Seitch

Does anyone have a recipe for suan tsai? I also enjoy it with my niu rou mian.

Next time you go to SF, be sure to try the sausages from Mow Li. It's on Commercial, right off of Grant, near the Eastern bakery. Commercial is a tiny street so you can't miss it.

Yeah, I think it's a good idea to really soak the sand pot for a few hours before using. I soaked my last one for about 20 min before use and it cracked. I've been thinking of getting a clay one like the one in the pics. I'm sure it'll be more durable than the sand pot.

Fresca has non caloric sweetening? I only remember it from my childhood in the 70's but Fresca as I remembered it wasn't sweet at all. It was more like lemony flavored carbonated water. Of course the last Fresca I had was back in the early late 70's or early 80's.

Hi Seitch: Nope, Tian Mian Jiang is made from fermented wheat flour use mostly in the northern dishs. Hoi Sin Sauce is made from fermented soy bean and with flour added as thickener found mostly in Cantonese style cooking. Tian Mian Jiang use to be hard to get in the US, so many restaurants use Hoi Sin Sauce instead. ← Thanks for the clarification. My great uncle's family made these kinds of sauces when they were in China. I guess I got confused because he'd sort of ramble on about the sauces they made and in my hazy memory I made the connection of Tian Mian Jiang with Hoisin sauce. I did know that TMJ is fermented wheat flour but didn't know Hoisin is fermented from soybeans. Wish I'd listened more carefully to great uncle.

I so agree with you on the confusing nature of Douban Jiang (豆瓣酱). I'm fed up of buying ones from Taiwan or other places that don't taste right at all!! And they make my Sichuan cooking taste funny.... But I've also discovered the same with Sweet Flour paste ( Tianmian Jiang 甜麵醬 -i think). There's one from Taiwan (which was readily available - and let's face it, it's not the most easily obtainable 'jiang' around where I live) that, in recent years, has been moving more and more to practically a hoisin-like texture and flavour that it made any Zha Jiang Mian (炸獎麵) sauce taste really strange.... however, I have recently found the answer to this terrible problem...for all my Dongbei cooking with Tian Mian Jiang......I buy Korean!! Honestly, there's this killer TianMian Jiang which is Korean (I can't read the label, but it comes in a box with a cartoon chef on the front - the box is brown), and it is Tian Mian Jiang on steroids, I swear! It's really much more concentrated than any Chinese one I've come across, but in the right quanitites *does* make a lovely Jing jiang rou si, Zha jiang mian, etc... ←

Hi Touaregsand, Would you happend to have recipes for homemade kochujang, dwenjang and kanjang? Thanks. -S

Belated Happy Birthday, Ben!

Yeah, my grandma sometimes adds that. She tends to cube up leftover gan sui joong and dries them. When she makes red bean soup she'll add a handful.

Great description Ben. Brought back good memories of when I visited the family villages when I was a kid.

Mmm, I'm with you Ben, mui herng is my favorite. But that's not to say I'd turn down the drier, chewier kinds of salted fish either. For those tiny dried white fishes we steam them in a bowl, add hot oil and soy sauce after steaming and eat with rice.

How about rose water? I find the adzuki beans are smaller and took longer to cook, even after soaking. I made red bean soup once with adzuki and it's just not the same. ← Yep, I agree...must use the small red beans and not adzuki for red bean soup. I think the flavor is better.

I have a feeling that you were thinking of the dried black mushrooms (shittake mushrooms), which are used often in soup and stir-fried dishes. The mushroom in question from the original post was "straw mushrooms". Here are some images from Google: http://images.google.com/images?q=straw+mushroom&hl=en Is this really what you have in mind and you have seen them in dried form, sold in Chinese grocery markets? ← Dried straw mushrooms are sold widely in markets in all through China. Here my mom buys them at the grocery shops in Chinatown. I've seen them in the dried form personally. Haven't seen them in stores in the US personally though. If you're in SoCal, TS Emporium in Rowlad Heights would most probably surely carry them. TS sells all sorts of dried food items.

I have a feeling that you were thinking of the dried black mushrooms (shittake mushrooms), which are used often in soup and stir-fried dishes. The mushroom in question from the original post was "straw mushrooms". Here are some images from Google: http://images.google.com/images?q=straw+mushroom&hl=en Is this really what you have in mind and you have seen them in dried form, sold in Chinese grocery markets? ← Nope, no way. Here's a pic of dried straw mushrooms. http://www.foodno1.com/efoodno1/menu/efood.../image/a041.jpg

Where do you get dried straw mushrooms? I have never seen it in dried form. ← I think you buy them at the grocery stores in Chinatown. I'll ask my mom and let you know.

Interesting, I've never encountered fresh straw mushrooms. However for purposes of making soup, I prefer the dried straw mushrooms over the canned ones. They have a really intense, earthy taste.

I thought it was the part where the mother's milk came out of (very specifically) . Looks like... Dejah, next time you're in Winnipeg, if you haven't already had the bubble tea at Asia City (Sargent and Young), you really should! But only get one of the fresh fruit varieties. The young coconut is almost like a dessert. I used to get either mango or lychee, but now I find them too sweet. They even have avocado, durian, pandan...all those interesting flavours! ← You're absolutely correct. The dispenser, not the drink.

The only brand of dried salted blackbeans I've ever seen is the one in a yellow cardboard cylindrical can. I'm not sure what brand it is but it's commonly available. It's so easy to make your own blackbean sauce that I don't think it's worthwhile to buy the canned ones.

Soak them in water a bit, rub them with your fingers to remove the outer skin. This reduces the mildly astringent taste of the skins. It's not important to get every one just some.

Hmm..sorry, never heard of yellow or black tofu. Maybe they used different beans than the regular soybean tofu or maybe they add a flavoring like black sesame? But this is just a guess on my part.

Ben, Gan sui is only used when you make the "sweet joong"...the ones with dow sah inside, and you have to dip in sugar before eating. I don't make these as I don't really care for them. Po-Po always make about 6 for "bai sun" on the festival date: the fifth day of the fifth month on the lunar calendar. ← Does anyone actually prefer gan sui joong over the regular ones? Most people I know barely tolerate them if that. ← I like the gan sui ones for a change of pace after having had the salty sticky rice ones and the salty long grain rice ones. Can't say I have a preference for them though.

You should probably try to use silken tofu but be careful and don't stir it up too much after adding the cubed tofu to the pan. Otherwise you'll end up with a plate of mush.

Whether you used the red or green bag is essential information to know. One is glutinous rice four and the other is non glutinous.

From the info online: The green mango is kind of sour-sweet and is somewhat crunchy. It seems like the mango is harvested when it is not completely ripe. The green mango is really popular in Taiwan. The most popular type of mango to be made into green mango is the 紫檨/土芒果(indigenous mango) . It is introduced by the Dutch from SE Asia so I would assume there must be plenty of green mango in SE Asia too. Sorry, I can't find info in English on the mango. I used to eat a large mango (double the size of the apple mango we see in Canada) that is green. Although it is green, but the flavour is very clean and sweet. I miss the huge variety of mango that I get in Asia and the best mango I tasted in this couple year is the one from India. ← Is that mango related to the Keitt mango? It sounds interesting. I'll try it if I ever get out to Hawaii. http://starbulletin.com/2004/09/07/features/story1.html

I've had olive nuts before. I'm pretty sure they're not from the standard Mediterranean olives and they're also probably not from the football shaped Chinese olives. They are sorta long and narrow in shape like an almond but not as big around and the texture is unique. Its as if you took an almond and cut little slits into it so that when eaten it would be crunchy but not hard. I wish I could help you find some but I've never seen them for sale any where. I had them in a dish in Canton years ago. Good luck though.