Fengyi

I just wanted to say a big thank you, Tokakris, for posting the picture of dakgalbi. It inspired me to make it today for Sunday lunch and it turned out super yummy!! A definite addition to the list of 'foods we like to eat'! This thread also inspired me to make finally some yukhoe (something which I planned to do for a long while) and also to try my hand at making pa jon (which, to my surprise was easier than I had thought)! Thanks to everyone for their great ideas and inspirational posts!

Yeah, I know what you mean. Millet can taste pretty awful. ← Erg! I do agree (and am not joking) that dog meat is much nicer than millet. My manchurian grandmother used to make me eat millet gruel for breakfast when I lived with her........errrrgggghhh! I loathed it with a passion! I would always try and push it around the bowl hoping against hope that it would somehow disappear..... But a nice dog meat chile stir-fry, I can do

Ohhhh no! I'm not thinking anything of the sort and I TOTALLY agree with you on the 'authentic sauce' taste I'm really interested in food research (last year I even helped with a conference on Food and Religion in Ancient China ... ) But, boy! I wouldn't want to eat most of the really traditional things (like for this month, according to the LiJi, the emperor is only s'posed to eat dog meat and millet (as I recall...). YUCK! Anyway, to get back to the all-important sauce terminology - I went and looked at the plastic package of sauce from Korean....it does say "Sweet Bean Paste"!!! Whoosh - it does taste very un-beany and like the Tian Mian Jiang I've had in China! Anyway, last night it got neglected in favour of the Kojujang for sauce....but I will use it again and really test the taste! Yum!

Oh yum! yum! yum! I have a jar of the salted fish in oil sitting in the cupboard...it's definitely off to the butchers for the pork, then! Thank you for posting this - I haven't eaten this for ages! Your lovely pictures brought back a flood of delicious memories (and it's only 9:45am for me!!!)!

The eternal debate on Zha Jiang Mian I actually don't like it as much when it's made in the traditional way in Beijing - especially when the sauce is served cold It just doesn't do it for me ...... I'm afraid my version of zha Jiang mian sauce is bastardized to my own tastes beyond belief**!!! I don't think there's any bean in the Korean stuff (at least not on the ingredients to read...but most of it's in Korean!). I don't even know if it's for making Korean zhajiang mian - but I love it! **I have even been known to add [shock! gasp! horror!] prawns to my sauce

Yeah- the food processor makes it a lot easier to whip up some jiaozi when you are really craving it (we can't really get frozen ones where we live)! It's invaluable for making the dough for the wrappers too! As jo-mel said, it's bringing it up to the boil and dowsing it with a cup of cold water...I'm sure there's a technical term for it somewhere, but my mum would just say 'one go.........two goes....three! and they're out!' I never eat jiaozi with the broth - just take them out with a slotted spoon. My mum always told me one should drink a bowl of the jiaozi 'water' afterwards for 'digestive purposes', but I've never done that (glue water...ick!) and have lived to tell the tale.... It's for sweetness and texture (though if you use the food processor, you kind of lose the texture...oh well...win some, lose some). Somehow, it's really quite good with the lamb - encouraging the sweetness of them both, I would guess... Glad you like the recipe! BTW- Shalmanese...beef and celery...yyyuuummmm! Haven't had that in years! Have you tried beef and water chestnut and green onion? That's got the same nice texture-y thing going. I wonder what vegetable you were using for the pork? Could it be 'green radish' (青蘿蔔)? but that's not round.... Was it like kohlrabi?

I mentioned lamb jiaozi in a previous wine thread, and thought that a lot of people might not have eaten it because it is a rather Northern style dumpling and one that I've not seen in your average restaurant.... so, in case you're interested, I made some a few days ago and tried to remember what to do....(please forgive me for my terrible recipe-style, I'm not good at this like hzrt8w!!!). Filling 500g minced lamb 2 grated carrots 1 and 1/2 bunches of spring onion (scallion) -minced 2 garlic cloves, minced about 1.5 T dark soya sauce splash of light soya sauce Good dollop of seasame oil - you want to be able to smell it! Lots and lots of pepper - I used white. sprinkle of salt If your lamb is lean, add a Tablespoon or so of vegetable oil. a couple T of stock (if you have it). mix everything together - the crucial thing here is to stir the mixture *well* and *in one direction only*. I cheat and use a food processor (for about 1 minute of processing). Stirring for about 1/2 hour produces a nice texture. The more stirring, the better the filling - it should change colour and become lighter. Wrappers mix flour (about 600g for this amount of stuffing) with cold water -only add enough to make a *stiff* dough. Maybe 300ml?!?! I do it by feel. Knead it VERY well -rest for 30 minutes. Or just buy them - but this filling works EVER so much better with the thicker home-made type. Roll wrappers (if needed), make jiaozi - this filling can also make good hezi (盒子). and boil for three "goes" (i.e. up to the boil, throw in water twice and then take out on the next boil). Eat with vinegar, soya sauce, chopped garlic and chile oil and with tremendous greed

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...

I haven't posted any tasting notes before (sorry if I do them incorrectly!), but we had a very interesting dinner where most of the wines had some degree of residual sugar and I found tasting them like this quite interesting so.....[deep breath]...here goes 1997 Oberhauser Listenberg Riesling Kabinett,, Hermann Dönnhoff Served with Prawn bisque with sorrel and Gravadlax with dill mustard sauce Lovely pale greenish-yellow colour with quite a restrained steely nose with kerosene and lemon. Flinty too. The palate was nice and crisp with low-moderate residual sugar and good balance. There was slight disagreement on the drinking window for this - I thought it would keep beautifully for quite a few more years, others argued for drinking it now... 1973 Burger Hahnenschrittchen Riesling Auslese, Mosel, Werner Müller Served with Gruyères soufflé with chives I've never had a 73 Mosel Riesling - and this was lovely!! Medium-deep gold yellow colour with a waxy, petrolly nose that seemed a bit closed at first. On the palate, it was gorgeous (if you like that old Riesling taste) with both the acidity and the sugar levels being moderated and good richness coming through with a bit of a honeyed feel. Bring on more 73s I say! 2000 Chambolle-Musigny, Domaine Bertagna Venison with Lyonnaise potatoes and cabbage with caraway A bit light to stand up to the (admittedly quite high) venison. Colour was good -and showing no signs of the maturing rim I've seen on other 2000 red burgundies. The nose again was youthful with lots of warm raspberry fruit and a slight whiff of mushroomy-ness and a nice bit of oak. The palate was rounded and warm with good acidity and a richness. Quite robust. 2003 Jackson-Triggs Proprietor’s Reserve, Vidal Ice Wine, Niagara Peninsula Served with Autumn plum crunch cake The night before, I had had a 1995 Oak-aged Vidal Icewine (from Hillebrand) which was ever so much more darker and more oxidised. This J-T one was much closer to what I think of as 'Icewine' (in my VERY limited experience!). Colour was a medium rich gold. The nose was very clean - honeyed and slightly floral (in a rich perfumed sort of way). Again, it tasted very 'clean' and bright (despite the sugar), and the acidity was nicely balanced. It went very well with the cake. 2000 Gewurztraminer SGN, Marcel Deiss Served with Rebluchon and Bleu d'Auvernge (sp?) This was just bought this summer on a trip to Alsace - and I wish we had bought more...a lot more!!! Colour was a bright gold. The nose was superb: Gewurtztraminer lychees and rose petal and spicy floralness with an undertone of honeyed sweetness. It was like essence of gewurtz in a glass! The palate was rich - with surprisingly high (yet fine) acidity for a Gewurtz. The sugar levels on this were not outrageous - in fact, on first tasting it, I thought for a second we'd opened a Vendage Tardive wine rather than an SGN. But, as such, it went beautifully with the cheeses... and the sugar didn't overwhelm the delicacy of the floralness and spice on the palate. Did I mention....I like sweet wines...

Thank you SO much for the 'flaming' rice wine tip I used it just where you showed to make a (well, my own odd) version of Hokkien Mee. I think it made a good difference...and it certainly made the kitchen so fragrent!!! Thanks!!!

Oh - must be further up/down than I thought. Actually, my mind must really be going..as the street where I recall seeing all those restaurants isn't Yuetan Park West Road...but Chaoyang Park west road. One day I will get my Beijing parks sorted in my head!!! Doh! Speaking about restaurants near parks, has anyone been to a restaurant on the north side of Tiantan Park (I know that's the right one!!) that was famous for serving Tea duck and these scrumptious 'Cat's ear noodles' (little wee noodley things just shaped like cat's ears....kind of like tiny oriechietti (sp?) )? I haven't been there for a few years and last thing I heard, the neighbour was scheduled to be demolished....

Last night I made a Gong bao shrimp that entailed about 6 six chiles (was out of my proper Sichuan chiles, so I was using the generic larger sort), which was about equal to about 20 of the Sichuan ones. They have to be fried in a lot of oil at the start with Sichuan peppercorns to flavour the oil.......[cue: coughing and choking fits] Eating it made me think - I can handle the "la" of the chiles - even in that amount (and I do chew on them...), but the "ma" of the Sichuan peppercorns really gets to me in the end. The numbing sensation gets a little much! Has anyone had the Sichuan Shuizhu bullfrog with silk gourd? I had that last time I was in China and somehow the silk gourds soak up all that oil so each mothful you get of that is an explosion of "mala" oil. I must say, I had to leave most of those to the others eating..... BTW, for Chinese readers....there is a series of descriptions that are useful for describing how one reacts to chile (as I remember them! and hoping the Chinese is readable!): 1. 辣 ? 我怕! Hot?.....I'm scared! 2. 我怕辣. I'm scared it's 'hot'. 3. 我不怕辣..... I'm not scared it's 'hot'. 4. 辣 , 我不怕! Hot?!?!? I'm not scared! 5. 我怕不辣 I'm scared it's not hot! 6. 不辣?!?! 我怕!! Not hot?!?!? I'm scared!!! I know some people who exist in state number 6!!!

Jingshan park is the one which has the big hill overlooking the Forbidden City. It's separated from the FC by the moat and a rather large road. The hill was made from all the dirt dug up to make the moat - it's a pretty big hill!! Ahh! I know the little park, I think! It's a sort of 'strip park' right next to the road, isn't it? In that case, Bei Heyan road is the one that runs parallel to Wangfujing and Bei Chizi Lu and it is slap bang between them.... In that case, Jingshan would be about 10 mins walk from Bei Heyan road.

The large amount of grain used in traditional Chinese spirit production is one of the reasons that the Chinese government is offically 'pushing' grape wine as the drink of choice at banquets. Besides the reduction in taxes placed on imported wine (which was because of the terms of the WTO agreement) and encouraging the consumption of Chinese grape wine, the government now only serves grape-derived wine at official state banquets to 'set an example'. Since grapes can grow where grain cannot, they are trying hard to decrease the amount of grain which is diverted to make Chinese-style liquors (and also beer ), thus increasing the potential for grain self-sufficiency. I was at Zind Humbrecht earlier this year and while tasting various wines, I kept on thinking to myself...hmmm this would definitely go with XXXX, where XXXX was nearly always a Chinese dish! I wish we could have tasted some of their older vintages like that 1991 Gewurtz...but I'm not complaining -we bought some back to age (well, we could only afford two bottles....)! I look forward to cooking up some dishes to go with them in the future.... And I'm really happy that someone affirms an affinity between Northern Rhone wines and Chinese food (pls excuse Homer-like drooling....lamb jiaozi and Cornas....yum) As for the Icewine - what a great way to end a meal...but then again, the Okangan Valley rules! We just finished off a Cedar Creek Platinum Reserve Pinot Noir with some Honey-Garlic pork, gailan and rice - it was Very Good. And make mine another vote for Champagne - particularly demisecs that are on the lighter side of the dosage. Actually (on a Malay note), the other day we opened some Pol Roger Rich to go with some Nonya food - and it was very, very pleasant!!

The name is a bit strange to me (but, although reasonable fluent, I am not a native speaker)....phonetically it's Beijing Tianwai Tian Can (pronounce Tsan) Yin Youxian Gongsi. Which is roughly Beijing "Heaven(ly) beyond the Heavens" Food and Drink Limited Company. The Limited Company bit is kind of strange....and the reference to food as "can" would indicate (at least to me) that the food isn't particularly high-class stuff, more 'family -style'. It's a word for food used in such binomes as 'cafeteria' (Canting) - there are fancier words in Madarin for food The addresses are (in Western style, i.e. giving street number first): No. 141A North Riverside (Bei Heyan) Boulevard (i.e. Dajie Large street), Dong Cheng District and No. 1 (building) West road, Yuetan (Altar of the Moon Park) -that's in the XiCheng distrinct (other side of Tiananmen from Wangfujing) The first address must have been somewhere near the Jingshan park? I know there's a few 'North RiverXXX' streets around there. Speaking of which, in the same area-ish (bei chizi lu=North Pool Road)is the absolutely stellar Courtyard Restaurant. Did you go there? I love it! Last time I was there, I had the most wonderful lemongrass-soy Creme Brulee and a fantastic beef Tartar with Red curry flavourings (yes, I know they sound dubious and scarily fusion-ish, but they were heart-stoppingly good!).

Did you go to the Dong Cheng branch or the Yuetan one? Judging by the tick, I would guess the Dong Cheng one. I think I've passed the Yuetan one this summer - I was also trying to find a restaurant (a Brazillian one, this time!) and it amazed me the number of huge restuarants on the Yuetan west road! It looked really happening! I wouldn't be surprised if some of those restaurants were good, since the competition seems so high! As for seafood, we had some excellent sushi this visit - the seafood has really improved over the years. I lived in Beijng in the 90s and it was much harder to find good stuff then. Now, it seems that good restaurants are flourishing everywhere, with lots of choices to boot! Mind you, I did find the ole Quanjude nearly the same as ever (this time I was brought to the Sick Duck branch by my relatives). However, there *are* more smilies to be seen and my great-aunty managed to bag the roast duck carcass to take home! I don't know whether it was by dint of her force of personality...or the niceness of the waitress, but that was a point scored!

If you personally don't much like or approve of any such combination, then I can see why you wouldn't drink wine with Chinese food. Your choice is perfectly fine for your tastes, opinions and needs. However, I myself find drinking wine with Chinese food pleasurable, inspiring, interesting, a source of great discussion and conversation, a way of combining two of my most-liked hobbies, a platform for finding out more about food and wine pairing in generally....and not to forget...delicious! Sorry, I do not mean to be confrontational about it.... Of course, each to his or her own.... [but I must say, I do admire Tepee's willingness to give it a go!]

I offer my apoloiges in advance if I upset anyone....but I really do think that quite a few wines go well with various kinds of Chinese food. Some wines go extraordinarily well, I've found. I drink (and taste) quite a bit of wine (I am giving two wine tastings this sunday, in fact and regularly attend one or two a week) and I also eat a lot of chinese food, particularly Beijing and Sichuan cai. In the last few years, where I've really "got into" wine, it has been a pleasure and a joy to experiment with food and wine combination. Firstly, ignore the rules...the best pairing is the one YOU like Play around with wines, get a group of friends together to bring all sorts of wine over and try them with every sort of dish. At least bianually for the last few years, I've done this - inviting a group of friends who are into wine to bring a 'blind' bottle each (or two!). We first blind-taste the wines, then I serve a multi-course, multi-regional banquet and we try all the wines with each course. Rather good fun! And it has thrown up soem real surprising stuff - like the time we found an unoaked South Australian Cote-Rotie make-alike (i.e. Shiraz-Viognier) went really well with bang-bang chicken (made proper-Sichuan style..i.e. no bl***y peanuts!). If you're interested in pairings, you may want to read on (warning: gets a bit wine-geeky!): generally, we liked German Kabinett Rieslings with a lot of the Cantonese seafood dishes. The Ausleses and Spatleses went a bit better with spicier food, generally. Oaked Chardonnay is VERY difficult to match with any dish..... Alsatian Gewurtztraminer was surprisingly difficult to match as well, although Grand Cru ones are more succesful (we actually served a BC Okanagon Gewurtz at our Chinese wedding banquet which went well, but deliberately chose a more acidic, less fat one). Alsatian Pinot Gris is lovely with quite a range of dishes that are predominately lighter in feel - a nice well-made one goes with the cold PinPanr at the start. Italian whites (particularly Verdicchio) can cope with steamed fish, but generally can get overwhelmed if they are over-cropped, watery examples, like badly made soave... new Zealand Sauvignon Blancs are also surprisingly hard at times as the aromatics tend to "fight". Better paired with white-cooked dishes. Australian rieslings can be surprisingly refreshing with such things as fried yi-mian. if I think of more whites, I will post.... Reds can go splendidly, particularly Rhone reds. Somehow, their own pepper and spice notes along with the hot, but restrained fruit nature of them goes well with many stronger sichuan dishes (try it with a not-so-hot mapo doufu!) and very nicely with Dongbei stews. It is absolutely gorgeous with lamb and carrot jiaozi, and with beef. Pork and baicai jiaozi are better served with a red like pinot noir or an un-carbonically macerated Gamay (think Swiss-style). Generally, we've found claret to be unsuccessful (but white Graves and Entre deux mers can work!), both left and right bank. Burgundy is good with such dishes as mentioned above. New World Pinot Noir, particularly NZ, also is incredibly flexible and works well. I think the lower tannin, greater acidity and lower alcohol of Pinot Noir can work well, and the New World examples often have a nice burst of red-berry fruit which seems to complement the savouriness of particularly red-cooked dishes. Traditional-style Rioja is also good, though Crianza and Reserva seem to work better with a wider range of dishes than Gran Reserva. As for big New World blockbusters, the main thing to really watch for seems to be alcohol content. When it gets too high, it is terrible for any spicey dishes. Ditto with high tannic monsters...somehow the tannins really fight any spice. Silkier examples though (like Shiraz-Viognier) are good with such things as Dongpo pork - but there should be enough acidity to cut the fat. Last week, a suprrisingly good combo was a Syrah-carignan blend from the Languedoc with Hui Guo Rou! Anyway, sorry for blathering on and on - pairing wine with Chinese food is one of my favourite recreational activities and it happens almost on a daily basis!!! Just my two cents........

I don't have the Bouchon but do have the FL, which has become a standard source for me when cooking 'for guests'. I've never whipped up something from the FL for an everyday dinner, but for those occasions when you want to do something exciting, I've always found it works. One of the most valuable techniques I've learnt from the FL book (which I don't think anyone's discussed yet) is the way to 1/2 cook risotto the day before so that you can produce a risotto on the day itself without keeping everyone waiting for 30 minutes. That's been invaluable (even though I find the actually recipe a bit too rich and do cut down on the amount of butter and cream added at the end). Since it's a basic risotto recipe, it's a great blank canvas for adding to. I also like TFL for inspiration - like using the cucumber-jelly with other seafood and things like smoked salmon. It's a great source for bits and bobs of information to 'lift' one's cooking.

Thank you for posting your list!! It sounds delightful! Here's wishing you many hours of pleasurable drinking! [Mission Hill S.L.C. Sauvignon Blanc - Semillon (if my memory serves me right..) was the wine that Ingo made my husband and I indentify by blind-tasting when we visited. It was really lovely]

We tried to do something similar ... if you notice we really only went a little crazy at the beginning of the trip. Most times it was 2 wineries a day. I find that even if you're spitting tasting a lot of wine can be fatiguing, and wines start to taste the same. Yes, I can see that - we went to Alsace this summer and I found it terribly exhuasting just doing two. Each winery showed about 16-20 different wines for each tasting and my palate just started to collaspe under the assault! It was a terrible shame in some circumstances....I recall being at Zind-Humbrecht coming to the end of the tasting and just wanting to weep with palate fatigue after 15+ of their very rich wines!! I knew the wines were very good, but I was soooooooo tired No - we didn't see that!! What a pity as I love Madeira and that oxidized tanginess! I loved your pictures of Mission Hill. It's very stunning, isn't it? We have a couple of bottles of the Oculus sitting in the cellar waiting....... And may I add my request, please, for a list of what you bought? I love vicarious wine-buying!

Thanks for posting the lovely pictures - my husband and I went on our honeymoon to the Okanagan last year and they bring back lots of good memories. We decided to 'take it easy' and only booked two wine-tasting appointments each day so didn't make it to all those you visited, but we found such a warm welcome and atmosphere at the ones we did visit! With regard to the last day, was the Cedar Creek restaurant not open? We had quite a nice lunch there with an interesting accompanying flight of their wines. But, I must admit that Burrowing Owl's restaurant was by far the best (we went there twice), particularly in terms of service. Our starters took quite a while to come out, and so we got two profuse apologies and offers of free wine (from the 'library' wines) and free desserts. Of course, being quite English, my husband thought that they had all run completely mad....I just said 'that's called nice service -we don't have that in England

I agree with you - it's very interesting...what came first - the bigger northern build or the more weight-packing northern diet? The consumption of lamb, yoghurt, wheat....surely they must have had an effect? It provides such different nutrients from fish rice and non-diary diets....But then again, just maybe being bigger was predicated by the climate - cold Hebei winters require big people....or perhaps a far greater consumption of fatty foods. Roll on the lamb's tail hotpot! Maybe it's just all that cabbage (baicai).........

With regard to the fat content and quantity of restaurant vs. home cooking, I once had a very interesting comment from a friend of mine from Hubei. She wanted to see how I made my Mapo Doufu becuase she really loved how I made it, so she came into the kitchen while I was cooking for my guests.... Her main comment on seeing me cook was " wow! you cook like a restaurant cook would do...SO much oil used!" She said that in her family, they would never have done things like seal the meat by 'passing' it through oil like I was taught to. There just wasn't the money to buy that much oil to use in such a fashion. The thing is...I only cook like that for guests, not for ordinary everyday food. So maybe I slip into 'restaurant cooking' when I get an audience...

How about the "romance" of carrying a newly-released bottle of 1998 Pol Roger (Blanc de) Chardonnay from France to the UK in anticipation of our first wedding anniversary.....and opening it on that said day only to find it horrendously corked? So we blew most of our anniversary wine budget on a wine that couldn't even be drunk......gosh, isn't cork just *fabulous*!!?!?! We settled for some White Foil but it WASN'T the same