jtnippon1985

Hello all, just wanted to know a few things here before I try making this blood sausage recipe I found on ochef. The ingredients call for a number of things, and I have all of them save for a few. Obviously you need blood, pork blood preferably. I have only been able to find beef blood and pork blood at the local Asian markets, which come in frozen containers. They contain "pig's blood, water, salt product" Now I'm assuming this is still usable, but the water and salt product threw me off a bit. Is this probably a low percentage of the total liquid, mainly for preserving? I really have never worked with blood before, and I know that fresh is prefered, however that's nearly impossible for me to find so I have to do with this. Do you think I can still use this blood? The recipe also calls for leaf lard, the only way to get leaf lard is to mail order and it's going to be more than I'm willing to spend for only needing a 1/2lb of it. The question I have is this: for the purpose of sausage making, do you think they leaf lard they're calling for in this recipe is just ground pork fat, or rendered fat (lard) that you find in the tubs? I know lard is good for baking, but I have always thought that the ground up fat would be what you would need for making sausages, right? Last but not least, the recipe calls for breadcrumbs. Correct me if im wrong (and I usually am) but if a recipe states breadcrumbs, usually its the small granular DRY breadcrumbs, and not fresh ones (the recipe for this calls for 1/4 breadcrumbs) I don't think 1/4 of fresh breadcrumbs would do the trick to thicken the blood, so I'm assuming the regular dry breadcrumbs are what is needed. Thanks for anyone who looks or helps out, it's appreciated.

I'm assuming that fresh killed is best because the animal hasn't been dead long enough for virus' and bacteria do inhabit the animal's body, right? I mean any live animal could be diseased, but there are less chances of problems going with live, and then killed and eaten very shortly (within an hour) afterwords right? If that's the case I might go to the store, have them killed, and then rush back home, rinse them off with ice cold distilled water, and have my sauce already prepared. I would like the heart though but I don't think the butchers are skilled enough to seek out just the heart and bag it on ice so that it still is beating.. I don't know, I don't know.

How so? Please enlighten me.

It may (but probably wont) help to note that the owners of the restaurant are Mandarin speaking, so probably from Mainland China, and that these are all home-style dishes, NOT banquet fare. I doubt that'd be something that would narrow it down though... Again thanks for all the help and suggestions. I'm going to try stir frying muing bean noodles with soy sauce, corn starch noodles with soy sauce, and then buy sweet potato noodles with soy sauce and see how it comes out.

UPDATE Here are the pictures. I hope they help anyone that is trying to help me figure this out, with better determining what the names of these dishes might be. WARNING: THE LINKED PICTURES PICTURES ARE HIGH RESOLUTION WARNING #2: ImageShack does have a popup on their page, nothing malicious though. The tendon dish: The noodle dish: The whole package (includes spicy tofu and the obligatory rice buried underneath): Thanks again for looking.

Well, whenever I decide to do this, *gulp* I'll post pictures. Hopefully I don't die.

Actually, before I officially call it a night, I wanted to provide a quick follow up with something I found just a few seconds ago: Beef Tendon and Turnip Stew. I found a blog entry talking about Ken Hom and a variation of this recipe in one of his books. I'm sure that the peppers would thrown in about 5 minutes before serving unlike the turnip, which is put in about 30 minutes before serving. Link to blog article: http://baconpress.blogspot.com/2006/01/love-me-tendon.html Or it could be just Sichuan red cooked beef, using only tendon. Dunno...

I don't care about speed with this recipe. I'll put up the pictures tomorrow, I've been up since 1:00 AM this morning and I am too tired to do it now.

Shinjuku, it figures, hahahaha! Btw torakris, since you're here, can you answer this one question for me? I have heard that Fugu is often left with a miniscule amount of poison in the flesh so that the person eating it experiences a tingling sensation in their mouth and throat while eating it, but not enough to shut any vital systems down. Is this true? [EDIT] Found this on Wikipedia: Wow, that's pretty hardcore Wikipedia.org - Fugu

Gah, such hostility!! LOL! No, actually one of my quirks on cooking is to try and find ways to speed up traditional long recipes and such. Some you obviously can't do. By the way, I cooked some jook last night, overnight actually for this morning. I really don't mind the cooking time, it was more of wanting to see if the taste could be replicated by taking a shortcut. The cream of rice variation I made this afternoon didn't come out half bad though. Needs some tweaking... Also, I have some pictures of the tendons and noodle dish that I got from Joy Luck Club today, I'll post those as soon as I can. I also must have forgotten, but they always include red and green bell peppers in with the tendon dish.

Torakris, there is a certain type of restaurant in Japan called Getamono bars which basically means "exotic and wierd things" bar. One is called the Asadachi, or something like that which means....Morning Erection. No I am not kidding and it was featured on Travel Channel's Bizzare Foods with Andrew Zimmern. Actually, here is a link (youtube) to a video from the episode:

As another request, and not to take any more real estate on the main forum, I was wondering if anyone knew about this: There is another dish at the Joy Luck Club that is a noodle dish. The noodles are different, I can't tell exactly what they're made of but they are very sticky, and usually have large masses clumped together (lack of oil perhaps) and they kind of have this cornstarchy, gelatinous (very subtle) texture. They are made in some kind of sauce, which dyes them brown, perhaps such a simple sauce made from soy sauce and other seasonings. The sauce is near non-existant in the final dish, it doesn't pool in excess or anything. I don't remember any other major ingredients, maybe some onions, but that's about it...not vegetables, no meat, no tofu, no fungus, etc etc.. It's all dumped in a hot-bar pan to keep warm so I dont know if their stir-fried or perhaps, steamed in a commercial steamer, though I doubt that. Any takers? [EDIT] I'm almost positive the noodles are rice vermicelli, because the noodles had the same texture and color of the rice vermicelli commonly found in Vietnamese spring rolls (not the fried variety)

I have decided to try and kick my "let's eat some far out stuff" mode to the next level. I want to try the fabled frog sashimi. I have Chinese market nearby that sells live frogs for food, along with turtles (which actually happens to be illegal in this state, don't ask how they get away with it) And I wanted to wade into the deep end of the culinary adventurists pool by attempting to prepare this fascinating dish. I understand that the frog needs to be alive, up until you've messed around with it enough so that it wouldn't be capable of staying alive. Anyone have a clue on the steps needed to prepare it? Do you knock the frog out? Freeze it to make it fall asleep? Just hold it down and skin it while it wriggles around? Rinse or no rinse? Any serious medical dangers when eating raw frog (I'm sure that's probably the most stupid question asked on here) Perhaps anyone with sashimi preparation experience could lend a helping hand. And no, this is not a joke, not a trolling, this is serious, I really want to know. I just hope it doesn't count as animal cruelty in the US.

After watching some episodes of Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern, I'm now on a quest to either find, or prepare the most foriegn, and exotic foods available within the United States. The two I want to try? Beef hearts stuffed with rice and currants, then grilled (and marinated?) And K'lia, which is some kind of meat that is preserved in it's own fat. If anyone has any experience with these recipes, please share!!

Every saturday I go to what is probably the most authentic, homestyle Chinese joint in all of North Carolina. It's called the Joy Luck Club, and it's a small diner located in the fron of the most popular Chinese supermarket in this state, Grand Asia Market. If they sell congee, you know they're legit... Whenever they have the tendon dish, I always get it, and every time I eat it, I wish that I could recreate it at home. Most of my searches have led me to either Ma La Beef Tendon, or some Chinese or Vietnamese variation of a tendon noodle dish. Both of these are NOT what I'm looking for. Its basically tendons, in a dark, thick, oily, somewhat spicy, brown sauce, with onions in it. Nothing else. It's served HOT. I did however, find this site tonight (or morning really, at least here) that looks almost exactly what I've been looking for, except this recipe uses spring onions instead of what I think are just regular yellow onions at the Joy Luck Club. Problem is, the recipe isn't too specific, using "some stock", "1 bowl cornstarch water" and so forth to describe the ingredients. Not very helpful. The cooking times are also, unfortunatly, absent.... I know that tendons, because of their purpose for existance, need to be cooked for a while (which may be a slight understatement) to make them edible. I think this could be converted into a GREAT crockpot recipe, but then again, what do I know? So here's the deal, I really need this recipe, more than you might think. I'm actually in love with this recipe, and it kills me to not be able to make it when I want. The lack of information on the web (shocking, isn't it?) and one potential, yet poorly worded recipe that taunts me is only making my dillema that much worse. [EDIT] Link to the site (with picture) is here: http://www.chinatown-online.com/recipe/tendon.htm

If I had to pick one? Fried crullers cut into strips. They did that at the Deluxe Food Market in NYC and I fell in love with the combination ever since. A combo? Well, probably peanuts, scallions, sesame oil, soy sauce, doufu ru, and of course, crullers. Perhaps that's a bit too many items for what is supposedly a simple dish...

Oh, in case I caused any confusion about all of this..... Cream of rice, is granulated rice. Basically like "broken rice" but in much smaller pieces. It's not precooked or anything, just plain and simple, ground up rice (like a coarse rice flour) Brown rice farina is the same thing, except with brown rice (and organic) So cream of rice probably isn't that far off from using broken rice to make congee...right? Right?....why are you looking at me like that? Now, if that's the case...I wonder if you could make congee from white rice flour...*begins running*

Now before I get called out for blasphemy, here me out. I love me some nice, hot congee. Soothes the soul ya know? But I absolutely disdain the process of waiting it out, despite the set-it-and-forget-it method used in its creation. Sometimes, when you just want something, you want it right then, right there? Not 8 hours later, NOW! I have seen cream of rice (white) and Bob's Red Mill (an organic line of products) Brown Rice Farina at my local one stop shop, and wanted to know this: Can I create a similar experience to it's slow cooked rendition, sans slow cooking? Has anyone even tried this? I was thinking it'd do quite nicely cooked with a cube of chicken boullion (one with MSG, thank you very much) and dash of soy sauce. Maybe some doufu ru on the side, some chopped up crullers (which are sitting in my freezer, awaiting their radiation bath) mixed in. Any thoughts? Criticisms? Evictions from the Chinese board altogether?

Thank you all, I appreciate all the responses. Now that I know how its layed out, I just need to figure WHAT to cook. So many choices...

Hi all. I decided that for the last day of CNY festival I'd try cooking Hongshao Wanyu or red-cooked carp. But....I don't know exactly what I'd use for the side dishes since I am not real good with typical home-style plating and typical side-dish accompaniments to a main dish (is there a book that explains this topic?) so I just was wondering if anyone had some suggestions for a few easy side dishes. I also want to prepare Tangyuan, 汤圆, 湯圓. I bought the already made, frozen glutinous rice flour balls (plain and peanut filled) but don't know what kind of soup to cook them in (I want sweet not savory) Any help would be gladly appreciated. Thanks for looking!

Hey everyone, need some quick help. Being called away on a "business" trip on Tuesday and will be there till Saturday. I plan on making Chinatown and Little Italy part of the down time I'll get so I would like just a couple of recommendations on where to go. Prices don't matter but obviously taste does. Thanks.

one more quick question: how long will home made baking grease last in the fridge? made with equal parts oil+shortening+flour

Today my significant other came home from work, which would be one of the 3 main private shipping companies in the US (not going to mention which one) with about $600 worth of fresh herbs. It doesn't happen often, but sometimes there are communication problems between the shipper, the sender, and the reciever, where in the end, no one wants the package(s), and the shipper gets the order to basically destroy it/throw it away. Fresh basil, fresh tarragon, fresh sage, thyme, rosemary, parsley, and mint...pounds and pounds and pounds upon POUNDS of it. So I throw most of the other herbs in the freezer, in tightly closed freezer bags, and took 3/4 of the basil, blended it by 4 larges handfuls to 3 TBSP of EVOO and froze it in ice cube trays. Did I do the right thing with these herbs? Will I be able to use the basil-pops for anything outside of pesto?? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I shouldn't take any credit for the recipe, as it is I copied Ah Leung's recipe from another thread and used it. He replied again in the topic suggesting to keep the pork moist yet crispy on the outside, to simmer it before putting it in the oven. The only thing I didn't do exactly like the recipe called for was to use pork tenderloins...as I thought to be on the safe side of ensuring this first time attempt with the best possibly results...I used Boston Butt. It also helps to work part time in a meat department where you can prepare all your own meats.

Found this picture I had taken a while back from when I attempted this dish. Needless to say I loved it and will eventually be having it again.