Jason Perlow

That brings up a whole nuther factor-- your dining companion ordered chicken, do you feel compelled to order beef/lamb/pork/other? Well, when I'm out with rachel, this usually causes 10 minutes of negotiation while we figure out what dishes we are going to order and share. Frankly I think its easier to negotiate with North Korea over nuclear arms.

Well, if its an ethnic type restaurant where the food can be shared, we usually just order everything we want and take the extra home for lunch the next day.

We've had some interesting Soy Sauce threads on the site before. http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?act=ST...ST&f=19&t=22120 http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?act=ST...T&f=19&t=17775& http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?act=ST...T&f=71&t=18720& Basically with soy sauce, the first ingredient should be soy beans, followed by wheat, and then water, and you should avoid ones with alcohol and salt as an ingredient. The more expensive organic soy sauces that are whole bean should be used as a condiment or dipping sauce only. The best advice is that you should buy a few soy sauces that are of good quality from different manufacturers and test them out, to find the one you like best. The bottom line is that you can make a very good home style fried rice, but its basically impossible to duplicate chinese restaurant cooking conditions in the home, even with a semi-pro range. Its all in the wok burner and in the restaurant-quality roast pork.

First of all are we talking about the small white arepas or the larger yellow, sweet corn arepas, or "arepa dulce". I LOVE arepa dulce, especially griddled. The white hockey puck ones with no flavor at all suck. Theres a colombian luncheonette near us that makes the sweet ones, those are fantastic. The Outlaw Cook has a few things to say about them: http://www.outlawcook.com/diary/Page8018.html http://www.outlawcook.com/diary/Page8023.html

Thats very Martha Stewart of you, Bruce.

Well, a field of sugarcane that you can set on fire would be a good start.

Well, clearly Grimes is constipated. He needs a life-size Wine Clip clamped to his neck to re-align his sense of humor. I read that statement as "I am a miserable SOB, so therefore you can't have fun either."

Yeah, unfortunately I didn't make it.

I like Tanqueray as well. I also like Hendricks, which is cucumber flavored. Makes a cool martini.

It not just pours cold but the viscosity of the liquid changes at a lower tempature. This is for both gin and vodka, and ideal for doing shots.

Aloo Paratha. Onion Kulcha.

Oh man. Difficult question. There are so many. In no particular order: 1) Any vietnamese noodle soup, particulary Pho, Hu Tieu and Bun Bo Hue. 2) Chinese velvet chicken and corn soup. 3) A really hot and spicy chinese Hot and Sour Soup. 4) Thom Kha and Thom Yum anything. 5) Pasta Fagiole and Minestrone. 6) Two words: Matzo Ball. 7) Wonton Soup, particularly the "subgum" kind with all kinds of good stuff floating in it and fried wontons. 8) Malaysian claypot noodle soup. 9) Soupe Le Oignon Gratinee. 10) Kreplach, the Jewish Wonton Soup. 11) Clam chowder, red or white. 12) Spanish garlic soup. 13) Posole. 14) Navy Bean or any bean or lentil soup 15) Split pea made with smokey ham hocks. 16) Cream of mushroom made with good wild mushrooms. 17) Lobster Bisque. 18) Gazpatcho 19) Japanese rice potage, or Zousui. 20) Ramen. RAMEN! Any kind of ramen.

Its literally using a Chan to stir fry the food. A Chan is a metal chinese spatula. Kind of like a flat shovel shaped thing. The chan is the spatula-like object next to the wok in this picture. It has a curved front so that it slides over the concave surface of the wok when you are stir frying. The sides of the chan have a lip to catch the food, so its more shovel-like than a regular spatula is. The one in the picture is a fancy one, I use a regular steel chan that came with our wok set that we bought in chinatown.

One of my favorites is Usquaebach: http://www.usquaebach.com/ Don't overlook their blended stuff either.

Amazingly, 100,000 is like the minimum acceptable BTU/hr rating for a commercial wok burner. The baseline seems more often to be 125,000 and the local place I used to go (before it lost its lease) had a water-cooled unit from Imperial Range that had those 32-tip jet burners at 160,000. Downtown at the restaurant supply places I've seen wok burners that are in the 200,000 category and I've heard tell of these new-fangled burners that are built on a concrete foundation with turbine-driven air intakes tunnels that crank well in excess of that. I assumed it was at least 100,000, I didn't ask. My bad. There were big ass flames shooting out of it and up the sides of the wok and I saw the guy almost get singed when they went like 2 feet into the air. He has 4 wok burner stations jammed into that takeout kitchen.

Yeah, you could have used it as a pan sauce for some roasted pork loin or something.

Oh yeah, they have places that do that. They're called "Singapore"

Savory or pastry/dessert?

For those of you having difficulty getting ahold of thai ingredients, check these guys out: http://www.importfood.com Their prices look decent and in particular, they offer a "Fresh Thai Produce" care package for $40 that contains: http://importfood.com/freshthaiproduce.html They also offer the Thai mortar and pestle needed for the curry recipe in this course, in 3 different sizes. The least inexpensive one is $20. http://importfood.com/thaicookware.html

I bet that powder has a shitload of MSG in it.

Yeah, crap dark soy from China is probably what it is.

Well, you would think that, but apparently not. Tonight I went to my local chinese take out place in Tenafly, Tea Garden. Unfortunately I came back with more questions than answers. Quincy, the proprietor of Tea Garden, was kind enough to let me watch the cook prepare me an order of pork fried rice and General Tso Chicken. Quincy and the rest of the staff are all from Taiwan, and for the most part Tea Garden serves a Korean, Chinese and Jewish upper middle class clientele. Most of the dishes are Sichuanese or Taiwanese and they make their own noodles. For a takeout joint, its very upscale. Anyways, into a firey hot wok with the burner going at full blast (they have a 100,000 BTU burner) they throw in chopped whole scallions and beansprouts and chan that up for a few seconds with a cooking oil blend. "this oil does not have strong taste. Some places use pure peanut oil, we don't like, goes rancid fast, flavor too strong". Then he throws in the chopped diced roasted pork, chans that for a few seconds, and then throws in the rice. Its pre-cooked old rice, which is from the batch of the day before. "Must use this kind or it will be too sticky gummy" the chef tells me. Then he throws in a dash of soy sauce. "We use Kikkoman. Not cheap. 32 bucks a case in gallon container. Many chinese takeout use crap dark soy from China. Too many chemicals. Don't like." He then adds "We do Taiwan style. Cantonese people use too much soy sauce." He then finishes off the dish with a whole beaten egg which coalesces into an omlette in about a half a second at the bottom of the wok, which he then tosses with the rest of the rice to chop it up a bit. He adds some cooked peas, chans that up for a few more seconds, and then the dish is then plated. The end product produces a rice with only a slight soy color to it. Note that no MSG was used. The whole procedure I may add takes about 60 seconds in real time. At home, you're not gonna get the same results because we don't have 100,000 BTU wok burners. So that coupled with the fact that you won't have restaurant style roast pork (Char Siu in cantonese, and its no menial feat to make) in your rice probably attributes to that flavor that is missing in home style fried rice. So basically what I learned is depending on the quality and ethnicity of the Chinese joint you are getting your fried rice from, the technique and ingredients are going to differ. I may add that Tea Garden makes a really good fried rice, but its the "expensive chinese restaurant" variety which I guess is Taiwan-style. I think we should attempt to do the same thing as I just did, but with a reputable Cantonese-American place. Last week I had the fried rice at King Yum in Flushing, Queens, which is the oldest operating Chinese restaurant in NYC (its now celebrating its 50th anniversary). They make the dark soy sauce kind there, and I must say it is a kick-ass example, as is all their food. This sounds like a job for Eddie Schoenfeld.

I dunno, is there really much MSG in soy sauce? The kind we use at home is the Japanese-made Kikkoman general purpose stuff... should we be using a Chinese type? I've seen them in asian food stores but they seem to be fairly low quality. Or is that the flavor we are looking for? I realize the "umami" flavor comes from soybeans, but don't you really need to concentrate it via some sort of chemical process to get pure MSG?

Lots and lots of soy sauce. Peanut oil. A really hot wok. And MSG Oyster sauce has a lot of MSG in it... I've never tried it, but that can be the flavor and color we are looking for. Theres also TWO or three distinct kinds of Chinese Restaurant fried rice. There's the retro kind from the 60's, with lots of egg and is a really dark soy color. That one is my favorite. Then you have the modern (bad) kind which is this yellowish kind of fried rice, which has like an artificial coloring to it. Then you have the expensive chinese restaurant fried rice which is young chow style with no or little soy added at all. Then you got the vietnamese and thai restaurant fried rices, which use fish sauce and some soy, plus stuff like pineapple and cilantro to add extra flavor.

I put fish sauce in the fried rice too when I make it for us.