tw/Main/Diary/2004/040622/01.jpg http://www.basil.idv.tw/Main/Diary/2004/040622/03.jpg Fillings: Black mushrooms, chestnuts, salty pork, salty duck egg yolk, peanuts.

While having more filling for your joong may sound good, it's not necessarily a "good thing". Joong needs a "binding agent" to hold all the ingredients together to form the pyramid shape. The "binding agent" is sticky rice. Not enough sticky rice, when you unwrap the bamboo leaves everything falls apart. A perfectly formed joong should standalone as a well form pyramid with nothing falling when you remove the leaves. That's good presentation. From my experience, you should use no less than 30%-40% (by volume) of sticky rice to form your joong. Sticky rice to mung bean ratio, usually 2:1. Be sure you stuff the sticky rice all around, wrapping the "liu" (other ingredients) inside.

What can top that? Next year you need to Cook with Sue-On and Jam with the Hillman Band at the same time! ... Do a little bit Country (cooking)... Do a little bit Rock'n Roll... So, your 5-6 dozen joong may not last past end of July.

I beg your pardon? I must not be very clear. You said "with all that liquid". Where did that "liquid" come from? All you use is 1/4 cup (may be I should say 4 tablespoon - I just measued it) of dark soy sauce. Sorry. Should that be 1/8 cup of dark soy sauce? Rice noodle is typical. But you can also use soft wheat-based pan fried noodles (like the thick Shanghai noodle, or udon), or spaghetti.

Gon Chow (Dry Stir-Frying) is a different style. The style described earlier (mixing vegetables with meats in a oyster sauce/chicken broth mix) is what Hong Kongers refer to as Sup Chow (Wet Stir-Frying). Gon Chow is a different process, here is how you do it: Cut up 1 to 2 green onion to roughly 1 inch long. Cut up 1/4 to 1/2 small onion in thin wedges. Pour 1/4 cup of dark soy sauce in a cup, set aside. Heat your wok/pan over high heat (the higher the better) for at least a few minutes. Pour in cooking oil in the wok/pan. Continue to heat the oil for a few minutes until oil is fuming. Very quickly, throw in the green onion and onion in the pan, at the same time pour in the 1/4 cup dark soy sauce, and pour in your drained rice noodle. (Note: this process should be completed very quickly - within 3 to 4 seconds) The dark soy sauce will boil immediately when it hits the pan. Along with the hot oil, it should coat the rice noodle very nicely with a dark sheen. The soy and onion/green-onion will give is the characteristic "Gon Chow" flavor. Stir well. At last, add in the meat (cooked separately) and stir some more for a minute or two.

Well, I can't flame the oil around the edges of the wok because I have an electric stove! ← Doing a "burning flame" effect at home is difficult because our gas burners are not strong enough. And it's hopeless for electric ones. If you have a gas burner, here a trick that works well for me: You should fry the marinated meat first, and remove. You should clean the wok/pan (or else the residue would turn charcoal and not look good in your dish). Heat your wok/pan over high flame for a few minutes. Add cooking oil. Continue to heat it until oil starts fuming. Add minced garlic, salt. Tilt your wok/pan slightly. Dash in 1-2 tblsp of white vinegar. Because the pan is red hot, it boils the vinegar instantly and creates many droplets in the air. You tilt the pan so that these droplets will catch on to the fire from the burner, and flame up in the pan. The flame will die down in just a few seconds. Continue to add your other ingredients, oyster sauce, chicken broth, vegetable, etc., and at last thicken your sauce with corn starch slurry. You resulting sauce will carry the "smoky" flavor. The longer you let the flame burn, the more smoky it tastes. But don't go overboard with it.

Pork bones, pork + lotus root, some peanuts, dried black mushrooms, dried scallops. If you can find them: chicken feet. Boil then simmer for 2-3 hours.

I have no secret recipe. I just follow the typical. The recipe from Eileen Yin Fei Lo has listed the ingredients pretty well. And wesza has an excellent description on the process. Way to go! So take Eileen's list of ingredients and follow wesza's method, voila! The flame around the edge of the wok: burning the peanut oil, is what gives Cantonese chow mein the characteristic "smoky" (sort of) flavor.

Yes. I think leung mein wong is much canton style. Typically, Shanghai-style chow mein (fried noodles) is referring to those thick soft noodles. They look and taste like Japanese Udon. I don't know if the Japanese stole it from the Shanghainese or the other way around. My Chinese bias would of course believe the Japanese stole it from the Shanghainese. Shanghainese "chow" their thick, soft noodles in plenty of oil and dark soy sauce, with meat and cabbage (??) mixed in to the noodles (not poured on top). In recent years, (in Hong Kong), chow udon and chow spaghetti (not kidding you) became very popular. Not sure what the latest fad is. Chow mein, chow ho fun, chow mi fun, chow lai fun, chow udon, chow spaghetti... all of them go through a similar process.

It's really tempting to bite... but I can't. Sorry. My summer schedule doesn't allow me time to cook dinner. No joong. No Mapo tofu. No Dan Tart. No Siu Mei. Similarly no Chow Mein. What is considered "participation" in these cook-offs? I served the role of a virtual food critic. Doesn't that count? I have made Cantonese Chow Mein many times. Of course, I am Cantonese. How can I participate? Besides, my digital camera is in gadget heaven. Can tell but no show. May be you can buy one and FedEx to me. Now we're talking!!! (A Sony Cybershot DSC-T1 please!)

The Hong Kong style chow mein (leung mein wong) is typically crispy around the edges. When the boiling hot sauce (with meat and vegetable mixed in) is poured on top of the chow mein, it makes the center of the noodle nest soft and moist. The attractiveness of this style is that you get the crispy, crunch noodle on one hand and the soft and juicy noodle on the other. When chew together, the contrast is excellent.

I am glad that this table gets used once a year!

Dejah/Ben/hiroyuki: Now I am even more confused. From what you are saying, your dessert dou fu is NOT dou fu fa? I thought dou fu fa is the dessert dou fu. I know the different softness scale of dou fu: From soft to hard: Dou fu fa is this silken tofu? is this dessert tofu? Dou fu (soft) is this silken tofu? is this dessert tofu? Dou fu (hard) I understand they are products of different stages when the soya milk solidifies and whether you press the water out. I am just very confused on where you crown the term "silken" and what you consider as dessert. It appears that the Dejah-Ben "silken" crown is different from the Hiroyuki "silken" crown.

I am sorry. I missed the M'sia part. I didn't realize we were to discuss Chinese banquets outside of China. I suppose every region would change the tradition to some degree to fit the local custom. A banquet can even be whatever the host or chef feels like doing.

Note: my screen name has a "8" in it. I am a Chinese. Everything has to be 8-8-8!!! Fat-Fat-Fat!!! *cam* *cam* I am thinking about it. But my schedule now is so busy that I hardly have time to cook dinners, let alone making joong.

"Go": Male crabs --> sperm - white/yellowish color Female crabs --> roe (eggs) - orange color

Tepee: Did you boil your bamboo leaves like Dejah does?

Are you soaking your sticky rice by the barrels?

I think we may have a mix of terminologies. I first thought "silken tofu" was referring to soft tofu (for cooking). In this thread, silken tofu is referring to "dou fu fa" (a snack or dessert). Different texture - different degree of softness. And real silk (from worms, not a metaphor) is involved in making silken tofu??? I thought "silken" was just a metaphorically descriptive term (e.g. soft as silk).