eatingwitheddie

Does anyone like flowering (Chinese) chives? Are they available in your location?

I agree. I completely forgot about garlic shoots because I don't find them in the stores too often. One of my favourite ways of eating them is sauteed with rice sticks and shredded chicken -- very simple but comforting. Garlic shoots are often called garlic scapes. In NYC the best place to get them is at the greenmarket during the springtime.

Sounds like 'ong choy' - NO HEART VEGETABLE - gets it's name from the hollow straw-like stems.

Have any favorite Chinese greens? Favorite recipes?

Did you get a raise yet?

Does anybody know of a roast pork bun that has ENOUGH filling? They ALWAYS seem to have too little don't they?

What makes a great roast pork bun? Who makes a great roast pork bun? Steamed or baked, which do you prefer? Why?

Don't forget to clean it first! Lot of ca-ca on a just-opened scallop.

Why do you boil them in the rice washing water? What roll does the rice play? If you boil them for 1 1/2 hours aren't they overcooked, too tender and going towards mushy? What size are the bb shoots that you're cooking? What causes the irritation of the outer covering. I guess that's what I'm reacting to when I eat fresh shoots. What gets rid of this effect?

Does it explicitly say on the menu that the bamboo shoots are fresh?

Americans never developed a taste and therefore a demand for it. You can sometimes find roe scallops. I had them this fall. Bought them in the shell in Chinatown.

Bought some beautiful fresh winter bamboo shoots in Bklyn. Chinatown. They're from China -- $1.98/lb. Three pieces cost $2.50. I peeled them by removing the outer layers with my fingers until the woody covering was gone, leaving just the tender interior part of the shoot. I trimmed and discarded any hairy or discolored edges as well as the fibrous part of the tip. I then blanched the bamboo shoots in salted water for 20-25 minutes, then drained and rinsed them. They came out with a great crisp, crunchy and tender texture and a delicate flavor, ready to put in a stir fry or braised dish. Both yesterday and in the past, I have noticed that I have a reaction to fresh bamboo shoots. They seem to make my tongue break out and create a tickle in my throat. To mitigate this I cut the BB shoot in pieces and then briefly blanched them a second time before using them in a recipe. Anybody have any experiences prepping and cooking with fresh bamboo shoots? My grandmother never taught me the classical bamboo shoot preparations, just blintzes. Anybody know about my allergic reaction or experience a similar thing?

The variety of bay scallop that is available in Nantucket is one of the great things to eat. Eastern Long Island has the same variety and quality but the crop hasn't been commercially viable due to disease. At their best these are fabulous incredibly sweet world-class scallops. Their season is October-December. Worthing seeking out. The southern Atlantic bay scallops, known as 'calicos', are the most frequently encountered bays in the US. They rarely provide even a hint at how delicious scallops can be. They are typically highly processed to preserve shelf life. This deprives them of their brininess and character. This is the case with most of the sea scallops as well. Truly fresh sea scallops from Maine and New England waters can be delicious, but in my experience never really approach the sweetness of the sweetest bays. In NYC we can now sometimes purchase live scallops still in their shells. By the way I've enjoyed great tasting roe scallops (with attached pink egg sack - a delicacy) in France.

I prefer fresh to dried but like both. I especially love: real Nantucket Bay Scallops and real Peconic Bay Scallops.

Chinese chefs make the best lobsters. That's my opinion, what's yours?

Kikkoman (similarly to its competitors) currently has something in the area of 9 different soy sauces on the market. The method and brewing and ingredients are different from one to the next with each having different depths of color and flavor. I have sampled the complete line and have found that they do vary especially when tasted side by side. By the way the soy you've purchased is the top-of-the-line product and it's noteworthy because it is a 'natural' product containing no chemicals. By contrast a couple of Kikkoman's other premium soys have a long list of unfamiliar scientific sounding ingredients. You can use it for daily cooking and flavoring, there are no sacred uses for it. I find it quite delicious and seek it out (Chinese stores don't sell it usually). Kikkoman has recently sent me a sample of a new soy developed just for sushi and sashimi which I loved. Haven't seen it for sale yet.

BLUE CRABS VS. DUNGENESS CRABS To discover what all the fuss is about go buy some fat live heavy blue crabs. Rinse and if necessary lightly scrub them under cold running water. Take care not to get bitten. Drop the crabs in rapidly boiling well-salted water that you have made almost as salty as seawater. Remove them after about 7-8 minutes, and let the crabs cool a bit, so that you can handle them without getting burned. If you're near an Asian market go buy a couple of live Dungeness crabs, those fat 2 1/2 pounders if you can find them. Treat them the same way except cook them a little longer: maybe 12 minutes, more or less, depending on the size of your crabs. Next crack each type open and taste them side-by-side. Best way to learn the difference. To my mind the blue crab is sweeter and frankly superior, but is way harder to eat. It's best bite is the back fin meat located in the front corners of the body, though I love the claws when they aren't overcooked. By contrast, the Dungeness crab has great leg meat, and plentiful meat in the body as well, but the claws while worth eating are on the stringy side. It too is seriously delicious, I just don't think the Dungeness has as much 'oceanic sweetness'. By the way I like to make seafood bisques and find that blue crabs are particularly good for this purpose, again better than the Dungeness, though I do like it when I combine the two. At its best blue claw crabmeat is sweet, fresh, delicious and extremely expensive. So much labor is required to 'pick' those small crabs. It is also virtually NEVER as good as the meat of freshly cooked live blue crabs that I make at home. It is always way easier. Don't get me wrong, I'm a crab lover and often purchase and cook both blue and Dungeness, which are readily available, live in NYC (not to mention live freshwater crabs from China). Bottom line is: if you're a crab lover you're lucky to be living in the Delmarva area. Make the most of it! By the way the really large blue crabs that can weigh a pound or more, the jumbos, virtually always males, rarely make it to markets outside the area. I see them in NYC only once every year or two. Look for them, they're much more expensive but have much more reward (meat). Only buy live crabs as they deteriorate noticeably and immediately after they die.

Korea has good mushrooms. The highest grades have lines and crenallations on the top and are called (in Chinese) flower mushrooms. These used to be quite expensive and not easy to come by, but are now widely available and much less expensive than 5 or 10 years ago. I suspect they are a different variety of shitake, not just a better grade, and are being more widely cultivated.

In NY's Chinatown a pound of very good quality dried shitake is about 10 bucks, more or less. The best quality ones are still up in the 20-30 range but the $10 ones can be truly excellent. For instance they may taste as good but not be of a uniformly large size.

Can't hurt, but I suspect that the stainless steel won't absorb the oil and achieve the same patina as a regular steel wok.

Shrimp with Lobster Sauce. When did you first eat it? Where do you like to eat/order it? What do you expect when you order it? What color is it's sauce? Is it authentic or Americanzied Chinese food?

The fact is I do exactly the same thing to a cast iron skillet. I have and use 20 of them.

"Jawbone wrote:" I gave my wok one last try last night on a fried rice dish and it worked quite well. This was probably my 12th time using the wok and the last several times I have noticed the blackened/seasoned area growing a bit (it now extends an inch or two up the sides). I live in a small apartment and my kitchen has no range hood, window or exhaust system of any type so my seasoning attempts have probably been more timid than they should have been. (my method: get the wok good and hot, put in a few tablespoons of oil and few teaspoons of salt and rub like crazy -- I should probably repeat this more than once or twice but by that point my wife and I are choking on the smoke I have done this 5 or 6 times altogether now.) I guess I will be patient and give it a few more tries. You don't need the salt. HOW TO SEASON & CLEAN YOUR STEEL WOK To season a steel wok: Put a few tablespoons of vegetable oil in your wok and place it over high heat. Tilt the pan to make sure the surface is oiled all over. When the wok starts to get quite hot, after 30-90 seconds, wash it out with cold water using a coarse stainless steel or copper pad to scrub the wok's surface clean. Dry the wok over high heat and wipe clean with a towel. Repeat this process 3 or 4 times for a new steel pan. To clean a steel wok: While your pan is still warm rinse it quickly with some cool water, then with more cool water flowing into the pan, scrub the wok's surface with a coarse stainless steel or copper pad until it's free of all food particles. Rinse it once more, then dry it by placing the wok over high heat and drying it with a towel.

Go for it. The wok taste is elusive -- flavoring the dish well is about 99.5% of the game. By the way my hand-hammered wok is quite thin and bends easlity. It works great and was easy to season. It gets very hot quickly and cools off just as fast. Are you sure you've seasoned your wok properly? Need help?

I shop in Chinatown 3-4 times weekly and frequently buy my fish at the same corner you singled out. There are two fish markets there, one on the NW corner of Grand and Chrystie, and a second just off the SW corner on Grand. I typically prefer the store on the south side of the street, but in fact one has to shop at both and see what's fresh. Mott between Grand and Hester is another block to check out, and in my opinion has the best shopping in the hood. There is an excellent fish market mid block, a little closer to Grand actually, on the east side of the street. They tend to carry a better grade product, larger sea bass and grey sole for example. Walk south from there and you'll run into a pair of narrow and particularly well priced mongers, very active stores. Further south on the block, just a few doors north of Hester, is the relatively new large modern market that stretches through the entire block to Elizabeth Street. Don't know the name but you can recognize it by its string of colored light fixtures. They sell big thick center cuts of beautifully fat salmon among many other items: reliably very good guality, a little bit more expensive, but still a bargain and worth it. More importantly when you reach this end of the block this enables you to reward yourself by crossing Hester and ducking into New Chiao Chow on Mott St to score a bowl of their cheap and terrific bone-warming wonton soup. You pay for the soup with the three bucks you just saved on the fish! Catherine St.(north side) just east of Chatham Sq. has a small mid-block high-turnover fish market that I've been patronizing and found reliable for many years. Again there is no substitute for being selective. Finally, on the east side of of Center St about 1 1/2 blocks north of Canal is a great store specializing in live fish and lobsters, as well as dungeness crabs and geoduck clams, which they receive directly from the west coast. Good place to buy live stripers, cod, tilapia and shrimp etc. The name has changed numerous times, don't know what it is these days. As far as fresh fish primarily on Sundays -- I don't believe it for a second. The wholesale market is closed Sundays, and direct receivers can get a shipment anytime. Retailers make sure to be well stocked on Sundays because it is the busiest day. Just isn't that simple. Shop carefully, that's the answer. By the way the shopping scene in Bklyn's 8th Ave. Chinatown has gotten extremely active and is priced even below Manhattan's. I find myself shopping there with increasing frequency.