XiaoLing

Please do Dejah!! Please do!!! I have never had savory Tang Yuan. My family makes our own Tang Yuan with our own secret sweet fermented rice wine soup for breakfast. But your savory Tang Yuan looks sooo good. Please show us!! Pretty please?? With chili sauce on top? hehehe

There's just something about eating a big bowl of noodle soup in a cold winter's night. Ben-Let me know the next time you feel under the weather and I'll ship a bowl of this soup to you FedEx! Ah Leung- The noodles I used are actually Mung Bean noodles. I was typing too fast and wrote rice noodles. It's actually dry noodles that I don't even have to reconstitute. I just drop it in boiling soup and it reconstitutes in the broth without any starchy residue. The usual mung bean noodles will deteriorate pretty quickly in hot soup but this particular brand I purchased is extremely resilient. It was boiling in the soup for a long time because I was taking care of all the other soups and grill cheese request but even with that much cooking, it still retained it's chewy texture. I actually don't have the package anymore but I remember that it is a red package from Taiwan with the letters "Q,Q,Q,Q" on it. "Q, Q" in Taiwan is used to described a chewy and tasty texture in food. Here is a pic of the noodles:

People have been sick with the 24 hour flu bug recently so I made the simple but very soothing chicken soup with rice noodles. Of course in my bowl I had to add something spicy.

I just bought my first ever batch of these shrimps and I am in love. I use to get them in Maine restaurants deep fried but you really have to eat them fresh to get the real experience. I was wondering, since the season is so short, can I buy a few pounds and then just freeze them for a few months? And what is the proper way to freeze them so they don't spoil? Thanks in advance.

Peel them and stir-fried them with eggs. ← Oooo....that's a really good suggestion. Forgot about that dish. I'll have to buy more. I already did what Dejah said she would do if she had some. So yummm....I'll post some pics when I make dishes with this Maine delicacy. I was thinking about making a Jambalaya with these shrimps too or maybe steamed egg custard with shrimp....ahhh...the possibilities are endless. If you get an opportunity to buy some Wild Caught Maine Gulf Shrimps, please do because they are only around a few weeks a year and supplies are regulated by the government to prevent over fishing. The taste is incredible. It's actually more tender than the live fresh water shrimps I buy in Chinese Markets in NYC.

Ah Leung - My favorite Boston Malaysian restaurant's PENANG CURRY FISH HEAD Clay Pot is only $16.95.

I found another thread in the New England forum all about this maine gulf shrimp and it's loaded with great pics! http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=96426

Oh and yes, that is the color of the shrimp when raw.

Hello all, I went to the market today and luck will have it that Maine shrimps are in season!! I of course HAD to buy 1.5 pounds to "try." They're petite shrimps that are wild caught and still raw but the one failing is that they took the head off. Here is a pic: (*note: the spoon in the pic is a teaspoon to give you a reference for the size of the shrimps) I took about half of what I bought and boiled it quickly. Then I made a dipping sauce of soy and vinegar. It's soooooo good. The shrimp is very VERY tender and sweet. Does anyone else have any suggestions of how to use the shrimps other than boiling or steaming? Thanks in advance!

I am horrible with names of restaurants and directions so I will have to do some research and find the actual addresses for my favorite restaurants in NYC. I am currently living in Boston but I am going home to NYC for x-mas and will write down the names and addresses when I go there next week!

I believe this is done only because most non-asian households would have a bottle of cooking sherry readily available versus a bottle of shao hsing wine. It's more of a conveinence factor than anything else. I actually ran out of shao hsing wine one day and I had guests coming over for dinner. So I called my Italian friend who was on his way over to pick up some cooking wine on his way over. He arrived with a bottle of sherry cooking wine. I used it the way I would shao hsing but the resulting taste is very different. I know that high end restaurants in China would even use Mao Tai instead of the usual shao hsing. I tried that a few times and it smells and taste great!

My favorite fish head soup is not made with curry. It is made Shanghai style by a famous restaurant (one of my favs) on Queens Blvd in NYC. It is made in a HUGE sand pot with a huge fish head (probably a carp) and filled with mushrooms, bamboos, mung bean sheets, etc. The fish head is pretty big but it wasn't just the head. The fish head actually was cut like 2-3 inches from the head so there's plenty of meat. And I think the dish costs around $25 but worth every penny. *drool*................

The flavoring is quite simple. It's only basically three ingredients: salt, pepper, and thin soy sauce. The reason why I kept it so simple is because the onions and the sausage is really flavorful so I didn't want to add anything to over power it. Its a really simple dish but the tast is extremely good and complex. The key is to cook everything in steps. 1) fry eggs and remove from wok 2) carmelize white vidalia onions in wok with residual oil (add salt to help draw out the moisture and carmelize) 3) add sausage with onions and cook until sausage is done 4) add eggs back into wok to reheat 5) add soy sauce (prefer pearl brand) and pepper to taste 6) remove from wok and serve You really get to taste the natural sweetness of the onions and sausages in this dish.

LOL...yes, I know. I told them that the brand translated in english is "Old God-Mother" but they found that strange so they just call it the "Old Woman" sauce. And they thought she looked like a man.

Simple but satisfying dinner tonight of sauteed tender pea shoots and sauteed eggs. Here are the pics: Fresh tender pea shoots sauteed classic Sichuan, Wuhan and Hunan style with garlic, ginger and chiles. It's simple but sooo yummy. A family favorite. Eggs with chinese sausage and onions. Goes great with white rice.

Thanks for the tip rarerollingobject! It's a great tip for my Lao Gan Ma's that are almost empty. Hehehehe...I'll just add some more oil and ta-da! more Lao Gan Ma!! I love this "Old Woman sauce"!! (I told my non-asian friends what Lao Gan Ma means and now they call it Old Woman Sauce.)

I think you're right trillium. A brisket would actually be all meat and none of the yummy chewy stuff we like to eat. The "nu lan" I buy usually has a piece of thin flank steak in the middle of all the fat and tendons. However, that cut of meat is very difficult to find in American markets. If you really can't find any, I think a brisket is fine as long as you get a fatty one with lots of marbling. And if you can find them, add some beef tendons into the stew.

You're very welcome. I don't think Lao Gan Ma is a good substitute for chili oil. Like hrzt8w said, it has tons of spices in it and not much oil. You can definitely use it in meat dishes. For instance, when I make braised ribs, I would also add a tablespoon or two of that stuff. Or even if you stir fry some five-spiced tofu with peppers and celery and chicken you can add some to spice it up. It's pretty versitile....well...atleast I think so...

C. sapidus: Lao Gan Ma would not be a good substitute for Do Ban Jiang. It's more of a chili oil sauce. The sauce is very fragrant and tasty with lots of delicious tiny morsels in it. There are types that has peanuts, beef slivers, and chunks of chicken with the bone on in the actual sauce. (Be careful with the rao-shi (meat slivers) type because that one is loaded with sichuan peppercorns.) A typical way that I use them is in sesame noodles. I would add the sauce to add heat to the noodles. I introduced this sauce to my Philipino girl friend and she loves to use the sauce in her chicken noodle soups. She would boil chicken stock and add Lao Gan Ma and some sesame oil along with veggies, chicken and noodles. Or Another way to use it is to stirfry vegetables with it. I prefer chinese eggplant with garlic. The sequence should go something like this: 1) heat oil 2) add cut up eggplant and stir fry until it soaks up the oil and is beginning to cook 3) add garlic (if you add before the eggplant it will burn) 4) stir fry eggplant until completely soft and cooked to the desired softness 5) add thin soy sauce to taste; stir 6) add pepper; stir 7) add Lao Gan Ma to your taste (I usually add a table spoon or more because I'm a spice nut.); stir 8) add scallions; stir turn off heat and serve immediately.

Thanks for the recommendation, rarerollingobject. I will definitely add that brand to my grocery list. I am always looking for a good sauce. I have like 50 bottles of stuff in my fridge and pantry. The brand that I am currently using isn't all that bad: However, the ultimate and my absolute favorite chili sauce is Lao Gan Ma. I love this stuff! It's so addicting and I put it on everything. I have over 5 different varieties of this chili sauce. My favorite ones actually have pieces of chicken and beef in it!

Thank you aznsailorboi and hrzt8w. I guess this isn't a good soup to make for my parents after all. But it sounds like a winner for my dinner table! I will add that herbal pouch to my list of groceries to get this weekend!

aznsailorboi - it looks yummy and it looks like it's a vegetarian dish, which would be great for my dad. Sorry to ask a dumb question but what does "bah kut teh" mean?

I could have sworn that it was pork in the ma po tofu when I had it in Sichuan. Hmm...I did some wiki research and found this history on Ma Po Tofu, pretty interesting read. The site states that it is usually made of pork. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mapo_doufu Well, there's only one way to find out ...let's all take a trip to Sichuan to find out ourselves! Who's in?

Great looking ma po tofu!! yumm...makes me want to make some tonight. You're right Sheetz, pork is more traditional than beef because it is more readily available. When I make this dish, sometimes I would use ground chicken and its a pretty good substitute for pork. I love Dunlop's book. Haven't really tried any recipes yet but I have my eye on the Fish with Pickled Vegetables (my favorite Sichuan dish.) I will be making that over the holidays and will definitely post my results.

What differentiates my dish from the others is that there is only garlic, ginger and dried chilies. Of course then you have all the sauces and the most important thing is the preperation. I can never be far from a "real" chinatown. It would depress me. I live in Boston now and I am complaining about their Chinatown because it is in no way shape or form even close to the markets and freshness of NYC. Which is why I always drive home to NYC so I can pack my trunk with lots of stuff.