huiray

Eh, nah... I'd leave out the bok choy - personally, I much prefer bok choy to be crunchy and tend to leave behind soft, limp bok choy. Ditto the Wong Nga Pak. Savoy cabbage would be nice. I'd prefer not to use water chestnuts but the bamboo shoots might go in...then again maybe not, if I'm using savoy instead... ;-) I think folks here (including you) have shown that they do claypot cooking or "Chinese casserole" cooking for Chinese eats at home in their home kitchens, heh. :-D Why not? :-) I usually dine alone. No kids.

I was in the mood for more "Tai Yee Ma Kar Lui" [大姨媽嫁女] today. (Hairy gourd with cellophane noodles & dried shrimp) Made a lotus root soup to go with it. (Beef slices sautéed w/ garlic, water, sliced lotus root, snow fungus, fresh cloud ear fungus, raw peanuts, soft tofu, sea salt) White rice. (Hom Mali)

dcarch, looks nice. Did you cook it in the clay pot itself or transfer it to the clay pot at some point? BTW I wondered what would be covered under "casserole dishes". Here's what Google images turns up.

Heh. I do have quality pasta too. :-D (BTW I prefer dried pasta over fresh pasta for Carbonara - just a personal preference, if you will, both in texture and final result - although I also do find that the vigorous stirring and tossing I do with fresh pasta is, um, more deleterious to their integrity...depending on which fresh pasta I use. I have never made my own pasta (horrors!!) and have tended to get fresh stuff from this very good local maker of it - and I'm sure my experiences have been colored by what I got from them. "Store bought" so-called "fresh" stuff works fine, but for my tastes a good dried pasta does best in my hands in this dish.)

Hmmm...I still have some pancetta in the freezer, and farm-fresh eggs, and I do have Pecorino Romano in the fridge...and it's still just a few degrees above 0ºF outside...

Possibly that could come under the definition of casserole, but again, they are seldom a feature of Chinese home cooking. You are much more likely to come across them in restaurants. True, clay pots are not commonly or widely used at home. When it is used, the sort of folks nowadays who do use it tend to be folks who would tend to do it on a Western-type stove or in a Western-type oven, rather than on a charcoal fire - that is what I meant when I said it would be "usual". I didn't say clay-pot cooking was a standard technique in a home kitchen, although those who do use it and write about it on the internet (heh) tend to think highly of it - just look at those recipes found by Google from folks cooking at home... :-)

I wonder if DR means a covered clay pot? One of these, perhaps? If so there are also lots of recipes available, Google as usual turns up many of them. Additionally, if clay pots were meant - traditionally, clay pot dishes were done over a charcoal fire (or equivalent) and even now in SE Asia (at the least) the nice ones are still done by hawkers that way. At home - doing it on the stovetop or in the oven in Western-type kitchens is usual. You just need to increase the heat slowly, no sudden jumps in temperature. Like a German-type romertopf, which is also sometimes called a "casserole" or "dutch oven"-like device, I believe?

Yes, I'm aware of Jimmy's Kitchen in Hong Kong, thanks. I was asking what this Jimmy's Kitchen was in KUALA LUMPUR. Have a look again at the location references in my post, where I asked about this place by this name in KL which wesza referred to and whose post I quoted in my post which you are referring to. (http://egullet.org/p1901878)

Use a cereal bowl. Or a rimmed soup bowl, those not-too-wide ones. Or one of those shallow-type bowls like the ones I often use (see some of my pics on the Lunch thread and elsewhere) It sounds like you run a catering business or a restaurant? (You refer to "guests" and "customers") Perhaps you have other serving ware not "normally" used for salad? Scatter some chopped red cabbage around the base (complementing the cabbage in the cabbage bowl) after propping the boat in that rimmed (cupped) bowl.

Use chopsticks.

Yong Tau Foo (釀豆腐). Today I used soft tofu blocks, fried tofu puffs, bittergourd, brinjal, sweet mini peppers, fresh thick-cap shiitake mushrooms. Fish paste mixed w/ sesame oil, chopped scallions & cilantro, ground white pepper, sea salt. Stuffed bittergourd & brinjal slices pan-fried before poaching in chicken stock. Rest were simply poached in the stock. Napa cabbage barely wilted in the residual stock (diluted a bit) --> a companion soup. Dipping sauces: Lingham's Hot Sauce & Kokita Sambal Bangkok.

Some recent "Chinese-type" meals at home: Steamed flounder fillets w/ salted soy beans, "Yau Mak Choy", and white rice. Full post: http://egullet.org/p1905137 Stir-fried beef & bittergourd, chicken-napa cabbage-thai basil quick-boiled-soup, white rice. Full post: http://egullet.org/p1905208 "Yeung Chow" fried rice; stir-fry/sauté of flower cap shiitake/wood ear/white beech mushrooms. Full post: http://egullet.org/p1906065 Pic of the rice:

Some soups I've made recently: Angled luffa, fish balls & snow fungus soup. Full post: http://egullet.org/p1903429 Pickled sour mustard soup w/ pork spare ribs & tofu. Full post: http://egullet.org/p1903872 "Choy Kon T'ong" [菜乾湯; Yale: choi3 gon1 tong1] - "Dehydrated Cole" soup. Full post: http://egullet.org/p1905355 Daikon & pork meatballs in peppery pork bone stock soup. With softened "mei fun". Full description: http://egullet.org/p1906253

Thanks. Do try your hand more at this stuff, maybe you might do it more frequently with more regularity. :-)

Sunday lunch: • Daikon & pork meatballs soup** eaten w/ softened (hot water soaked) "Mei Fun" (thin Chinese rice noodles). • Blanched "Tong Ho" (edible chrysanthemum or garland chrysanthemum) drizzled w/ oyster sauce & dusted w/ ground black pepper. To drink, a nice tasty calamansi lime juice (Luzona) over ice. ** Stock: pork bone stock, from ~5 lbs pork knuckle & shin bones w/ lots of marrow & cartilage, simmered w/ some sea salt for >6 hrs; filtered through cheesecloth. Soup: the stock, simmered w/ sliced daikon radish (peeled), ground pork meatballs [formed from ground pork + chopped scallions + ground white pepper + a few dashes of good fish sauce (nước mắm)] towards the end plus copious freshly ground white pepper. The soup is unctuous w/ the gelatin from the stock and also very peppery.

(oops, double post - deleted)

Steamed "Char Siu Bau" (Chinese BBQ pork buns), and glutinous rice w/ pork & shiitake mushroom filling wrapped in lotus leaves. Both commercial stuff.

Who cares if it's traditional, it's on the list for my next visit to NYC. I wonder if it is truly salt cod that Mission Chinese used... I've never had that dish at Mission Chinese but am aware that their menu says "Salt Cod Fried Rice" and has the additional description of "Slow cooked mackerel (???), Chinese sausage, lettuce, egg". (see here for the NYC menu) There are many variations on Chinese/South China salted fish, many sold whole (smaller fishes) or in larger chunks (larger fish) etc. Salted fish fried rice (using the Chinese-type salt fish) is not really a new dish. :-) I imagine salt cod (as produced in and found in the West) could be a substitute for the salted fish in various "Chinese cuisine" dishes. I wonder how simple "homestyle" dishes like steamed pork-patty-with-salted-fish ["鹹魚蒸豬肉"] or steamed tofu-chopped-with-fish-paste ["老少平安"] (sometimes with pork mixed in) would come out like using salt cod instead...probably pretty similar. The question would be how to pretreat the salt cod (Length of soaking? Any soaking? Just a rinse? How much to use?). Interesting. One of our members posted a pictorial for Salted Fish and Chicken Fried Rice and you can see that the salted fish is indeed dark, like mackerel. It's chopped and added early in the stir fry, but no mention of soaking. I don't know if chinese salted fish is preserved by the same method as salt cod, but I can't imagine so, if it's edible after such a brief cook time without a prior soak. The only recipes I've found so far that uses unsoaked salt cod require either a brief simmer or time under the broiler to remove some salt and soften the fish a bit. ...... Linda, nice pictorial tutorial you linked to there. Indeed further on in that thread the OP says what kind of salted fish he used and it was a "more modern" cured-type mackerel seemingly sort-of held in a somewhat oily environment (sealed pack). I don't think the salted fish is soaked. The fish was used "as is" (maybe a brief rinse) in the tutorial, I believe. There was also additional discussion about "salted fish" in the later part of the thread which partly answers your other questions. Some other non-exhaustive/semi-random links of interest: http://basilkitchen....dFishFriedRice/ http://en.wikipedia....ved_ingredients http://www.gourmettr...ean_sprouts.htm http://www.cantonese...12,58572,page=2 http://www.chinese-f...25-salted-fish/ http://zh.wikipedia....i/鹹魚 (and the Google translation here) http://baike.baidu.com/view/252538.htm (and the Google translation here) http://tupian.baike....56963742020.jpg ...and so on. The Google image set for "鹹魚" if one is curious...

Heh. Quite nice carving work there. Ingeniously decorative plate of yee sang too. :-)

Yes. That is what I said. However, West Lake soup is traditionally a thick soup and more commonly referred to as 羹 (gēng). I'm not sure what your point is. I was expressing my sentiments and my view of a menu where the soups were generally described as "湯". I'm not sure what your complaint is about.

Ericpo, I meant balsamic in a general sense wrt the side-discussion about vinegar, not necessarily with regards to fennel. :-) OTOH, a dash of nice balsamic (10-year old stuff, or 30-year stuff) - a very litle - I would not have thought would take over the taste of fennel?

rotuts, adding in "lap cheong" would be a fine addition. I would prefer to soften it in some way first, though (e.g. steam it). I've done it with the unsoftened sausage in fried rice before on various occasions, for my taste I would prefer it better if softened first.

Ericpo, try RIPE lime juice. :-) As for fennel - try it wherever you might use celery. Vinegar is too vinegary? Uhh, that logic escapes me. Just use less, or use a mellow vinegar. How about a good balsamic vinegar? (a good one, not the caramel-colored fake ones)

Lunch on Friday: • Fresh "Far Koo" [flower-pattern thick cap shiitake mushrooms], fresh white beech mushrooms and fresh "Muk Yee" [wood ear mushrooms] sautéed w/ "Wong Nga Pak" [Napa cabbage], sliced ginger & Shaohsing wine. Salted to taste. • "Yeung Chow" fried rice: with chopped Chinese BBQ pork ["Char Siu"], sliced shrimps, chopped Chinese long beans, chopped scallions, finely chopped garlic, tossed w/ chopped plain-fried egg omelette. Eaten w/ pickled chopped hot long green chillies. A couple of pics of some of the ingredients: Mushrooms (washed): Stuff for the fried rice:

汤 (tāng) is the most common character for soup and wouldn't be wrong, but in my experience West Lake soup is more usually described as 羹 (gēng)- or 'thick soup'. (But, I wouldn't dare argue with your mother! ) Well, "tang1" (汤 - simplified) (湯 - traditional) *is* the general term for "soup"... ;-) I myself would tend to look at menu items with the term "湯" with a more encompassing view, so to speak. :-)