sheetz

Did I hear curry? As promised, my curry turnovers, filled with ground turkey, onions, and S&B curry sauce. The pastry was made following this method using 9 oz AP flour, 3 oz cake flour, 8 oz butter, and 4 oz lard. Inside: I also made steamed spareribs based on Ah Leung's recipe for steamed spareribs with plum sauce. Instead of plum sauce I used a few spoons of sweet mango chutney. It tasted very good!

Another problem is that if you don't look Asian the server will not be expecting you to be speaking Chinese and probably won't recognize what you're trying to say even if you could say it properly. You'd be better off printing off Chinese characters on a piece of paper and showing it to them. But then again, their job is to push their wares, so they will tell you it's hot even if it isn't.

Forget about learning any Chinese (It's impossible to do without learning tones.) and watch for the carts as they come out of the kitchen. When you see something you like race over to the cart and grab it while it's hot.

I like to use a blend of cake flour and AP. Or, for those who have access to it, a Southern style all purpose flour like White Lily or Martha White works fantastic. <sigh>My tiny Chinese grocer doesn't carry the bao mixes, so that's not even an option for me.

Middle Eastern spring rolls! They would go great with the falafel I made yesterday. Yum! I actually prefer steamed chicken bao over steamed char siu bao. I like my char siu bao baked.

Mmmm... I could live off of dumplings and pastries. I've been meaning to make some curry turnovers using homemade puff pastry, but haven't gotten around to it for a variety of reasons. Maybe I'll make them in honor of Pi Day. Meanwhile, today I started incorporating more meat back into my diet after going mostly meat-free for the last couple of weeks, although I'm still eating brown calrose rice instead of regular white rice. Beef with Chinese Broccoli

Well if you HAD to have it faster you could always use a pressure cooker.

This had occurred to me as well. It's been awhile since I saw them bare and unseasoned, but I think my problematic cast iron skillet is quite a bit smoother than my good one, so perhaps the smoother pans are more difficult to season properly?

Cruellers cut into rings so they can get globs of jook inside; diced pei dan; slivers of preserved chili radish; and cilantro! Yep, yep, yep, and yep. I also like slivered ginger. Growing up we would also place raw fish slices at the bottom of the bowl to be cooked by the boiling jook poured on top. Never heard that one before!

Looks delicious, Bruce. Reminds me that I have bunch of shallots that need using up. A couple more veggie dishes from Land of Plenty: Dry Fried Eggplant Homestyle Bean Curd I'm surprised I've lasted this long on my veggie kick, but my system seems to have been cleansed from all the CNY overindulgences so I think I can start incorporating a little more meat back into my diet.

I've had turnip cake cubed and stir fried with onions and bean sprouts in a restaurant before. It was the type of turnip cake that you typically get in a dim sum restaurant with not too much of the filling ingredients so there weren't too many competing flavors.

I wonder if it's possible to have a defective cast iron pan. My good skillet has been building its seasoning for years and has developed a nice mirror finish. My bad skillet is unusable and just sits in my oven for thermal mass.

I have the same problem as nduran, and it isn't that I don't know how to season cast iron--I have another skillet that is beautifully seasoned. It's this particular skillet that I have that just doesn't seem to hold the seasoninng for some reason. It starts off ok, then after awhile it starts to crack and flake.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that you can fry up strips of Pilsbury canned bread dough if you don't have any yao zha guai.

I understand eating savory oatmeal is common in some other cultures. I use quick cooking oats rather than regular oats because the resulting texture is closer to that of rice. Regular oatmeal has a completely different texture.

Both. I quickly blanched them ahead of time, then lightly stir fried them just before serving.

There are actually packets of instant jook that you can buy, but those are gross, imo. A while back I was in search of a more healthful alternative to the traditional white rice jook and here is what I came up with: Mix 1 part quick cooking oats with 3 parts broth in a microwave safe bowl. Microwave for approx 3 minutes on high until thick and creamy. If you add things like slivered ginger, chopped scallions, preserved egg, etc. it's actually not bad at all. Seriously.

Dejah's ribs look soooo good! But I'm still sticking to my mostly meatless meals. Here are two classic Chinese veggie dishes: Lor Horn Jai Chinese broccoli with oyster sauce

Did you do a lot of braising in it? That tends to eat through the layer of seasoning, especially if the food is acidic. I think carbon steel is best for frying and stir frying but not for things like braising or steaming.

That's pretty amazing. How do people feel about eating foods older than they are?

Thank you! I'll try to remember that. Meanwhile, to continue on with my string of vegetable dishes, tonight I made an interesting recipe by Eileen YF Lo which consisted of tofu stir fried with red fermented bean curd, black mushrooms, and bell peppers.

Hmm... I'll have to assume that's a typo, since 2 oz is the same as 1/4 cup, and I find it hard to believe that adding 1 tablespoon of salt to 1/4 cup of *anything* would taste good.

A bit OT, but what's the basic difference between fu yue and nam yue? I'm more familiar with fu yue but my mom never really used nam yue much.

Thanks, I wasn't sure because of dialectal differences but figured that's what it was. I don't have any Chinese butchers near me, but I do have a good American butcher who takes special orders. Maybe if I can figure out how to describe what I want he can get some for me.

Beautiful, Xiaoling! What's niu lan? After pigging out (pun intended) on so many rich foods for the last couple of weeks, I'm determined to eat more veggies and less meat and starch for a little while. I normally would just make a pot of veggie chili, but this time I decided to try some Chinese vegetable recipes that I'd never attempted before. This was a bowl of soy noodles in broth. I've actually never had soy noodles before, and I must admit I wasn't all that impressed. Perhaps this wasn't the best way to prepare them. Anyone have any good recipes using soy noodles? Here was an attempt at making vegetarian "duck," which really didn't look or taste anything like duck at all. It's called that because the bean curd skin wrappers are pan fried until crisp like roasted duck skin. The filling consisted of mushrooms, bamboo shoots, and carrots. The skins were pretty bland tasting, but they were not half bad with some worcestershire sauce. Kinda like a low carb vegetarian spring roll. This dish was inspired by a dish I saw on Ah Leung's CNY blog. It's stir fried pea shoots with dried scallops topped with fried shallots.