Gastro888
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Posts posted by Gastro888
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I bring my lunch every day to work. It's either leftovers from home or a restaurant meal. We have a Sodexho (shudder) cafeteria on campus but no lunch rooms on the office floors. There are no microwaves in the cafeteria only on each office floor so I end up eating at my desk instead of carting it over to the cafeteria.
I share my open cube wall with a princess on the other side who makes comments about the smell of my food. I'm really tempted to bring in stinky tofu one of these days. Or salted fish.
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Hope people recognise that most of the CNY dishes are symbolic.
Neen Goh is extremely important.
I for one wouldn't be dumbing down a CNY dinner. It's like dumbing down a Thanksgiving meal for instance.
ROOTS MAN!!
We've always celebrated Chinese New Year in my Toisan house and I know and understand there are meanings to the CNY dishes. Just because I don't like neen goh and may choose not to serve it (due whatever reason) does not make this less of a CNY dinner or make me less aware of my roots. Knowing your roots is more than just eating one particular dish.
A large part of the CNY dinner is to gather the family around the table for celebration.
I don't think it would be dumbing down the CNY - if I had Lean Cuisine Chicken Teriyaki special then you can call it dumbing down.
Yeah, foot binding's part of our roots as well but you don't see me doing it.
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hehe... maybe we should start a thread about the various types of goh and sweet/salty snacks that we eat in new years or when the craving comes. I think I am going to do that now!
I like coconut milk neen goh fried with some eggs, fried loh bak goh, and taro strips cake.
Coconut milk need goh? Now THAT I could go for! I've only seen the red ones...I just couldn't get into it. Fried with eggs? How do you do that? Dip it in egg?
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What about butter sans vehicle? My mother-in-law will eat a pat of butter all by itself.
My friend in high school got caught eating sticks of butter when she was 3 years old. Her mom didn't understand why they were going through so much butter every week until one of the older sisters caught her red (butter?) handed in front of the fridge munching away. Funny thing is when I told my mom this story, she thought it was perfectly rational for a 3 year old to do it? (It tastes so good and it's so creamy, of course, she'd eat a whole stick!)
Ai ya!
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Interesting! Boil them for 5 minutes and then clean? Hmm. I wonder if that affects the taste of the final product. In Cantonese cuisine, a favorite dish of mine is to take the chitterlings and deep fry them after a good cleaning. (Usually about 3 days worth of work!) They're served with a side of sweet and sour sauce to dip in. My mom laughed when I asked her if there was a way to tell if chitterlings weren't cleaned well. She just said that it wasn't polite dinner conversation and that I would know if they weren't!
The smell? Well, I went to my friend's dad's house and he made soul food chitterlings and it smells like...slightly...eau de toliet? He boiled his, so maybe that's why they had more of an odor. They were boiled with hot chile and vinegar. Oh, they were good. FYI, I was informed by my friend that chittlerlings prepared and eaten that way are good for, um, "detoxing". I guess what goes around comes around! (sorry!!!)
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Back on topic, I was once told that men should be careful and not eat hard boiled eggs that weren't freshly made that day. (In case you were wondering, no, it doesn't apply to me so I have no answer for you as to whether this is true or not! =) )
Apparently, eating "leftover" hard boiled eggs affects their manhood. Perhaps it's because the egg's a similar shape to certain organs? Anyways, I always thought it was interesting. I mean, what did they do with stuff like nasi lemak (served with hard boiled eggs) or the tea eggs you couldn't finish in one day?
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Is this a banquet that happens to be at CNY or is this a CNY banquet? If it's the latter, there are certain dishes that are traditionally eaten: faat choi jai (the vegetarian dish that contains among other things, faat choi - or "hairy moss" seaweed, water chestnuts, bamboo shoots, dried mushrooms, etc), fresh clams in the shell (supposed to bring wealth), saang choi (lettuce, again, it's supposed to bring wealth), whole fish and chicken (you have these covered in your menu). Also, if possible, goh (CNY steamed puddings - loh bak goh, neen goh, wu tau goh, etc). Well, actually, you don't usually eat them at a CNY banquet but they are eaten at this time of the year.
It's a CNY banquet for CNY. It's going to be towards the end of the month due to scheduling conflicts. The restaurant will have a CNY menu - hopefully they'll have some of the dishes you mention.
Ah, yes! Clams in black bean sauce. Duh, me!
Ai ya, neen goh is sooo sweet. But it IS traditional!
I prefer loh bak goh, extra crispy! 
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I've never heard of Yu Sheng before, that's neat! Thanks for the link.
As for other areas of China, the restaurant we're going to serves mainly Cantonese food. I wouldn't know how to hold a northern Chinese CNY banquet, unfortunately. (I'm Toisanese)
For the dessert course I'm going to ask for mini pineapple buns or mini egg tarts. If we get enough people, I'll get longevity buns instead. They're so cute.
I don't know if they'd make pickles or anything. I'd like to have sea cucumber but if most of the ppl are squeamish, I'd be mad to see a good dish go to waste.
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It's that time of year again! I'm organizing a CNY banquet for my friends and I at a local restaurant. We have some adventerous eaters and some not so much. It's going to be a Cantonese style menu and I wanted to try pick y'all's brains to see if there were other dishes besides your "typical" banquet menu dishes. For example:
*Traditional Cold Cut Starter Platter (jellyfish, cuttlefish, pig's feet, cold braised beef)
*Fried shrimp ball wrapped around a crab leg (and covered with broken rice noodle bits)
*Shark fin's soup or golden mushroom soup
*Abalone with vegetable
*Cantonese fried chicken w/ shrimp chips
*Lobster w/ ginger and scallions
*Steamed/fried flounder
*Noodles (in various forms)
*Yangchow fried rice
*Dessert
The only things I could think of (and unfortunately I can't read or write Chinese so I'm at a loss for getting the authentic menu...bah!) as alternate dishes were:
*Fried quail
*Roasted suckling pig
*Shrimp and fried walnuts in mayonaise sauce (Yes...Chinese American but I thought this would be good to cater to the less adventerous folks)
*Kingdom pork chops (see above reasoning)
*Salt and pepper fried shrimp (with the head on)
*Sea cucumber (is it even worth getting if some ppl are sqeamish?)
*Seafood combo in bird's nest dish
I guess I'm at a loss 'cause I usually eat the homestyle stuff and not the fancy banquet stuff when I go out. Gimme a bowl of congee with 1000 year old eggs and pork or a rice bowl with some BBQ meat and I'm happy.
Any assistance is appreciated! *bows to elders*
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You're like my friend who likes things fried "hard". I think it's a Southern thing that she likes food fried "hard" (crunchy?). I like chicken skin in all forms...cracklin, crisp, roasted and squishy bits like you get from soya sauce chicken or salt roasted chicken.
Sidebar-how does one make schmaltzy potatoes? Do I just take raw chicken skin and raw potatoes and throw them in the oven? Or do I have to render the fat?
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Maybe it's considered inelegant to eat raw veggies? I've never heard of raw veggies being too "leung" for the system. That would be interesting. But there are salads in the Western diet and in Europe back in the day, I'm sure they used the same traditional fertilizer. Perhaps that's why they developed such tasty vingerettes? *grin*
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What about the bean curd skin, seaweed and edamame salads you find at northern Chinese style restaurants?
hmmm... this is close i think they have they shanghai starter dish of roast peanuts, marinated tofu and cucumber and some kinda pickled vegs and beans.
actually quite tasty hmmm... think that might actually count
nice one gastro
There is this one place that serves cucumbers and green bean jelly sheets in a chile oil/vingear dressing. Quite tasty. Or you can try bean sprouts with seaweed in a chile/sesame oil/vingear dressing.
This is a hard one for me as I'm Toisanese - I didn't encounter these cold plate dishes until I went to China. I do think they're neat and makes me wonder if the Korean panchan is a variation of the dishes made in northern China.
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What about the bean curd skin, seaweed and edamame salads you find at northern Chinese style restaurants?
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A recipe for xiao long bao can be found here. This recipe calls for the use of aspic. The Savuer April 2004 issue is the one with the great recipe. Unfortunately, I don't have that issue nor is it online.
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Ugh, why would anyone want to eat there? It's so fabricated! And overpriced. There HAS to be better/tastier options in NJ.
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YEEEEEEEEES! Woo hoo! I can try the famous pancakes now. Sweet, pancakes!
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Who knew there were so many onigiri? At our local (and one of only two) Japanese markets here I've only seen the umeboshi and the bonito. I like the combos y'all mention here. Is there a traditional recipe for it or do you just take regular rice and make it into a ball with filling in the middle?
I don't think that there are any traditional recipes for onigiri, but there are several tips for making good onigiri, such as
1. Make them while the rice is still hot.
A professional onirigi maker makes onigiri from rice as hot as 72 C (162 F)!
2. Refrain from holding the rice too tight.
A professional onigiri maker first makes rice into a soft ball and then finishes making it into a rice ball by holding it softy only 4 times.
from here
http://www.ktv.co.jp/ARUARU/search/aruonigiri/onigiri4.htm
(Japanese only)
Cool, thanks! So I can just take regular rice and ball it up around bonito, ikura, and other items? Way cool.
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Pancakes -especially from the Amish farmer's market...*drools*
French Toast
Baguettes -butter and strawberry jam
HK style toast - butter and condensed milk
Baked potatoes
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Sweet! Thanks! I'm surprised it has catsup in the recipe. I don't recall the huli huli chicken I ate having any sort of catsup/tomato taste to it. It fainly resembled Chinese roasted chicken but with a twist. The charcoal makes a HUGE difference, for sure. I wonder if the chickens y'all get over in Hawaii differ than the mainland chickens (local - more flavor vs. mass produced)?
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Laksa. The kind from Taiping, Malaysia. My ex-bf's family made it and the first time I smelt it I thought it to be foul and it was spicy as all get out. Took some getting used to but I now love the spicy/sour/salty tasty of the fish, tamarind, chiles, etc.
Sidebar: why is it that good - no, great! - food comes from crappy people? Why, why, why?! *shakes fist* Ok, I vented...thanks...=)
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They probably used some sort of vegetable to dye the dough that color. I don't think a filling could make the whole dumpling green like that. It could be a vegetarian dumpling. It kinda looks like kueh instead of a dumpling! =)
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I went to Oahu 3 years ago and had Huli Huli chicken near the North Shore. This family was grilling chicken over charcoal and it was THE BEST chicken I've ever had. Does anyone know what I'm talking about?
Huli Huli chicken is great! It's usually sold as a fundraiser but on the weekends in the summer you can sometimes stumble upon some in parking lots of markets, schools or churches.
That's great - but what IS huli huli chicken and where did it come from? I got it in a parking lot up near the North Shore. Holy moly, that was the bomb. Does anyone know what's in it or how to make it?
Favorite Sushi
in Food Traditions & Culture
Posted
Sashimi's the best! Straight raw fish, baby.
For nigiri, I like:
Salmon
Yellowtail
Unagi
Mackrel
Ikura
For maki:
Salmon skin
Spicy tuna
Yellowtail w/ scallions
Salmon w/ avacado
Any tempura rolls - shrimp, Spider, etc.
And yes, free sushi is always, always, always nice.