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The fast food in Hong Kong is very different from the fast food in USA. With places like Cafe de Coral or Fairwood, they probably serve more fast Chinese food (something over rice kind of dishes) than hamburgers. The main object is "fast". Tastes are usually okay, but not as good as from the traditional restaurant. But if you are in a hurry to get a meal (and who isn't?) or want to be economical (and who doesn't), it's really a good alternative than going to traditional restaurants.

1. Cornstarch and oil do not mix too well. I take it that you mean water mixed with cornstarch as a thickening agent? 2. While soy sauce is indeed use very often, similar to salt and pepper in Western cooking, I wouldn't say it is the *only one* basic sauce in Chinese cooking. Oyster sauce, vinegar, Hoisin, brown bean paste, chile bean paste, even shrimp paste, etc. all have their places. It is the different mix and match along with different processes (timing) and methods (steam, fry, deep-fry, stir-fry, braise, bake, boil, simmer, double boil, etc.) that make a variety of different dishes in Chinese cooking.

That's it! Thanks for clearing that up. Does China 46 have a fish tank? If so, did you count?

Maybe snap a few digitals and post for us to look at the real Beijing food.

If you don't use as much rice flour, the cake will tend to be very soft and fall apart easily. But it tastes good as the steamed version of Lo Bak Gow. If you want to show more texture of the diakon, you may reduce the initial cooking time from 30 minutes down to say 10 to 15 minutes. I tried to make Lo Bak Gow without the initial cooking step once (just steam the raw shredded Lo Bak and rice flour mix). The result was not good -- tasted like chalk. The taste of the rice flour was too "raw". Since then I learned that I really need to cook the Lo Bak with rice flour for a little while. The recipe at Above.com calls for cooking them for 1 hour (and steam for another 1 hour). I think that's way overdone.

Sorry, not likely a whole century egg in one Pai Dan So. I had bought some in Kee Wah Bakery in Monterery Park. Theirs are the best IMHO. I think they generously use 1/2 an century egg in one Pai Dan So. The recipe you pointed to suggested to slice up each century egg into 6 to 8 pieces. They also add lotus paste and pickled ginger in the fillings. Pai Dan So is a bakery item, so it's baked in an oven not deep-fried.

Pai Dan So is an century egg wrapped around by a crispy crust made from flour/shortening. Wife's cake is..... errr, let me ask my wife...

My recipe is fairly close to the one posted at Above.com with small differences. Cantonese Lo Bak Gow typically doesn't contain parsley and sesame seeds. And 1 cup of water seems too little for 2 1/2 lb of Lo Bak. Anyway, here's my version for your info: Recipe for Lo Bak Gow (Daikon Cake) - 4 lb of Lo Bak (Daikon) - ¾ lb (12 oz) of Regular Rice Flour - 2 to 3 tsp corn starch - 3 to 4 tbsp dried shrimp - 3 to 4 dried black mushrooms - 1 tsp salt - 1 tsp ground white pepper - (optional) you may add lap cheung or other ingredients to suit your taste Yields: 25 to 30 slices of Lo Bak Gow the size they serve in dim sum restaurants Peel the Lo Bak, then shred them using a food processor. Cook the shredded Lo Bak with 5 cups of water until soft (about 20 to 30 minutes) over medium heat. Drain away the excess water to a bowl. Add ground white pepper and salt and sugar to the Lo Bak. Use the excess water (about 2 to 3 cups) to dissolve the rice flour and corn starch (2-3 tsp), create a medium-thick batter. Pour the batter back in the pot with the Lo Bak, continue to apply heat and stir until the batter/Lo Bak mixture just start to boil, about another 5 to 10 minutes. On the side, soak the dried black mushrooms in water for at least 2 to 3 hours. Remove the stems and dice up the mushrooms to small pieces. Soak the dried shrimp in water, drain. Place a pan over medium heat, add 1 tbsp of cooking oil, add dried shrimp and diced black mushrooms and stir-fry for about 2 to 3 minutes. Add a pinch of salt. Add the dried shrimp and black mushrooms to the Lo Bak mixture. Stir to ensure the dried shrimp and black mushrooms spread evenly. Transfer the entire mixture to 1 or 2 rectangular aluminum cake baking pans. Use a steamer to steam this mixture for about 30 minutes. The Lo Bak Gow should then harden. You may store this in the refrigerator up to a few weeks. When ready to serve, cut the Lo Bak Gow into 1/2 inch slices and lightly fry over slow heat for 10 to 15 minute to slightly brown the surface. Serve with soy sauce. Please note the ratio of Lo Bak to rice flour. Too little rice flour, the cake will be very soft and fall apart easily. Too much rice flour, the cake will be hard and you cannot taste the Lo Bak. My experience showed that the ratio of Lo Bak to rice flour should be around 5 to 1 by weight. I used 4 lb of Lo Bak, and 12 oz of rice flour. This amount will yield about 25 to 30 pieces of Lo Bak Gow the size that you see in dim sum restaurants. How much water you use to dissolve the rice flour is also a key to making good Lo Bak Gow. Too much water, the cake will not harden. Too little water, the cake will be too hard. You have to feel it. The batter mixture from Lo Bak/rice-flour/water should be kind of like pan-cake batter -- just liquid enough to flow slowly. The recipes give you some idea to start, but you may need to adjust.

I know what I am having for morning snack: I am heating up some Lo Bak Gow. Made yesterday right here at the hzrt kitchen.

Oh, jo-mel, don't you know enough about Chinese food by now? There is only *ONE* way to cook boneless chicken! Seriously, many Chinese restaurant operators are guilty of providing non-descriptive names for menu entries. Hopefully most would provide brief descriptions on what the dishes are. But a few just leave the patrons guessing. For example, can you guess what these dishes are: The Odd Couple [sauteed Shrimps and Scallopes with snow peas] House Special Chicken [can be anything really... one happens to be chicken with garlic and scallion] Double Happiness [shrimp and beef stir-fried with vegetables] Imperial Shrimp [sichuan style shrimp with garlic and tomato sauce] There really is no standard English translations for Chinese dishes. One's imagination is still a predominant factor.

Should it be "Pai Dan So"? "So" means crispy skin (made of flour and butter mostly). "Gow" means cake usually. I am familiar with Pai Dan So. What does Pai Dan Gow taste like?

Black bean sauce: smash the garlic and fermented black beans before cooking. Stir-frying with black bean sauce is a very common dish. Be it beef, chicken, shrimp with black bean sauce, the recipe typically calls for using garlic and fermented black beans. I often see people cook the garlic and black beans separately on this dish. Here is a tip for you: black beans do not release their "soy" taste when you cook them whole. When you are doing your preparation work, mince the garlic (or just use the side of a cleaver to whack them flat), rinse the fermented black beans, drain, then use a big table spoon to smash the black beans, then mix them with the minced garlic in a bowl to form a paste. This technique is similar to South-Asian cooking where they grind the ginger and other spices to form a paste before cooking. When you are ready to cook the dish, heat up the wok/pan and add in cooking oil. Cook the garlic/black-bean paste first until fragrant, about 10 seconds, then add a few slices of chili pepper (or jalapeno), a bit of salt, a dash of vinegar/cooking wine, then add 1 diced onion to sautee for a minute, then add sliced green or red bell peppers. Sautee for a few more minutes. Add chicken broth or water. Bring it to a boil. Add the par-cooked (velveted) meat. Add sugar (if you like) and corn starch slurry to thicken the sauce. To enhance the "soy" flavor, I often add some light or dark soy sauce as well.

I want to dedicate this thread to share some Chinese cooking techniques, some of which may be handed down from one generation to another... tips that you don't normally find in cookbooks. Some of these steps may seem insignificant, but they can make the difference between a mediocre dish and an extrodinary dish.

This 9 fish custom applies only to the decorative kind of fish tanks, not the kinds that keep the fish (food) alive. Typically they put in gold fish, corral fish, or carps. The upscale restaurants may put in a “Lon Tow Geu” [Cantonese] 龙吐珠 (not sure what the English name is) along with 8 other small corral fish in the tank. If one fish dies (or gets eaten) they would need to put in a replacement right away. Next time you visit a Chinese restaurant with a big decorative fish tank at the entrance, take a count.

Contrary to what you may believe, usually these "poetic" names for dishes are only known to the authors. When I read up on these poetic names in menus, I would be scratching my head just like you do. These poetic menu entry names are used notariously often during the Chinese new year, where the restaurant managers often come up with names that would imply good luck, prosperity and such. Only a few old ones are well known: e.g. Fat Choy Ho See (Fat Choy (hairy fungi) = making lots of money; Ho See (dried oysters) = Good outlook for the market). For any other creative names, I would need to read up on the fine prints to figure out what they are.

In a fish tank inside a Chinese restaurant, it is customary to keep a total of nine fish. Not eight, not ten, has to be nine. I am not sure what the reason is. It perhaps has to do with the sound association. Nine in Chinese (at least in Cantonese, pronounced as "Gau") sounds the same as "Forever" (also "Gau"). It would mean the business will run forever. Fish in Cantonese (pronounced "Yu") sounds the same as "Excess" (which is good, it means you have made more than expected). So Nine Fish can have an associated meaning of "Having excess forever"). Not sure how that translates to "China 46".

From my experiences working in the Chinese restaurant business, when the restaurant was first opened the owner typically will try to match the English name with the Chinese name (Chinese name is picked first, typically). They translate their business names by one of the 2 means: 1. Translate by pronounciation: e.g. Mei Wah, King Fung Garden. 2. Translate by meaning: e.g. Golden Dragon, China Pearl. But sometimes, they would do a combination of both, that created something like China (by meaning) Sun (by pronounciation). What you observed, that the Chinese name on the restaurant sign bears no relation to the English translation, is typically because, like Gary said, a new owner taking over the business decided to change the Chinese name but keep the old English name (so the owner doesn't need to change the registration, phone book, menu, etc.).

"Jook Sing" is young bamboo shoot, or bamboo pith? Same meaning as "banana": yellow on the outside, white on the inside.

Let me guess: The core (grass jelly) is black but it's coated with white milky (soya milk) substances? Is that a little bit similar to calling America Born Chinese "Jook Sing"?

Interesting recipe. What is "crystallized ginger". Is it the same as ginger powder or something else? How do they sell this? (In a jar? Plastic bag? Box?) Do you grind the salmon meat?

Occassionally I put some hydrated qi zi in my steamed chicken dish (chicken steamed with lily buds, black mushrooms, wood ear mushrooms).

It's amazing how one's lifestyle changes when living in a different country. When I was working in Hong Kong, I typically had 5 meals a day. 1. Breakfast (jook, cheung fun, or eggs sandwich + coffee, or McMuffin) 2. Lunch (dim sum, or something over rice on a plate) 3. Afternoon tea around 4:00 pm (wonton noodle or egg custard + tea, or street food) 4. Dinner (the really good stuff, ate out 4 to 5 nights a week) 5. Late snack around 11:30 pm Since I lived in the States, I have only 2 meals a day typically. Skip breakfast. 1. Hamburger or leftover for lunch 2. Dinner at home mostly Typically, we (Chinese as a whole) eat less meat and a lot more carbo (rice, noodle, bread, etc.) in a meal. In Hong Kong, people walk a lot more though. Typically I used to walk a minimum of 2 to 3 miles a day. Just to get from home to subway stations, shopping, out to lunch, etc.. Here in the US, I see people get in the car and drive half a block from one parking lot to another, or wait in the car for a parking space for 10 to 15 minutes to save a hundred feet of walking distance. There are so many diet theories and diet plans out there. But I know this: If one would not walk and resort to driving half a block from one store to another, none of these diet plans would help much.

Half a bag of Pepperidge Farm Goldfish crackers, Parmesan flavor. Helped to swallow them down was a glass of Burgundy, thinking how myserable my food life could be. Shrimp chips would have been great. I need to secretly stock up some because I am on food curfew after 9:00 pm. I love the sensation of the dry shrimp chips sucking up the taste buds on my tongue.

In Sacramento where I live, there are a few Chinese restaurants that open until 2:00 am to 3:00 am. Try to catch late shift workers, late movie goers, or the restaurant workers I guess. I am sure there are plenty of those opening late in San Francisco and the San Gabriel Valley and New York and Toronto and Vancouver.

Gary Soup: My wife and I will be visiting San Francisco in August. Is there any Shanghainese cuisine in SF at all? Would be nice to have some xiaolonbao and lion heads. Couldn't find those in Sacto.