Ohba

Sorry to be overdue in thanking everyone who chipped in. I was away from the forum for a day or so. I hope to make it from one of these recipes in the next week. Thanks for the help. It's so long since I had la bai cai that I don't recall exactly what it was made with, but definitely not Cantonese bok choy. Probably napa cabbage. Although called "la", it wasn't especially hot, and was usually quite sweet.

Could anyone point me in the direction of a good recipe for La Bai Cai? What I've got in mind is the kind of thing I've eaten in restaurants in Shanghai as a common appetizer or side dish. I've never tried making it or even seen a recipe for it, or eaten it outside Shanghai, but I always imagined it would be simple to prepare.

I use two containers to keep the cycle going (3-5 weeks to fill it up, then stand the container outdoors for 2 weeks). The final product hasn't broken down fully the way compost would, so the food is often quite recognizable as similar in form to what you threw into the container. Once you dig it into the soil, however, it breaks down very fast. You can get the equipment through Rakuten. I have no idea about durability of the equipment because I am less than six months in. As a system, I'd probably prefer to compost if I had the land and some privacy from the neighbours. It's more satisfying to have an end product that looks like rich, dark soil. But not having that choice, bokashi's a good second best.

How does that work by the way (the soap spray)? It's not harmful if you're going to be eating the leaves a few days later?

Like you I'm starting out with gardening in Japan: this is my first season. And like you, I've found that you can sink quite a bit of money into it. But that's largely to be expected. Almost any new pastime involves considerable setup costs. There are certain areas where gardening becomes quite cheap though. For example, compare the cost of vegetables that you buy from the shop to the cost of a packet of seeds. If you can successfully grow a crop from seed, it's a fraction of the cost of buying them. Take rocket/ruccola for example: never seen it for less than 100 yen a bag at the shop, but a packet of seeds contains hundreds, and costs 200-300 yen. And it's ridiculously easy to grow. Tastes great too. When deciding what's worth growing and what isn't, other factors you have to think of, after the cost of seed, is efficient land use, length of time to cropping, amount of labour required, susceptibility to pests/disease, and the flow of the seasons: you can't realistically compete against farmers with greenhouses or against commercial hydroponic systems, so you'll have to make do with your shorter growing season. It would be naive to grow vegetables only to save money, although you can undoubtedly do so once you've got your garden going. There are two other very important advantages: variety and freshness. Many vegetables and herbs just can't be bettered if you have access to your own garden and eat them straight after picking. I'm thinking of something like basil for example, where I now find that the stuff that comes from the shops has quite an unpleasant almost spongy texture compared to the homegrown stuff. It's the same for so many other vegetables - tomatoes are the one many gardeners cite because shop tomatoes can often be flavourless. The issue of variety is mentioned on almost every website devoted to gardening. Think of things like tomatoes, beans, chillies etc where literally hundreds of varieties are available as seeds, but go to the supermarket and you might be choosing from 5 or 6 if you're lucky, down to only 1 type for most herbs (where as a grower, you really can enjoy having different types of basil, rosemary, thyme, etc.). I think you'll eventually find gardening really rewarding. I'm an instant-gratification kind of guy, but I've really enjoyed the slower pace enforced by growing plants. It teaches you a different way of looking at things. About the compost, I don't know what setup you've got, but if you have a reasonable sized garden, you can just make your own compost pile without the bokashi (in other words, it's free). The easiest system is an open pile, which is basically a heap of organic garbage where your main input is to keep a balance so that decomposition is controlled and you don't end up with a putrid mess. It's not very difficult. No compost pile is odour-free, but if you've got it right, it's not foul smelling either. I have little choice but to go with bokashi, because I live in a danchi, and it's just not worth the risk of aggravating the neighbours. We actually use our bin indoors, as it is designed to be used. I agree that at 300 yen a kilo, it's not especially cheap, but I'd rather be doing this than throwing all my food waste out with the trash to be carted off to the municipal incinerator. Once I started composting a couple of years back, I realized what a criminal waste that is. Anyway, it's nice not to have stinking garbage bags any more, and of course the amount of garbage we throw out is now considerably reduced. Good luck with your gardening, and I for one will enjoy seeing your photos.

Do you reckon that eating everything everywhere all the time has something to do with the national tide of obesity? ← Nope, I'd say it's more to do with eating (and drinking) crap in industrial quantities, adopting sedentary habits, and failing to accept the consequences as self-inflicted and avoidable.

Because there are many varieties of tomato, and therefore texture and flavour varies enormously. By necessity rather than preference, in Hong Kong I used to buy a commonly available type that was firm and somewhat sour. Mainly because of the texture and lack of juice, it was a waste of time eaten raw as a snack or in salads. It wasn't good for tomato sauce. But stir fried it was excellent, so it was appropriate for the local market. All tomatoes should have good flavour, but they can't be all things to all people all the time.

Not for $30. Not for $1. Peeling shrimps just isn't very difficult. "No more sharp knife." Thanks, er, Shelton.

I prefer the side you've shown (Yung Shue Wan), where most of the Lamma residents live, than the other, more commercial side of the island (Sok Kwu Wan). The restaurants over there are obviously geared quite heavily to tourists and the expat professional crowd, are more aggressive in touting for customers as you walk past, and a lot of them are decorated with giant ads for container shipping lines - not the most romantic setting for a meal. Last time I was over there, I was charged extra for the bowl of dipping sauce that was brought with the food. That's just cheap. The Yung Shue Wan side, though, has a nice variety of restaurants. The non-Chinese food is distinctly patchy, with the exception of the vegetarian restaurant, which is quite dedicated to quality. The Chinese seafood restaurants are a much safer bet. I think you can save a small amount (very small) if you go further along the main street, but I have to disagree with you: the first two, largest restaurants as you come off the ferry are perfectly fine. I actually find them to be better than the others: cleaner, and the higher turnover doesn't hurt. In particular, Sampan (the second restaurant after you come from the pier, with the red colour scheme) has been consistently good over the years. They also serve good dim sum in the earlier part of the day. I can't be bothered with lobster, crab or abalone in Hong Kong. Too expensive, and to my mind, overrated, but steamed prawns with garlic are a great order, as is the steamed fish. It's nice to see your pictures. Takes me back.......

One thing I'd say (and I'll admit that I know nothing about the actual places you named) is that I find dining in hotels a bit of a sterile experience. I'd always go for an independent restaurant. The other is that even if you narrowed your choices down, it would be a hell of a task to make a worthwhile suggestion. It IS overwhelming, even if you live here. You could pick up some ideas from Metropolis online magazine, which has its reviews archived, Tokyo Food Pages, and Tokyo Q. The emphasis is a little different in each, but it's a good place to start. P.S. Poisson Rokusaburo? These guys look ready to beat the living crap out of anyone who doesn't like seafood. http://r.gnavi.co.jp/fl/en/a058200/

In answer to Dejah's(?) question, you can get knife blocks that are made to take cleavers. Mine does: I got it in a local place in Hong Kong for around HK$100 (about 12 US). A couple of things I liked about it were that it's upright, not angled (knives are stored pointing straight down), it's reasonably solid, one end has a receptacle for other utensils like chopsticks or stirrers, and it has a cleaver space - the main reason I bought it, in fact. I couldn't tell you who the maker is, or how to get hold of one, though.

Shame. They're one (two) of the glories of Japan. My own list would be completely different from yours. I'd skip breakfast altogether most days, take no food at all in the hotel, cut the ramen, throw in a top-notch Italian or French dinner (probably in place of kaiseki), and leave at least two days unscheduled, to choose a restaurant as the mood takes me. But then we both know that each of us is right, and we also know that a week could never be enough in Tokyo, don't we?

Did I misread? No izakayas? No bars? Only a teetotaller can be excused such an omission.

I'd add to Pan's comment that Chungking Mansions isn't Harlem. So anyway, you say "My advice came from my own experience. I did not read about Chung King Mansions in a website on the Internet where anybody can modify the content. Where do you find accountability on the accuracy of the information posted? Just by an Internet online name and an IP address along with a modification date?" You're right. But all I said was that I found that information to be spot on. What I meant was it reflects my own experience of the place, which I first visited around 1986, and stayed in numerous times over the following ten years, and during the next seven years living in Hong Kong, visited whenever I wanted to eat Indian food, buy Indian ingredients, or show visitors a different side of Hong Kong. Your own information was anecdotal, lacked footnotes and bibliography, and moved on into a pickpocketing incident that took place elsewhere - NOT Chungking Mansions. Though now you've remembered that you were the victim of an attempted mugging, which at least shows (to Wikipedia standards of credibility) that you've actually been inside the place. Great as Hong Kong is for Chinese food, that too is often to be found in the most unpromising surroundings - dirt, pollution, 19th century hygiene, and yes, drugs and crime. I lived and worked in Wanchai and Western among other places, which had all of that and more.

I saw some comments today by various people on Chungking Mansions, and though they went up a long time ago, I'm a bit appalled by some of the things that were said. Especially the above. I can read between the lines. For a much more accurate picture, there's good information from Wikipedia. What it says in the sections about "Security" and "Food" are spot on. The list of businesses looks to be incomplete, though, even for A and B blocks. Chungking Mansions is interesting in its own right both for the feeling of the place and the number of restaurants - usually termed "mess clubs". I've made frequent trips to Chungking Mansions for dinner, or to buy Indian ingredients for cooking, and stayed there around ten times over the years. I've never felt remotely threatened, and I've walked around the shopping area, as well as the upper floors and staircases in all the blocks. Sure it's dirty, but if that bothers you, you can give the most of Hong Kong a wide berth - that's one city that ain't going to win any prizes for cleanliness.

Sorry to see you didn't get any replies yet. Hoping it's not too late, here are some general ideas, without mentioning much in the way of specific places. My impression of HK food is that you do okay if you try any of the restaurants of a certain size - those sort of (usuallY) red and gold dragon palaces that you can find just about anywhere - most of these also do dim sum, by the way. Central, Wanchai, Causeway Bay, Kowloon side, they're all over the place. The food is very good, the atmosphere somewhat assembly-line, the service anywhere from awful to excellent. You should definitely eat seafood in Hong Kong, with the proviso that you'd better know what you're getting and what it costs before you order it - by all means eat "seasonal price" menu items, but check the price first and don't feel that you need to eat it just because you asked about it. I'd also warn that in Hong Kong, waiters are all too keen to "guide" customers, whether towards a particular menu item, or just to refill your wine glass. Unless you know your restaurant, advice is, to put it kindly, as likely to be self-interest as anything to do with customer service, so feel free to ignore it, deflect it, or tell (rather than be told) what you want. Personally, I don't feel Hong Kong's a great place for finding hidden gems on the dining scene. Maybe I'm fussier than others, but it tends towards the formulaic. However, there are so many options that it's easy to find good food, and you're not likely to be disappointed. Just try and avoid the places that are too obviously oriented towards tourists - that's particularly a problem in Tsim Sha Tsui. For lower end food, Wellington Street's good for a wander, and there's a very famous noodle restaurant downhill on the right - very basic, but it's good. Some of the other places aren't Cantonese, but the jiaozi (dumpling) restaurants are good, simple, and cheap. The wet market nearby (Wellington St/Lyndhurst terrace area) is interesting and atmospheric, if you catch it when it's open. There's a place in Wanchai called Steam and Stew, which has a slightly different take on the Cantonese food you might be more familiar with - I've been only once, but I think it's worth seeking out. Other than that, I won't mention places, though: there are just too many, and as individuality isn't part of the equation, it's difficult to find true standouts.

Around fifteen years ago, someone introduced me to aerosol coffee. It's a kind of instant concentrate in a spray can. Squirt some into a cup, add water, and you've got a cup of coffee. Predictably, it was disgusting. Though now I come to think of it, conceptually no sillier than dried parsley or cooking spray.

Nira have a very distinctive taste - pretty good, but not at all subtle, so it would not make a good substitute for chives - at least, in some cases it could be used, but the effect would be noticeably different. Maybe the closest thing to chives would be the green part of small spring onions (scallions). Although words like "chive" and "leek" are applied to more than one type of plant, there's quite a significant difference between one and another. Japanese negi, for example, though sometimes called a leek, is nothing like the leek used in British and European cooking, being closer in taste to a spring onion. In cooking, the two are definitely not interchangeable.

If you've got space to grow them, and other herbs, it's a lot better than relying on the supermarket. They're fresher and much cheaper - it costs around the same to buy a packet of seeds (with dozens or hundreds) as for a single serving of the fresh herb from a store. I'm lucky enough to have a basic supply of herbs for 100 yen a pack at my local supermarket, but at most places it seems to be around 200 or 300 yen. If you like to use herbs frequently you can save a lot of money by growing your own. Chives take a long time to germinate, though.

Sounds reasonable. Coffee is better out of real cups, too.

Presumably you're all quite familiar by now with the "digestive" properties of gobo. You can practically set your clock by it.

Kurage. Namako.

Some simple principles: First up, no question, you will be able to get better results with tea leaves than with teabags. Second: You can make tea without a pot, but a teapot is still about the best way to make it, plus you're honouring centuries of tradition. Third: Don't be browbeaten by Brits, many of us make barely drinkable tea ourselves. Fourth: A big (or classy) name doesn't count for anything. Therefore, you can skip over Twinings, Jackson and Lipton, as well as Fauchon, Harrod's and Fortnum's. Some of these companies sell tins, not tea, if you get my drift. The teas might be okay, but they're not particularly good, and the price difference between an okay tea and a very good one is frankly not worth quibbling over. Fifth: You can usually ignore the instructions that come with the tea, in particular "one spoon per person and one for the pot". Types: here we get into questions of personal preference, but of the teas I've had that are really worth seeking out, estate Darjeelings and teas from Taiwan (and in recent years, China) should be at the top of the list. Among the Taiwan/Chinese fine teas, it's usually the oolongs that get most attention, although Chinese who know their tea won't limit themselves to that. The difficulty with Chinese fine tea is that the method and equipment requirements are a little more demanding, and the whole field's a bit more esoteric anyway. For Darjeeling, I've found nothing that comes close to the quality offered by Whittard's. They have a range of single-estate whole-leaf Darjeelings that eclipse anything in the mass produced line. My favourite of these has been from the Margaret's Hope estate, though others are excellent too. There may be other specialists who can offer tea as good, but I'd start with Whittard's. It's easy to order internationally online, and I think they have an American website as well, though whether it has the same range, I'm not sure.

I agree with you Anzu on lack of kitchen space. I'm currently struggling with extreme lack of space and lousy facilities (ie electric rings) in the place I'm in, though fortunately I'll be shot of this place in a couple of weeks. But getting an oven in my last place made things a whole lot easier, opened up a lot of new possibilities, and also meant I didn't have to ignore whole chunks of the cookbooks I brought from England. Now I wouldn't want to do without one, but I know that some kitchens/living rooms here are just too small. What I really want is a four burner, two oven setup like Mother uses, but even in HK, where they were easily available and not too pricey, I was never able to get one because the kitchens in Hong Kong apartments (in my budget range) are usually designed with Chinese families in mind - a concrete shelf on the wall just below waist height to hold that indispensable two-ring burner. There was never anywhere to put a full size oven.