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Found another great Chinese food recipe site: http://www.joycekitchen.com/home.htm In the home page, the navigation pane on the left, just click on "Recipe". Then click on "Seafood", "Poultry", etc., then click on the recipes of interest. The recipes are bilingual (Chinese(??) and English), with pictures of the finished dish.

Thank you for the link, Lee! There are some awesome pictures!!!

I observed the butchers in the Cantonese BBQ shop... first the chicken is cut in halves with a cleaver - along the spinal cord. Now deal with half a chicken. First cut off the wing. Then lay it flat and chop the wing into a few pieces. Then cut off the leg right at the joint - just soft cartilages, easy. Cut off the drum stick at the joint. Then chop up the drum stick into 2 pieces. The thigh: lay flat and chop into 3 to 4 pieces. Next: the back and the breast. Make one cut to separate the back and the breast. Make a few chops on the back (mostly vertebrate and rib bones). Finally the breast. Make a few chops perpenticular to the spinal cord. Finished. Repeat the same process on the other half. I think the key is whenever you have a piece of chicken to chop up, you have to prepare it in a way that it lays flat on the chopping board so that the bones will be sharply cut and not crushed. Having the small pieces of chicken and fat splattered around is what I don't like about doing this at home. My MIL uses a trick - though it is not visually appealing but it is very practical. She lays some used newspaper on the floor to cover a 4ftx4ft area. Put the round chopping block right in the middle, then chop the chicken right on the block on top of the kitchen floor. Afterwards, just discard the newspaper. May be some spots on the cupboard doors or drawers need to be wiped but not too bad usually.

That was long, long time ago. Shatin used to have a small airport for private planes. I learned how to ride a bicycle there when I was about 6. (mid 60's). It has been since demolished. The old Sea of Shatin was landfilled. The HK Government had developed Shatin as one of the "Satellite Cities", along with Tuen Mun and Tai Po. My first estimate of the population is around 1/2 million. And, according to this web page, the population of Shatin is 480,000 per cencor in 2001. You can see the explosion increase from 109,000 to 493,000 from 1981 to 1991. I am sure if you go there today, you would not be able to recognize most places. Here are some pictures of Shatin from Google: http://images.google.com/images?q=shatin&hl=en Lung Wah is still alive and well, selling 6000 squabs a day.

Sure. Thanks for the suggestion. This is pretty easy to make at home. Time to sharpen the cleaver and have the Chinese round chopping board ready!

This ithe first time I have heard of it. It seems so far fetch. I think human from all coastal regions (or inland... there are rivers) had discovered millennia ago that most shellfish - crab, shrimp, clam, etc. - were edible. So why would the Chinese be an exception?

Thanks dcbilly! Indeed there are 2 Chinese names for this fungus. One that describes what it looks like: human hair. According to some online articles, hairy moss fungi grow in 青海 (Tsing Hai) in the wild and are harvested. One specialty dish is to use hairy moss fungi and ground chicken or pork and eggs to make a roll. The resulting rolls is black (from the hairy moss fungi) and white (from the eggs), good contrast. I have never seen it but would sure like to have some. One sample article. Yes my dish is a miniature version of "Lohan Tsai". I use only 4 ingredients, one of which is not even a vegetable. Doesn't the real "Lohan Tsai" use 18 different vegetarian ingredients? (18 Lohan) I can think of mixing ginko nuts, bean curd sheets, straw mushrooms, bamboo shoots, jujube dates and other vegetarian ingredients in this dish.

I think you were talking about "Lung Wah" (龍華 - dragon china) in Shatin. I found this article (in Chinese) talking about the restaurant. Per this article, "Lung Wah" has been in business since 1950. 龍華乳鴿 That article said they are selling 6000 squabs a day (year 2005). Here are some pictures of the restaurant. See if you recognize it: 沙田龍華酒店 (in Chinese) My brother-in-law took our whole family there for dinner once when I was a kid. I remember they are within a short walking distance from the old Shatin railroad station (which is a little bit north-east of today's Shatin railroad (KCR) station). But, of course, over 35 years ago, this hotel was facing the Sea of Shatin... but in the past 30 years it had been reclaimed and with many residential complexes built on top. They are also at the trail head that goes up to the "Ten Thousand Bhudda Temple" in Shatin.

Causeway is the center of all kinds of food/restaurants. I observed the recent trends of food courts established inside some shopping centres. The one that is modelled after the Singaporean food courts with different independent vendors selling different types of food and a shared common dinning area. What used to be "street food" two to three decades ago might have migrated to these shops in the food courts. Causeway also has a high concentration of Japanese who are residing in Hong Kong. I remember stepping in to a Japanese/Chinese grocery store and saw all kinds of Japanese produces and packaged food, including nice sashimis, sushis and many other ready-to-eat items. I agree that Hepatitis is a real threat to visitors who are not used to the environment. It is high risk to eat seafood from street vendors. Because I grew up in Hong Kong, I have been fine during every one of my visits. I cannot say the same for my wife who grew up in California. She had stomach problems almost during every visit. We have been very careful in picking what to eat (her portion, that is!).

Picture: Chinese name: 薑蔥霸王雞 English name: Steamed Chicken with Ginger and Green Onions; Emperor Chicken Category: Cantonese dinner entree, Poultry Description: Whole chicken, first marinated then steamed to perfection. Chopped into pieces when served. Shredded ginger, green onions and sliced chili are laid on top of the chicken. Fuming hot oil is poured on top, followed by a splash of light soy sauce. Condiment: (Optional) Grated ginger and chopped green onions mixed with salt. Fuming hot oil poured on top. (Offered at: Yeung City Seafood Restaurant, Sacramento, CA, USA)

I am fortunate enough to live very close to a few Cantonese style seafood restaurants which offer great, authentic Cantonese cuisine. Occasionally I drop by some of the best Chinese restaurants in the San Francisco, San Jose and Los Angeles areas. I want to create this new thread to post a series of Chinese food pictures with descriptions on how the dishes are made. Chinese dishes that are offered in restaurants. Many Americans know Chinese food as Egg Rolls, BBQ Pork Fried Rice, Egg Foo Young, Sweet and Sour Pork, Chow Mein, and the latest Orange Beef, Kung Pao Chicken, Mongolian beef popularized by franchised Chinese fast food operators such as the Panda Express and Pick Up Stix. But Chinese food is much more than that. Through my perspectives, I hope that you would find some dishes that you may not know about or may have overlooked on the menus. And to the poor souls living in a foreign land where Chinese food cannot be found easily, I want to apologize in advance!

Hairy Moss Fungi - I am not sure what the correct English name is. (Laksa?) In Chinese, they are called 發菜 (Fat Choy in Cantonese). In dry form, they are very hard and stiff, like steel wires. They look almost like human hair. Once soaked and cooked, they become soft and crunchy. The texture may be a bit like cotton candy. Like woodear fungi and white fungi, by themselves they taste rather bland. They tend to soak up the flavor of the sauce. Karen is right, hairy moss fungi do have a bit of smokey taste to them. Karen: I am not familiar with the term that your father spoke of. I thought most Cantonese like fat choi. About reusing the dried black mushroom stems: yes we can. Usually what we do is to snap off the stems of the dried black mushrooms and keep them in the bag before soaking the mushrooms. You may save those stems in making soup at a later time. But personally I found that the taste of these stems bring to the soup is not as rich as the black mushrooms themselve. Nowadays the dried shittake mushrooms are very inexpensive. Their prices came down to about 1/3 to 1/5 of what they used to be. I personally don't find the stems worth saving any more. But that's just me. Note: In cooking this dish, dried oysters can be used in place of dried conpoy. Soak the dried oysters overnight and cook them whole in place of dried conpoy.

#24, Stir-Fried Lotus Roots with Dry Conpoy and Hairy Moss Fungi (連年發財: 瑤柱發菜炒蓮藕)

Stir-Fried Lotus Roots with Dry Conpoy and Hairy Moss Fungi (連年發財: 瑤柱發菜炒蓮藕) Many Chinese like to associate food with symbolic well wishes. Especially round Chinese New Year, you can find many dish titles named to associate with wishes for wealth, health and prosperity. The hairy moss fungus is called Fat Choy in Cantonese, which has the same pronounciation as the phrase "getting rich". Lotus root is called Leen Ngou. The word Leen has the same pronounciation as two words: one that means "consecutively" and one that means "year". This dish I named, Leen Leen Fat Choy, would symbolically wish you "Getting rich every year"! Picture of the finished dish: Serving suggestion: 2 to 3 The main ingredients: (Clockwise from the top right) Lotus root, about 1 1/2 pound, 3-4 cloves of garlic, 3 small cubes of nam yu (red fermented bean curd), a handful of hairy moss fungi, 6-7 small dried conpoy, about 10 dried black mushrooms. Preparations: The dry ingredients need to be soaked in water before cooking. Note: For best results, the dried conpoy need to be soaked with a small amount of water overnight (see lower right). Dried black mushrooms (top center) and hairy moss fungi (lower left) should be soaked in warm water about 2 hours before cooking. After soaking, drain, then trim and discard the stems of the black mushrooms. Drain the hairy moss fungi. Use your hands to separate the hairy moss fungi so that they don't tangle into a big patch. Separate them into perhaps 10 to 20 smaller patches. They will soften up when they are cooked. Peel the lotus roots with a peeler. Wash clean. Trim the dirty ends and discard. Cut the remaining into 1/4 inch thick slices. Raw lotus roots are very crunchy. Peel and minced about 3-4 cloves of garlic. Cooking Instructions: Use a pan/wok, set stove to high setting, heat up the pan til hot. Add 2 tblsp of cooking oil. First add the minced garlic, 3 cubes of nam yu (red fermented bean curds) and a pinch of salt (suggest: 1/4 tsp or to taste). Use the spatula to smash the nam yu and mix them with the garlic. Add the soaked dried conpoy. Save the soaking liquid. Use the spatula to break the conpoy into shreds. Fry for about 1 minute. Add the soaked dried black mushrooms. Fry for another minute. Add the lotus root slices. Add 1/2 cup of chicken broth. Add the soaking water of dried conpoy, and another 1/2 cup of water. The lotus roots take a long time to cook (about 25 to 30 minutes). Cook with the lid on. Reduce the stove setting to medium after the initial boil. Occassionally stir the mixture (about every 5 minutes). Keep checking. If the mixture becomes too dry, add some more water as it cooks. This is how the mixture looks about 15 minutes into cooking with lid on. About 20 minutes into cooking, add the hairy moss fungi. (They don't take as long to cook.) The hairy moss fungi take up the liquid in the pan as they cook. Try to separate them as much as you can with a pair of chopsticks or forks. If the mixture is too dry, add a little bit more water. The lotus roots should be ready after 25 to 30 minutes of cooking. The texture should be soft and not snappy. The water should just dry up. Perfect! The finished dish. The quantity made in this recipe is a bit more than twice the portion shown in this picture.

AzianBrewer: (I just got into this Japanese forum...) Did the tofu-yo that you had in this restaurant taste the same as Chinese fu-yu? Or entirely different? From just the pictures, they do look like the Chinese nam yu (red fermented bean curd), which in China is abundant and is selling at low low prices.

Yeah yeah. More memories came back to me. To add to the list: - Baked yam (sweet potatoes) - The green herbal drink bunk dai wun, chilled. - Ma Tai Lo (sweet drink made with waterchestnuts and eggs) - Various shaved ice (red beans, pineapples, etc.) - Leung Fun (grass jelly with shaved ice) This is too much to bear! Too much! Anna: if you go to Hong Kong, let us know where you can still find these street eats. I am eager to make a home visit too. Next year perhaps.

Reading this 3-year old post about eating street food on Temple Street, Kowloon, Hong Kong brought back some of the memories of the street food I was accustomed to eating growing up in Hong Kong. There used to be many more places offering street food. You could find them in every corner in HK. But the movement of eliminating these street food hawkers has pretty much wipe them off the streets for good. Now some of these street food got absorbed into the mainstream "dim sum" offered in restaurants, or some operators need to set up a storefront to offer these traditional small eats. There are only a few spots of these street food vendors left. The ones along Temple Street... may be for attracting tourists? I don't know. Some of my favorite street food: - Clams cooked with a hot and sour sauce (tomato, basil, chili, whatever else...) - Periwinkles cooked in brown bean sauce, sweet, garlicy - "fake" shark fin soup: shreds of chicken in broth colored with soy sauce, thickened with corn starch - Various fried fish paste stuffed vegetables (bell peppers, chili peppers, egg plants) and tofu. Or the fish paste balls. - Dace fish paste boiled in broth, served steaming hot in a small bowl mixed with shredded lettuce, with sesame oil and ground white pepper added - Steamed "poor man" siu mai (the ones made with really fatty pork and no shrimp, wrapped in siu mai wrappers), fun goaw - Teochew style dumpling with thick wrapper and minced pork seasoned with peanuts inside. Steamed buns. - A pot of various beef organs including stomach, liver, kidney, lung, intestines - A cold-cut meat snack assortment including chicken feet, duck gizzards, pig intestines, cuttle fish, etc. - Cheung fun: they take out the freshly made rice noodle kept warm with a bath of hot water, use a pair of scissors to "chop, chop" cut it up in front of you, pour on some light soy sauce, sweet flour (red) sauce, mustard and/or chili sauce, and sprinkled with sesame seeds - Salt-baked chicken thigh or wing: The chicken wing/thigh are wrapped in wax paper, buried in a big pile of rock salt and heated/steamed - Chestnuts (in shells) stir-fried with black gravels with sugar added. The sugar glaze makes the chestnut shells very shinny and appealing - Pot of broth cooking fish balls, pork blood, pork skin, squid (reconstituted from dry squid) - Pig trotter braised in sweet red vinegar with young ginger - Tea eggs - Red bean dessert soup - Soy sauce chow mein (with bean sprouts and green onions), Soy sauce chow Shanghainese style thick noodles - Guo Jing Joong - sticky rice with a piece of pork and salted egg yoke wrapped in lotus leave (? I think it is) and steamed to perfection - Deep-fried daikon cake: made from shredded daikon mixed in a flour batter, molded into the shape of a cup cake, deep-fried Oh, what am I doing? I made myself hungry!

Kris: In Asia, a small gadget designed for this purpose is very common. I don't have a picture of it, so I have drawn a sketch (sorry it doesn't look too good): This gadget is made out of aluminum. The design is really simple. You don't put the dish directly on top of the rice inside a rice cooker. Instead, you put this gadget in first and it will hold up the steaming dish. The 3 legs would be immersed in the rice/water mix but the top if above the water line. You place your dish on top of this "holder". (Not sure what the exact name is). There is also another special gadget to let you hook to the side of the steaming dish and lift it up from the rice cooker because the clearance between the dish and the wall of the rice cooker is very small. 10000th post will be a major landmark! That deserves a special banquet dish!

Thanks for the tip. I need to look them up. Chicken/sausage in sandy pot... Steamed chicken with fish maw wrapped in lotus leave... Hmmmmmm.... Mouth is watering!

Russell: 15 to 20 minutes should be enough to cook the pork spareribs. It may not hurt to cook them longer. Same goes for pork slices or ground pork. I am not sure what the benefits are steaming pork for that long. Like how Yuki described, my father used to put sparerib in a dish that fit right above the rice inside a National rice cooker - the one like yours. It's done in 15 to 20 minutes. Congratulations on your 500th post! What an honor! Please let me know one of your favorite Chinese dishes. I would like to make that dish (and treat my stomach to it) in your honor! (Same offer to anybody who has achieved this major milestone! ) I know... you mentioned about steaming meat (may be beef?) with one of the preserved vegetables that you bought...

I finally found some fish maw in a local Asian grocery store. They were located in the section where dried shitake mushrooms, dried dates and such were placed. Out of the only few packages that the store carried, they looked very dusty and unappealing. US $11.00 for a 3-oz pack, about 5 pieces of fish maw. I think I will wait until a trip to San Francisco China Town to see if there are better selections.

Karen: Dim sum restaurants offer both spareribs with black beans and spareribs with plum sauce. My recipe is the latter one. The restaurant's plum sauce spareribs may not use black bean. It is my own touch. The result was good. Congratulations on your 100th! eG posting is addictive! You next major mark is 500th, then on to 1000th, then 5000th, then on to 10000th like Pan.

Yes it is optional. I found that have just a bit of black bean would enhance the flavor.

The spareribs that I bought did have some bones, though thankfully not too many. Inevitably spareribs also contain a fair amount of fat. The package that I bought was the leanest that I have seen. The Chinese plum sauce (mine is Koon Chun brand) is pretty sweet. It is exactly the same sauce that is served as a condiment for Cantonese roast ducks.

#23, Steamed Pork Spareribs with Plum Sauce (梅子蒸排骨)