KennethT
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Posts posted by KennethT
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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?
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2 hours ago, heidih said:
Hhmmm - gai lan in my book looks like broccolini or rapini on steroids.
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.
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@liuzhou Very true... but I was also comparing the price of the cai hua to the spinach... it's almost half the price.
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wow that cai hua is cheap! It's like $0.60 per pound!
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1 hour ago, heidih said:
It is interesting to see th names and the images are great. Practically speaking though I just buy what looks interesting. Asking other shoppers how they treat the greens usually get the "soup or stir-fry" response. I've just learned what I like. One of my fun experiences was walking the dog at a regional park and seeing a Korean woman, elegantly dressed, with a big knife and a basket crouching down cutting a "weed". I asked and she said "for soup" and that I would not like it. I picked some. It was edible crysanthemum - I liked it
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glebionis_coronaria
Just make sure you wash anything you pick in the park - who knows how many dogs could have peed on that chrysanthemum!
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@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)...
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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.
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1 minute ago, liuzhou said:
I guessed that might be what you were referring to. That is known here as 上海白菜 shàng hǎi bái cài (Shanghai Bok Choy).
It's labeled that way here too, depending on the store. Some call it baby bok choi, others Shanghai bok choi...
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@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:
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27 minutes ago, liuzhou said:
The nomenclature for Chinese greens is a minefield, and varies from place to place.
Can you point me to an image of what you know as baby bok choy?
Yu choi is Cantonese. The Mandarin is 油菜 yóu cài and is rape, the origin of rapeseed oil or Canola.
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:
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25 minutes ago, liuzhou said:
The nomenclature for Chinese greens is a minefield, and varies from place to place.
Can you point me to an image of what you know as baby bok choy?
Yu choi is Cantonese. The Mandarin is 油菜 yóu cài and is rape, the origin of rapeseed oil or Canola.
This is what I typically see labeled as baby bok choi:
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@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.
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14 minutes ago, MetsFan5 said:
Where did you go?
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...
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Finally made it down to Chinatown to get some specialty ingredients and stopped off for lunch.
This place is known for their hand pulled noodles and their dumplings. The dumplings were so good that I got a bag of them to take home.
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@CantCookStillTry Thai curries can be very runny - it depends on how much (if any) coconut cream you use.
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7 hours ago, FeChef said:
Late to the party, but you want to flash boil the bones and discard the water, and rinse the bones. Then add them to a pot with other ingredients to make stock. You can skip this step if using a pressure cooker, or apply this step in combination with a pressure cooker if your goal is clear/white stock. Any browning of bones will result in dark stock.
Sometimes people want a dark stock. Beef stocks typically have the bones/veg roasted prior to simmering. You can also do it for a dark chicken stock.
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1 hour ago, Anna N said:
I would suspect it does make a difference whether it’s over water or in water. The initial question was about bones in water.
Whoops - I misread the OP - I thought the OPer was trying to roast bones and use water in the pan (I assumed the bones were on a rack above the water) to keep the drippings from sticking to the pan...
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@liuzhou Sorry for the question - I didn't realize that shepherd's purse was an ingredient! I had never heard of it before...
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17 minutes ago, gfweb said:
So the consensus is that water in the oven air inhibits browning and roasting?
Maillard is temp dependent and steam conducts heat better, so wouldn't moist air brown better...or at least no worse?
I agree - I think you can get good browning when roasting above a pan of water. The water won't be boiling in the oven - hot air in an oven does not have nearly good enough heat transfer capability to have a pan of water boil... it will increase the humidity in the oven though.
I recently saw a video online where someone was making Char Siu in a home oven - and the pieces were being roasted on a rack over some water in the pan. The char siu got nicely browned - it looked perfect.
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Your photos are fantastic - they are so good that Georgia may go on the travel list! Thanks for all this!
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4 hours ago, liuzhou said:
A Shanghai favourite. 猪肉荠菜馄饨 zhū ròu jì cài hún tún - Pork and Shepherd's purse wontons with wilted, shredded lettuce (生菜 shēng cài).
Wontons were cooked in a peppery chicken broth and the lettuce thrown in for the last 30 seconds. Drained and served. I ocould have served them with the broth, but wasn't in a soup mood.
What's the filling in the wontons? Do you make them, or are they available for purchase (uncooked)?
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It is sometimes recommended to roast things on a rack above a little water so that the drippings (mostly fat) don't burn on the sheet pan below it. I don't know how useful it would be for bones since there isn't much meat or fat on them, unless you're roasting a duck or goose carcass, or a really fatty cut of pork.
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35 minutes ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:
As I am from Philadelphia I have to ask: what is Philadelphia in context?
cream cheese?
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10 hours ago, Smithy said:
That's a point well worth exploring. A cooking class I took about a year ago asserted that mole is defined by having finely-ground (and, I think, cooked) nuts in the sauce. However, I don't recall a requirement that the food be cooked in that sauce. Is that a significant and defining difference between mole and curry?
Many Nyonya curries have finely ground (or pounded) nuts - specifically candlenuts, which are kind of like macadamias... they act as a thickener for the curry. One of the curries I make frequently - the Ayam Buah Keluak - uses them.
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Chinese Vegetables Illustrated
in China: Cooking & Baking
Posted · Edited by KennethT (log)
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!