huiray

I embedded the wrong link for the term "sambal ikan bilis" in my post above. It should, of course, be this instead.

They come in various sizes (and prices) and "saltiness" but yes, they are mostly fairly salty. In general the type of anchovies referred to as "ikan bilis" are not the European or North American ones you may be used to or may be thinking of. See this reference for some useful stuff. Think Vietnamese and Thai "Fish Sauce". Or sambals. Well, "fishiness" is in the palate of the sampler, but they would have a fairly strong odor and taste. Yes, you ought to be able to find them in decent Chinese or "Asian" (especially those who carry significant amounts of SE Asian products) groceries. The dried fish as packaged/sold is not eaten as-is. It is always cooked in some way. The simplest is to just deep-fry them when they become salty crunchy tasty little things. These deep-fried ikan bilis or the corresponding sambal ikan bilis is often considered an indispensible ingredient in Nasi Lemak in SE Asia, for instance. They were once even bar snacks (the equivalent of peanuts in Western/North American bars :-) ) and have returned in some places, so I understand. They range from cheap to not inexpensive usually depending on size and grade. Buy some medium-priced ones and try cooking some. :-) [Mind you, someone I knew could not abide the idea of eating them when she first encountered them (she's Western European in origin) stating that she just couldn't eat what looked to her like pet fish...guppies... :-) ]

A nice wine dinner at Oh Yumm! Bistro, a well-regarded local place. Overall, a nice neighborhood place, fairly high-level food. (I've eaten there before) The wines were all interesting, some more than others, and all certainly a change from the Northern Hemisphere stuff one sees more often in the US and (what else) Northern Hemisphere places. If there is interest I will post my specific comments on the wine and the food. I ordered the Sauvignon Blanc and the Carménère.

Thursday lunch: Pork & Chinese spinach wontons [Wei Chuan] in broth§ w/ Shanghai noodles¶, Chinese celery leaves & sliced scallions. § Chicken stock simmered for a while w/ broken-up dried shiitake mushrooms & dried whole anchovies (Ikan Bilis), then decanted off. ¶ Shanghai Yangchun Noodles (上海陽春麵) cooked in the usual manner in simmering water.

Patrickamory, nah - I (personally) would not consider what you posted as a thread jack. I'd like to think it's fine here. I also think one ought not to shove anything and everything "ethnic" into the "ethnic" threads. That's a kind of over-compartmentalization and even faintly discriminatory, no? :-) I think the Theresa M. Chen book is nice - but note that it focuses on Cantonese SOUPS and does not go into the full panoply of the cuisine. It's not written as an extensive personal & historical memoir, though, in the way Dunlop did. There are sections about the author's journey (personal & foodwise) from the SF Bay Area [this book *is* written from the perspective of "looking back" at the "Old Country" from N. America], the journeys/biographies and recollections (and heretofore unwritten family recipes) of the old-timers and many others she sat down with and talked to, some stuff about the Pearl River Delta versus the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta (with a few historical tid-bits), that sort of thing...then there are sections on Traditional Cantonese/Chinese soups and the principles behind them; lots of stuff about techniques, yes; more than 50 pages on ingredients w/ pictures and the Chinese characters for them (Chinese names for the soups and etc are also given throughout)...etc etc...plus three interesting forewords by Martin Yan, Doreen Leung and Esther Yip Chan. Oh, there are lots of recipes for soups too, of course. :-) Look it up on Amazon - you can see a fair bit of it using the "Look Inside!" feature. OK, any more than this I suppose would count as a threadjack - from the "Cookbooks" threads this time. :-) Your Chicken Chettinad - looks tasty. :-) I presume that is powdered coriander and cumin I see? Plus other stuff? Plus powdered chilli or did you supply the heat with just the fresh chillies depicted? In Tamil Nadu if you had a bowl of this one might be at danger of losing the mucosal lining of your mouth (and throat) if not used to it... :-D I make a form of this too, with a personal simplified/ad hoc recipe rather than one from a cookbook and also dial down the Scoville units some! (I'm not a chilihead :-) )

I see I had some typos in my earlier post. I meant to say that the chicken wings and drumettes were cut crosswise across the bone(s); and that the package of calamansi juice I cited actually contains 12 (not 14) mini-packs of the juice.

Yes. Commonly w/ Thai; also with "regular" basil ("Italian", "Broad Leaf", Genovese) - where the stems are less tender or more woody and the basil trimmed accordingly. Rarely with the other scented/"flavored" non-Thai basil varieties. I often use basil as a vegetable. In soups too, besides stir-fries. The other components are chosen with the concept of the basil packing a punch of flavor being kept in mind. I like it. In each case it is added last, so that it functions as a leafy veggie still having some "bite" and texture (i.e. like a vegetable :-) ) rather than semi-dissolve into the dish if one were using just a few leaves as a spice or herb in a ragù or whatnot. (I do use basil as an "herb"/spice in the latter manner, too)

Lunch today: • Stir-fried chicken & Thai basil. Chicken wings & drumettes, cut into halves crosswise cross the bone(s); marinated w/ fish sauce [Red Boat], “Luscious Soy Sauce” (甘醇油膏) [Kim Lan] (this one), peanut oil, fresh ground white pepper, juice of half a Key lime. Garlic cloves sliced lengthwise sautéed in veggie oil, the chicken pieces + marinade added & tossed; then “Chilli Paste with Holy Basil Leaves” [JHC] (this one) added with quick stirring (sizzle & splatter); the mix stir-fried then cooked (covered) briefly; a pack of calamansi lime juice added in [Manila Gold] (this one; the package shown contains 14 small individual sealed packs of “pure” juice; one pack was used) and the mix banged around on high heat a bit more; halved peeled red shallots & sliced de-seeded ripening hot long green chillies were then added in, the mix tossed, followed by fistfuls of large-trimmed Thai basil (with attached succulent parts of stems & flower buds) added in and the whole stirred & tossed till the basil was just wilted in/stirred in and the heat shut off. • Steamed white rice (Thai Hom Mali) [Elephant Brand].

Issues about Kiwi fruit have been known for 30 years - especially for children. Some useful links: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14675467">http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14675467 http://www.news-medical.net/news/2004/07/07/3139.aspx">http://www.news-medical.net/news/2004/07/07/3139.aspx http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiwifruit#Allergies">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiwifruit#Allergies http://allergicliving.com/index.php/2010/09/01/serious-fruit-allergy-kiwi/">http://allergicliving.com/index.php/2010/09/01/serious-fruit-allergy-kiwi/ http://www.anaphylaxis.org.uk/userfiles/files/Kiwi%20Allergy%20Factsheet.pdf">http://www.anaphylaxis.org.uk/userfiles/files/Kiwi%20Allergy%20Factsheet.pdf

You appear to be in the Mid-Atlantic/New England Region ("Sandy" region) (http://forums.egullet.org/topic/143808-cooking-without-power/#entry1895842). I would imagine fresh lychees and longans would be available in your area? Those would be something different for many of your daughter's classmates I venture to speculate. I would caution against the suggestion of Kiwi fruit in another post - some people have VIOLENT allergic reactions to Kiwi and it might be best to avoid it. Star fruit? Jackfruit? Mangosteens? (OK, the last one is expensive and not really worth it, after being imported frozen then thawed, but it is a nice idea I think :-) ) How about different sorts of melons from Korea/China/Japan? They are readily found in those "Asian" groceries you have referred to. DURIANS??!!! (heh, that could [but maybe not certainly?] get your daughter's class and school and authorities "going") (You can get frozen ones all over the place; although because they are frozen it might not count) Even something simple as fresh Alfonso mangoes or other types of SE Asian mangoes (i.e. OTHER than the "Indian" types) might be a viable choice, and they ought to be available in your area.

Thanks, Plantes Vertes. Interesting.

Have a look here: http://forums.egullet.org/topic/143989-lunch-whatd-ya-have-2012/page-10#entry1917315 :-)

Lunch today: • Heritage chicken eggs, simply pan-fried sunny-side up with crisp edges. (two yolks unfortunately broke while moving them around on the plate) Plated w/ simply boiled small white wax potatoes; plus carrot sticks & sliced onion, both sautéed in the leftover oil from frying the eggs plus a bit of sea salt. • Pepper beef, cured ox tongue & coarse Braunschweiger (all from my local German butcher/sausage/luncheon meats maker). The Braunschweiger was eaten w/ rosemary croccantini [La Panzanella] (these). • Green salad of celery heart & leaves, red-leaf lettuce heart, parsley leavelets, trimmed spinach leaves; dressed w/ a vinaigrette of Dijon mustard w/ horseradish [Maille], sea salt, sugar, rice vinegar [Marukan], juice of half a Key Lime, fresh ground black pepper, EV olive oil (Arbequina) [ Unio]. The eggs were nice, but I thought were not significantly different (if at all) from "normal free range" eggs let alone from the better supermarket eggs. The yolks were more orange, yes, and overall the taste was probably a little "eggier". I ate only part of the pepper beef laid out (it was a little salty) and also half of the potatoes; but pretty much everything else went down the hatch. :-)

huiray – I have other Chinese cookbooks, but cook almost exclusively from “that Englishwoman” for three reasons: the cookbooks cover Sichuan and Hunan (my favorites); the recipes are very well written; and the food has turned out wonderfully. Do you have other recommendations for Sichuan/Hunan cookbooks? OK. No, I don't have any particular recommendations for other Sichuan/Hunan cookbooks, largely because I don't normally like or cook Sichuan/Szechuanese or Hunanese dishes. I prefer and largely cook Cantonese/Hakka and related cuisines, as you may have noticed if you look at the "Lunch" thread. When I cook spicy or fiery dishes¶ I gravitate to SE Asian/Nyonya or Southern Indian dishes. I continue to find it interesting that so many folk in the US (and perhaps elsewhere too) seem to prefer Szechuanese/Hunanese food. Heh. ¶ ...and yes, of course not all Szechuanese/Hunanese food is spicy or fiery. :-)

Well, this is a cook-off, and no one made these items (yet), so there is no discussion of them; it isn't a matter of exclusion. As was mentioned upthread, anything savoury wrapped in some sort of dough qualifies, so what are you waiting for? Whip up a batch of any of these, and post your pictures Glad to hear it. Perhaps I'll give it a try myself - although I can't even remember the last time I used the oven for anything other than warming up or re-crisping some food (Yau char kwai, Chinese roast pork, etc). (Oh wait, I made roast lamb shoulder and roast duck some time ago) My intention in my previous post was to raise the idea in folks' minds that those things I suggested ought to be fine for this thread and I gave some links to what some of those things look like. Although it is a cook-off thread I would hope it is not necessary to have personally made the featured food to even post in such threads. :-)

Bruce, aha thanks. Just curious - do you (or other folks here) read or follow anyone else other than that Englishwoman Fuchsia Dunlop when it comes to Chinese cookery? I just picked up two books off the top of my pile of my cookbooks and they are "The Hakka Cookbook" by Linda Lau Anusasananan; "A Tradition of Soup" by Teresa M. Chen... ;-) and they are written in ENGLISH, no less. :-D

Bruce, those tiger skin peppers - what did you do? (here's one description from someone else which does not involve vinegar) Ditto the "coconut rice" ?

I think one of the issues with the thread (having relatively few posts) is that the OP limited it to empanadas, samosas and UK pasties - even though it was subsequently acknowledged that any savory filling in a pastry counted, and some posters chimed in with other categories (e.g. calzones, momos, crawfish pie) Technically the term "savory pastry" covers an awful lot of ground. No Chinese or Japanese savory pastries have been mentioned, for that matter (other than the query about jaouzi), or other SE Asian or Indian ones (besides samosas) or other Asian (Persian, Turkish, etc etc) pastries? What about some dim-sum items? Would "Wu Tou Kok" qualify? What about "Dan Tat"? There are also savory versions of mooncakes nowadays, even though the veddy veddy traditional ones with the sweet lotus seed derived filling plus the salted duck egg yolks ought to qualify as sort-of-savory too. :-) For that matter, chicken pot pies or steak-and-kidney pies and shepherd's pies (in the Western idiom) ought to qualify as well. :-D Anyway, here's just *one* type of Chinese savory pastry some folks in the West might have had: "Char Siu So" (叉燒酥), which is just one version of a class called "So" or "Sou". As another example, there are any number of variations on something called a "Curry Puff", ubiquitous in SE Asia and derived from something similar in Southern India (and which are not quite samosas).

2013-0428 Lunch • Fried rice. A version based on Yeung Chow fried rice. (See here also) A simple “flat & bubbly” egg omelette (with two eggs, beaten w/ a little water, veggie oil & freshly ground white pepper) was made with a hot pan & hot oil, placed onto a plate, cut up into short strips and reserved. Chinese BBQ pork (“Char-siu”) cut into small cubes was sautéed with chopped smashed garlic & chopped yellow chives (韭黃) in peanut oil. Medium-short-cut Chinese long beans (Vigna unguiculata subsp. sesquipedalis) plus some sea salt were added, the mix stir-fried for a bit; then 2-day-old rice (Basmati) was added and the mix tossed. Shrimp¶ was then added and the mix tossed, followed by the reserved cut-up omelette with a bit more stirring. Plated w/ chopped scallions & coriander leaves. ¶Deheaded, peeled, deveined whole shrimp were soaked for a while in water + some “Kan Shui” (Potassium carbonate + sodium bicarbonate solution) [Koon Chun] then decanted and rinsed in fresh water. 2013-0429 Lunch • Bucatini [Garofalo] dressed w/ a simple tomato sauce§ and fresh ground black pepper. § Half a yellow onion, sliced & chopped, was sautéed in EV olive oil (Arbequina) [unio] till they were lightly browning. Halved Cherub tomatoes & a chopped-up “Vine Tomato” were added and stirred in, some chicken stock added followed by dried oregano, thyme & powdered sage; the mix simmered for a bit, the seasonoing adjusted then chopped Italian parsley added in at the end. • Salmon & Veggie soup. ¶ ¶Chopped shallots & chopped smashed garlic were sautéed in EV olive oil (Arbequina) [unio]. Peeled carrots & parsnips (both cut into sticks) were added, water & some sea salt put in and the mix simmered for a short while. Sliced common mushrooms (button) were added, followed shortly after by sliced salmon (Steelhead; de-skinned), the mix given a stir then fistfuls of red-stemmed spinach leaves (they look like these) put in and the mix just brought back to a simmer and the heat shut off.

Plantes Vertes, out of curiosity, where are you located? (generally, if you would prefer not to be specific)

Ah, that one. :-) Yes, I called it Kon Lo Mein - but that name indicates a general way of preparing noodles (the name means "dry mixed noodles" in Cantonese) - a category, if you will; not a specific dish. It's like saying one likes pizza. I also made other versions of Kon Lo Mein in this Lunch thread besides the one in my April 7th post (for the others see here and here and here and here) which was why I asked which one you liked. If you look again you will see that I also always described what I put into the Kon Lo Mein and what kind of noodles I used and so on. But perhaps you do mean that you like any kind of Kon Lo Mein no matter what is in it?

Yup, they're expensive although beautiful. I *certainly* wouldn't pay that much for eggs on a regular basis. The guy who sells these is one of those types who proclaim their organic/all-natural/holistic/blah-blah "credentials" and have pamphlets and stuff on their utterly all-natural and sooo healthful products etc. (No, he's not a young hipster dude - he's a middle-aged non-ponytail-haired guy) His main line is actually "naturally brewed/fermented" ("Live organic lactic acid fermented foods") - sauerkraut, kimchi, veggie mixes, pickles, fermented beverages, that sort of thing. Note the bit about feeding his chickens "sauerkraut production trimmings" and "probiotic microbes, enzymes" in the blurb on his label on the egg carton , pictured above. All his fermented offerings are not cheap, naturally. (Pun intended) There are, however, the well-heeled foodie-type yuppies who *would* religiously buy them on a regular basis. But in a wider comment regarding farm fresh eggs at farmers' markets or organic food stores - around these parts they usually run around US$4 - 4.50 a dozen for the "ordinary" eggs. "Heritage chicken eggs" like these I picked up today *do* run around US$5+ . The $6 I paid today is within range, sad to say, for here. :-( The cheapest I've found is $3.95/doz at the local organic food store (Good Earth) for eggs from one particular producer for the "regular" eggs. Purportedly "organic"/"free-range" eggs at the regular/normal large (chain) supermarkets will run around $3 or thereabouts. In a general sense, stuff at farmers' markets in this area are not cheap. I had an interesting discussion with other posters on another forum some time back about the relative costs of produce etc at farmers' markets in different locales and folks in California in particular were astonished at how much these "natural" things cost (in general) in the Midwest versus what they paid in sunny growing-friendly California :-). Some other posters from the Midwest besides myself were not surprised at the costs I reported. Perhaps others here, however, have different experiences?

Very nice to see this portrayal of the progression of your dish, mm84321. You ought to do this sort of pictorial description more often. Lovely final result as always.

2013-0427 Lunch • Whole Golden Pompano, steamed Cantonese-style.¶ • Rainbow Swiss chard (from today’s Farmers’ Market), sautéed w/ garlic in veggie oil. • White rice (Basmati). ¶The fish was marinated w/ Shaohsing wine [Wei Chuan], julienned fresh ginger, some chopped garlic, short-chunked scallions, light soy sauce [Pearl River Superior], peanut oil [Chang Chi], sesame oil [Dragonfly], fresh ground white pepper. (The body cavity was stuffed w/ some of the scallions + ginger + garlic & the liquid marinade also spooned into the cavity + contents several times while marinating) The fish plus all marinade components were then steamed in a shallow metal dish till just done, the fish alone retrieved from the steaming plate/dish (leaving behind all liquids and other marinade components) and plated on the clean serving dish. Fresh diagonally-sliced scallions, coriander leaves and julienned ginger were scattered over the fish, sautéed chopped garlic with the hot peanut oil + veggie oil poured over the fish + greenery and the whole dressed with light soy sauces [Higeta Honzen + Pearl River Superior]. • Dessert: a slice of what they [Rene’s Bakery, in Indy] call “Bête Noir” (heh!) which I would call “Death by Chocolate” instead; plus a couple of “Raspberry Truffles” (truffles rolled in a layer of raspberry flavored & colored fine sugar crystals).

I picked these up today from a semi-local breeder/farmer today at the last day of the Indy Winter's Farmers' Market. The eggs: The blah-blah on his label on the carton: Six bucks US for the dozen.