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What recipe? Didn't Ben Sook just tell you? Stir-fry it with some garlic and hom ha (Cantonese salty shrimp paste) or fu yu (fermented bean curds). BTW: In Cantonese dialect, amaranth is called "Yin Choy". Quite different from Mandarin of "Xian Cai".

Dai Ga Jeah and sheetz: how about mixing maltose/honey in hot water and use it to dilute the red vinegar? Maybe we can take advantage of both? I may try this in my next round. All the recipes I have read on this dish said use red vinegar. I have seen Ming Chai doing it on TV: Peking duck... boiled a whole wok of red vinegar and pour on top of the blown-up duck... during his challenge to Iron Chef Bobbie Flay (and Ming won!).

As Dejah Dai Ga Jeah said (and who are we to argue? ): smaller chicken, cornish hens, etc. should be okay. Just adjust the cooking time and be careful as it may get burnt easily.

Be careful... the chef gets too full in the kitchen, no appetite at the dinner table...

Thank you for the tips. I have no idea where that was. I just saw a picture posted in some other blog sites. I haven't been to Shanghai for ages and have no idea what things have become.

It tastes as good as the restaurant made if done right. Left over oil: same as frying oil for other stuff. You may save for future frying, or some people discard it. Left over vinegar: should discard because it ran over raw chicken. Not that much anyway because vinegar is consumed and evaporated.

I recently saw a picture of some street eats in Shanghai: 1 bowl of Beef noodle soup: 40 RMB 1 piece of potsticker: 4 RMB 1 cup of soya bean milk: 15 RMB From this pricing, a Peking duck of 98 RMB (= 6 cups of soya bean milk, or 2+ bowls of beef noodle soup), the price does not seem outrageous. I will trade a peking duck for 6 cups of soya bean milk any time. In my part of the world (a cowtown in the USA), I can get a Peking duck for US$17 on a special. Regularly they are sold for US$20 to $25.

#65, Cantonese Fried Chicken (炸子雞)

Pictorial Recipe Cantonese Fried Chicken (炸子雞) Have you ever tasted Cantonese Fried Chicken? Succulent meat, crispy skin, and accompanied with a dish of salt mixed with ground Sichuan peppercorn. Customarily this dish is served with a dozen pieces of fried shrimp chips on top. Here is how you can make this dish at home. Picture of the finished dish: Serving Suggestion: 2 Preparations: Main ingredients (upper right, clockwise): - 1 whole chicken, about 2 lb - Shrimp chips (Prawn Flavored Chips), use about 20 pieces - Five spice powder - (Not shown) 2 star anises - Chinese red vinegar, use about 1/2 bottle Note: I used a small chicken, which was only 2 pound. The optimal size to use is around 3 to 4 pound. You need to adjust the cooking time. Pat dry the chicken with a paper towel. To make the marinade: mix 2 tsp of salt, 1-2 tsp of five spice powder, 2 whole star anise (break them apart). Mix well in a small bowl. Rub the marinade inside the cavity of the chicken. Try to spread as evenly as possible. Set aside for about 1 to 2 hours. The key to get crispy skin on a Cantonese Fried Chicken is to treat the skin with boiling red vinegar and hang dry the chicken for a few hours. Here is how I do it at home: Boil half a bottle of the Chinese red vinegar in a small pot. Set a pan on top of a stove set at medium heat to catch the overflown vinegar. Use a pair of tongs to hold the chicken. Pour the boiling red vinegar on top of the chicken. Turn the chicken slightly as you pour the vinegar to get it evenly on the chicken surface. Recycle the vinegar from the pan and pour back to the pot. Wait for a few minutes until it boils again, repeat the process and pour the boiling vinegar on the chicken. Repeat the pouring for a total of 4 times: twice poured on the breast side, twice on the back side. Note: I had past experiences that when I poured the boiling vinegar on the chicken too many times, the skin turned vinegary. Two rounds per side is about right. Hang the chicken somewhere that has circulating air. I hung the chicken off the paper towel rack. I used a small fan to gently blow on the chicken for about 2 hours. I placed a plate under the chicken to catch the dripping fluid. This is how the chicken looked after 2 hours of drying. Cooking Instructions: Use a wok. Set stove to high. Heat up about 3 to 4 cups of frying oil. The oil must be very hot before deep-frying the chicken. This may take up to 10 minutes or more to heat up on a regular stove. Observe the oil. Wait until it start swirling before use. Add the chicken. Note that the chicken will start sizzling right away (if it doesn't, the oil is not hot enough). After a few minutes, turn the chicken over and fry the other side until the skin turns golden brown. Use a colander to drain off the excess oil. Chop up the chicken as depicted in this guide: A Pictorial Guide To Chopping A Chicken, Cantonese style Transfer the chicken to a serving plate. It is customary to serve fried shrimp chips with Cantonese Fried Chicken. When you buy them in boxes, here is what they look like - kind of like transparent plastic chips. Use about a dozen of them. Drop the raw shrimp chips in the hot frying oil. They will sink to the bottom. After a few seconds, they will pop and float to the top. Place them on a plate with a paper towel to soak up the excess oil. To make the condiment: use a small dish and mix 2 tsp of salt and 1 tsp of Sichuan peppercorn powder. Mix well. Transfer to the serving plate (put on the side). Picture of the finished dish. Keys to cooking this dish 1. The chicken should be hung dry long enough to produce cripsy skin and not too long where the skin will burn quickly while the inside of the chicken is still raw. 2. For large chickens, you may need to pre-cook the chicken in an oven, then finish it off on the fryer to get the crispy skin. Suggest to bake the chicken at 325F for 30 to 45 minutes.

On San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf, there are a few old Italian seafood restaurants. I think you can't have more "SF" experience than having Dungeness crab or clam chower in a sour dough on Fisherman's Wharf. View? Some just face the small marina. Some face the bay/Alcatrez. I have a different view on getting a good view of San Francisco. My belief is that when you are already in San Francisco, you can't get a good overall view of San Francisco itself. You may want to consider dining at Sausalito. There are a couple of restaurants by the bay that have good view of the bay and San Francisco skyline. My favorite is "The Spinnaker". They really have a good location overlooking the bay. Food is good and price is reasonable. E.g.: US$18 for a Cioppinno (circa 2003). There is another one that is built right on top of water (can't recall the name), serving seafood. You can combine that with a sight-see stop at the Golden Gate Bridge. The downside is a $5 toll.

In my first batch (the recipe posted), I used 2 rounds of nam yu, each round with 3 small cubes of nam yu in the bowl and smashed them. In my second batch, I used 3 rounds of nam yu, each round with 4 small cubes of nam yu in the bowl and smashed them. So quantity wise I doubled the dosage of nam yu. (I reduced the salt amount for each round so the total salt quantity is still about 1-2 tsp for 3.5 lb of raw peanuts.) You may adjust all these for your personal taste.

I always like driving up to Coit Towel early in the morning. I'd been there once before 7:00 am while the whole San Francisco was just waking up. A fresh look. Feel just different (as that place is always packed with tourists). Parking I am sure you would have no problem finding at that time. No sure about shady spot though. For breakfast... there is always Chinese Town close by.... Freshly made bakery and Hong Kong style coffee (condensed milk and heavy in sugar) would be lovely. Or better yet... jook (congee) at Hing Lung (I think they open early but am not sure) and freshly fried cruellers. On broadway between Stockton and Columbus. Some shops sell to-go dim sum cheap! (but quality is so-so)

If you make this dish at home, by all means use only boneless chicken breasts. I use chicken breasts to cook dishes that call for bone-in chicken pieces all the time.

My picks for best Cantonese seafood and dim sum in the east bay are: - Pearl Village - Saigon Harbor - Daimo (no dim sum) They are all in the same mall (Saigon Harbor is right next to that mall) in Richmond, off Central exit on I-80. Only 10 minutes or so from Oakland. I don't want the hassle of trying to find parking in Oakland. Hong Kong East Ocean (Emeryville, even closer to Oakland) is also good if you like a view of the bay while dining. These restaurants are Cantonese specialties, not Sichuan. Though they probably make some Sichuan dishes. For Sichuan dishes, you can go to San Francisco Richmond district. Along Clement around 6th Ave and 8th, there are Spice I, Spice II (and I heard there is a Spice III???). There is also another Sichuan one on Geary neart the same neighborhood. Haven't tried it though. I have tried Spice I. I would say the taste is pretty good. The only thing I am not happy about is they give you chicken elbow joints for "Sichuan Chili Chicken".

I have seen Caucasians use forks and knives. Chinese patrons typically debone the pieces while chewing, and spit out the bones (some even spit the skin). At times that it's really difficult? Just use fingers. (Do you use fingers when you eat Kentucky Fried Chicken?)

Thank you, Miraklegirl. If you cannot find suitable chili bean sauce or brown bean sauce, you can skip them. I made my second trial without them (I forgot them, actually ). The dish tasted not as hot and a little plain, I felt. A touch of the bean paste added a new dimension. The dried chilis - and don't let the quantity fool you - actually don't make this dish hot even if you use 100 - 200. I relied on the chili bean paste to turn up the heat. I think you can compensate by adding some chili sauce and a bit more soy sauce. (I hope these are kosher enough for you.)

I made my second batch a few days ago. This time it turned out better. I had less burnt peanuts. I roasted them in the oven at 350F instead of 400F for about the same time (40 minutes). Based on jtnippon1985's post, I increased my dose of nam yu too and it turned out indeed better than my first batch. I love the flavor. I love this feedback loop! The nam yu really brings a lot of flavor. My little unsung hero.

That's fabulous, jtnippon1985! ... wear on Donald Trump's wig in The Apprentice: "You're Hired!"

Great blog, Ellen! Thank you for letting me be a part of it, and led me to have a glimpse of how Chinese cooking has blended into the American culture. Go and let yourself loose in 99 Ranch more often! By your next blog I want to see more bottles and jars of Chinese sauces whose names you cannot pronounce in your cupboard and you asking "hmm, what do I do with this?".

Thanks Michael. Cleaning: just drain the hot oil, wash under running hot water and scrub with the bamboo brush. Then I wipe off the excess water and any residue sud with paper towels. Then place the wok on top of the burner again to heat it up and burn off the water moisture.

After a few weeks of using a wok for cooking, I came up with the following evaluations: - A wok is really a versatile cooking utensil. You can use it for frying, stir-frying, deep-frying, boiling, dry roasting, braising and steaming. It combines the functions of a pan, pot and a steamer. I don't use my wok to steam dishes since I already have a steamer. I try not to erode the nice seasoning through boiling tap water too often on a wok. - My worry of having a bigger wok (16-inch versus 14-inch) was unwarrented. The extra dimension turned out to be quite useful in a few times that I was cooking a little too much vegetable. On a 12-inch skillet, the raw vegetable would have overflown. On a wok, the extra width had accommodated the added ingredients very well. In fact, there might not be such as thing as "a wok too big". Come to think of it, the cooks in restaurants in Hong Kong might be using a 36-inch wok to cook a single serving chow mein or stir-fried dish. I have seen pictures of them. Because of the design of a wok - basically a spherical surface - the ingredients always roll back to the center where the heat is prominent. Quantity large or small can be equally accommodated well on a wok. - The long wooden handle turned out to be less useful than I thought. My original idea of using it to toss the ingredient did not turn out to be practical. I can use the handle to hold the wok. But when I am stir-frying, even for a small dish, the weight of the wok plus ingredients makes it requiring Popeye's arm muscles to toss. Not an easy task. The regular wok design with 2 "helper handles" might work just as well. - One should religiously clean the wok immediately after each stir-frying. Simply rinse the wok with running hot water, clean the surface with the help of a bamboo brush (no detergent), and immediate set on top of the stove (at high) to burn off the water droplets. This will keep the longevity of a wok.

13- 烹 Peng 烹煎大虾, Shrimp First Fried then broth added and reduced Click through the Google image search page to view the picture: (Sample 1: 烹煎大虾, Shrimp First Fried then broth added and reduced) 炸烹茄条, Halfed Egg Plant Cooked with Carrots and Peppers Click through the Google image search page to view the picture: (Sample 2: 炸烹茄条, Halfed Egg Plant Cooked with Carrots and Peppers) 香烹鸭脯, Duck Slices Click through the Google image search page to view the picture: (Picture is good but the link is slow) (Sample 3: 香烹鸭脯, Duck Slices) I found that the term 烹 used in naming a dish could also mean as a way of serving: Some stones are preheated and are used to hold the food, either directly or indirectly by laying the stones at the bottom and a metal container is laid on top. Food is kept warm from the stones. Here are some examples that I found: 石烹牛蛙, Stones are preheated and thrown into the bottom of the wooden barrel. A metal pot is laid on top. Then food is poured on to the metal pot to keep warm. Click through the Google image search page to view the picture: (Sample 1: 石烹牛蛙, Stones are preheated and thrown into the bottom of the wooden barrel. A metal pot is laid on top. Then food is poured on to the metal pot to keep warm.) 万年石烹海虎王, Stone (marble?) is carved into a bowl shape to hold the soup (?) Click through the Google image search page to view the picture: (Sample 2: 万年石烹海虎王, Stone (marble?) is carved into a bowl shape to hold the soup (?))

One thing that has been puzzling me is that how the dried red chili peppers in the Chili Pepper Chicken dishes made in restaurants stay so red and shiny? When I fried the red chili peppers (as the first thing in cooking this dish), they turned dark brown or even black very quickly. What is the secret that they can keep the dried chilis so bright red and shiny?

JH: I have it now! Sichuan Chili Pepper Chicken (辣子雞丁)

#64, Sichuan Chili Pepper Chicken (辣子雞丁)