Kent Wang

How do you use them? Only for dipping or also cooking?

That's unfortunate. Yet you can find at least 10 Chinese restaurants in Austin that have pork intestine and various other offal, and not a single Thai place with that. Why are the Thai places shy and the Chinese aren't?

It's your standard size terrine, about 4" wide, 4" deep, 10" long. I layered about 10 ears together, which weighed about 2 lbs. How many servings? Well, it depends on how much you can eat. I can eat a lot of ear at a time. I did 4 hours in a pot on simmer. I recommend using a lot of soy sauce in the simmering broth as it's hard to get the ears to absorb much flavor.

La Michoacana 1917 E 7th St, Austin, TX (512) 473-8487 There's a number of these all over town, but this is the closest to me. It's a great place to go for Mexican groceries. The marinated meats like the fajita, chorizo, al pastor are dirt cheap. Cheaper than if you were to buy the meat un-marinated from HEB! How do they do it, I dunno. They also sell tacos and have a small dine-in area. The tacos are pretty good. They have borrego (lamb) which you don't see everywhere. I didn't get it this time because they were out. I know, weird, right?

Yup, piece of cake.

I admit that I haven't been to many great Thai restaurants in America. Perhaps the best is Sripriphai in New York that had a great pork stomach dish. Other than that, I can't recall ever seeing any kind of offal or other exotic meat or fish on any Thai restaurant menu. Being Chinese, offal and exotic meats are my bread and butter. Whenever I go to a Chinese restaurant, that's what I order. So I'm always disappointed when don't find any at Thai restaurants. Do Thai people just not eat offal? Surely not?

Thanks so much for doing this blog and answering my questions about making the move to China. Please allow me to repay the favour in 2010!

What's the difference between DTF's xiaolongtangbao and regular xiaolongbao? I've always thought that xiaolongtangbao is just another term for the same thing. That is quite expensive for xiaolongbao. I wonder if there aren't more good and cheap xiaolongbao restaurants in Beijing? Shanghai of course is full of them.

I just tried a 3:1 Laphroaig 10 cask strength to St. Germain. The combination is pretty interesting as the elderflower comes in first and is then overwhelmed by the peat and smoke. I think I'll play with this combination a bit, probably dial down the scotch.

What's the organic shop like? How stringent are the Chinese laws about organic foods? Given the rampant fake foods, are there counterfeit organic products too?

I've also heard about fake cooking oil that's made from some industrial oil or something like that. Not sure how much of that is true or just rumour.

How about some pics of your kitchen? Is it a typical Chinese one with less than half of the amenities we've come to expect in the West?

Thanks so much for answering my questions so thoroughly. I'm very surprised that you can get so much of those things in China. Are the consumers mostly expats or are there locals interested too? Belgian beer especially seems like an expat-only thing.

Oh, I'm sure you're right that the bounty of Chinese foods will outweigh all the Western things you can't get. But can you tell me a little bit about how restricted the selection of the following imported goods are: Wine - I'm sure you know all about this! Beer - Especially Belgian ales Liquor - Smaller distribution brands (not like the majors like Grey Goose, Johnnie Walker, Remy Martin, etc.) like Flor de Cana rum, El Milagro tequila, Laird's Applejack. Cheeses - You mentioned upmarket cheeses at Fauchon. Do they have brie de maux, epoisses, Neal's Yard cheddar, Beemster gouda, to name a few of the fairly widely distributed fine cheeses that I enjoy. Charcuterie - Especially Italian and Spanish I also have a crazy idea to start an import company to get all things that I want from the West that aren't imported yet, especially in the beer and liquor departments. So if you go out to eat a lot more now, do you find this to be less healthy than your diet back in the UK? Especially since I find so much restaurant food in China to be so greasy -- maybe even more so than American restaurants.

Did you used to cook a lot before moving to China? Do you miss all the things you could buy back in the UK that you can't get in China? What are the items that you miss the most?

I'm very excited to see more from inside China, not just Chinese residing elsewhere. I also plan on moving myself and my business to China soon (Shanghai, April 2010).

I am Chinese and I love Jewish food.

I should add that barbecue contests are only compatible with styles of barbecue that can be cooked on mobile equipment. The Central Texas style of cooking in huge, immobile concrete pits, therefore, cannot be judged this way.

Aren't shiu mai of Shanghai origin? How about the curry squid? When did that enter the "canon"?

In Chinese, meat is called rou and unless otherwise specified, pork is the default meat, e.g. the dish translated as red-cooked pork is simply called hong shao rou, or literally red-cooked meat. There are a few other similar simplifications in Chinese, cai literally means vegetable but refers to all non-rice dishes, and even more broadly, fan literally means rice but refers to all food, e.g. one asks literally if another has eaten rice to mean if they have eaten a meal already. My rudimentary understanding of Spanish leads me to believe that there is a similarity with carne literally meaning meat but usually referring to beef. Does this phenomenon exist in other languages?

Is there anything new in the world of New York pastrami? I will be in the city this weekend and would like to taste a few.

Ah ha, so another difference is eating style. I don't twirl my noodles, I just slurp them up Chinese style -- I'll even use chopsticks if I'm at home. With the slurping style, I do think it's a little easier to eat broken noodles, but I don't mind slurping and biting off what I can't fit in one bite.

In China, noodles represent long life. One eats a bowl of noodles on one's birthday. I should think that breaking the noodles in half would represent truncating your own life.

I speculate that part of the reason is that demand is still not high enough. The only mezcals Spec's carries are the three Del Maguey, compare with the 100 or so varieties of scotch they have. If more people demand fine mezcals to the point that stores begin to carry a dozen or so brands, I'm sure the price would drop substantially.

What is the usual cost for these services? I think I would do it for free if all my meals were paid for.