sheetz

Wow, that sounds rich! Normally I would just sprinkle powdered sugar on it, but...now that I think about it, it's about as dense as a carrot cake, so maybe something like a cream cheese frosting might work?

Today I made Ma Po Tofu using Ms Dunlop's recipe. I tried to adhere to the recipe as closely as possible, except that I used ground pork instead of beef. (Is beef really more traditional? I always thought pork was more common.) The first thing that occurred to me while making it was, "This sure is a lot of oil!" I thought it would also be extremely hot/spicy, but it in reality it wasn't even as hot as my usual recipe. Maybe the ground chilies I used were wimpy. Tasted very good, but I think I will cut back on the oil next time.

This is classic Semi-Homemade Cooking, Chinese-style using the leftover egg whites and crab meat from the Gold Medal Crab Fried Rice from earlier. In a pot boil 1 can of creamed corn, 3 cups chicken stock, 1 tsp minced ginger, 2 Tbl Shao Hsing wine, 1 tsp sesame oil, and a little salt & pepper. Stir in 3 Tbl cornstarch mixed with 3 Tbl water and bring back to boil. Fold in 1/2 cup cooked crab meat and 2 beaten egg whites. Garnish with chopped scallions and cilantro. Corn Soup with Crab Meat

I just bought a sack of the new Gold Medal Harvest King bread flour and was wondering if anyone could tell me how this compares to other bread flours like King Arthur.

It seems like my recipe uses a bit more dark soy and sugar than most others, which may be why the color is so brilliant. Lo's original recipe used 1 cup dark soy, 3/4 cup sugar and no thin soy, but I like the taste more with the extra sugar and added thin soy. I like eating the red cooked pork along with canned sweet corn over rice. And you're right, the fat is sinfully good.

XiaoLing, that looks very delicious. What's that sort of crumb topping you used? AznSailorBoi, is there anything more comforting than beef and black bean sauce over steamed rice? Sarah, those pictures are beautiful. Is your okra dish very hot? I have a big jar of sambal in the fridge that's taking forever for me to use up--it's so spicy that I can only use a tiny bit at one time, and I'm not exactly a wimp when it comes to chiles, either.

You can make it with skinless, boneless pork shoulder. It just won't have the beautiful skin. The recipe I used is adapted from Eileen YF Lo's recipe for Red Cooked Pork. 1. Take a 4-5 lb pork shoulder, rub it all over with dark soy sauce and deep fry it in oil for several minutes to sear on all sides. Place in slow cooker. 2. In a pot heat up 4 cups water, 3/4 cup dark soy, 1/4 cup thin soy, 1/3 cup shao hsing wine, 1 cup sugar, 3 star anise, 4 scallions, 2 1-inch chunks of ginger, 2 cinnamon sticks until sugar is dissolved. Taste and adjust seasoning if desired. 3. Pour sauce over pork shoulder and cook on low setting for 8-10 hours, until falling off the bone. Turn meat occasionally for even coloring if necessary. 4. Remove pork from slow cooker and transfer remaining liquid to pot. Bring to boil and reduce until the sauce is desired concentration, adjusting seasoning if necessary. Serve sauce with pork. Notes: 1. If you are using boneless, skinless pork you can skip step 1, or else sear it on all sides in a hot skillet. 2. I think using rock sugar over white sugar is more traditional, but that's what Lo's recipe uses and what I had on hand. 3. Lo also adds powdered red rice for coloring, and I did, in fact, add a few drops of red food coloring to the liquid, but I honestly don't think it made any difference at all. 4. Leftover sauce can be saved and reused with pork, beef, chicken, or duck. Just strain the liquid, bring to boil, and store in the fridge or freezer.

Man that looks good! I'm salivating! Did you broil it in the oven at the end to get such nice browning? ← Nope, it's all from the dark soy sauce and sugar.

Yes, the recipe uses both shrimp and crab. I used pre-flaked crab in a plastic container from the supermarket. Had I extracted the meat from whole legs it would have been in bigger chunks.

Thanks a lot! I'll see if I can get my butcher to get me some trotters and skin.

The recipe for this dish is in Martin Yan's Chinatown Cooking and is from Chen Foo Ji Chinese Fried Rice Restaurant in Singapore. It supposedly took first place in a fried rice competition some years ago. Not bad, actually. Gold Medal Crab Fried Rice

And we have a winner!! Rarerolling, please share with us your method for preparing these. (A pictorial would be fabulous.) This would definitely be something I'd like to try during the upcoming winter.

On a related topic, lecithin is an emulsifier used as the active ingredient in cooking sprays. Can anyone explain why it works to prevent foods from sticking to the pan?

This red cooked pork shoulder was prepared overnight in my slow cooker.

That does seem pretty weird. Most Chinese restaurants that I've been to use baby bok choy anyway, so separating the leaves from the stalk would be pointless.

v. gautam, normally I would soak the shrimp in a salt and sugar solution for 30 min before cooking, but I didn't for this recipe because of the egg white marinade. (Egg whites are alkali.) I also like the texture more when I fry/velvetize them in a lot of oil rather than stir-frying in a tiny amount of oil. Finally, don't over cook them. Remove them from the heat before completely done, as the residual heat will finish them off. hzrt8w, no thank you with the pictorials. I don't know how you guys do them so well. When I cook it's like a 3 ring circus with so many things going on I can't possibly stop to take pics.

For the shrimp and creamy sauce: http://chinesefood.about.com/od/shrimpreci...honeyprawns.htm For the walnuts: 1. Boil 4 oz walnuts in 4 cups water for 5 min. Drain and rinse. Repeat. 2. Mix 2 T sugar with 1 T water in a saucepan and boil for 1 min. 3. Add walnuts and cook until syrup turns golden brown. Drain excess syrup from walnuts and cool. 4. Fry walnuts at 300F for 3 min, then gradually increase temperature until oil is 350F and walnuts are browned and beginning to float. 5. Toss walnuts with 1 T toasted sesame seeds while still hot. ETA: Actually, I didn't use the measurements called for in the sauce recipe. I just looked at the ingredient list and mixed something that tasted about right to me. I think it was more like 1/2 cup mayo, 1 T honey, 3 T condensed milk, and a squeeze of lemon.

Shrimp with Glazed Walnuts

Portuguese tarts are baked at a higher temperature than the Chinese ones so that's why they are browned on the top. I don't think they use a torch on them unless you're thinking of some kind of creme brulee version that I've never heard of. Peony, those tarts look beautiful. What's your recipe for the filling? With all the discussion about yau zha guay I looked into some other recipes for them and I came across this recipe that combines all the techniques I've mentioned. I've tried it once and it seems like a good compromise between the different methods and doesn't take too long to prepare. I think I made them in under an hour and a half from start to finish.

Most traditional recipes like this one use an old-fashioned leavening agent called ammonium bicarbonate, aka "baker's ammonia" or hartshorn. If you've ever noticed a faint ammonia scent emanating from freshly prepared yau zha gai that's what it's from. The problem with using ammonium bicarbonate is that you have to rest the dough for quite a long time, at least 4 hours. I was in a rush so I made a basic yeast dough using instant yeast along with some baking powder to give it extra poof. Don't know the exact amount of ingredients because I do it by feel, but it's something like 1 1/4 tsp instant yeast, 1 1/2 cup bread flour, 1/2 cup water, 1 1/2 tsp baking powder, some salt and sugar, and a tablespoon of oil. Ammonium bicarbonate will make the fried dough crisper, but the inside will be drier. OTOH, baking powder and yeast will make the outside less crisp, but the inside will be moister and the time to make them will be much faster. Oh, and I mentioned this before, if you're desperate and in a rush, you can even fry those Pilsbury pizza doughs in a can. They're not great by any means, but they still beat the stale ones you get at the supermarket.

Yes, I make my own. It's just a basic yeast dough with some baking powder for leavening. Other recipes use ammonium bicarbonate and I do that sometimes. My little Chinese grocery only carries these mass produced machine made ones from Chicago which are just awful. I'd rather fry up the Pilsbury dough in a can than buy those.

For most baking recipes it's definitely better to at least partially account for the added water in the butter. Have you ever made shortbread cookies? It's just butter sugar, and flour mixed together. Without that little bit of water in the butter no gluten would form and the cookies would not hold together.

I finally used up the turkey carcass in the freezer to make after-Thanksgiving jook, along with fried crullers (yao tiu) and thousand year old eggs.

Both batches look very nice. What's the secret to the second batch's improvement? ← I raised the baking temperature, chilled the pineapple topping, rolled it out thicker, and re-etched the pineapple pattern on the buns halfway thru the baking. I still have a few more tricks up my sleeve to further refine them, though. Baking can oftentimes seem like a scientific experiment!

Technically, since most butters are only 80% fat and 17% water, 3 oz of butter and 1.5 oz of water equals 2.4 oz of fat and 2 oz of water. In order to get the ratios to 3:2:1 you would need 4.5 oz of flour, 3.75 oz of butter, and 0.86 oz of water.