huiray

Some recent Chinese-type soups: http://egullet.org/p1901720 • Lotus root soup w/ pork ribs & etc. http://egullet.org/p1901252 • "Bak Kut Teh" ("Pork bone tea"). • Beef short rib soup w/ daikon & snow fungus . • "Harm Choy Tong" (Pickled sour mustard soup ) with chicken. • Soupy braise of sliced pork belly & salted turnip .

Hainanese Chicken Rice for dinner tonight. See: http://egullet.org/p1902527 for pic & description.

Hainanese Chicken Rice. • Chicken poached w/ green onions (in cavity), ginger and salt. Served w/ cucumbers, green onions, cilantro, splashed w/ light soy sauce flashed in pan w/ hot oil. • Bowl of Napa cabbage (separately) cooked in the poaching stock. • Rice cooked w/ the poaching stock w/ lots of chicken fat skimmed off the stock. • Grated ginger, chopped green onions, salt & hot oil sauce. • Hot sauce (Lingham's) w/ fresh lime juice and a bit of rice vinegar added.

I'm not sure I'm looking at...scrambled...eggs...?

I like this and prefer it over the specific "4 noble varieties", or dry or semi-sweet sherries. Goes well with a lot of stuff, many appetizers and certain desserts especially, but I usually enjoy it on its own. I did a quick search for this subject and found just two references to it. Hmm, do folks here like this variety of Madeira?

For myself, when I order a "MARTINI" without any additional descriptive words I expect one made with GIN and garnished w/ an olive. Whether the proportions (w/ the vermouth, etc) are "perfect" or not doesn't matter *that* much to me. I get annoyed if the bartender or wait person then asks me if I want gin or vodka or a lemon twist. Sigh. If I wanted vodka I would have asked for a "Vodka Martini" and if I wanted a lemon twist etc I would have said so. Am I the only one who feels this way? (It's OK to ask me which gin I would like)

My default scotch is J&B. I can run through quite a bit of it, good for simple glugging without too much thought, decent stuff. I'll probably need another bottle tomorrow or thereabouts.

Thanks Dejah, I only know the Mandarin - jiè cài - and Cantonese has so many different romanisation systems it gets confusing. Anyway here it is. http://www.fotothing...d6579e9d10b.jpg There are many different hot and sour soups (more accurately "sour and hot soup"). The one in my picture is more typical of SE Asia and also this part of China. But I like the Sichuan version which uses white pepper, too. Fuchsia Dunlop has a good recipe in her Sichuan book. The clam soup is by far the most common here - I doubt I've ever seen a menu that didn't have it and I get it served to me at almost every family dinner. Not that I am complaining. I'm guessing 冬菇 (dōng gū in Mandarin) more commonly known as dried shiitake. It really is easier to use the English where it exists. Yes, by "tung koo" I do mean 冬菇 ; Yale romanization - dung1 gu1. OK, thanks, that mustard green is 芥菜 ; Yale - gaai3 choi3. I wasn't sure because there are many varieties of greens that get called simply "mustard greens" in English. That clams & 芥菜 soup sounds like an attractive simple soup to do on the fly (providing one does have the clams). :-) I don't remember the "hot & sour" soup in Malaysian-Cantonese/Malaysian-Chinese restaurants being as chili-laden as the one you show, though. They were more chili-ish and more sometimes more vinegar-ish (IIRC) than being "just brown" but they normally weren't as bright red with chili oil as the one you made? I'm sure Nyonya versions would tend to be more fiery w/ chili, yes, if a nyonya were to make it. But it's been a while.

• Pork & cabbage w/ XO sauce "shui kow" in wonton stock w/ sliced soft tofu, chopped scallions & cilantro. • "Kon lo" wonton noodles - tossed w/ a sauce formed w/ chopped de-skinned pork belly ("sam chang yook") sautéed w/ chopped garlic in peanut oil; quenched w/ a mixture of light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, oyster sauce, Red Boat fish sauce, sesame oil, ground white pepper, MRT Ryori-shu mirin. • Blanched "yow choi sum". • Pickled chopped long hot green chillies.

Lovely soups, liuzhou. The hot-and-sour soup does look a little "hot"/chili-ish, though for my taste. I usually make mine with tofu, bamboo shoots, "kum chum", "muk yee", button mushrooms, "tung koo", tofu sheets (broken up), maybe a few other things; no chili oil, loads of ground white pepper instead for the heat; Chinkiang vinegar; etc etc. Care to share your recipe for that clam & mustard greens soup? And by "mustard greens" you mean...?

Have folks here had fried black pomfret?

I haven't looked into it. Snake River Farms is fatty and delicious American wagyu. Actually the high end kobe gets a little too fatty for my tastes.Thanks.I had a look at their website. (Longing looks) Hmm, I see they refer to it as American Wagyu (Kobe) beef in part. Of course, we know that the suggestion of this beef (American Wagyu) being Kobe beef would be incorrect. Certainly actual Kobe was allowed back into the US only recently, a few months ago. (Actual Japanese Kobe available now)

@ScottyBoy: Is real Kobe beef available in your area yet (and if so how much is it)? @rotuts: not wagyu, but a place in my area used to have the most wonderful SV 48-hour (60ºC? IIRC) beef short ribs cooked in apple juice.

Your family name (and "romanized" spelling and its pronunciation within your family) and your dialect group would be good places to start. But I'm sure you know this. :-)

dcarch, munchymom, SobaAddict70, basquecook et al - wonderful meals. SobaAddict - besides oyster mushrooms, what other fungi were in that mushroom salad? Those cockles did look a little different from what I know (mentally) as cockles... :-)

Looks nice. I see "Tung Choy" and chopped scallions. What was the meat in it? (For myself I might have considered adding a bit more water, but that's just me)

At least two fat plump cherries. ------ MOST hated versions: Shaken Manhattans.

Here's what Helen Rosner (of Saveur) said about Pete Well's review and why it was important: http://everydayforev...-and-guy-fieri/ Wells explains how the review came about here: http://www.poynter.o...ris-restaurant/ Anthony Bourdain's take on the place: http://www.esquire.c...sult-1349103254 http://www.hollywood...r_Town/44320544 New York Serious Eats' take on it: http://newyork.serio...op_serious_eats A commentary on scathing restaurant reviews: http://www.bonappeti...nt-reviews.html As for that "Today" show segment where Fieri defended his place, it did seem like NBC bent over backwards for Fieri, IMO and that of others. Here's what one journalist had to say about that: http://www.tampabay....rk-times-review Amongst other things, it seems Fieri considered 4 visits to his place to be suggestive of a "secret agenda" on the part of Wells. He clearly has no idea how professional restaurant reviewing is done, unless he was trying to blow smoke into the Today show's viewership [since most would *not* go to a place 4 times if they found their first experience horrible, I would speculate. :-) ].

It depends. My mood, what kind of soup, phase of the moon, what cuisine, etc. For me, "puréed soups" - or the half-and-half option mentioned by others - is associated more w/ European/Western cooking. One example of an extreme "half-and'half" soup I personally prefer is cream of mushroom (the more velvety the better) with definite distinct slices or pieces of mushroom in it, preferably still crunchy. The split pea soup you ask about - personally I would not purée it. I would prefer that one the way it is as shown, even in the most high-falutin' restaurant - just serve it on elegant fine china in that case. :-) I've made a pea soup with a specific German-family heritage (which I learned from a former colleague) using dried whole green peas** (skin-on) [i.e. NOT split pea] with carrots, chunked potatoes, ham hocks etc and the soup is specifically cooked such that the soup is "done" when the peas just begin to show the suggestion of splitting (and some of the skins are now floating off the peas into the still largely clear broth). **(boiled in a saucepan for a short while then allowed to steep, covered, for a sufficient time before draining and cooking in another pot in fresh water with the other stuff) Chinese-type soups: These are *seldom* smooth soups equivalent to "purées", in my mind, especially savory ones. I personally would not do almost any of them in a way other than "chunky". I posted some recently on the soups, dinner, lunch threads. Some sweet "dessert soups" (e.g. red bean or, especially, almond tea) might be closer to "smooth" soups.

Sushi today. No pics, I was sitting at the sushi bar. Asked for omakase nigirizushi from Iwamoto-san. ("Feed me") Got nice stuff - usual suspects mostly but good stuff. Maguro, hamachi, sake, unagi, uni, ikura, ika, ama-ebi, shiro-maguro (nicely dressed, w/ some bonito shavings as well), hotate, etc. Asked for another hamachi and unagi; plus a tamago for last. Oh, plus agedashidofu to start. Nicely "thick" green tea. Yum.

Thanks. I toss in the snow peas and the onions at the very last and bang them around for only a minute or two before shutting off the fire. Crunch crunch.

Late lunch: Stir-fried deboned sliced chicken thigh meat (marinated w/ Shaohsing wine, sesame oil, white pepper, Red Boat fish sauce) with chopped white onions & trimmed snow peas. Served over steamed white rice.

For free? You must be a FAVORITE customer there!!! <<biggrin>> They look good, in any case, as patrickamory said.

eg? I'm afraid it was mostly stir fries, which I realize sounds dull, but for speed, flavour, variety, and freshness, it's really hard to beat. Plus, as I said, I do like to experiment, and if an experiment was a disaster, I wasn't stuck with a large quantity of awful or inedible food. I grew up in Italy, so pasta was a go to for quite a while, but an aggravated carbohydrate intolerance took that off the table for most days, leaving it as a treat for when I could afford to be comatose the next day. But it also scales well, and leaves a lot of room for experimenting. I personally also find stir-fries to be easily scalable. I just use less stuff if I consciously want to cook a single portion, although I do also have a healthy appetite as I've mentioned previously. :-) I also find pasta-with-a-sauce to be also easy in many cases for me. Pasta Carbonara is particularly amenable to single-portion control, at least for myself, as I lay out however much guanciale or pancetta I need for a single serving, then portion out the egg yolks/eggs I need [hongda mentioned the "individually portioned" aspect of eggs :-) ] and the rest follows. The rest of the guanciale/pancetta simply stays in the fridge/freezer. :-)

Of late I've been running through a fair amount of preserved plums ("Chan Pei Mui", 陳皮梅). At other times I gobble down stuff like peanuts, pistachios, potato chips (Cape Cod Traditional Kettle Cooked, just simply salted, are the best!). At other times I have a bowl of instant noodles/ramen, or other such stuff. In season I've been known to run through a bowl of luscious Bing cherries (all 1 lb of it, even more sometimes) and paid for it a little later on... Or if there is leftover soup on the stovetop I might have a bowl of it. I very rarely snack on veggies (like Western celery or carrots etc). Once in a while crackers like Lavash (sesame-topped, plain, etc) or croccantini (a treat!), with or without other stuff with it (but extremely rarely cheese - I'm not a cheese or dairy person). Etc.