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That looks good. But I think the "Kee Wah" in Monterey Park (and San Gabriel, and Milpitas) - if you have ever tried it, is even better. (And so are a few in San Francisco China Town.) I hope Kee Wah will open shop in San Diego some day (and I might consider moving back to SD!!! ).

Congrats on your weight loss, Ellen! Where is Golden Hill in San Diego? This restaurant looks lovely!

Sorry. I got mixed up. What I said about great for making Cantonese soup is "fun got" (arrowroot), not "sha got" (jicama). They look similar.

Jicama is great for making Cantonese soup: some pork bones, jicama (peeled and sliced), dried oysters, black mushrooms, chicken feet, some peanuts, some barley (or use the "ching bo leung" mix). 2 to 3 hours of slow heat boiling.

Excellent! Thank you XiaoLing! We have another pictorial master here! We definitely need an annual Chinese food pictorial master reunion!

When in doubt, just poke at the dim sum and see if it is hot and crispy! Sorry, johnjohn... there is just no easy way to learn a language (on top of that the dialect issue (Cantonese versus Mandarin)). But there is good chance that dim sum workers probably speak Cantonese. In Cantonese: "Yeet Hmmmmm Yeet?" Is a question. "Yeet" means "hot" (temperature-wise). "Hmmm" is a negation. "Hmmm Yeet" means "not hot". "Yeet Hmmmm Yeet" put together is a form of a question "hot? not hot?".

Sichuan peppercorns are used in many Sichuan style dishes: Ma La beef tendon, Kung Pao chicken, etc. for example. I have seen it toasted and ground (like how Kylie showed in her TV programs), and I have seen it used as-is in Chinese restaurants - which is a bit lack of elegance in table manner having the guests to spit out the thing. The peppercorns bring in a numbing effect that is not experienced using other spices. Not sure of the name. Just those bright red chili pepper. Can it be "red" jalapeno pepper? I don't recall hearing a particular term for these in Chinese. Garlic, scallions (green onions), leek, shallot, onion are all in the same family - and sometimes we substitute one for another. These are in the "aromatic" group in French-influenced cookings, no? Ginger is unique though.

I didn't know what aloe vera is until now. I saw the name used in many of the hand lotions, but never thought it could be eatable (or should I say "drinkable"). Doddie: This has been a wonderful week following your blog - the food, the scenaries, your family, the cultures. Thanks for enlightening us with the Korean and Filipino cultures! I feel sad to see this comes to an end! But now you can be relieved and point the foodblog magic wand to somebody else!

The noodles do look like mung bean threads.

How interesting! Does your salted egg taste about the same as the Chinese salted egg or very different? Is it traditional to have the dark pink color? (I assume this is from some kind of food dye. I haven't seen pictures of a naturally pink egg before.)

Are you ready to make it jtnippon? Cooking tendons takes 2 to 3 hours. I remember that you wouldn't want to spend over 10 minutes to make jook. Here is one way to make it. Same procedure, just use beef tendon instead of beef shank: Beef Shank Braised with Five Spice and Soy Sauce (五香牛腱)

They use mung bean threads ("Fun See" in Cantonese) in the Vietnamese fried spring rolls, which is different from rice vermicelli ("Mai Fun" in Cantonese).

MSG. Seriously, Maggi is a brand of soup cubes and granules and instant noodles--in southeast Asia, it's a joke that when a student moves overseas to study, they bring these in their bag with them. Not sure which seasoning in particular they've been referring to though. ← I think the Maggi Gastro888 is talking about is the sauce in a smallish bottle, soy-ish but not quite ← And MSG just the same.

Is it possible? - to have raw fish on top of jook. Jook is usually served boiling hot. And the moment you add some raw fish slices in it, the fish will become cooked, won't they?

Be careful! I am seeing a Hannibal Lecter in the becoming in the ducks' world!

The pumpkin that you mentioned, Shiewie, is it kabocha? Like this? Interesting. May be I will make some...

ludja: That's the whole discussion is all about. Dim sum is Cantonese in origin. We Cantonese make daikon-cake/turnip-cake/carrot-cake the way you described: first steamed and formed a "brick", then cut into thick slices and lightly fried. What they are discussing are other ways of making/serving what essentially the same item, as popular outside of the Cantonese style. In Singapore, Malaysia, etc..

None of the above! Or may be all of the above. It seems to me that there is no one "correct" condiment sauce. Many restaurants in Hong Kong would provide light soy sauce, chili sauce, Chinese mustard. Pretty "standard". Haven't seen oyster sauce though. Hoisin sauce is more close to the "sweet sauce" ("teem jeung" [Cantonese] they called it on the street.

I have bought and tried exactly the same brand too! I found it too powder'ie (too much rice flour and not enough taro) and a bit bland. In my home-made version I can control the ratio to use more taro, plus a lot more dried shrimp and Chinese sausage "liu".

I have eaten this before. I think it is a Teochew style dish, offered in some Teochew style noodle houses? (They call rice noodles "quay teow"???)

Xifan is Mandarin. Xi (Cantonese "Hey" - diluted), Fan (Cantonese "Fan" - rice)

I want to comment on “where did the Chinese restaurants’ profit come from”: I have worked in a few different Chinese restaurants in San Diego as a waiter long ago. Chinese restaurants survive primarily from volume and low cost operations. Some restaurants would offer wine and beer. The license (at least in California) is not easy to get. A full bar liquor license is even harder. Some restaurant owners would not even bother trying to get the license. Most who do would only serve wine and beer. Selecting wine is another headache. Most Chinese restaurant owners just don’t know what wines to get (type, brand), let alone how to recommend pairing to customers. So they typically stock up on some cheap ones or popular ones as they know them. Business volume typically is done via low-pricing. For a meal that would feed a family of four, Chinese food typically would come up as a more economical choice. That tends to draw more business revenues. As for controlling costs. One of the big expenditure is the skilled labor - i.e. the chef and other helpers. For family run business, many would use immediate family members as the labor source. There is also a darker side where owners employ the undocumented from China. I don’t think Chinese are unique in this practice, among all ethnic food restaurants. But Chinese restaurants may have the biggest job market for these undocumented workers across the country, especially that Chinese food is ever so popular. Some of you might have all seen incidents of human cargo transportations in container ships (some died making the journey) and got intercepted by US Coast Guard. Those were only the ones you know about. What happened to those who successfully got in to the US unnoticed? Many work in the restaurant business or other sweat shops as dirt-cheap labor. There was a good article I read on-line that talked about one of those living in such an underworld. Being an undocumented, having no Social Security Number, they know they cannot get employment like regular US residents. They pay cash to some of these employment agencies, many of which located in New York City, for match-making. One phone call: Where is the restaurant? How long is the "contract"? How much? Second phone call is to the restaurant owner. Done. Buy the next bus ticket to North Carolina or wherever that restaurant happens to be. The owner would typically pick him up and get him settled. Many owners would provide living quarters. Not a nice apartment. One would wish! Just a half-okay place to pack 4 to 5 workers in the same unit. Some of these living spaces might just be right on top of the restaurant itself. I have seen some of those. These "chefs" or assistants don't make US minimum wage. It's all cash payment, however worked out between the owner and the worker. How is it possible? You have to consider that per China Embassy in the US, China's national per capita annual income is only US$1740 in 2006: http://www.china-embassy.org/eng/gyzg/t268200.htm Even half of US minimum wage would be ten times better than what they can make back in China. And no income tax! Many would live the underground lives, work 6 or even 7 days a week, 12 hours a day, for weeks on end. Until the owner no longer wants or needs them, they move on to the next one. Many of these "single" men have families and kids back in China. They would send some of what they earned back home to support their families. Most hope to get settled down and become legit at some point of their lives. And they have been mis-informed by peers or the agents who got them here that amnesty happens once every few years. If not… oh well…

I don't think I ever want to work as a dish-washer in Korea! It's nice to see your photo, to tie a face to a name Doddie!

Fa Sung Wu? (Peanut sweet dessert soup) I saw an advertisement for one of those soya milk machines that you can make almond dessert soup and peanut dessert soup in their machine, much like you make soya milk. All automatic. The soya milk machine model that I bought did not advertise that. I wonder if I can just try it. Same principle: Grind the ingredients while boiling water, and filter out the pulp.

Would my pupils turn pitch-dark too? I still have a full head of hair, although salt and pepper (more salt it feels like). I can use some shoe shine waxes on them just about now... What's the thickening agent for gima wu (black sesame sweet soup)? I would imagine that sesame itself is not sticky and doesn't have starch content. Would it be sticky rice flour (nor mai fun) that thicken the sweet soup? And gima wu is not particularly CNY-ish like tong yuen, right? Or maybe people eat tong yuen with gima wu?