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Maybe you would like the minced shrimp rolls (each about 1 inch long, really minature size). I like them as snacks.

How does one eat a durian? Use one hand to clip the nose and the other to deliver a slice to the mouth? Or just endure the smell for the taste?

I agree, fish meat is very delicate. The Chinese style steamed fish only taste good if the fish is fresh and taste bad if it is even slightly under par. Most of the fish I see in Sacramento's Chinese grocery stores don't interest me much... meat too tough, too boney, taste too bland, etc.. The fish in the San Francisco China Town is much better.

Here is an observation on our typical family dinner gathering. First of all, the dinner must be Chinese food because my PILs don't eat anything else. Second of all, we always go to that one restaurant my PILs like. Yes, the same one for the past 10 years (since they opened basically). We order the same set family dinner every time. There are 4 groups in the family: <me> my PILs and me are traditional Chinese. <abc> my wife and her brothers. <sil> my Caucasian sisters-in-laws. and <kids> all are cute Chinese-White mix. Soup: Crab meat and winter melon soup. All groups like them except <sil>. Honey glazed shrimp (mayo) with roasted walnuts. <sil> love them. <me> so-so. <abc><kids> welcome them. Deep-fried chicken. All groups love them. Everybody races to grab the best pieces. I love the wings and dark meat. <kids> like drumsticks. Pork chop, Jing Dao style: (bit sweet and sour) <me> and <abc> like them <sil> love them. <kids> so so. Beef with vegetables (gai lan): <me><abc> love them. <sil><kids> so so. Sauteed seafood with snow peas in a bird nest: <me> like them. <abc> so so. <sil><kids> never touch this dish. Steam fish, ginger and scallions on top, soy sauce: <me> love it. <abc> okay. <sil><kids> take on tiny bit. Shrimps, salt and pepper: <me> love them (well, PILs couldn't eat them because of high cholesterol level). <kids> only one like them, others don't. <abc> okay. <sil> one likes them, one doesn't. Crabs, ginger and scallions: <abc> okay. <sil><kids> never touch this dish. <me>, no, my PILs don't eat much seafood. It's really just Me like it. My record is eating 1 and 3/4 Dungeness crabs all by myself in front of everybody. Pork fried rice: <me><abc><sil> okay. <kids>... garble garble garble. Dessert: sweet red bean concoction <me> love it. <abc><kids> okay. <sil> never touch it. So, it seems that the only common denominator is the deep-fried chicken.

I agree that even looking at the picture at high resolution, the dishes are hard to see because the picture was taken from a distance. I with there are close-up pictures on those dishes. I was hoping those dishes look like something what pan and jo-mel had experienced in Beijing. But this could well be a Hong Kong chef's interpretation (or imagination) of an Imperial banquet. It looks like they brought out dim sums, the main courses, and some desserts all at the same time (for picture-taking sake?). It looks to me that #6 and #8, or even #1 are desserts. #2 is har gow (in a skin that was made to shape like fish, I have seen that before), which is dim sum. #4 is another dim sum. So, only #3, 5, 7 and 9 are main course dishes. #3 could be shrimps sliced in half and steamed with garlic. #5 could be a steamed fish like Laksa said. #7 is Chicken with Chinese ham and jade (green vegetable)? #9 is... oh, that's anybody's guess. A wonderful picture. Just so Hollywood made-believe like.

Over at Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, I always see the restaurants boil their Dungeness crabs in a big pot until cooked, then cut up the crabs, cool them down and sell them as crab cocktails. Here's what I am thinking: They don't cut and clean the crabs (to remove the gill and internal organs) before cooking. I heard that crab gills are toxic. If you eat it, you will get really sick. If they boil the crabs with gills and everything, wouldn't the broth (water) be bad? That broth, perhaps just a minute amount, would go in to the crab claws/legs they sell you. Wouldn't that be bad?

Dejah: I recommend that you try altering the process just a little bit... top the fish with green onions and ginger, pour heated oil on top, then at last splash the light soya sauce. I think this process would make your fish taste even better. I like my fish steamed plain (and top with green onions, oil and soy sauce) sometimes. Sometimes steamed with fermented black beans and ginger. Sometimes steamed with brown bean sauce and ginger. Sometimes Hung Shao (that's garlic, green onions and oyster sauce). Sometimes lightly fried. Sometimes deep-fried. Sometimes grilled. Sometimes blackened. Sometimes smoked or baked or proached. In other words, I like them all! Oh, may be just not sweet and sour. I'd eat the fins and tails if it is a flonder or other similar "both eyes on the same side" fish, deep-fried. I'd eat the scales if it is a carp, braised. I'd eat the head if it is a sardine, lightly fried. I'd eat the eyeballs if it is a.... errrr... never mind.

A 400 year old egg would mean they started the curing process back at the beginning of the Ching Dynasty. That sounds about right. Dejah: your friend mentioned they put "chive" on top of the tofu and 400 year old eggs. Then in the next few pictures, she mentioned scallions (green onions in the USA). Though similar, chive and scallions are different herbs/plants. I have never seen chives in China until I came to the USA. So I seriously doubt that those are chives, but just the same scallions, just finely chopped. A lot of people misname scallions as chives and vice versa in the USA. One time I was dining at a Denny's. I asked the waitress to bring me some chives for my sour cream (with my baked potatoes). I really meant to have chives. She brought me a small dish of chopped scallions, and said "here's your chives". I told her that's scallions and just asked if they were out of chives and use scallions instead (which is okay though not as good). She insisted that those are chives... *sigh*

Here is a wallpaper image from the Discover Hong Kong website (click here), run by Hong Kong Tourism Board. The wallpapers are free for download to anybody who is interested. This picture has a caption of "Imperial banquet at Jumbo floating restaurant". Question: why were the Caucasians dressed in Ching dynasty costume? And they were having wine with their Chinese Imperial meal? Can you name or guess what dishes they were having? Let's label them this way: Dish #1 is the one closest to us, the viewers, with purple/white flower-like garnishing. Go clockwise around the table. Dish #9 is the double bonus dish right in the center of the table.

The moon is bright and round for 3 nights in a row out here in Davis, California. Welcoming the moon, appreciating the moon, chasing the moon... all done. If I had a Kee Wah moon cake, that would have been fantastic. I miss that place. I have been a long time fan and used to live a few blocks away from their Monterey Park bakery right on Garvey Ave. There is nothing like it in the Sacramento vincinity.

kangarool: are you sure those that you saw were seahorses? 1. I have never heard of seahorses used as a snack food. 2. Chinese use seahorses as medicine and they are a bit expensive. (They are difficult to catch perhaps) Seems odd that they can sell them as snack food on the street.

Zha Jiang Mian is a bit on the salty and hot side, more heavy on the chili bean sauce. Jing Jiang Rou Si is more on the sweet and sour side, more heavy on the hoisin, vinegar and sugar.

Thanks for sharing your stories and pictures. More likely cabbage. Beijing Rens are very fond of leeks. So I suspect what you thought was spring onions (green onions in the USA) are actually leeks (a Chinese variety, which is smaller than the leeks we see in the USA). Leeks are sharper than spring onions, but not as sharp as raw garlic. They are somewhere in between. I think they don't cook it as long as the Cantonese style conjee. The name is actually Hot and Sour Soup (酸辣汤), a very common soup exported to the US and other countries. This is the world famous Mapo Doufu (麻婆豆腐). In Mandarin, it's called JingJiangRouSi (京酱肉丝) (Literal translation is: Shredded Pork with Capital Sauce). The shredded pork is prepared by skillful use of a cleaver. As for the sauce: a little bit of brown bean paste, some hoisin, some soy sauce, some vinegar, some sugar, (some use a bit of catsup or tomato sauce). Cooked in garlic, of course. Beef Noodle Soup (牛肉面). Yeah, star anise, clove and leek I'll bet. Let me know if you are interested in a recipe of this. That's gotta be a Singaporean touch. Just look at how many slices of red chilis!

Yes, that's a classic technique... throw a handful of ground meat smashing against the bowl. Chinese make some meatballs and fishballs that way. To modernize this process, we actually make machines that go through the hammering motion with a big flat plate in a bucket full of ground meat/fish. That's the same as people say "stir in one direction only". With a food processor, that's a given. I just like using a food processor because it's more convenient, as well as more elegant. Actually, in order to save time you can use the food processor to mix the vegetable with the pork paste too. Just don't blend it for too long. While you blend the ground pork for a full minute, at the end you can add your chopped vegetable to the pork and just blend it (pulse it) for, say, 5 to 10 seconds. The idea is to preserve the texture of your vegetable while mixing it into the paste. I tried it with chive green and the result was good.

Is the frozen crab cooked or still raw? I don't think I had ever seen a raw frozen crab before. If it is already cooked, then no matter how you cook it, the meat would be cooked twice and therefore the taste would be far from ideal. If it is raw, then I would definitely try to thaw it slowly. E.g. take it out of the freezer and leave in room temperature for 8-10 hours. Crab meat cooks very quickly. If you go for quick thaw, inevitably you would be cooking the meat as well. Again, like most seafood, crab meat cooks very quickly. Most crab recipes call for cooking with high heat (steaming or boiling or stir-fry). If you simmer, seafood tends to turn tough.

The pre-ground pork sold at the butcher usually has a label on the fat/meat ratio, something like 15%, 20%, etc.. I think between 15% to 20% would be a good ratio for making jiaozi. If you don't see a label, you can roughly guess by looking at the ground pork and see how many "white dots" there are. Lean pork is pink. Fat is white. For ground pork, the whiter the mix, the fattier it is. Ground pork from 100% lean cut would almost bear no white dot at all. My wife and I usually avoid fat as much as we could. We mix some 15% fat ground pork with some all lean ground pork to get the lean ratio that we like to make jiaozi. Jason's recipe is pretty good. For my taste, though, I would add some ground white peppers and some XiaoXing cooking wine. And I don't usually put in tofu or Cellophane Noodle in my recipe. If you find your filling mix too crumbly, here is a tip for you: After you mix the ground pork with the seasoning, put it in a food processor and grind it one more time -- about 1 minute for each batch. Your ground pork would turn into a paste instead of staying crumbs. Then you mix your paste with the vegetable. (I think I blended the vegetable with the ground pork together once and the vegetable "dissolved" -- not good. Can't taste their texture.) This way, I have a pretty good, sticky, pasty filling even when using 100% lean pork.

Yeah. You need to continue to taste test it a dozen times to make sure the taste is consistent through out, right?

I agree with Laksa. I take a braver approach: I don't bother with using a knief. Turn the crab over, find it's tail. Yes, crabs have tails just like shrimps. The only thing is their tails curl up and tuck underneath their body shell. Use one hand to hold down the crab once you turn it over as it would swing its claws and all 8 legs but it can't really reach the center. Use the other hand, stick the thumb into the soft spot (the end of the tail), then just pull the underside open. Then, remove the gill and organs, rinse the body, and proceed to chopping up the legs and claws. Sounds cruel, huh? A story: I like to watch the National Geographics channel and there is one program called "Worlds Apart". In every episode, a U.S. family is invited to spend their next vacation visiting a third world country usually in Asia or Africa. Almost invariably, the head of the U.S. family is treated as the guest of honor. As such, he is requested to, in his honor, slaughter a domestic animal - from chicken to pig to goat. He has to swing his sword or machete towards the animal (yeah, the one he petted that very morning) in front of a big group and his own family. And, almost invariably, you will see a grown man cry after doing it. Yeah, shouldn't have petted your food. A guy said he had eaten chicken all his life. He had never seen the head, the feet, the feather. Oh, my goodness. My favorite crab recipe is ginger and scallion. The other one is salt and pepper. I think black bean sauce is a bit overpowering for crabs, as crab meat is very delicate. Another way to eat it is to steam (or boil) plain, then dip in -- no no, not butter -- sesame oil and red vinegar mix. I was in Singapore once. My host took me to eat chili crab and curry crab - a Singaporean specialty. We ordered both of them, and ate them side by side. They were wonderful. Laksa: I viewed the page on the chili crab recipe with interest. In the end, they said "Cover the wok and simmer over high heat for five to seven minutes till the crab shell turns bright red.". Simmer over high heat? Did I miss something?

I don't know of a single Chinese word for this. In Cantonese, we do say someone "Sik sung mmm sik fan" (where "sik" = eat, "sung" = main dish, side dish, "mmm" is the negation, means "no", "fan" = rice). And this phrase usually has a negative connotation, and usually is used when parents lecturing their children over meals. Chinese believe that it's very important that you eat rice so that you can be healthy.

More example: bubur (almost a double) chacha (that's a double).

Spam and vienna sausages are very common in Hong Kong too. In the States, there seems to be two groups of people: those who love Spam love it. Those who don't like it, or don't know what it is, would avoid it like a plague. The Spam in Hong Kong is not imported from the US. It's Spam-like canned pork (and other ingredients of course) made in Mainland China. We like to slice it, lightly fry it to get the crispy skin, and eat it with rice or ramen noodles or in a sandwich or in an omlette. Growing up, I thought Vienna sausage is the only sausage there is! Sorry... went off on a tangent. It's still about food though.

Where is mudbug when you need him/her? Maybe too much dessert and took a long ZZZZZZZZ...

The moon is getting rounder and rounder every night. I am counting the hours until middle autumn. "...looking up, I see the moon; in reflection, I really miss home..." Moon cake, some grapes, and a sip of XO. Life couldn't be better than this.

There! I saw it. I went to do grocery shopping at Foods Co, an American grocer. They carry sweet potatoes, just like the ones in the pictures shown in a previous note. They labelled them: "Red Yam" Huh, I am not nuts after all. Maybe it's a Californian thing?

It sounds like you may be talking about what's called "Sweet Soy Sauce" here. Really thick like syrup (you have to shake the bottle hard to pour some out). And it is sweet and not too salty. I have a bottle of ABC Sweet Soy Sauce at home that fits your description. And they carry it at Asiafoods.com. See if this is what you are looking for. $2.89 online order. Not bad.