huiray

Or spooned over wild rice. Or tossed w/ gnocchi, or as a spread on toasted buttered Baguette slices, or spooned on top of a bowl of tomato soup or creamy artichoke soup, or or or...

Shelby, your salsa looks very good, and I think would be a nice sauce for various kinds of pasta or noodles. (I can just visualize that with Angel Hair pasta or even min6 sin3, as just two examples; plus some salad on the side) Care to give us some details?

Anna N, how did you do your braised duck leg?

Comfort food last night. Stuff I do (especially the pasta) as "regular dishes" nowadays. • Pasta (Thin spaghetti this time) w/ fresh tomato sauce (Hazan-style). Pecorino Romano. • Pan-fried/"stir-fried" wong nga pak heart w/ just salt & oil.

When I was growing up in SE Asia more than a half-century ago, there used to be an INDIAN guy who came around my house (in a residential area) for a while pushing his soup noodles cart (it was a sort of Chinese-Indian combo of a noodle dish :-) IIRC). He tended to appear around mid-morning tending towards lunch time but he really started at the beginning of the day - so it just depended on WHERE you were located on his chosen route for that day. Alas, he stopped doing this after a while. Here's a video of a Pok-Pok soup noodle cart (Kway Teo Pok Pok) in Thailand, plying the streets of residential homes - again, this is not specific to breakfast...it just depends on the time of day when the cart passes your house, and if she (or he, in other cases, presumably) hasn't sold out before he/she reaches you. :-) . p.s. This comes from a collection of videos on Thai street food; you might enjoy looking at them too.

Ah, OK. I misunderstood you then. Yes, that one from Honest Foods does indeed have oyster extract as the last item in the list of ingredients.

Really? Here's the relevant label on the bottle of LKK oyster sauce I'm currently using.

Sunday lunch: • Chicken thighs, chopped up; “stir-fried” w/ garlic, vegetable oil, poblano peppers, shallots, baby long-type Chinese eggplants and a sauce mixture of {black bean garlic sauce [Lee Kum Kee], Guilin chili sauce [Lee Kum Kee], chilli paste w/ holy basil leaves [JHC], fish sauce [Red Boat], aged soy sauce [Kimlan], aged ‘gourmet’ rice vinegar [Kong Yen] and palm sugar}. • White rice.

I promise!!

FauxPas, Nah, don't sweat it. I would like to think that we all all have days when we put out an amazing highly detailed and sumptuous meal and days when we do something simple and/or simply heartwarming or whatever. In a home environment I would expect more of the latter, and it is none the less as valid a post as any other. I for one benefit from seeing all of them. huiray.

YOU REALLY NEED TO PICK THEM WHEN THEY ARE YOUNGER AND SMALLER!!! Make battered-and-fried zucchini babies or flowers. Soup w/ zucchini babies. Salad w/ shaved or sliced baby zucchinis. Tomato sauce w/ baby zucchinis in it, with a nice fresh pasta. Stuffed zucchini flowers (even simply Ricotta cheese would suffice) - i.e. don't let them become full-grown zucchinis. Pick them the night before, not the morning after. Etc etc. ;-) :-)

Aha. Thanks for the pic(s) and the peek into your world.

I second dcarch's commendation. I appreciate seeing your posts here. Is that chap in that photo you?

Late-night simple dinner. • Skinny wonton noodles dressed w/ a savory garlic sauce,¶ chopped scallions garnish. • Baby Shanghai bok choy blanched in oiled boiling water. (The same pot of water used for the noodles was used, with some oil now added in) • Chinese roast pork (store-bought); a piece oven-rewarmed then cut up. • Simple chicken broth garnished w/ scallions & coriander leaves. ¶ Chopped lightly crushed garlic (Music) very lightly browned in vegetable oil and quenched w/ a mixture of soy sauce [Kikkoman], oyster sauce [Lee Kum Kee], some dark soy sauce [Yuet Heung Yuen], generous jozo mirin [Morita], a little fish sauce [Red Boat] and some water. The mixture was brought back to a simmer for a minute then removed from heat (covered).

“Instant Noodles Artificial Hot &Sour Shrimp Flavor” (酸辣蝦麵) [Dragonfly] augmented w/ sautéed sliced garlic (vegetable oil), leafy celery heart, quartered common mushrooms, chopped scallions, halved hard-boiled eggs (done separately) and de-shelled de-veined prawns (wild Atlantic; they went in at the very last). Garnished w/ coriander leaves.

Shelby, here are some plants of baby Shanghai bok choy, taken out from a bag of them, that I picked up today from my usual Chinese grocery. :-)

BRFM: Cherokee Purple tomatoes, parsley, red carrots, shishito peppers, Poona Kheera cucumber, White Russian kale, Western chives. CFM: Purple Chinese long beans, yellow zucchini, fresh radiatore pasta, fresh mozzarella, blemished tomatoes (for soup), green zucchini, green-shelled farm eggs. Asia Mart: Chinese roasted pork (siu yook), coriander leaves, Chinese chive flower buds, water spinach (ong choy), baby Shanghai bok choy, lemon grass, daikon, packaged bamboo shoots in water [J.Z.], High Mountain Green Tea [Da Guan], seasoned crisp bamboo shoots (bottled) [Tomo Foods], chili radish (bottled) [Kim Lan], “tapioca stick" (Bánh ướt) (tapioca starch version), mutenka shiro miso [Maruman], pickled plums (umeboshi) [Daiei].

Some recent lunches. ------------------------------------------ • Chicken slow-simmered broth w/ celery, carrots, parsley stems. A bowl of this plus the veggies eaten w/ some of the chicken as well as min6 sin3 (Fuzhou-type wheat noodles; Taiwanese [Hung-Ming]). ------------------------------------------- • Linguine tossed in the pan w/ sautéed garlic (EV olive oil), maitake mushrooms, sliced white (button-type) mushrooms, parsley. Sea salt, splashes of jozo mirin & ryori-shu. ------------------------------------------- • Sautéed minced pork, chopped garlic, vegetable oil, halved Sun Gold tomatoes, sliced de-seeded shishito peppers & (hot) Bulgarian Carrot peppers, quartered white button-type mushrooms. Splash of fish sauce [Red Boat], seasoning adjusted. Tossed in the pan w/ Angel hair pasta.

You're welcome. BTW if you see a menu that has "Manchurian Chicken" on it that would be a dead giveaway that the place is, at least in part, an Indian-Chinese place - unless it is one of those "upscale" fancy-wancy-trendy places that "features" Chinese-Asian-Fusion food.

I dunno, seems like roasting these wings would generate even more heat than making stock...just sayin'. ;-) Try one of the recipes for Vietnamese (grilled or whatever) chicken wings for the duck wings. Just google it.

A couple additions to the "Hakka in GTA" question: 1) Here's a post from another forum, and another one FtHoi; 2) I had a look at the dinner menu of Yueh Tung restaurant in downtown Toronto and it is a mix of "traditional" (mainland) Hakka/Cantonese dishes PLUS definitely Indian-Chinese dishes. I personally found it a very confused menu. :-) ETA: Corrected "GTO" to "GTA".

Cucumber soup. Stuff that went in: Water, chicken thighs, duck leg, Poona Kheera & Brown Russian cucumbers, garlic (Music), dried cuttlefish, dried Solomon's Seal rhizome slices ("yook chook", 玉竹), dried longans, dried tangerine peel ("chan pei", 陳皮), Chinese jujubes ("lam jou" variety, 南棗), salt, chicken fat (rendered into the soup). ETA: A little commentary here - I used the dried ingredients as listed above, precisely for their inherent properties. There is no way I would have used the fresh equivalents for any of them in this soup, or in other similar dishes, as I would not have achieved the taste profile desired. Dried ingredients are ingredients in their own right in many cases (such as in the present and similar cases) with the specific taste that they have acquired, and are not "poor substitutes" for the fresh items.

AHHH....so it was an Indian-Chinese restaurant? If that is correct, that is the answer. In India, ALL Chinese food is called "Hakka cuisine/food", regardless of what regionality it may derive from in truth. This comes from the history of how restaurant "Chinese food" was brought to India within the last 1-2 hundred years - it was brought there very largely by folks from the Hakka dialect group and the Indians grew to associate Chinese food as being Hakka food, and throwing in Indian items and Indian-Chinese/Hakka fusion stuff as well all onto the same menu. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Chinese_cuisine and: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakka_cuisine#Hakka_cuisine_in_India ETA: I took a look online and although "Hakka Fresh" is listed it is too new to have an online menu or a fleshed-out webpage to consult. I note, however, there is a "Bombay Chinese" just down the road which is clearly Indian-Chinese cuisine. I had forgotten about it (haven't thought about it for a long time) but in looking around I see (am reminded of, perhaps?) that "Hakka food" in the GTA is commonly Indian-Chinese food (here's one search; here's another search). I hope there must be genuine/real Hakka food in the GTA, though? Food such as in the parts of the Wikipedia article OTHER than as described in the "Hakka cuisine in India" section (also referenced above). I've posted about some Hakka-type dishes such as Yong Tau Foo and Kow Yuk (amongst others) here on eG also. ETA2: Yes, there are fairly "real" Hakka dishes available, such as some of those on the menu of the restaurant I looked at in the post below, or of others. The section on Hakka food in Toronto in Anusasananan's book also talks about the arouping together in Toronto of Hakka folks from all over including India although the recipes the author writes of are closer to "traditional-type" dishes than Indian-Chinese dishes, which seem to be drawn more from these folks' traditional heritage than from their place of last abode or birth. ETA3: Corected "GTO" to "GTA".

True enough. (Or when they grow arms and legs and wave at you)

I think cakewalk said it best. Notwithstanding what you may find in your travels along the pathways of exploring vegetables available in places other than one's standard Western supermarket, it still devolves down to what you find delicious at that moment at that time for that purpose. You'll just have to try them all. It is a fool's errand to "list" the *best* types of salad vegetables. It reminds me, in a sense, of those "Best 10"/ "Best 50 (San Pellegrino)"/"Best Whatever" lists of restaurants - they are completely dependent on who's on the ranking list and what their cultural biases are (and they are pretty biased) or what the "trend of the year/moment" was; and who was the friend of whom in recommending which restaurant to go to next etc etc etc.** There is no such thing as the "best" type of vegetable for any sort of salad. Happy trying-out-stuff. ** Or a Yelp list