Kake

Dinner tonight: plain stirfried Chinese leaf (大白菜); and Fuchsia Dunlop's chicken with chillies (辣子雞). Served with jasmine rice.

I have an overview of Chinese cucumber salads/cold dishes on my blog, which may be of interest. I think the variation you describe is of a kind that I've also had trouble finding recipes for, though. Here's a picture of what I'm thinking of: I'm wondering if simply marinating cucumber pieces in a really good chilli oil (with bits) would be a good start. I like Sunflower's recipe for chilli oil. I've also had a really savoury version of this that reminded me somewhat of the sauce from mouthwatering chicken (口水雞/kǒu shuǐ jī). That might be another good thing to try.

So in the end I did a few more websearches, with the help of Google Translate, and got the impression that the 木耳 are usually boiled briefly (around 3 minutes or so) for this dish, rather than fried. So I did that instead, then drained them and dressed them with black vinegar, a bit of sugar (not enough to make it sweet, just enough to balance the vinegar), a splash of soy sauce, and some home-made chilli oil, including plenty of the chilli "sludge" from the bottom of the jar (I ran out of sesame oil while making another dish, or I'd have added some of that too). It was pretty good, though I think it would have been better if I'd boiled the 木耳 in chicken stock rather than plain water. I'd still be interested in hearing from anyone who knows how this dish should be made!

I've had this dish a few times, and I don't remember it ever being particularly sweet, no. The most recent rendition (not the one in that picture) was fairly spicy, to the point where someone who wasn't used to eating chilli-enhanced food would have had a problem with it. Your suggestion sounds plausible, and I'll give it a go if nobody else weighs in — thanks!

Does anyone have a good recipe or some hints for making the spicy wood ear (木耳) salad served as a cold dish? The sort of thing pictured here.

I would love to know more about this device/custom, but have failed to find the earlier thread — can anyone point me to it? I'm also not having much luck Googling for more information elsewhre, so would appreciate any suggestions of potentially useful search terms. Kake

You can also do this with sweetcorn; it's then called golden sand corn (金沙玉米) or more prosaically, corn with salted egg yolk (鹹蛋黃玉米粉). Here's a description of my attempts at it, and below is a photo of the result.

Thank you! That makes sense.

I'm having trouble working out the difference between 臘肉 (là ròu) and 臘味 (là wèi). Are they actually different from each other? I usually see the former translated as "Chinese ham" and the latter as "Chinese preserved meat", but the photos I've found online look quite similar.

Ah-ha, thank you! Interesting... I know that "golden sand" (金沙) is often used to mean the yolks of salted duck eggs. Could "yellow sand" possibly be the same thing?

This sounds brilliant, thank you for posting it. One question regarding the name — I know 南乳 is red fermented tofu, and 花生 is peanuts, but why is there a 肉 in the name?

Yes, I was there on Monday. I wrote it up here, and I have some photos on Flickr. There are five units open in the food court at the moment — a Thai stall, two Japanese stalls (one specialising in takoyaki), a Chinese/roast meats/dim sum stall, and a Korean stall. I tried some of the dim sum, and it was not bad at all (siu mai and fried turnip cake good, king prawn cheung fun less good but still OK).

I was there on a group dinner, and we'd reserved space in the back room — this may only be possible if your group's large enough.

Is it me or is it de rigeur to bash Tayyabs? ← For the avoidance of doubt, I wasn't bashing Tayyabs — I liked it. I do think it's important to warn people about the queues, though; if you're not expecting them then it might put you in the wrong mood to enjoy the place.

I'm always surprised when I see a comment on London Eating that isn't a complaint... However: it does indeed get very crowded, with queues both inside and out. I don't have a comparison to "what it used to be", but my recommendation of the lamb chops else-thread is fresh from a couple of weeks ago. Hope that helps a little.

I'll second the recommendations of Magdalen and Hibiscus. Magdalen is more similar to St John, Hibiscus is a bit more experimental. Magdalen is rather cheaper though; given that you're concerned about the exchange rate, it might be worth leaving Hibiscus for another trip when you can go there for the good-value set lunch instead. Another possibly off-beat suggestion is Tayyabs in Whitechapel; incredibly noisy and busy and crowded, unless you get there _very_ early you'll have to queue, and it's the exact opposite of white-tablecloth fine dining, but they do the best lamb chops I've ever eaten. Re Culinista's recommendation of Umu: I've only been twice, but the service was not up to scratch on either visit; it went seriously downhill once the place filled up, in a way that impacted on our enjoyment of the food. They just didn't seem to have enough staff on the floor, and both times they rushed us through the first part of our meal, suggesting that they knew they'd have problems later on. It's not even like we hit the peak; we dined early, in terms of both the week and the evening. (This is a sidetrack given that the original poster seems to be much more of a St John person than an Umu person; but I would recommend Saki, opposite Smithfield Market, as an overall better alternative to Umu. The prices are much more sensible and their vegan kaiseki menu is excellent.)

London-SE1 says that Magdalen reopened last Wednesday.

Tomoe is just off Oxford Street and is open until 3pm. No website, but my writeup is here.

How exciting! I lived in Croydon a couple of years ago. I shall have to come and revisit (this is no hardship; I rather like some of the pubs in the area.) But is Tinker's no good any more?

Artificial ikura was first invented by Nippon Carbide Industries Co., Ltd. They accidentally succeeded in making something similar to ikura while attempting to put adhesive into microcapsules. I once watched a TV show explaining how artificial ikura was made, but unfortunately, the most important part of the technology was a trade secret. Artificial ikura has a three-layer structure just like real ikura, and is difficult to make at home. Simpler, single-layered ikura is easy to make: Just put droplets of 3% sodium alginate solution in calcium chloride solution. ← Thank you for the comprehensive answer! I actually have these chemicals in my cupboard at the moment, but haven't experimented with them yet as I want to get some pH strips first. There's an entire eGullet thread about sodium alginate experiments here: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=86839 Kake

Do you know how fake ikura is made? I googled, but couldn't find anything helpful. Kake

If only it were that easy... ← I can recommend Abel and Cole for vegetable box deliveries. Good, responsive customer service, friendly delivery drivers, and they let you give them a list of things that they should never bring you (e.g. cucumber, ugh). They also deliver meat, fish, and various storecupboard bits and bobs. Edited to add: before I worked from home full-time, I got them to deliver our box to work. Had to carry it home, but it was still preferable to using a supermarket. They coped pretty well with delivering to my office some weeks and to the house others.

I'm quite keen on Magdalen too, from my one visit. Two of us went on a Wednesday night without booking, but they managed to squeeze us in anyway. I thought the service was rather good; even though it was rather busy, every time we wanted something there was someone there almost instantly, and when we didn't want anything we were left in peace. The food was all competent; it's very meat-heavy so vegetarians beware. I left the wine choice up to our waiter and he got it right (I liked the white so much that he ended up going to find the name of the supplier, and I have a case due next week). Their website is here, and my writeup with maps and links to other reviews I could find is here.

I went to Umu in April (hm, that's ages ago, should go back, but there are so many other places to try...) and rather liked it. Some interesting stuff in the tasting menu, and a good selection of sake to go along with it. I wrote it up here. It's definitely not cheap, so might suit your needs. Also recently liked Saki, opposite Smithfield Market, bit cheaper though.

I think you mean that the decor wasn't to your taste — unless the ceiling fell down since I was there, or something.