huiray

True. One example in my case is when I sometimes make Hainanese chicken rice, with say a 4 lb chicken poached in the usual way (or a variant if I feel like mixing it up), eat my fill of the chicken (and rice and soup), then shred the remains of the chicken flesh and turn it into a chicken-in-aspic using the remaining stock (adding gelatin powder to it) and stuff like sliced hard-boiled eggs (layered in) and chopped scallions and cilantro (mixed in). That provides for a couple meals more or "snacks" for a few days.

Liuzhou, were you addressing this to me? If so, I certainly didn't mean to be judgemental. I was expressing my opinions as it concerned me. Let me reword that sentence about two-meal portions to say that it is acceptable for me, I wonder if it may be for you too? As for soups and braises, I don't live on only these either. I don't think it is expected of anyone that they do, really. :-) One way I create single-portion meals in my personal case is to portion out what I *think* I would need in a dish, then cut everything in half and put that half back in the fridge or cupboard. That doesn't work with everything, of course! I also do use "convenience foods" (horrors! :-D) such as ramen packs, certain canned foodstuffs - and these are "automatic" one-portion meals. Instant ramen (don't laugh!) packs are very useful - I doctor them up with whatever I feel like, fresh veggies, an egg or two, sausages/sundry meats either fresh or leftover...and it's hard to arrive at a portion that is more than one serving for myself in my case. Not gourmet food, but I personally find it decent enough for casual meals now and then, here and there, and in the US there are so many types of such ramen/noodle packs from SE Asia to Japan and even India, ranging from bad to very good. I don't know what you would have available in your case, however.

I hate frozen rice. Ditto refrigerated rice. It never quite regains the texture it had before freezing/chilling when reheated. For my taste, anyway. With me, cooked rice is left out at room temp - annnddd I have "proper" rice for that stir-fry the next day. :-) In fact, I've left out cooked rice (covered, of course) for 2 days or so.

. Exactly what I am trying to avoid. I think it's unavoidable to a certain extent if one cooks decent meals (as I would like to think all of us here do) rather than subsistence-level meals. Surely two-meal portions, which are quite doable, are acceptable? As I mentioned above, I do manage to cook single-portion meals too...but perhaps the fact that I have a healthy appetite also helps in that regard.

Which is why Season 6 was such a good one (the Voltaggio brothers, Kevin Gillespie, Jennifer Carroll) in my opinion. OTOH, some have said that it was sort-of a cop-out *because* the front-runners were so obvious right from the beginning and everyone else was just filler to stretch out the season for the requisite number of episodes.

What is room temperature? Here it can be anything between 10ºC and 40ºC. I don't really want to be eating braises in the heights of summer and the braises I make in winter, I don't eat all. Back to where we started. I certainly don't want to live on soup and beans. l want the full range of dishes. I may live alone. I am not an invalid. My room temp? Ranges from around 60ºF or below in winter to the mid/high seventies in summer. (Central heating/air-con). Yes, Leaving stuff out at 40ºC (104ºF) for long periods might not be a great idea, I'll agree. Well, "soup and beans" - Western format - is not a particularly inviting thing to have all the time, true - but there are so many substantial and tasty Chinese-type soups and braises. I've illustrated several of them here recently. ;-) I don't eat everything I cook either, and do throw out a fair bit of food too. I do make small-ish batches without too much effort although I often tend to make batches that are equivalent to at least two meals worth; with some braises and certain soups I do end up with, say, three meals worth (or more) and those I might chuck out the "last portion". I like soups and braises year-round, even when the temperature outside may be hot, hot, hot - in accordance with my Cantonese background. :-)

As others have said here there is some doubt about whether there is really a separate "banquet cuisine". Perhaps if one thought of it as more fancy, elaborate dishes that a home cook or even restaurant would not normally do - perhaps that is a better approach? Would you regard "Special Occasion" (Big Birthday Bash, say) or even a super nice meal (just for the hell of it) that is prearranged with a restaurant to be "Banquet Cuisine"? If so I've certainly had those at many Chinese restaurants outside of China - in SE Asia, for example, at least in the past, and excellent meals they were too. In the West/USA, one can pre-arrange elaborate dishes with the chef or even get the more special ones from the menu at high-end places - I would consider such nice meals to be "banquets" in my book. As for the "getting drunk" aspect that Liuzhou refers to - IMO that depends. Certainly I have been to "banquets" in the past (someone's Tai Sang Yat", e.g.) where there was vast amounts of premium Johnny Walker being consumed - mixed with Fanta orange juice or Seven-Up (another favorite), of course. :-) In those cases there wasn't much appreciation for the subtleties of the whiskey and the provision of premium grades of firewater was largely a status symbol thing, except for a few folks who were appalled at the waste of good stuff. Heh.

Make more soups and braises. (I do) Many of them taste better the next day and voilà! you have yummy stuff for breakfast and/or lunch. Oh, I leave them on the stovetop at room temp overnight, not in the fridge. :-) Covered, of course.

I regret to inform you that the famous Yook Woo Hin restaurant has closed down. I grew up in KL. When I migrated from Malaysia, my farewell party was in that restaurant. Yes, I'm aware of it. There was quite a "send off" too, I understand, with the place cranking out enormous amounts of their versions of dim-sum (admittedly not exactly the best in town) for the crowds who descended on the place for one last hurrah. It was such a pity, but KL's Chinatown is no longer "Chinatown", as YWH's proprietress said, and to someone who has never been there before (and ignoring the fancy gates on Petaling Street) the place would seem like Little India, not Chinatown, with large populations of Bangladeshis, Nepalis, etc. Still, YWH was no longer the same anyway, compared with previous days. The "old guard" of great chefs had retired /died/left and never passed on their skills to the new generation and many of the dishes they were famed for including those which I remembered fondly from the 60's, 70's were no longer available. Their wonderful version of "Wat Tan Ngow Yook Cheen Heong Mai"[Cantonese pan-fried skinny rice noodles in a sauce of beef stir-fried w/ scallions & giner w/ a raw egg broken into the hot pile just after plating], for example. I have personally not come across elsewhere quite the same scrumptious balanced mix that they turned out.

Yes, your translation is correct. :-) [and the Google translator does just fine with this one] The relevance or accuracy of the sentiments is, of course, subject to personal interpretation. :-D BTW this article might be of interest: http://asiasociety.o...-all-california The author does say (at least elsewhere) that if North America were the area in question all the top places would be in Vancouver and Toronto (and most Cantonese at that). Take that for what you will. On a certain other food forum, this author was viciously attacked by (non-Chinese) posters for what they decried as his "bias" especially against NYC, where these posters thought had the most excellent food in their view especially NON-Cantonese food which these same posters much preferred anyway. Heh.

Do you know the dish called "Dai Yee Ma Kar Lui"/"Tai Yee Ma Kar Lui" [大姨媽嫁女] (First [maternal] aunt marries off daughter)? :-) Handed down from parent to offspring over the generations in SE Asia and elsewhere.

No, "Dun Tong" is NOT just for "making tonics out of all the herbs and various dried creatures" that you think of. It's a common technique for making flavorful, tasty, wonderful soups using all sorts of ingredient combinations. Yes, many are "tonic/medicinal" in inspiration but many are not. Double-steamed "Lou Wong Kua Tong" or "Ham Choy Kai Tong" for example would have little "medicinal" aspects to them. It's just a way of extracting the taste from ingredients by cooking them at a temp just below the boiling point of water, in a vessel that contains all the ingredients and traps all the juices etc. [You typically do "Dun Tong" in a heavy ceramic "pot"/"bowl" with a close-fitting equally heavy lid] In a sense, it's an old way of doing something in a "sous vide" type of cooking.

There is a third way of steaming fish, especially if the fish is extra oily or too "aromatic". Panfry and brown with a little soy sauce first, then steam normally. I (being Cantonese, specifically Toysanese) have never used sesame oil on any steamed fish. As Ah Leung says once you heat it to a sizzling temp., it smells and tastes awful. (Must be the technique of those barbaric Northerners ) Hmm. I use sesame oil frequently as a component in the mixture used to *marinade* the fish before it is steamed. I don't heat sesame oil to pour over the steamed fish, but the use of sesame oil in the preparation of steamed fish Cantonese-style is NOT verboten.

First, the bananas point...I am not saying you are wrong about this, but my point is that this will never be settled because it is impossible to find a consensus on this issue, and Chinese are intensely regional. I have eaten in almost every one of those cities you mentioned and don't disagree that you can find good, everyday Cantonese food. I guess the focus of my post was on Cantonese food in China. In any case, the good Cantonese offerings in these places doesn't translate to me feeling that Cantonese is the best of all Chinese foods, nor does it show it to be the most simple or complex, it just offers me a good cheap meal... Yet they still have this saying in China: 生在蘇州, 活在杭州, 喫在廣州, 死在柳州 :-D

You can also add in tofu. The dish "Lo Siu Ping On" (老少平安) is one such dish, a variation on the pork patty, where tofu is mixed in with chopped/minced fish with some pork. https://www.google.c...iw=1176&bih=957

Depends on the chef. Some places do it very well, some do not. One avoids ordering such dishes at places that don't do it well.

Have you never had "Gai Kow" (chicken nuggets/pieces) or "Har Kow" (Prawn/shrimp) stir-fried with TOMATO KETCHUP and onions and maybe green peppers? :-)

"Kula Lumpar" - Do you mean KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia? Hmm, I don't remember a "Jimmy's Kitchen". The Coliseum Cafe, however, was (and still is) a Hainanese-British Colonial place that served steaks on sizzling platters, and where the "tradition" was to hold the edges of the tablecloth (yes, the crisp white linen tablecloth) up in front of you as the server poured the sauce over the steak on the hot platter on the table to give the sizzle (and splatter). That certainly went back into the 1960's, at least, and I think far before that too. As for "sizzling platter" meals in "Cantonese" cuisine or otherwise, I certainly remember fondly having "Tit Pan Ngow Yook" (鐵板牛肉)(Beef with a special sauce on a very hot metal platter lodged into a wood base) or the equivalent version with big fat prawns in various Cantonese/"Dai Chow" places in Kuala Lumpur as far back as the early 1960's. Somehow I doubt places like Yook Woo Hin of that time derived their inspiration from this place called "Jimmy's Kitchen". (What was this "Jimmy's Kitchen"?)

I tend to agree with the sentiments expressed in the NYT article. Certainly Chang and other chefs have the ability (or even the "right") to say what they will or will not do, and I as the diner can choose whether to dine there or not. Reading about some of the shenanigans pulled and hissy fits thrown by overly-demanding diners is both annoying and sad at the same time. No, the customer is not always right. Pulling apart a dish carefully conceived by a chef and demanding substitutions not based on medical necessity (but just merely on choice) is not right. Asking for "non-critical" substitutions - where possible - is fine in my books and I do that on occasion. (Rice instead of mashed potatoes, for example, when both sides are clearly available from inspection of the menu; or linguine with my white clam sauce instead of spaghetti, when both pastas are seen to be available; etc) Some places/chefs are certainly more accommodating than others, even "at the last moment". Some places would ask diners whether there are any food restrictions they may have for their tasting menu only when the diners arrive that night (although they do appreciate it if the diner had told them beforehand, when they made they reservation) [Volt is one place that does it, for their Table 21 for example; and their Table 21 menu is certainly not published for you to research it, with the menus blogged about by past diners being useful only as "guides" for what you might get that particular night you eat there] But most folks here know these things of course.

The problem may simply be in the lack of a general agreement on the meaning of terms, but in my opinion (and this aspect of the discussion is highly subjective) when you make a decision, you're actively engaged. When you consider a a variety of restaurants, look over their menus, talk to others about them, and choose a place to eat, you're actively engaged in selecting where you dine. When you order, in most places, there are decisions involved (if the place has a set menu, then that decision has been made previously). The same holds true of the wine(s) you select, whether or not you have coffee, dessert. You don't just go into a restaurant and say, 'feed me', tell the waiter to just bring you what he or she deems best. You become involved. I don't know about other people, but if there's something interesting going on behind the scenes, I'll read about that beforehand, since I find context interest; basically, when I eat out, I think. This doesn't mean I believe I have the right to tell the chef what to do, but I do ask questions about items on the the menu (e.g. 'Does this come with a creamy sauce?', or 'I'm planning on having a fairly substantial dessert, is one of the main dishes particularly light?'). The scenarios you describe are not parallel: On any given evening, a theatre shows a set selection of performances, they don't offer a menu, and, while I wouldn't argue with an expert, I certainly would ask questions, because I'm an adult, and since I am accountable for my decisions, I prefer to be familiar with the options, tho process, what lies under the surface. I do know what I enjoy eating, and choose restaurants accordingly. Dining room staff not only take my order, but provide helpful information. I simply do not see the desire to be informed as an expression of the need for control, or in the least likely to offend a chef (Seriously, who becomes disturbed by someone taking the trouble to be aware of how much effort they've put into something?). Submission is for infants, who, eyes and mouths agape, swallow whatever Mum and Dad choose to spoon in. Interesting posts & responses. I, too, am one who gets what Bourdain meant when he commented about eating being submission. Just curious - do you dislike going to restaurants with tasting menus or set menus only? Places where you do not have a choice from a list of selections from a menu? You did mention set menus as an instance when these "active engagement" decisions have been already made beforehand, implying you do go to such places... You also mention choosing restaurants based on what you like to eat (which many people do, one whould think) so presumably you research the set menu or tasting menu (if there is one) and go only to those places with a menu to you liking? What about places where there is no published menu at all and you eat what the chef decides to do that day based on what he finds at the market or what he feels like doing...? (e.g. Masa in NYC)(Not that I've eaten there myself) (Or places like Recess in Indy, especially in the early days, when Greg Hardesty might not even decide on what he was going to do that day until maybe around noon or so let alone publish his daily menu [which had no choices for you - at least in the early days] until then or later. in the early afternoon... I had great experiences "just going" and trusting him to cook delicious meals with combinations that I would not have chosen myself if I were choosing stuff to eat. Later on he started adding a *limited* number of alternate courses, e.g. a choice between two appetizers, say; but not a panoply of 6, 7, xx number of options) [i know there are folks who refuse to go to such places because they feel they cannot control their meal with being unable to choose what they want to eat...so they don't go to such places unless the place posts their daily or seasonal menu and they study it beforehand and decide they like everything on the menu that day.] As for "You don't just go into a restaurant and say, 'feed me'" - another poster here commented that he does it all the time. :-) I do this too although only in certain places and/or as occasion arises. If you go to a Japanese place and request "Omakase" you are certainly asking the place to just "feed me" in effect, and I think many people do indeed do this, surrendering themselves to what the chef sees fit to provide - although some (better?) places would honor such requests only from regular diners where their preferences have become known to the chef or sushi itamae. At other places one would indeed be asking the chef to provide you with whatever he felt like feeding you. ;-)

• Fried rice: with chopped leftover Chinese roast duck, fresh Chinese celery**, sliced leftover mushrooms & bamboo shoots, smashed & chopped garlic. • Leftover lotus root soup. ** http://chinesefood.a...chineseing5.htm ; http://www.evergreen...celchincel.html ; etc.

Actually, on reflection I think I've had this cleaver for more than 30 years...

Nice. Tasty-looking. What did you use for the "curry" component? It is basically an imported Indian curry paste from a bottle, which I pimp up with some extra coriander, fennel and cumin seeds, and chilli. I'd prefer to do it all from scratch, but I just can't get the spices here. Interesting. What sort of non-Chinese/S Asian/SE Asian spices can you get in Liuzhou? You're not far from HK. Would you swing by there once in a while and get other stuff?

I like John Tesar. Talented, speaks his mind, gracious (yes, he has been) and accepting in his own way. :-) Joshua Valentine - now THERE'S a prick of the first order. ;-) Regarding "Last Chance Kitchen" - it is designed as a web-only feature viewable on the Bravo website, so - no, it is not available on one's cable service, whether in the US or elsewhere.

As others here have said, I can't think of instances in "normal" Chinese/SEAsian/E Asian cuisine where poultry and other on-bone meats are not CHOPPED to give pieces of meat-and-bone. I can't recall ever having a plate of chicken in a Chinese cuisine context where the chicken is dismembered by cutting at the joints only. Ditto duck, roast pork, beef ribs, pork ribs, char-siu, roast goose, etc etc etc. OK, I have found pieces/splinters of bone sometimes, particularly when I do my non-professional CHOPPING of my meats at home, but that has never bothered me. I don't eat my food like Donatella Arpaia - i.e. everything on the plate goes into the mouth without any thought or caution. If there is a splinter, I just remove it before or after it goes in my mouth (with chopsticks, or fork/spoon, whatever). :-) My cleaver is a one-piece steel one (non-stainless) without a "number" that I can see. I think I've had this for maybe 20+ years. Pretty heavy and thick-bladed. The non-cutting edge is bashed in with a slight curve around 1 ½ inch to around 4 inches from the far edge from my using the cleaver to smash and pound stuff. The cutting edge is still undented/un-nicked. I get it sharpened by a professional knife sharpener once in a while and he always jokes with me about whose head I had been bashing in with that top edge of the cleaver. :-D