sheetz

You'd get something very gooey and completely unlike chow fun. That's not to say you couldn't do it, but that's not what you're looking for.

Um, that's cake "flour" and not cake "mix," which would be truly bizarre. Anyways, I have known quite a few elderly Chinese women who swear by Swansdown cake flour in their dumplings. Few, if any, can utter so much as a word of English, but they can all spot a box of Swansdown flour from a mile away.

You might try this recipe: http://recipes.chef2chef.net/recipe-archive/21/118107.shtml It uses cake flour, which may give a texture closer to commercial ho fun than using plain rice flour, but with a slightly different taste. It also lists boric acid as an optional ingredient, but that stuff scares me.

I know some recipes for ho fun include boric acid in its list of ingredients. I think it's to firm up the texture because if you use just plain rice flour then it's very soft. If fresh noodles aren't available I use the dried ones.

Yes, pork, black mushrooms, and dried shrimp.

I think it may be that the oil was too hot the second time. These dim sum are pretty finicky and it seems like you need to have the oil at the exact temperature or else you have problems.

I had a sudden craven for taro puffs (woo gok) but didn't have any taro, so I improved using instant mashed potato flakes. The results weren't bad. I still haven't gotten these down to a science. These were the first batch I fried and they came out pretty good, but the second batch wasn't quite as nice looking. I'm not sure what I did differently the second time and will have to experiment some more to figure out what happened.

Try Ah Leung's Roast Pork and Oysters in Clay Pot. Separate the skins and fry them up to a crisp to be used as a garnish on top.

Sorry about being lazy with the photos. Here are a few dishes from the last couple of weeks: Catfish with Tofu in a sand pot. Roast pork shoulder seasoned with salt, sugar, five spice, and red fermented bean curd: Curried Chicken Stew with taro root Low Carb vegetarian spring rolls using bean curd skins for wrappers.

To be honest when I season my wok or cast iron in the oven I don't bother turning them upside down.

Stuffed tofu pockets with winter bamboo shoots in a Sichuan style sauce: Steamed taro with Chinese bacon:

Yeah, my boneless stuffed chicken was adapted from the recipe in this book. It's a really good, no holds barred, compendium of Chinese cooking with a Cantonese slant.

I can't even imagine cooking for 300! I say go to Costco and buy their mega sized bags of frozen meatballs and gallon sized containers of sweet and sour sauce. Toss in some stirfried onions, peppers, and canned pineapple and voila! sweet and sour meatballs.

It's a leavening agent called "baker's ammonia" or ammonium bicarbonate, and cooks off when the dough is heated. It's often used in old fashioned cookie recipes and is still used in some European cookies. If you've ever eaten those Danish butter cookies in the metal tins it's baker's ammonia that gives the cookies their characteristic light crispness.

Alum is actually available in the spice aisle of most major American supermarkets and is produced by the McCormick's spice company. It is *not* the same as lye water. http://www.mccormick.com/productdetail.cfm?id=6408

You're not alone! My local Chinese grocer carries unfamiliar vegetables from time to time and the names are always written in Chinese only, and I can't read enough Chinese to figure out what they are. Can anyone recommend a good reference, either a book or online, that gives pictures and names for lots of Asian vegetables.

I bought mine from wokshop.com http://www.wokshop.com/HTML/products/hard_...d_mooncake.html

Cantonese style wonton soup is most commonly eaten with noodles and very few other ingredients. The wonton filling is made similar to yours except I think you didn't add cornstarch. And the method of wrapping is different. Read Ah Leung's pictorial to see what I'm describing.

Yes, I started with raw nuts, which were an awful pain to peel. It tasted fine, though, but next time I'll use preshelled nuts.

One Chicken prepared two ways: White Cut Chicken: Chicken Braised with Chestnuts, from Land of Plenty.

I want to participate! But here's the catch: I want to use up what I have on hand without having to buy any other ingredients. What I have on hand: An 11.5 oz bag of Ghirardeli bittersweet chocolate chips 1 lb of chestnuts 4 oz of Nestle cocoa powder Typical pantry items (eggs, flour, sugar, etc.) In particular I'm interested in using up as much as I can of the first two items. Can anyone recommend a good recipe?

A couple of dishes that are a bit different from what I usually make: dry fried long beans with ground pork Shanghai vegetarian "chicken" and shallots in black bean sauce. I bought a pack of frozen soy vegetarian "chicken" a few weeks ago when I was eating mostly vegetarian and forgot about it until yesterday. I'd never cooked these before but I did find one recipe where it was sliced, fried, and then stir fried so that's what I ended up doing. It had a very weird spongy texture, and the deep frying gave it a hard crust. Next time I don't think I'll fry it beforehand and just stir fry it with the other ingredients.

I can totally understand the popularity of many convenience foods. But what I don't understand is the popularity of so-called "semi-homemade" recipes when the fully homemade versions are oftentimes no more complicated and vastly superior.

So pretty! For laziness I beat everyone--the squid I buy is frozen, cut up, and already scored.

I still have several more pounds of spareribs in the freezer so I will try that, too! Thanks for the compliment. As for pork belly, I've never made it like that before, but it seems strange to me that you would slice it up before simmering, since you'd think it would shrink a whole lot during cooking. Also, make sure you're gently simmering it and not boiling. Just those few degrees can make a difference. It's true that it really doesn't take that long, especially if you've done it before. But the main advantage to doing it yourself is you can customize your ingredients the way you want it. For example, for the puff pastry I chose to use a butter/lard blend, which you'd probably be unable to find in a frozen puff pastry dough, and certainly not at most Chinese bakeries. Yet I think the taste of it goes perfectly well with the curry filling and to me is worth the effort.