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I am superstitious. I need to wait to get my fresh fish to have a wok-opening ceremony.

Thank you. You may want to take a look at some past pictorial recipes that featured Chinese vegetables and see if there is any of interests: Bitter melon: Stir-fried Bitter Melons with Foo Yu Chinese mustard green: Stir-fried Mustard Greens (Gai Choy) with Salted Fish (咸鱼抄芥菜) Bok choy: Bok Choy with Garlic (蒜容白菜) Snowpea: Stir-fried Snowpeas with Oyster Sauce (炒双冬) Lotus root: Stir-Fried Lotus Roots with Dry Conpoy and Hairy Moss Fungi (連年發財: 瑤柱發菜炒蓮藕) Hairy melon: Hairy Melon Stir-fried with Mung Bean Threads (蝦米粉絲炒毛瓜) Pea shoot: Pea Shoots with Minced Pork and Dried Shrimp (蝦米肉碎炒豆苗) String bean: Sichuan Style Dry-Fried String Beans (四川乾煸四季豆) Many of these recipes are just suggestions. You may usually mix and match them (green leave vegetables for green leave vegetables, melons for melons). You can also download my "Ah Leung Pictorial Recipe" Windows help file and have all these recipes in one place for easy browsing. The URL is in my signature line.

Awesome! I want some of that! I've never seen it anywhere in New York, as far as I can remember. Have you tried that, Ah Leung? ← Yes I sure have. They are easy to get in Hong Kong but not as easy in the USA. I am lucky enough. In Monterey Park, CA, there is a Chiu Chow restaurant on Garvey which has excellent Braised Goose and Sichuan Pepper Leave Chicken. In Northern Cal, there is a VH Noodle House in Richmond which serves good Braised Goose and Chiu Chow fish cakes. There is one local Cantonese-Chinese restaurant whose owner is from Chiu Chow. I have some Braised Goose from them every now and then. Braised Goose is very heavy in five spices and soy sauce.

Nice Photos! Sorry Doc, I am pretty sure what's shown in this picture are Xiaolongbao (Shanghai specialty) and not Cantonese Har Gaw. Xiaolongbao uses pork filling and has no shrimp in it. Not sure if the waitstaff misquoted or delivered the wrong order to you. I had both Har Gaw and Xiaolongbao during my last trip to Koi Palace. While I love their Har Gaw (shrimp dumpling) - very juicy, fresh and tasty, I couldn't say the same about their Xiaolongbao. I could only come to a conclusion, which I should have known and learned from my years of eating at dim sum restaurants - never order Shanghai specialties in a dim sum (Cantonese masters) restaurants!

Not sure what you meant there by "unusable".

#58, Stir-Fried Water Spinach (Ong Choy) with Beef and Shrimp Sauce (蝦醬通菜炒牛肉)

Pictorial Recipe Stir-Fried Water Spinach (Ong Choy) with Beef and Shrimp Sauce (蝦醬通菜炒牛肉) The summer is about here. Summer is the season for one of my favorite vegetables - Ong Choy [Cantonese], or Water Spinach - the "hollow vegetable". Ong Choy stir-fried with beef is popular. Typically there are two seasonings: one is using shrimp sauce, and the other one is using fermented bean curds. I like both seasonings so I alternate between them. If you are not used to the strong smell and taste of shrimp sauce or fermented bean curds, you may stir-fry Ong Choy without them. This dish is very easy to make. Picture of the finished dish: Serving Suggestion: 2 to 3 Preparations: Main ingredients (from top-right, clockwise): - 3/4 to 1 lb beef - 1 small chili pepper (e.g. jalapeno pepper) - Garlic, use 4-5 cloves - Shrimp paste, use 2-3 tsp - Ong Choy (water spinach), 1 1/2 lb Here is the feature of this dish: Ong Choy (water spinach), the "hollow vegetable". Trim off the ends and discard. They are usually too rough to eat and dirty from transportation. Slice the beef into 1/8 to 1/4 inch thick pieces. It is important to cut across the grain or else the beef will be tough to chew. To marinate the beef: use 1 tsp of light soy sauce, 1 tsp of ShaoHsing wine, 1 tsp of corn starch, 1/2 tsp of ground white pepper. Mix well. Set aside for about 30 minutes before cooking. Mince 4-5 cloves of garlic. Cut the chili pepper into small slices. Scoop about 2-3 tsp of shrimp sauce. Cooking Instructions: Use a wok/pan, set stove at high temperature. Add 5-6 tblsp of frying oil, wait until oil gets hot. Velvet the beef slices in oil. It takes about 2-3 minutes. Remove the beef when it still shows a bit of the dark-pink color. Don't overcook. Drain off the frying oil. To speed things up, I use a second pan to cook the Ong Choy while the beef is velveting. Boil about 1 cup of water and add the Ong Choy. Only parboil for a minute or two. Don't overcook. Use a strainer to drain the excess water of the slightly-undercooked vegetable. Start with a clean wok/pan, set stove at high temperature. Add 2-3 tblsp of cooking oil. Wait until oil heats up. Add minced garlic, chili pepper slices and 2-3 tsp of shrimp sauce. The shrimp sauce is already quite salty. No need to add extra salt. Stir well. Cook the sauce and garlic/chili for 20 seconds or so. Return the Ong Choy. Stir well. Return the velveted beef slices on top. Continue to toss and stir-fry for a minute or two until the sauce is evenly coated on all ingredients. Finished. Transfer to a serving plate. Picture of the finished dish. (Note: The quantity of food made in this recipe is about twice the portion shown in this picture.)

There are a few very good Chinese restaurants in Millbrae and it is just across the I-101 freeway from SFO airport. I am very disappointed at Hong Kong Flower Lounge from a recent visit. Their quality has declined. You can tell from their patronage. I arrived there extra early 10:30 am on a Sunday anticipating a long time if I arrive any later, only to see that there was no line at all at noon and there were still vacant tables in the dining room. (This was about a year ago.) Their dim sum now is just so-so. I like Fook Yuen and Zen Peninsula, both of which are along El Camino Real within a mile of HK Flower Lounge. Very good food.

I agree with that. Beware that it is VERY crowded on Sundays. The trick is to get there early. If you can't be there before 11:00 am, get ready for a long wait. Could be over an hour easily. I think they open at 10:00 am in the weekends but am not sure. Their website tells you many things... except hours. Koi Palace Serramonte Plaza 365 Gellert Blvd, Daly City CA 94015 Tel: (650) 992-9000

Kent: In some past discussions, some posters asserted that restaurants in Mainland China do not expect nor accept tips or service charge. I questioned on the currentness of this and the response seemed positively up-to-date. Tipping in China What is your experience dining at different restaurants in Mainland China (Beijing and other places) during this trip? Do they all post mandatory service charge? Most of them? Only a few of them?

How does that work for Peking Duck? They leave you with a whole duck and a knife that you would help yourself to carve it? Or they chop up the duck before bringing it to the table, just no carving? Or they carve the duck in the kitchen, just not in front of you at the table?

Yeah. Teochew (Chiu Chow) style steamed fish. Tepee has a pictorial recipe here: Teochew Steamed Fish, - another easy dish

And the newly weds need to kneel down to serve tea with both hands to the seniors, one pair at a time. Right?

Yes, that is right... but not without experiencing fish bones stuck in the throat and coughing until the face turned blue a few times... then we all learned from our lessons... I surely remember mine to this day...

k43: Regarding the chopping block: actually no. I bought that chopping block just from a local Asian grocery store in Sacramento. I didn't pay attention to the brand name. I looked at the wood itself to pick the right chopping block for me. My tip is: choose the one that is heavy, solid. You can kind of tell from the grain. The grain pattern should be packed together. Other rectangular chopping boards that you find in regular stores are usually made of composits: small pieces of wood that are glued together then cut to size, not from one single tree trunk. These boards cannot take the pounding of a heavy cleaver over time. Don't use those for chopping bone/meat. I know all Cantonese BBQ restaurants use softer blocks. Personally I don't like it because they are so soft, I feel that every time I eat the BBQ meat that I bought from those stores I am eating the small wood chips. Have you see those blocks used in these restaurants? They look like a sink with a depression at the center! Every few minutes the master would use the cleaver to shave off the top pulp. Yikes! I don't chop my own BBQ that often (but they do hundreds of times each day), so I like to use a harder block. The best wood in China came from LiuZhou. In 1999 we visited LiuZhou. As many other tourists do, we bought a nice LiuZhou chopping block from a local store and carried it back to the USA. I didn't think much about it at the time. We gave the chopping block to my MIL. Of course I regret it looking back. The one I have now is comparable. I didn't examine to see if it came from LiuZhou. As for the cleavers: This is the bone chopper. Details: Manufacturer: Jin Lih Enterprise Ltd (Taiwan) Product name: Chin Me Model name: H110-008 金美A骨刀 Scan code: 4 710984 255285 Price: US $19.95 I bought it at "The Wok Shop" in San Francisco. (Can't believe I am advertising for them after what I have been through.) Not sure if they sell it on the web site, but there is no reason they won't sell it to you by mail order if you can name the exact product. You may FAX the above info to them. The Chinese model name would help. Price may be different doing mail order though. The Shopkeeper#2 actually brought this cleaver out from behind the counter. Seemed so "secretive". I felt as if they reserved a few boxes of these cleavers for special customers only. (Yeah, right...) The other inexpensive cleaver I have is: Details: Manufacturer: Yang Jian Shi Ba Zi Kitchen Ware Manufacturing Co., Ltd. (Mainland China) Address: No. 1 Dengfeng Road, Lingdong Area, YangJiang, GuangDong, China http://www.shibazi.com Product name: FeiQui Knife 飛球菜刀 Model: PD1 Price: US $12.00 Scan code: 6 79833 20302 7 I use this one for vegetable cutting and meat mincing. Hope that helps.

Sorry to hear that jo-mel. Hope you can have some Lu food during your trip. I am not quite sure, I think that in Internet Explorer, you can go: View --> Encoding --> Chinese Simplified (GB2312) If this is the first time you use it, it will prompt you to load the font or it loads it automatically, something like that. Can't remember. Perhaps CFT can help. Excuse us, Audience. We are having some technical difficulties, please stand by.

Sounds like you are on your way to buy more cleavers.

Congratulations Kent. Well done! It's interesting to see your family/relatives use chopsticks to eat penne pasta, crab cakes and deviled eggs... in bowls.

Are there any particular ones you have been to? We will be camping at the Sunset Beach SP in the summer and that would be a great place to have dinner.

This Squirrel Fish dish requires a lot of mastery. The goal is to criss-cross on the fish meat without separating the meat from the bones (for presentation purpose). Then the fish is deep-fried. The meat will curl up like a squirrel's tail. I think that's how it got the name. It's much harder to do than it seems. I believe the criss-crossing is done on the inside of the fish meat and the skin is used to hold the meat together.

He was talking about a dish like this: Squirrel Fish This is a recipe but it is written in Chinese. The sauce is made of: salt, MSG, ShaoHsing wine, ground white pepper, sugar, vinegar, tomato sauce.

You may certainly use bighead carps for this recipe: White Bass Braised with Bean/Soy Sauce (酱烧鱼) Different fish, same process.

10- 滷 Lu The "Lu" method is very common in everyday cooking. It is using the "master sauce" (Lo Shui) to braise the poultry or meat for hours. 滷水鵝掌, Braised goose feet Click through the Google image search page to view the picture: (Sample 1: 滷水鵝掌, Braised goose feet ) 滷豆乾, 滷鴨舌, 滷鴨翅, Assorted braised varieties: pressed tofu, duck tongues, duck wings (Sample 2: 滷豆乾, 滷鴨舌, 滷鴨翅, Assorted braised varieties: pressed tofu, duck tongues, duck wings) 卤牛肉, Braised beef Click through the Google image search page to view the picture: (Sample 3: 卤牛肉, Braised beef) 潮汕卤鹅, Braised Goose, a Chiu Chow specialty Click through the Google image search page to view the picture: (Sample 4: 潮汕卤鹅Braised Goose, a Chiu Chow specialty)

I thought I had created an ingredient page on red fermented bean curd. I guess I haven't. It is similar to the regular fermented bean curd: Fermented Bean Curd, or Preserved Bean Curd They are both found in the same section in the market usually. Red fermented bean curds are a bit harder, the taste is a bit more intense. Hard to describe. Just have to taste it yourself. I believe the Chinese red vinegar is made by fermenting sticky rice.

I already gained a mother, a daughter, a sister and a niece through this recipe. Where may you fit in?