eatingwitheddie

I have enjoyed Flower Drum in Melbourne, found the good things quite good, great in fact, but not consistent across the board. I had even better food at a Cantonese seafood restaurant in Sydney. It was called Century I believe. I went with the famous chef Tetsuya Wakuda (an everyday patron) and we got great product and treatment. Without doubt Vancouver's best is world class. I found Sun Sui Wah excellent and have heard great comments about other venues there. I worked at NY's Shun Lee which has a real split personality. One can get a world-class meal there but this is usually most often encountered when pre-ordering and they put on the 'Ritz' for you. Come in off the street and it can be excellent or disappointing and Americanized, depending upon what you order. This dual personality is something which must be included in this discussion as it happens in many Chinese restaurants worldwide. Pre-ordered banquet food is often at a different level than food sold on the a la carte menu. Over the years I have frequently pointed this fact out. Often a chef may be able to cook a fabulous meal for a table of 10, but doesn't have the skills and /or desire to be an executive chef for a large and busy operation. The reverse is true as well.

I'm sure they do. I found six online and you mentioned the sushi-specific dipping-soy-sauce. What I'm trying to figure out is 1) whether there's much difference other than salt levels; and 2) what the missing soy sauces are. I mean, is there some sort of uber-Kikkoman product that isn't on the Web site, that the company tries to keep secret, but that is actually the world's best soy sauce? Or are variants 8 and 9 just representatives of the two levels of saltiness that fill the gap between regular and lite? My recollection is that they were all different, some in salt levels, but significantly in nuances of flavor. The ingredient list on each varied greatly. Some had many ingredients and a couple only a few. Clearly 'whole bean soy' is a buzz phrase that they and other manufacturers use for indentifying a premium product. Though I seem to remember the different premium soys varied substantially from one another when reading the fine print. I have a bottle of the Kikkoman 'sushi & sashimi' soy. I have not seen it for sale anywhere. On the label it says "To enjoy sushi and sashimi Kikkoman has produced a special soy sauce. It is milder, better balance between sweetness and saltiness, and compliments the flavors in sushi." Ingredients: water, wheat, soy beans, salt, sugar, water, modified food starch, sodium benzoate, fermented wheat protein, maltodextrin salt, disodium inosinate, disodium guanylate, lactic acid. Tastes gentler and delicious. By contrast my made in the USA (Wisconsin) gallon of regular Kikkoman only lists water, wheat, soybeans, salt, and sodium benzoate as ingredients. By the way they suggest (on the can) refrigeration after opening (I don't do this), and use within a few months. Better living through chemistry!

Thanks for a great post

Is it made from toasted black sesame? How can you tell? Smell it!

Chinese chefs like it, they think it tastes good. And yes Kikkoman does make 8 or 9 different kinds. How do I know? I recently went to a seminar which they sponsored and saw and sampled them all. Honest injun! May not be on their website but they do exist!

These directions are good but: Don't do it in much in advance because 1) It isn't as good as when it's freshly done 2) If you let it sit warm and covered it will promote bacterial growth and everyone who eats it is in harm's way 3) The recipe gives the impression that after velveting the chicken is then stir-fried. This is only kind of true. After velveting the chicken should just be tossed in the seasoning sauce for a few seconds. This is about flavoring NOT cooking it further. That should have been taken care of by the velveting.

Virtually every protein has a better texture when it is velveted in oil. The almost invisible egg white and cornstarch coating adds a smooth texture. A good trick is to add a tablespoon of oil to the marinade. This helps to promote the smoothness. Adding some salt to the marinade 'denatures' the protein and after 12 hours or so breaks it down and tenderizes it. By passing the food through oil rather than stir-frying it, one counts on the oil to transmit the heat. If the food is cut precisely, and surrounded by the hot oil, THE HEAT IS EVEN ALL AROUND and all the food cooks at precisely the same rate. In traditional stir-frying the heat is transmitted randomly as pieces of protein come in contact with the surface of the pan. Therefore velveting and egg white marination gives 1) more precise control of texture 2) a more tender product. While it is possible to velvet chicken and seafood in water, the cooking takes longer because of the water's lower temperature (212 max and much lower after the food goes in), plus the water washes the food and removes flavor. I find it acceptable for dietary reasons but inferior in terms of finished product. If you try to velvet meat in liquid it will quickly toughen, unless you are using a cut that is naturally extremely tender such as a beef filet or pork tenderloin. Even then you'll be washing it and diluting its natural flavor. Not highly recommended. It is very important that egg white marinated foods be cooked at no more than 300 degress F., or the pieces will stick to one another. Sometimes I may marinate protein and then realize I don't have much oil around. I don't hesitate to stir-fry it in the traditional manner using a couple of tablespoons of oil. If I make a tasty sauce and am good about vegetable texture I can get quite a good result. I know velveting sounds intimidating but in fact it's quite simple once you're accustomed it. Just make sure to have a strainer suspended over an oil pot right next to your wok.

MIXING TWO KINDS OF SOY FOR THE SAME DISH I usually cook with Kikkoman and with Amoy Golden Label Dark. I will use one or the other depending upon whether I'd like a dark or light color, a more or less salty taste, and what nuances of flavor I'm trying to achieve. Some of the dark soys have a rounded molasses-like quality that I find desirable. If I really want a great deal of this molasses flavor I'll use a bit of thick soy, which is highly reduced and viscous. Many years ago a masterchef/teacher who influenced me greatly showed me how to mix the two kinds of soy to achieve a variety flavors and depth of color. For example when I'm making a standard brown stir-fry sauce for Beef and Vegetables I might use 3 parts light soy to one part dark. For a spicy Hunan chicken dish where I want a deep brown color I might use more like 2:1, light to dark.

Kikkoman produces at least 8 or 9 different soy sauces including a delicious new one that I received from them that was developed expecially for sushi.

JASMINE & MOONGATE IN VEGAS I am familiar with both of these restaurants since I have done consulting for one and spent much time in the other. JASMINE is indeed modeled after a fine Hong Kong hotel restaurant and is both beautiful and authentic (when it tries to be). The chef, Philip Lo has been there since opening and is a very good chef who prepares Hong Kong style cuisine. THE MOONGATE was originally designed to please Americans and has had to adopt a bi-polar personality in order to please both its Americian diners has well as its Asian (mostly Chinese) high-rollers. My feeling about the food quality in these places is that it ranges from fairly good to excellent with a large number of traditional Chinese luxury foods available to those who seek them out. There are live lobsters and fish as well as things like dried abalone and scallops. To my mind they would NOT be in the five top American Chinese restaurants, though I haven't eaten there in 3 years or so. They are however worthy of mention, with Jasmine in particular being a lovely place. The primary purpose of these restaurants is to provide a familiar and somewhat special experience for guests of the hotels' Asian marketing department. After an Asian highroller drops a bundle they want to be able give him/her something comfortable, familiar, and help them forget their losses. By the way, Chinese New Year in these restaurants can be quite a scene.

Does Hong Kong Flower Lounge still exist? There were 2, one on Geary, which I'm pretty sure is now something else, and the one near the airport in Burlingame? which was especially good in the early 90's, but which I couldn't locate a few years ago and suspected it had passed on.

So what restaurants do you like in LA, SF, Vancouver, Toronto etc.?

I think that absolutes are impossible in this case, but a general consensus on the top contenders would be valuable. Plus there may be some terrific restaurants in smaller communities where one wouldn't expect to find them. In the back of my mind is a restaurant in California, Sacramento I think. If people just list the best restaurants in their communities we will have a good starting point.

Mobil, Zagat, Michelin, Gayot, don't provide the answer to the question: what are the 5 top Chinese restaurants in the US? Let's see what we can come up with. Nominations please.

Dark or Light? Japanese/Chinese/Other Want do you look for in your soy sauce? What brands/flavors do you prefer and why?

You ordered well. All of these were items I thought were good as well. Unfortunately, many other offerings weren't so impressive, though that was 3 weeks ago and things may have changed for the better. I truly hope so and expect this will happen sooner or later.

Love it? Hate it? Know how to make it delicious? Soft? Firm? Pressed? Dry? Beancurd skin? What restaurants have great beancurd? Where can you buy great beancurd? Whatdaya think?

A well cooked and seasoned steak stands on it's own if the meat is of good quality. It doesn't NEED anything. However a sauce on the side whether it's bernaise, marchand de vin, au poivre, chimmichurri or another, creates a nice variety of experience and gives the diner the opportunity to add another flavor dimension to his or her meal while still enabling them to enjoy and appreciate the beef's natural flavor. Why Not?

They count for sure.

What are your favorite non-green Chinese vegetables? Recipes? Dishes? Who makes them best?

Actually when it's properly prepared I think that the classic Szechuan dish, Dry Sauteed String Beans, is one of the greatest dishes in all of Chinese cooking. While the beans are not raw they are only cooked for about 10 seconds in super hot oil, this makes them bright green and crisp and really brings out their natural flavor. By the way, in Chinese, string beans are called 'four-season beans.'

Where's your corner?

They're green and long (a foot or more) and curvy and often tangled, and they have a bud at one the end. In NYC Chinese markets one often finds similar but different shoots. I'm particularly thinking of 2 things: flowering Chiense chives and yellow leeks.

What's this please?

What do you enjoy about a longbean that you don't get frrom a string bean? I've never really gotten it. I find that the texture of long beans never seems to please me, plus the little beans growing in the pod are often more mature than I would like.