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I have been thinking... I can probably improve this recipe by using a fork to poke some holes around the chicken breast so that the meat would soak up some dark soy sauce during marination before baking. This way the white meat would carry more of the soy sauce flavor.

Thank you very much for your kind words, orangewasabi. Oh, BTW, are there really wasabi that is orange in color? Never seen it.

Now where did the red color come from this time? Food dye?

Thank you very much for taking us along in this photographic journey, Nishla! I enjoyed it very much. In the future if you have a chance to visit California (both Northern and Southern), or Seattle, or Vancouver, you will find many Chinese establishments (restaurants, bakery shops, snack shops, knick-knack shops) similar to those you saw in Taipei but yet very different. It's a result of Chinese' adaption to what's available in this country. Been like that for generations. But the recent immigration changes and the influx of new immigrants (yours truly included ) have equalized the Chinese establishments in the left coast to be more or less in par with their origins. The restaurants in the Bay Area such as Fook Yuen, Hong Kong Flower Lounge, Hong Kong East Ocean, Kee Wah Bakery, Mayflower, etc. are all brand names in Hong Kong which extended their businesses in North America. People say the Chinese food in Vancouver is even better than those available in Hong Kong - because of the skilled labor, available ingredients and patronage. My bet is that there would be more and more of these shops/restaurants opened up along the left coast and they become more and more competitive. A good thing for us consumers.

Which one is better? Big tapioca balls or small ones? I had the impression the bigger the better but it seems that the smaller the balls, the more tea you would have. The big ones really fill me up quickly.

Thanks liuzhou. It doesn't sound close phoenetically to Costco but the Chinese translation has nice symbolic meaning - prosperity.

There are 2 kinds of pea shoots available in the USA: Big pea shoots (Da Dou Miao) - the one showed by Xiao Ling, sprouts from snow peas. Small pea shoots (Xiao Dou Maio) - these are sprouts from... gosh, sorry... I forgot. Both varieties are available in Sacramento. I cook the regularly. I like the big variety more - if it is tender. Sometimes we get the old one and they are too fiberous.

omg! In Southern California I needed to pay US$3.00 for this. See my post here: A & J Restaurant (Taiwanese style), Irvine, Taiwanese/Szechuanese style small eats

A restaurant called "Seafood Cove" in Garden Grove (Little Saigon), Southern California, has printed their menu in 4 languages. I recognized 3 of them: English, Chinese and Vietnamese. I could not figure out what the fourth language is. Thai? Lao? Indian? Or something else? I have the original 5 Mpixel picture uploaded here: http://www.4shared.com/file/8627788/ea04ed...Cove4_orig.html If anybody recognize the language on this menu (under the Vietnamese), I would love to know which it is. TIA.

This is killing me. The price and the picture. The airfare to KL from SFO couldn't be that high, could it?

A & J Restaurant 14805 Jeffrey Road, #D Irvine, CA 92620 949-786-3585 There are two A & J Restaurants that I know of: San Jose and Irvine. The one in Irvine is a small outfit but often very busy. They serve Taiwanese/Szechuanese style small eats (noodles, Chinese pan cakes, xiaolongbao and cold appetizers, etc.). Taste of their food is very, very good. We stopped by to have lunch recently. A shot of the outside. (Sorry about the glare in the picture.) The menu: very simple, basically just one page. Potstickers. 8 in an order. This must be a lazy boy version because they don't really plead the potstickers. Just loosely pinched on the edge. The meat filling is exposed on both ends. "Hung Yau Chow Sau", Szechuan style wonton (pork filling) with a touch of soy sauce and sesame paste. Green onions sprinkled on top. Spicy Beef Noodle Soup (Szechuan Style). Your choice of thin or thick noodles. The beef has been braised for hours to the right tenderness and the soup is spicily good. "Jao Bang", Thousand Layer Pancake. The pancake is plain (no filling) but very tasty. This dish is very interesting: when done right (as in A & J), you can peel off the pancake a few shreds at a time by hand or with chopsticks. That's how it's gotten its name. All dishes are excellent! Lunch for two, about US$17 or so.

Wow! I thought this is a Cantonese thing. Didn't know they do it in "northern" China as well. They sure didn't give me any free soup before meal 20 years ago when I travelled through China.

And with the right ratio of fat to meat.

That must be some cheap perfume.

First of all: I don't eat fatty pork since I was a kid, with the very occasional exception of "mui choy kau yuk" (pork belly braised with preserved vegetable). Once every few years. So I have not made braised pork belly. If I were to do this, however, I would skip the marination and searing steps. Go with mixing the dark soy sauce, rock sugar, 5/6/7/10 spices whatever... Place the pork belly along with the braising mixture and start cold with slow fire from the get go. Let is slowly heat up, and braise it for 4 to 5 to 6 hours. One thing I found with searing the meat or putting it in boiling water - the meat shrinks immediately and thus will not be as tender as otherwise. I would advice to try at least one with starting the whole thing cold with slow fire. I cooked beef stew before with this method and the result was better. And... always cook the meat in a whole chunk and cut it before serving.

Seafood Cove is great as ever.

From my experience, rock sugar (bing tong) works the best. Next pein tong. Next granulated brown sugar. Next regular granulated white sugar.

You are tempted to make roast pork and wanted to air dry it in the backyard? You plan to hang to whole pig? I don't think roasting one piece of pork would work.

It is, by and large, not part of the Chinese culture. Until the foreign powers took over Hong Kong and Macau and Shanghai.

One hour may not be enough though. Typical braising time is 2 to 3 hours. Slow fire.

What you showed there is very similar (just very similar, may not be identical) to the Italian squash we have here. The colors (both the skin and the inside) look very much like Italian squash.

Here is another webpage that contains a picture: http://www.5iny.com/htmlnews/2005-1/20050110123910423.htm The page said the alias for this melon (winter squash) is 玉瓜. Not sure if they are correct either. I found many different pictures and many different webpages but did not find any confirmation. The squash/melon families seem to be very confusing, with many names and varieties.

I don't think 玉瓜 is fuzzy melon. I did some Google search on this term (in Chinese) and there were many references to it. Excerpt from: http://www.foodmate.net/tech/jiagong/jiagong10/3198.html There was only one webpage that contains a photo: http://www.cnca.org.cn/include/content5.asp?thing_id=11232 The melon looks like a winter melon. If this webpage is correct, then it is definitely not the same species as the fuzzy melon. Beats me as to what the English name is.

Okra! Ah! They do taste a little bit like "see gua". Perhaps a miniature one. I haven't seen okra offered in Chinese restaurants here in the west coast.

XiaoLing: are you going to introduce to us the dishes you had? Or you want us to play some guessing game? Let me guess... Starting from the "big bowl", counterclockwise: Big bowl is fish head soup - you said that. Next: red shell and white meat? Sauteed lobster? Next: stir-fried "see gua"? Next: on the pedestal: scallop? Next: Too dark, couldn't tell what it is. Next: Lionhead meatballs? Next: Tofu and black mushroom in oyster sauce? In the center: deep-fried pork chop? Or pieces of fish?