hzrt8w

I STILL do, after 40 some years. What is going to happen? Will my face turn yellow now? Oh... wait... it's already yellow.

In my college days I shared an appartment with a guy from Indonesia. He liked to mix the dry shredded pork with steamed rice (and crack some shrimp chips and some fried peanuts). That's Indonesian style though. I have eaten some Chinese bread (baked bao) with dry shredded pork sticked on the top. Taiwanese style I think.

How about snacking on it as is?

I have just viewed your photo album. The food you had in Beijing is very different from what you can find in the USA. I don't recognize many items that you had (except the Malaysian roti canai and curry mee ). Because of its history dated back to the gold rush days, California is populated predominantly by Cantonese-Chinese restaurants. Even that, the dishes, ingredients and styles have been altered to suit the local tastes. The "Chow Mein" as we know it in California is very different from those offered where they were originated. It wasn't until recent decades that more "authentic" Chinese restaurants started setting up shop in US soil. There are a few Sichuanese, Shanghainese, Taiwanese and a mix style restaurants in San Francisco. Don't know of one as "pure" Beijing style which seems to be what you are looking for.

Opposite to "Mui", you can describe a "solid" meat texture as "sut" 实. "sut yuk" 实肉 is the other type of salted fish with firm meat texture.

I am going to have fun with you guys and inject some negative descriptions. How would you describe eating rotten fish? "Mui" 霉 "Mui Heung" 霉香, a highly sought texture in salted fish. How would you describe some crackers that are stale? "yik" 益 (not sure if this is the right Chinese word). Technically not a texture description. But it is a mouth feel that is hard to describe otherwise.

Fuzzy Chef: I am not sure what your "high-class" means. High prices do not necessarily equate to high quality in terms of food tastes or services unfortunately. I also am unclear on what you are looking for as "good-but-not-traditional California-Chinese gourmet". I assume that you mean you don't want the chop-suey, egg-foo-young kind of outfits, because chop-suey dishes would never make the "high class" rank. I have a few favorites of my own. They are kind of at the outskirt of San Francisco. Zen Peninsula Restaurant, Millbrae, on El Camino Real Very good food. Very good service. Good decor. They offer round-table (for 10 to 12) set seafood dinner for US$300 - $500. They serve Cantonese live seafood dishes. Was in a banquet there once. Really a nice place. Fook Yuen Restaurant, also in Millbrae, on El Camino Real Hong Kong brand name. Good food, good service. Decor can be a bit better IMO. Serving Cantonese live seafood dinner. Similar to Zen. I think Zen is a tad better. Koi Palace Restaurant, Daly City Very good food. Very good decor (they have koi pond as a center piece inside the restaurant). Service is not as good. Waitstaff seemed too busy all the time. This restaurant can offer you all the "high end" stuff: shark fin, abalone, live king crab, etc.. They serve dim sums, which are excellent. Not sure if Zen and Fook Yuen do dim sums. I think they do but am not sure. Many others like Yank Sing (inside Rincon Center, downtown SF). I haven't eaten there before. Couldn't get a seat (too busy) the one time that we visited. I love their Yank Sing Chili Sauce though. Also some like Flower Lounge (Millbrae, on El Camino Real). I think they used to be good but my last visit a couple years ago gave me the impression that they had gone way downhill. Haven't been back since. Similar Cantonese live seafood dinner stuff and dim sum.

This is a Cantonese style dish: Steamed shrimp with garlic. Each shrimp is split in halves. This dish is available in many Cantonese style live seafood restaurants. I did this with a twist: I like to caramelize the minced garlic first with a bit of cooking oil before using it for steaming. This makes the garlic taste a bit better. I also added some caramelized shallot slices (the dark brown bits). Chopped green onions sprinkled on top. Mung bean threads were used to lay as a bed at the bottom. They would soak up the steaming juice.

There have been a few discussion threads on wok and burners in this forum. You may want to search for them as this topic has been discussed a few times. I live in the USA. I do cook, to date still, all my Chinese home cookings with my 2 12-inch stainless steel frying pans (not the heavy iron skillets). I have done that for over 20 years. They are adequate for me for the most part. I do have a wok. But I believe to use a wok effectively we need to have a comparable gas stove. Most of the gas ranges in the common households of the USA are too "slow". How do most Chinese cook at home in Hong Kong or Mainland China? They use woks mostly. But... one major difference I think... the gas ranges/stoves in Hong Kong/China are "stronger". The burner rings are bigger. Some have double rings. For home cooking with a wok, those work fairly well. In the 60's/70's in Hong Kong, my father used to use an old kerosine stove (not the kind with compressed air, but the older kind that used several wicks to soak up kerosine). He used a wok, of course. We could still cook most stir-fried dishes. Just that we won't get the "wok hei" (breath of a wok) in our food.

Those kitchens most likely have gas stoves - either pre-piped from the gas company or using portable gas tanks. I think by and large the big ovens roomy enough to bake a turkey are probably not common in China. Both because of spatial constraints and impracticality (how often do we bake?).

Another idea is that: Check out "Tapioca Express". They are a franchised drink store which originated from Taiwan. In some store locations, they team up with some restaurant operators and offer food. I don't know if all locations serve the same kind of food (I don't think they do). The one location of Tapioca Express in Sacramento (Freeport Blvd) teamed up with a "Shangdong Noodle House" and they offer Taiwainese style small eats and noodles. e.g. HungShao Beef Noodle Soup, potstickers, scallion pancakes, tea eggs, tofu sheets, dan-dan noodles, etc.. And they are pretty good! Worth checking if there are other SF Bay Area locations having a similar setup. http://www.tapiocaexpress.com/

I agree. I have seen more Taiwanese style restaurants in the Milpitas, Fremont and Cupertino areas than in San Francisco proper. But this native Cantonese doesn't usually look for them. I have been to one on Clement Street long time ago: Taiwan Restaurant, 445 Clement Street, San Francisco, CA (415) 387-1789‎ If you Google-Map with the above string, you can find 12 reviews on that restaurant and they are mostly good. With StreetView you can even see what it looks like! My memory of it is they are not bad. But that was long ago and I don't eat Taiwanese food too often. If you are interested in the Milpitas, Fremont and Cupertino areas I can provide more details.

I am wondering why... Kee Wah Bakery had set up shop about 20 years ago in Monterey Park (Atlantic and Garvey) and they have great mooncakes (famous Hong Kong brand name). Why a need to mail order from a so-so bakery in San Francisco? I have a picture of Eastern's display taken a couple of years ago.

I am reading this with a slight amusement. How "inedible"? You don't like the taste of their mooncake? I have been to Eastern Bakery on Grant but am not impressed by them. I remember them displaying a month-old pineapple bao in a plastic-wrap on the window display. My favorite is "AA Bakery", one block uphill from Eastern, on Stockton and about Jackson. AA Bakery & Cafe‎ 1068 Stockton St, San Francisco, CA - (415) 981-0123‎ I like their mooncakes and all sorts of Hong kong style bakery items in general.

I grew up in Hong Kong, have been to London Chinatown and been to a few major cities in Mainland China. I think I can relate to what you were saying (or "smelling"). I suspect that particular "Hong Kong" smell, or "London Chinatown" smell, was probably the smell from the Cantonese style wonton noodle houses. In Hong Kong, there is, figure-of-speechly, one around every corner. Well... at least more than banks or MacDonald's or Starbucks combined. Almost invariably in every wonton noodle house there would be a cauldron of beef organs (beef briskets, stomach, intestines, lung, etc.). (Though I suspect in London or USA you can only find a subset of these organ varieties.). They use five spices in the bubbling broth to simmer the beef organs. Now... that's Cantonese style. When I travelled through other Mainland China cities, such as Beijing/Shanghai/Nanjin/Guilin/Dalian/Shenyang/Tienjing/Tsingdao/Hengzhou, etc.. I have not seen a cauldron of beef organs in bubbly broth like those in Hong Kong. Perhaps that explained the difference? Indeed, I think the five spices (or maybe six, seven, or more) used vary from restaurants to restaurants and from chefs to chefs. But you can almost trace them to those originated from India. Well... this doesn't say much. Five spices are not usually used for cooking at home except for braising dishes. A good portion of the households in Hong Kong may do stir-fried dishes at home all their lives without using five spices directly. [That includes my father and my two brothers.] But if they eat out in restaurants, many items are cooked with five spices. In the Chinese language, dishes that are cooked with five spices may be crowned by other names than "five spices". For example: Hung shiu 红烧 Lo shui 卤水 Ng Heung 五香 (These are all Cantonese pronounciation) Cantonese BBQ items: the roast pork, the roast ducks, the Cantonese-Fried Chicken 炸子鸡... all use some versions of five spices in marinating the cavities.

You absolutely need to cook the rice (and the rest of the ingredients) first before freezing the joong for storage.

Unfortunately it seems that not all A&J are created equal. I think they need to do a better quality-control job. I found that list of half a dozen A&J locations. I have tried the one in Cupertino and I was disappointed. The red-braised beef noodle soup was okay. But the potstickers were inferior than the ones made in Irvine (the filling does not taste as good and the wrappers fell apart). The General Tso's Chicken was horrible.

Can't one adapt the many existing dumpling recipes and substitute the meat (typically ground pork) with shredded (or diced) pressed tofu to make the dumplings?

From a Hong Kong experience... People usually buy the five spice mix because: 1) They are quite readily available in stores. 2) Most people may not have the knowledge on the actual "five spice" ingredients, let alone the ratio, in mixing the five spices. Why not let the experts handle it?

Just an idea: Have you tried experimenting with mixing flour and water and a bit of salt and oil then roll out the "pancake" and fry it on a flat pan?

Little Tokyo is in Downtown Los Angeles. A bit far from LAX. There are many good Japanese restaurants in Torrence because of many Japanese companies setting up shops in SoCal. Many Japanese immigrants and relocated workers. Torrence is much closer to LAX. Sorry I don't have a specific restaurant recommendation. Just helping out with the geography info.

My impression of Anaheim is that there isn't many decent/upscale restaurants (perhaps I am mistaken). A better chance maybe in the Costa Mesa (as rjwong said), Irvine and Newport Beach area. Newport Beach might take a bit long to get to (local street and traffic congestion). Irvine should not be too bad. I like a few decent (but not the "high end" if that is what you are looking for) restaurants: - Scott's Seafood - Prego (Italian) - Il Fornaio (Italian) - Houston (Steak) Sorry I am not known to have sophisticated taste buds. As for decent "Asian"... If Chinese... They are harder to find in that area. One that I like: - Sam Woo Seafood Restaurant (Culver and Irvine Center Drive). (Be sure to go to the "Seafood" side not the "BBQ" side... two restaurants sharing the same bathrooms...) Cantonese seafood, stir-fries and Cantonese BBQ items are very good. There are many good Vietnamese restaurants along Brookhurst. "Little Saigon" is in Garden Grove. My favorite is: - My Nguyen Restaurant (Brookhurst and about Westminster) But these are almost all operated by small families and are hardly in the "decent/upscale" class. Along Katella Ave my favorite seafood place is: - The Fish Company (Katella and Los Alamitos Blvd) about 5 miles west of Disneyland. I love their charcoal-grilled fresh fish.

I don't think this particular style of roast chicken uses the "honey sugar colour solution" that you described ("lo shui" in Cantonese). The marinating agent is "Nam Yu" (fermented red bean curds) and a bit of dark soy sauce. As for huai yan(淮盐): Dry roast some sichuan peppercorn on a pen over fire. Then use a spice grinder to grind it into powder. Pick out the husks. Mix the powder with table salt.

Is the sweet dessert soup a Cantonese thingie? Years ago when I worked in different Chinese restaurants in San Diego, serving "Mandarin" style (a mix of Sichuan, Peking and Shanghai styles... just a name to distinguish it from Cantonese I supposed) Chinese food, none of them offered any dessert except candied apple (or banana) - the one the comes in hot, melted sugar syrup and quenched quickly into iced water. Others served icecream. And one served "banana flambe" because the owner grew up in Paris. We ate at a Sichuan style restaurant in Richmond just last weekend. Their Sichuan dishes were wonderful. But when they served up the complimentary "sweet dessert soup" (egg drop, sugar syrup, pineapple (???!!!))... my gosh... it tasted sour! I have never tasted a sour one before... they should just leave these dessert soup to Cantonese chefs.

Rinsing the fermented black beans is a traditional, hand-me-down method. It serves several purposes: 1) As liuzhou mentioned, to rinse off dust or what not. 2) To moisten the black beans a little bit. Depending on the quality of the fermented black beans you get... some of the poorer quality ones (the one that my family could afford back in the old days) are quite dry. The beans should be moisten a little bit, and smashed a little bit to release their full flavor. 3) The most important reason, I think (why they used to do it in the old days)... I don't know about others, when I grew up the fermented black beans bought from the market were full of small rocks. Putting some water into the bowl containing some fermented black beans helps in picking out those small rocks, which were detrimental to children's teeth. And in this day and age you probably don't need to worry about that... Eating dried shrimp? No I don't water it and just eat as is. If moisten, the flavor would be diluted, which is very different from preparing fermented black beans for cooking.