KennethT

Jeez @FeChef - no need to be snippy.... OP was asking if the water would prevent the bones from developing a grilled flavor. The OP did not say that it was not wanted, just if the water would prevent it.

What do the sweet potato shoots taste like? I've seen them in my local Korean/Asian store and have been curious, but not curious enough to take the plunge without hearing what someone else thinks!

So I'm prepping to make mapo tofu, and one of the ingredients is fermented black beans. I haven't opened the package yet, but they look like they're preserved in salt. Do they need rinsing or soaking before chopping them up?

Right - gai lan is called "Chinese Broccoli" sometimes in the USA... also, keep in mind that gailan is the Cantonese for Brassica oleracea var. alboglabra (from Wikipedia). The stems are much thicker and hardier than what has been pictured above so far.

@liuzhou Very true... but I was also comparing the price of the cai hua to the spinach... it's almost half the price.

wow that cai hua is cheap! It's like $0.60 per pound!

Just make sure you wash anything you pick in the park - who knows how many dogs could have peed on that chrysanthemum!

@shain Sorry to hear about not feeling well.... I've been there. Do you know what those berries were? The first ones look almost like hops (not a berry)...

Nuts will absorb water, regardless of how well roasted, I would think. I think they should be coated with some kind of moisture barrier (cocoa butter?) before putting in anything other than chocolate, which is basically fat with solid particles suspended.

It's labeled that way here too, depending on the store. Some call it baby bok choi, others Shanghai bok choi...

@liuzhou This variability of nomenclature reminds me of something that drove me crazy in Singapore - there was a vegetable that I loved that was served everywhere, called "baby gai lan" - but it didn't look anything like any type of gai lan I've ever seen. And doing any kind of search for it brings up nothing even close - yet every place we went to, from hole in the wall dive to hawker center to restaurant all called it the same name, and when it was served, it was always the same thing! Maddening! ETA: this is a photo of the elusive "baby kailan"... ETA (again).. another photo of the baby kailan, in a different place:

Then again, a search with Mr. Google shows many different images for xiao bai cai - some look like what I posted above, and some look like this, which looks just like yours:

This is what I typically see labeled as baby bok choi:

@liuzhou Looks great, as usual. That baby bok choi doesn't look like how I'm used to seeing it - the stems seem too narrow. It looks sort of like a baby yu choi. I'd love to know more about this.

Lan Zhou Hand Pulled Noodles and Dumpling. They're on Bowery about a block south of Canal. They used to be on East Broadway in a much smaller space, but have moved maybe a year ago to the current location. There's a window in the back of the dining room where you can watch the guy pulling a huge skein of noodles... didn't get a photo of it though. The dumplings are amazing, and the noodles had great texture, but I thought the broth was under seasoned - but that's easily rectified by the jar of homemade chili oil, and bottles of black vinegar and soy sauce on each table...