huiray

Thanks, mm84321. Appreciated.

• Franks [Claus'] w/ sauerkraut [bulk Hengstenberg; rinsed] & Rose Finn Apple fingerlings. Franks "browned" in vegetable oil then the sauerkraut & potatoes layered in; cooked w/ water, rice vinegar, jozo mirin, ryori-shu, sea salt, Redmond salt, dashes of Maggi sauce (German), dried bay leaves. • Kenny's Reserve Asiago, Headwaters Tomme & Parmigiano Reggiano cheeses; w/ mini-croccantini crackers.

Ah, that's a different story then! Yes, OK, if it is claimed to be lotus seed paste but is not then of course it is "fake". I was thinking that there was an uncertainty about whether "mooncakes" could be made with sweet potato.

BTW, regarding "sweet potato mooncakes" - yes, they are "modernized variations upon a theme" and are considered bona fide mooncakes within the devolving meaning of the term, not "fake" mooncakes. Here's one recipe amongst many others. Perhaps a better descriptor would be "non-traditional" mooncakes. :-)

That's because "garam masala" is a GENERIC TERM for "spice mixture". (Masala = spice/seasoning/condiment) Just looking up the wiki article will reveal this. It's similar to talking about "salsa" and wondering how come there are a gazillion recipes varying wildly all over the place and across cuisines. It is NOT a single spice mix as McCormick or Penzeys or any number of other Western spice houses with their own blend might lead one to believe. Turmeric may well be it as pbear suggests. Can you distinguish cinnamon/cassia or cumin or coriander, which are often used in GM mixes and in a heck of a lot of other dishes from the South Asia subcontinent and which might also be possibilities for what you are seeking to place?

Here are four mooncakes, snowskin/ice-skin variety, which were the favorite of that poster this year. Note the pure durian-filling one. Yes, they are all considered "mooncakes".

• Chicken rice (from here) w/ chicken liver & shallot sauce,¶ plus poached chicken pieces (from here). Scallions. • Baby Shanghai bok choy, wilted in and served with (sieved) chicken broth.§ ¶ Peanut oil, chopped smashed garlic, finely sliced shallots, chopped chicken livers, light soy sauce (sang chau) [Kimlan], ryori-shu [Morita], jozo-mirin [Morita], fish sauce [Red Boat], a dash of dark soy sauce [YHY]. § The chicken broth/poaching liquid from here; re-simmered w/ the chicken carcass, most of the remaining meat & pieces, red carrots, generous scallions, additional ginger, sea salt, fresh small chinese mushrooms (tung koo).

IN SE Asia mooncakes basically disappear "overnight" after the conclusion of the Moon Festival, a.k.a. 八月十五 [literally "eight(h) month fifteen(th) (day) - in the lunar calendar]. Good quality mooncakes in the USA imported from HK or environs *will* cost that much or more. The tin of cakes I commented on upstream (from which I had just sampled one of the cakes) were something like ~US$45 or so for the tin when I bought them last year. There were cheaper ones available, and also this year, also from HK - ranging from the twenty-ish range to forty-ish and so on. I've bought "locally produced" mooncakes from bakeries in Chinatown in Chicago in the past - individual ones were around US$4-5 or so IIRC. They were not as good as the better ones imported from HK, at least those I got and/or those available to me. I have not sampled the locally-produced ones in California or the US West Coast. The ice-skin mooncakes (冰皮月餅) are ever more popular, it seems, with each passing year - especially in E/SE Asia and are the ones which are evolving and mutating the most, incorporating far-ranging and *very* fusion-y (across cuisines) and creative ingredients/tastes/approaches. (I have not tried these myself) The range of these ice-skin mooncakes (some of which include actual ice-cream) are astonishing, from what I read, and these mooncakes appear to represent the direction in which "mooncakes" are going - so, yes, the "trend" appears to be persisting and continuing, to answer a query from a poster way back on this thread from more than 9 years ago. There are many threads on these (as well as the more traditional ones and on regional variations - e.g. Northern Chinese vs Cantonese vs Fukienese vs Taiwanese versions of "mooncakes" on a certain other food forum. :-)

Here ya go... http://nookmag.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/GOD-mooncake-5.png

Hainanese chicken rice, with minimal accoutrements. Small yellow-skin chicken, simmer – poached in the hot broth method; scallions (in cavity), ginger (in cavity + in pot), salt, generous additional cut-up chicken fat, rendered in situ in the pot/liquid; rubbed w/ vegetable oil + a little black sesame oil after retrieval from the pot. Accompanying sauce – grated young ginger w/ juices, Lingham’s Hot Sauce, Kokita Sambal Bangkok, “aged” rice vinegar, juice of half a fresh lime, dash of Red Boat fish sauce. Broth – portion of the poaching liquid w/ chopped scallions & coriander leaves. Rice – Thai Hom Mali w/ most of the floating fat + residual chicken fat rendered nuggets + sufficient liquid + ginger pieces from the poaching liquids, chopped smashed garlic, generous fresh pandan leaves trimmed/washed/knotted. The rice preparatory to being cooked:

These chiles intrigue me. I can't say I've consciously noted eating them. So I poked around and at the local "gourmet" grocery store/supermarket close by me they have it at $35/25 lb box stated to be available for pickup on Saturdays (pre-orders appreciated) during this period. However, they do sell them loose at $1.49/lb - after I called them up. I just picked up 9 nice ones which, serendipitously, came out at $2.00 even for the lot. :-)

BRFM: Rose Finn Apple fingerling potatoes, Japanese Trifele tomatoes, farm eggs. CFM: Green Chinese long beans, fennel bulb, green zucchini. Asia Mart: Fresh Yellow Skin chicken, scallions, coriander leaves, Thai basil, fresh pandan leaves, Thai red chillies, long hot green chillies, fresh galangal & fresh ginger (these were really young and fresh, for a "grocery" - still fleshy bracts on them, quite firm and young - clearly recently harvested), Tong Ho (edible chrysanthemum), fresh Chinese mushrooms (Tung Koo), bittergourds (Taiwanese-type "#1"), fried tofu puffs, soft tofu, firm tofu, "fish meat emulsion" (frozen), short-cut pork spare ribs, pickled cabbage fish flavor instant vermicelli (5-pack).

I just hauled out a never-opened-and-still-tape-sealed metal presentation box of mooncakes (lotus seed paste, double yolks) in the Cantonese-style from when I bought them LAST year - from Maxim's, a well-known bakery chain in Hong Kong and imported from there. Opened it etc and had one of the cakes (individually sealed in stout but attractive cellophane packages). It was entirely edible, still quite moist, unctuous, smooth, "creamy" and suitably oily in the lotus seed paste. The yolks were not perfect anymore (if they ever were) but still moist and exuded a little golden yellow oil when they were cut through and were satisfactory in taste, color and texture. I am impressed with its keeping power.

I did a double-take when I read that you were using MTQ in your prep and that you also were not sure if you had used enough. I thought that you must really need to get blissed out on this chicken ham... :-) ;-)

Soup: straw mushrooms & leafy celery in milky pork stock diluted w/ water & chicken stock (plus garlic) Fried firm tofu & angled loofah in a sauce w/ garlic & drizzled egg. The loofah was a little on the old side. :-( White rice.

Old Cucumber Soup, 老黃瓜湯. I used two Poona Kheera cucumbers which a local grower (at the Farmers' Market) kept for me on her vines until they were actually old :-) and had a very definite cracked-pattern brown skin. The making of the soup: oil, smashed garlic, sliced pork belly (skin on) & pork baby back ribs, sea salt, water; dried Polygonatum odoratum root/rhizome slices (玉竹), dried scallops, dried cuttlefish, Chinese jujubes ("lam jou" variety, 南棗); sliced deseeded cucumbers; goji berries. In that order.

Liver & onions. It looks very dark but no it wasn't burned. :-) The red onions I sautéed were very red and the liver (seasoned floured; I went heavy on the flouring too) went into the pan next.

The next time round you might also try cooking the lettuce stems (peeled & sliced) IN the soup as the soup is cooked. ;-) I personally find the lettuce taste to be (pleasantly) dominant.

Well, they're also known as "lettuce stems" or "celtuce" or "A-choy stems" as at least three other synonyms; while a common Chinese term for them would be wosun. See the wiki article on "celtuce". I'm interested too in what Kerry Beal thinks of them, taste-wise and texture-wise. For myself, they taste like...lettuce. :-)

Sometimes I do what others have mentioned - wash then let dry for a while (usually when I get distracted and go do something else and leaving the prep of stuff to "sit" for a while) but usually I am not bothered (or greatly impeded) by chopping my parsley and coriander leaves "wet". And yes, I always wash my herbs, or at least run some water over them, even if plucked from my deck. I don't need my chopped herbs to be a fluffy pile or to be a very fine mince and also like to see individual pieces (whole leaves, even) of them in many applications. In some cases I use the entire fronds (intact stem+leaves) and toss them into whatever I am cooking. Some soups, stocks, braises, certain curries; and in salads definitely whole leaflets/leaves; while in other cases a chop somewhere between fine and coarse is satisfactory to me.

http://forums.egullet.org/topic/145474-grocery-shopping/page-4?p=1968170#entry1968170 http://forums.egullet.org/topic/143989-lunch-whatd-ya-have-2012%E2%80%932014/page-15?p=1933370#entry1933370 (scroll down to the 4th sub-entry) http://forums.egullet.org/topic/148424-dinner-2014-part-3/?p=1968621#entry1968621 By all means do it with sliced meat of your choice. Oh, in soups (Chinese-type, with solid stuff in broth) and braises too. Treat it like broccoli stems; or like celery or even like young daikon. Yes, you need to peel off the tough/hard "skin", see one of my links above. Or pickle them, like cucumbers.

Make seolleongtang. Add some beef meat when you do plus cartilage. http://forums.egullet.org/topic/147367-if-you-skim-fat-off-soup-is-there-any-fat-left-over-from-emulsion-eg-ramen/#entry1957928

An old martini pitcher with ice insert I picked up in an antique mall some time ago.

http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/bondage

Blue Mountain coffee to me is not much more than "eh, it's OK". Certainly not THE BEST, to me, and certainly not worth its cost. NewFoodie, YOU have to compile your own set of preferred tastes, as others have said. Perhaps you find Blue Mountain coffee to be the sine qua non of coffees. Pending other "revelations" you may encounter, so be it. But the notion that there is a single BEST OF list (which applies to more than just coffee) which is immutable or the one-and-only list is entirely illusionary.