bwv544

thousand year old eggs, orange juice, mint. this combo comes from growing up with rice porridge for breakfast (with thousand year old eggs, of course)....i'd have just brushed my teeth (minty!) and would drink orange juice, like a normal kid, and then take a bite of thousand year old egg and be very, very sorry.

sort of a side note... does nobody do the "drive a nail through the head" thing? granted, the first time i saw that was on iron chef, but then i asked my grandmother about it and she does the same thing, so i thought maybe that was a valid way of disassembling an eel. anyway, there was an article in food and wine a couple of years ago very similar to this, although his first experience was with wild hog, i think. he stressed some of the same things---knowing where your food comes from, not being disconnected from the fact that something has to die in order for you to eat, every living thing is different, etc. the way i understand your article is that it was a bit of a revelatory experience, and that's totally cool. i might go hunting for the first time next year and will be interested in how it affects me (not to mention the whole thing will be exciting, i think.) i don't necessarily think people who don't hunt are hypocrites, though...my mom has tremendous respect for her food, and while as a child she had to kill lots of things on her own, she simply prefers not to do so. she grew up on a small farm and had to kill the chickens and geese and rabbits, and she'd rather someone else do it for her.

this is possibly blasphemous, but oh well...just two of us, and last year: roast duck chinese sticky rice "stuffing" (chinese sausage and shiitake mushrooms) chinese broccoli green beans with garlic cranberry sauce corn pudding dessert---lots of fruit. this year was a big crazy eclectic party of, uh, rural texans, and chinese people: turkey venison wild pork seaweed salad potato salad bok choy with bamboo fungus regular bread stuffing scallion pancakes sweet potatoes cranberry sauce sesame noodles "cowboy" beans a weird salad of raw mung beans, napa cabbage, cucumber, and carrot, but i couldn't find any dressing anywhere... i like all of those foods. i just don't think i like all of them at the same time. as an example, my seaweed salad mixed with my cranberry sauce, and then it was just odd.

stock, pita, marshmallows, "char siu" (i can't get over the fact that to me it sounds like "cha shao",) baba ganoush... there's a huge list of more stuff i'd like to make on my own, but that i haven't found the time/space to explore. that's the issue with a bunch of college roommates sharing one fridge.

oh! my roommates and i finally had the chance to make variations on nightscotman's recipe a few weeks ago, and again this morning. first batch: strawberry, rolled in cocoa powder and powdered sugar. excellent, big hit. second batch, peach and blueberry with southern comfort, rolled in powdered sugar, ground ginger and nutmeg. another big hit. the variations are endless and we're ridiculously excited. thanks to all for this fantastic thread!

i learned to make rice in a rice cooker as soon as i was tall enough to reach the counter, i think. but that doesn't require any skill. i think the very first thing i made completely on my own, without any processed prepackaged shortcuts, was a fettucine alfredo with mushrooms when i was 12...i think it turned out alright, but my very Chinese parents who loathe creamy things (unless it's pork fat) weren't too fond of it. i've never made it since.

oooh oooh, tell me about all the good asian places too! in undergrad i always drove three hours to houston to get my chinatown fix---the "newer" chinatown, the primarily Taiwanese (or at least it used to be) chinatown---and since moving up here i've been at a bit of a loss.....partly because i don't speak any cantonese, so i don't know how to ask for what i want. we live on coventry (well, hampshire, really), with about a 1/2 block walk to hunan and pacific east and mint cafe. so most of the time we go to those three places, but....on saturdays we go to C&Y for dim sum, on wednesday nights to sushi rock in beachwood (1/2 off sushi). i should add that i don't really know anything about thai and japanese food. when my parents came to visit they chatted up the owner of hunan coventry, and for a while she would offer me random things to take home (bittermelon, for example)...but the last few times i've been she hasn't been around, and i find the menu generally too americanized to eat there all the time. there was this bubble tea place in houston (tapioca house, i think it was) that had this amazing taiwanese crispy fried pork chop, complete with a "lu dan" and cabbage...mmmm....anywho, i've been hunting for a similar meal here in cleveland, and haven't been able to find one. one more thing....curry pastries....curried beef in a flaky pastry crust, with black sesame seeds...does anyone know where to find these? i once had an unsuccessful conversation with the delivery guy from amazing wok, where all he could say was, "you tell us how to make it, we make it for you!" any help would be GREATLY appreciated...

i'm so happy this thread exists.... my father is addicted to Chinese braised pork belly, but my mother won't let him have it. i've eaten it twice in my childhood---the first time, i had to scrape off all the fat and give it to my father, and the second time both of us were denied that melting, yummy goodness... now that i'm in college my mother still won't tell me how to make it. but now it looks like i won't need her! i have a question about the braising liquid/process for it....is it the same as the stuff i would use for "lu dan" (braised eggs) or braised pig feet, for example? except the "lu" my mother taught me consists of: soy sauce, rice wine, coke (can be flat, doesn't matter), star anise, szechuan peppercorns, a chili pepper, orange rind, water/broth to cover. is this proper for pork belly as well?

New here, so i apologize if this post is bungled for some reason or another... when i go to Taiwan (which is where most of my family is), i try to stick with local food as much as possible because even on that small island, every region has its own specialties. the exceptions have been if there's a large family gathering, when they take us to Japanese restaurants because they're "fancy," or this one particular occasion when my cousin thought it would be fun to take me to a "Texan" restaurant. it was awful. horrendous, even. i vaguely remember "chicken fried steak" smothered in canned tomatoes and served with overcooked spaghetti. on the other hand, this restaurant wasn't in Taipei, or Taichung, or any of the other big cities, so maybe it's not truly indicative of how "Texan" food is handled over there. the Japanese restaurants, though, have always been quite good. my only issue with this last visit was that EVERY relative felt the need to take me to a Japanese place, so at the end of two weeks i'd eaten sushi and miso for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and i hadn't had any Chinese/Taiwanese food at all. when i got home my other half "surprised" me with a dinner at a Japanese restaurant and i wanted to scream.