Will

I think pepper is fairly common in Chinese cooking. Salt and pepper chicken / tofu / shrimp comes to mind, as well as black pepper lamb / beef as far as a couple of dishes which use pepper as their primary seasoning. Ground pepper is often used (sometimes in excess) to help compensate for less than fresh vegetables. It's used a fair amount in soup (e.g., hot and sour). Ground white pepper is often on the table as a condiment at Chinese restaurants. A little history also here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_pepper#China I have also seen Sichuan peppercorn (which is, of course, unrelated) mis-translated on ingredient lists as "black pepper".

I get the best rice cooking results in the rice cooker. Really depends what style of rice you like and how often you make it. For a lot of people, a rice cooker is an unnecessary gimmick. But for me, the main feature on my rice cooker is the timer. Whether it's having perfect brown rice when I get home (and not having to wait 2 hours for it to cook), or waking up to steel cut oats, it makes my life a lot easier.

It is interesting to a point (and I'd definitely be interested if someone ends up finding reliable information about historically used thickeners in various Chinese cuisines), but it doesn't address the question posed in this thread, which, as I understand it, is simply whether cornstarch is used in modern (but "authentic", whatever that means) Chinese cuisines (compared to "Westernized" Chinese food). I think it's clear that it is, though other substances, such as potato starch, etc. are also used, both for coating food prior to frying, and as a thickener. Of course, China is a huge country with a number of different cuisines. Even in contemporary usage, I would imagine that different thickening agents are popular in different areas, so the question, even as asked, is a little silly, because there is not one "Chinese food". And, this may reflect to a greater or lesser extent what substances were common or available in the past in a given area.

Also works the other way around:

They look like mustaches if you flip them around. Pretty delicious too. I think the person above meant 'water caltrops' when they said 'water chestnut' (and looks like they've edited their post to be more clear about that) -- I didn't know this either (only heard the Chinese name for them), but confusingly, while these are sometimes called water chestnut in English, they are not the same thing as what we normally think of as water chestnut. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_caltrop

I think potato starch is often used instead of corn starch. You get a little bit less gloppy results, I think (from my very unscientific testing). You use about 1/2 the amount as you'd use of corn starch. I think arrowroot is another thickener sometimes used in Chinese cooking, but could be wrong.

I could see the point of going somewhere like this if you were an expat living in Shanghai, but since you're not, maybe you're better off spending your short time there experiencing some things that are actually unique to China / Shanghai during those few days, rather than something you can find better and cheaper back in the US. Lots of great food and other stuff to enjoy there. One of my favorite moments last time I was there (in '07) was finding people ballroom dancing on the street at 9 or 10 PM on a weekend evening.

I usually use a wok, or, for stuff that's small enough, sometimes a cast iron skillet (don't have a CI dutch oven, but that would probably be a good choice too). Unless you deep fry often enough to make it worth while to use the oil a few times before changing, I'm not sure a dedicated deep fryer is worth it. You're supposed to change the oil pretty often anyway, and the deep fryer tends to use quite a lot of it.

I think one problem with egullet is that the mission statement is kind of pretentious and elitist, and there are a lot of hoops to jump through to join (and to stay active). While this has the (presumably intended) consequence of keeping out a lot of the riff-raff and ensuring that folks who are here are interested in participating, I'm sure it also puts off many people from joining entirely. I only joined to post in a few threads I found interesting, but when I first came across egullet years ago, all the requirements definitely kept me from signing up. I'm not saying it's a bad way to go -- there's some benefit to limiting the size of a community, but by restricting growth, you do also run the risk of lack of growth or stagnation. I'm not against aggressive moderation and keeping things on-topic, but personally, I would question the need to be so restrictive about who can join, or try to inflate the idea of a forum by making it a "society". The name also seems a little dated - the whole 'prefixing things with e' trend died out a while back... This is not to say I don't enjoy this forum - it's a more manageable volume of topics than Chowhound is, and in certain areas of discussion, there's less noise / repetition.

Nutritional yeast... a little 1970s granola, but a good way to add a savory element and cheesy flavor to non-dairy or vegan dishes without cheese. I rarely use it when cooking for guests, but I will occasionally sneak it in.

Well cognac is a kind of brandy, though not all brandy is cognac (in the same way that scotch is whisk(e)y, but not all whisk(e)y is scotch). I find that Hennessy or Courvoisier VS work fine for mixing and are also nice enough to drink (though of course you can get nicer cognacs for more money). Hennessy can be obtained pretty cheaply, and if you buy the big bottles from a Costco type place, it's even cheaper. For something a bit more off the beaten path, some places have "H" by Hine in the low $30s; seems easier to find on the east coast than over here in California. If you can get the Bulleit Rye for $22 or under by you, I think it's a pretty good value; I like it better than the Rittenhouse, though I haven't been making many mixed drinks recently, so I don't know how it mixes. While it doesn't exactly qualify in the budget category, I would suggest checking out the Ransom "Old Tom" gin if you can find it (about $35-40), and might work a little better than the standard brands in some of the drinks you mention.

I would be curious if people who notice this problem notice it with all canola oil, whether mechanically or chemically extracted. FWIW, unless it's rancid, I never notice any off smell or taste in Canola oil. I do usually try to use mechanically extracted types when it's financially viable. On another note, one good thing about Canola is its ratio of Omega-6 to Omega-3 - 3:1, which is one of the most balanced of the commonly used oils (olive oil, which is 12:1, is also not too bad). We do need more 6 than 3, but too much Omega-6 can completely prevent you from getting any benefit from Omega-3, no matter how much flaxseed or fish oil you gulp down.

I've always heard that adding salt to the beaten eggs makes the end result tougher, and that you should salt after they're mostly cooked. We usually make them pretty runny and soft in our house - very low heat and long cooking time.

I used to just use a brush (which is what I do with most other wild mushrooms), but after talking to several mushroom people, I have started to rinse morels, and I don't think the results suffer too much. I do several changes of cold water immediately before cooking, drain and a quick pat dry, then directly into a smoking hot pan (method suggested by the guy I buy mushrooms from).

I use a combination of these, depending on what I'm cooking and how much of a particular ingredient there is. For stir-fries and things where I really need to do all the prep first, I'll transfer the ingredients into small bowls. Otherwise, if I'm using a lightweight cutting board, I may scrape from the board to the pan (with the knife upside-down, of course), or use the flat of a Chinese cleaver.

Do you mean teabag teabags, and are you joking? Because I don't think you will develop much of an appreciation for tea drinking floor sweepings. teachat.com is another good resource, if you haven't seen it.

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/restaurant_website

A Chinese cafe I go to serves a salad with broccoli stems that's pretty good. I think it's got vinegar, salt, chili or chili paste, probably sesame oil, and cilantro. Not sure what else. I think they're raw, not sure if they peel them first, then they're sliced thin the long way.

I like stainless, but only time will tell whether it is, as someone suggested on Gardenweb, the "new avocado".

Maybe something like this? http://3hungrytummies.blogspot.com/2009/11/cantonese-chili-oil.html Also a few comments at: http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/702945#5561698

FWIW, the large, food service size bottles of Neilsen-Massey are way cheaper than the small bottles. Surfa's has the 32 oz bottles for around $30 (this is a huge size for a home kitchen), and the gallon ones seem to be around $75-80.

ps - I don't do well with Campari or tonic water, and I can handle bitter melon pretty well now, so, just keep on eating it.

Just to be clear, I said they are not century eggs. They're duck eggs which have been brined for a few weeks or more. They come either cooked (steamed or hard boiled) or uncooked, and don't have the color, taste, or texture of pi dan / century egg (I think the Filipino version is sometimes dyed red also). The cooked salted duck egg is more or less like a hard boiled egg, but intensely salty. Beyond the saltiness, there's nothing really unusual or gross about the flavor or texture. Probably thing usually called "black bean sauce" (dou chi - 豆豉), but you could also use doubanjiang (either the kind with or without chili).

Yeah - stir-frying with egg reduces a little of the bitterness. There's another Chinese preparation that uses salted duck egg -- see below -- this guy has you do a lot of work by blanching it in salty water and removing all the pith; I'm not totally convinced that the difference in bitterness is worth all the work (compared to just slicing it and stir-frying, then steaming / braising directly in the wok). Stir-frying with fermented bean paste is another tried and true Chinese cooking method (oven-braising with fermented bean paste is another way I've had it, though I don't know if it's traditional). I don't eat meat, but stuffed with sticky rice and pork is another popular way to eat it. The type of bittermelon matters too - the white kind that's popular in Taiwan seems a little less bitter; the spikey Indian kind can be extremely bitter. There's a Taiwanese shake made of white bitter melon with some other fruit and honey that's absolutely delicious. Using a lot of oil, or adding a little bit of sugar are a few other tricks you can try. And just making yourself eat it over and over will get you a bit more accustomed to the taste. If you can get salted duck eggs, here's another method to try (on Youtube); I put the rough method in English below (recipe uses the white kind, but you can use the green kind too): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68NU2Q80PJk 1) Quarter kugua lengthwise, cut off all the pith, cut in strips on the bias, blanch in hot / just off boil salted water with a little oil 2) Stir-fry whole yolks of 2-4 cooked (n.b. - these come either cooked or uncooked, or you can make your own at home; these are the salted kind, but not century eggs) salted duck eggs in some oil on fairly low heat. 3) Add green onion whites, in ~ 1" chunks 4) Add chopped whites of pidan 5) Add kugua and stir-fry a little longer, then add some (water / "soup") - about 2 ladles. 6) After water cooks off, add a little salt, rice wine 7) Add some sesame oil after removing from heat. I'm not sure if Okinawans are concerned with reducing the bitter taste - my co-worker was eating some plain with tofu; I asked her if she added any sugar to it, and she looked at me like I was crazy.

I had never understood the taste of muscat, until I tried a (fresh) muscat grape -- since then, though, I can easily see how Darjeelings have a strong muscat flavor. And of course, most of us haven't spent much time tasting cat pee, road tar, or pencil lead... however, I have experienced tastes which these kind of silly terms help me put a name to. As with wine, some people can go a little overboard with these things, but they are useful to a limited extent, simply because they give people a (somewhat) standard language with which to describe their taste experience. Of course, some of these things are culturally determined - with Chinese tea, people frequently use Chinese medincine, camphor, longyan, dried ume, etc. as taste descriptors, and often these aren't familiar reference points to non-Chinese. But even if you've never had the experience of trying these things, you quickly get a sense of what people mean when they describe a tea as tasting a particular way, and I think that's really more to the point. I go back and forth - sometimes, I prefer to just keep it at the level of "I like this" or "I don't like this"; other times, I try not to be as judging ("good" vs. "bad"), but try to focus on the various tastes I'm experiencing... terms like the one you describe are, at the very least, a way to keep track of your sensory experience if you write down your thoughts on a particular tea (yes, this is a little obsessive, and I rarely do it when I'm sharing tea with friends, but I do find these little notes helpful, both to look back on, and as a way of focusing my thoughts about a given tea). Tea is both interesting and intensely frustrating at times, because we have all the variables in individual taste, atmospheric conditions, etc. that people have with wine, but also, the nearly infinite possibilities that come from variable brewing (and, in some cases, storage) really makes the whole thing very complex. In other words, with tea, you have a lot of rope to hang yourself with, and while you can strive for consistency, you will probably find it hard to re-capture that perfect tea experience from last week.