XiaoLing

All I can say is that you'd make a great dinner companion! ← You know what? My instructor said the same thing to me this week. (I'm in class learning new technology.blah) He said "I bet you're great at parties!" Seeing how I think that comment meant that I am slightly more entertaining than a mechanical clapping monkey, I took it as a compliment. But now that I think about it , it might be his subtle to tell me to shut up so he can continue with class. I won't be posting for a week after today. I'm off to Taiwan and then to Japan (Kyoto, Osaka, and for some strange reason Universal Studios.) I will be armed with my camera and ready to go by tomorrow morning! I'll be back with a full tummy report (minus fruit) when I come back. Sorry to hijack your thread Peter! I did ask my dad what the "Yellow Braised Chicken" meant and he told me that it's similar "Red Braised chicken" but using only a little bit of light soy so that the chicken comes out looking yellow rather than the dark brown/red color you would have for red braised chicken.

I like to stir fry chicken hearts, livers, and gizzards and most the time all together to give it a nice texture contrast. You can slice the chicken hearts and then marinate them with a tiny bit of salt to tenderize them. Then in a hot wok with high heat, add oil, ginger, dried chilis, and garlic. When fragrant, throw in the chicken inners and stir fry very quickly. When the inners are almost cooked, add rice wine, splash of vinegar, light and dark soy. Mix well and then add a cornstarch and watch mixture to thicken the sauce. Add scallions and serve immediately.

Wait a minute.... ...I remember my parents giving me alcohol when I was 5 and every year after that during holidays! Isn't it illegal to start aborting your child at the 18th trimester???

The noodles and the fried meat dumplings look like breakfast in Wuhan! The fried pork chops looks different from the ones I usually get in China or even in the US. Yours seems a lot thinner and leaner. Usually the ones I get has bones attached and a good proportion of fat. It's one of my favorite dishes! Always a safe bet. How can you not love fried pork and pork fat??? I'm beginning to sound like Emeril.

but...but....but....doesn't the alcohol kill the parasites??

Wow, this makes me rethink my GuiLin trip idea. I'm not that into impregnated snails and bamboo rats. I love the snails in Chili oil but to eat them with a "crunch"....ummm...not for me. The snake sounds good though. Did you get to eat it's beating heart in some rice wine???

Sorry...I can't help you here. I try not to eat any fruit when I'm in China because it takes up unneccessary room in my tummy that can be used for more frogs, eels, ducks, and fish.

OMG!! I am soooooooo looking forward to my trip to China this fall. I think my family and I are settling on visitin Yunnan, but knowing them, it'll change last minute. As for me? I'm not even thinking about that because I'm going to Taiwan (I'm already drooling in anticipation for the food) and possibly Kyoto or Seoul. Not sure with one yet. Ok, back to your post: I LOVE frogs cooked this way or sauteed with chilis, garlic, and ginger. But you have to find the wild variety. Ten years back all they sold were the wild varieties but now alot of them are farmed. Looks like the one you got is the farmed variety because of it's size. The wild variety is smaller and much more tender. I remember killing them fresh myself and well...gutting them too. I am a fearless cook. I think to answer your question, we separate items in China by "Meat", "Seafood", and "Vegetables." Eels would definitely fall into the seafood catagory. Eels in Mandarin would be called "San Yu." As you noticed it's a "Yu" which means fish. The white fungus soup you had with the outside vendor is called (written on his cart) "Bing Tang Ying Er Tong" which translates to "ice candy silver ear soup." And the black gelatin stuff he pour out of the sprite bottle is "Gui ling gao." Wow, I'm so jealous of your meals and its really making me anxious to start my trip!

Yes, it is bean flour or starch. The bean flour is most likely made from mung beans. It can be used the same way as corn starch. In all honesty, just use corn starch. It's just as good.

I don't know how to make it but a while ago in the Home cooking topic, Peony made some. Here's the link: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=96011&st=390 It starts on post #395. Hope this helps.

Great pics Peter! I hate to do this to you but the "gourmet powder" has the real name underneath it in Chinese "Wei Jing" which means MSG! TA-DA! I noticed that Sichuan natives (this applies to Wuhan too) love MSG. I remember eating a hot pot with some natives and the dipping sauce they made for me consisted of a spoonful of MSG, tablespoon full of sesame oil, and a dash of soy. It was actually very good and extremely tasty (can't imagine why.) Adn the bottle that you were asking about is "Liao Jiu" which is rice cooking wine.

Those are peanuts and not beans. In China you would see a lot of peanuts cooked in a braising sauce until it's soft. I also do it at home. Kinda like boiled peanuts from the South (US south that is.)

Sheetz! Like Ah Leung, I thought you purchased those puffs. Very professional looking and tasting (i'm sure!) I love those fried taro puffs!! Did you have a filling inside?

You have a very good point there. But I honestly bought so much food that I didn't know where to begin?! I had a whole roast duck, char shui, roast pig, seafood xo lo mein, seafood satay udon, and who knows what else was in there?? I did eat some skin on my way home. I should have eaten all the skin within an hour though.

Are those bean curds? It's interesting that on the Chinese label, it said "Leung Gou" [Cantonese] where it means "cool cake". I haven't see Chinese refering to tofu as cake before. ← The Liang Gou is probably not made of tofu but rather the geletan stuff that they were selling in blocks in the market. We generally eat them in savory sauces such as the one on top of the Liang Gou in the picture. In Wuhan we eat them in thick slices and we call them Liang Fun. Liang Fun will be mixed with garlic, spices, soy, vinegar, sesame oil, scallions, chilis and etc. and eaten like a noodle salad.

My brother and I used to buy those all the time when we were kids back in China. the Vendor would come around and with a spinning wheel with all 12 zodiacs on his wheel. You would pay him and then spin and which ever zodiac you would land on would be the shape of the candy he would mold for you. My brother would always get a dragon for some strange reason. Of course after we spun the candy we were never allowed to eat it because my grandmother didn't think it was clean enough to eat. Can you imagine a 3 year old with candy the size of her head and not to be able to eat it?? Eggplants in China are normally in that shape. We also have white eggplants in the same shape. The eggplants I get in Wuhan are so fresh that the sellers are usually the same farmers that cut them off that morning to sell in the market. And most importantly, that only sell young eggplants about half the size of the ones we get in the US. My grandmother told me once in a US market that people in China would never buy the eggplants that we have here because they're so old and no longer tender. The stuff in the middle is a vegetable indigeous to China. It's actually "lettuce." The correct name is Lettuce Celuce. We actually buy it to consume the stalk. You have to peel it, cut it up and stir fry it or make a salad. It actually has a taste of a combo of lettuce and cucumber. You can definitely eat it raw. You can also eat the leaves but only if it's still young and tender, if it isn't then you want to cook it before eating it. The thing that you're calling shallots is actually garlic. It's a single bulb garlic that is very convienent and garlicy. It's not mild like elephant garlic, it's definitely as strong as the regular garlic we get but it's just bigger and you don't have to peel as much. Easier cooking! And the dried stuff on top is dried bamboo. Not sure how to use it though. The yellow stuff on the right of the ginger is what we call "Jing Ying Hua" or in english: dried lily bulbs. We use it in soups and stir fries. It has a tangy and woody flavor. These dried peppers are actually called "heaven peppers" and they're not as spicy as they look. Generally, you would see a ton of them in one dish but it won't be a firey as the little thin dried peppers. This pepper is a MUST in Sichuan and Hunan cooking. As someone else pointed out, those are picked long green beans. I love them! My grandmother (I think I should just have my grandmother post here instead of me ) use to pickle her own. I remember going into her huge clay pot in the storage room and fishing strands of pickled green beans out. YUM! We usually cut it up and stir fry it with garlic, ginger, chilis and minced pork. Speaking of that, I have some in my fridge. I think I have to make some now. Those packed and sealed eggs are actually "Pi Dan" or thousand year old eggs or Salted duck eggs. That's how they use to sell them back about 20 years ago. They pack them in mud, straw and salt to preserve them. After you buy them home you take a knife and scrape it off to clean them off and cook them. I remember watching the elders do it when I was about 3 or 4. Sigh...those were the days. That looks like dried squid that has been reconstituted. It's very popular in in-land cities to sell them this way because you can't get fresh squid. My family in China has this "tool" at home as well. We use to gut our own eel but now that labor is so cheap and competition is so fierce that they clean them for free now. But I remember the days when we use to kill our own chickens, ducks, frogs, and eels. But that's sooo old school now! Or at least that's what I have been told. Are you sure they are noodles? They look like dragon beard candy dusted with peanut powder. A very traditional and extremely famous dessert in China. Thank you so much for sharing your pictures with us! It's like a blast in time for me. So many fond memories were triggered looking at your wonderful pics. I hope we will see more.

Ah Ha! Ham ha....interesting....LOL Thanks Ah Leung. I love it actually. But I have only had it with seafood. My favorite way of eating "ham ha" would be with lightly stir fried sea conch. YUM! But to steam the pork with ham ha sounds really good too. Oh boy...so much to do with so little pork. I thought I didn't have many choices with so much pork, now I'm beginning to think so little pork with too many choices! hehehe.... I think I might stir fry half with chinese leeks, ginger, soy, and garlic like anna suggested and then save the other half for steaming with "ham ha." Thank you Anna and Dejah! Thank you all!!

Thank you all for your suggestions. I really like the suggestion of sauting it and then heat up the skin separately to make it crispy. It sounds like the least amount of work. hehehe. I think I will freeze it and save it for another time. I have way too much food from Chinatown that will probably spoil within a week. So I have to go into a food binge and just eat and eat! So much for my diet. LOL....big difference!! Roast pork is the pork strips that are red and the roast pig is the whole pig roasted with crispy skin. But I'm sure Ah Leung is teasing me. It's true!! I have no idea what ham ha is. Is it Chinese ham?? Thank you all again for such great suggestions! I knew you guys would help me out.

Thank you Anna! I never thought about using roast pig for soup but I guess why not? I saved my roast duck bones for soup later on, maybe I will also with the roast pig. Darn, I didn't buy any wintermelon, I think that was the only thing I didn't buy. But I'm sure diakon would make a good subsitute. I'm sure the roast pig will also freeze well enough, at least until I get my hands on some winter melon. I thought about sauting it with soy and garlic, ginger, green onions too but I didn't know if I was being a little weird or not. Does anyone have any other suggestions?

So...this weekend before the storm, I made my way to Chinatown and bought enough food to feed a small country. I can't possibly fit any more food into my fridge. I will probably be digging my way out of it for the next 2-3 weeks. I also made a stop at my favorite bbq restaurant and bought way too much food. So, now I'm stuck with about 1 pound of roast pig (not be confused with it's equally tasty counter part - roast pork.) Since roast pig doesn't really taste good after the day you buy it (the skin is no longer crispy ), I'm wondering what I can do with it. I know that I can put it in the oven to crisp it up again but then the meat dries out. It's quite a conundrum. Does anyone have any recipes for cooking with roast pig? Any pointers would be greatly appreciated!

Dired beans are also used in making Chinese congee. A favorite congee that we make in the summer time is with mung beans. It's not sweet. I know that a famous congee called "ba bao zhu" is a sweet congee with eight different kinds of mix beans.

Those pictures looks so droolfully delicious. I'm getting more and more excited about my potential trip to China in the fall now. Peter, quick question. I'm currently in the process of planning my trip with my parents and we're trying to pick out cities. We're thinking Yunan and Guilin so far. Out of all the places you and your family has been, which would you consider the most interesting and a must see?

I think we eat those cubey thingies too in Wuhan. However, we steam them and then eat them room temp as a salad mixed with sauce, garlic and scallions. These pics are awesome! Please keep them coming!!

I remember going to that snack market!! It was awesome. I saw so many different types of food that I have never seend before. And everything was on a stick! Thank you for posting these pictures. I'm looking forward to going back there this fall and actually trying some of this food. My grandmother wouldn't let me eat any of those foods except for roasted sweet potatoes and candied dates on a stick. She was afraid I would upset my stomach before we even made it back to Wuhan. I think you're right. This looks like Ox stomach. Well atleast it looks like the darker version of a cow's stomach. YUM! noodles!! I love noodles! I think this might be fish balls stewed in spices. At least that's what I think the sign says anyway. I wonder what a star fish taste like. Did they cook the star fish or did the lady just grab it and start nawing on it right away? I think next time I would spend the night next to this stand. YUM! Thanks for sharing the pics Peter! I hope to go to China in the fall and will definitely need suggestions and reccomendations!

I cook my tomato and eggs the same way nakedsushi does it too. I always cook the eggs first and then the tomatoes. I never add sugar either. Here's what mine looks like: I like mine with extra sauce so that I can mix it with rice. YUM!