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We still use a blixer 4vv robotcoupe for light loads occasionally. It's really completely awesome and gives you a lot of control. That being said if hummus is all you will use it for I'd stick with a larger and cheaper R-series. You forgo the fancy cover but it barely matters with the speed the things get to anyway. For us we use it for a million things -- Really great. Prices go a little overboard as you go up in size though. the 4vv does a load of about 1.5KG of hummus at once. Seems I didn't have the right calculation before. But 1.5KG without shuffling things around. So I'm guessing the R8 could do close to double that. I looked into an R30 btw. 4 months delivery (HAAA) and about $15K. No thanks. That could be more of a China problem though.

Funny I did consider initially to just scale up the robotcoupe. The R30 looks nice. Holds 30 litres. Delivery date for it is 4 months after payment and the cost for the device was $20K !

Ya definitely the blenders would great for this kind of thing. Before we used a really fancy robotcoupe blixer. That could process loads of 3kg at a time. More than enough for smaller middle eastern restaurants as a base load. But ya, I don’t want to stress it out with 10 loads a day even if the machine only takes 3 minutes. Also another oddity of blenders or high speed professional food processors is that because they are just chopping things up the water absorption continues long after the final product is made. So if you made enough to put away for the next day everything will require additional liquid to loosen up later. So no one had played with one of those mills?

Hi everyone ! I’m tasked with a situation now where I will need to get my kitchen to output about 30kg of hummus daily. This is a lot more than we did before and I can’t imagine using the robotcoupe Blixer unit to do things in a timely manner. Does anyone have some better ideas? have been eyeing one of these colloid mills. Some are marketed for ‘hummus’ but I’m not sure about that. I also don’t want a situation where I need to input too much water when simply grinding the chickpeas. Have also tried a 2800rpm stone grinder and that seems to have unpredictable results while occasionally needing far too much water to get through everything. Although if you put too much water in the job is done in 5 minutes! anyway- just curious what others have tried for equipment. And also I’ve never spoken to anyone using a colloid mill for anything so I’m not aware of any experience with this one way or another. Although if I needed to make more peanut butter these look like the way forward!

holy &^*# What happened to my actual post!? Here's a rewrite, sorry if it is less linear and containing less content then I originally wrote.. Hard to remember precisely.. Hey All I'm about to arrive in thailand, after several hundred days away, and this time, despite it being the 10th time I'm traveling there, I'd like to get my street food done correctly. Can anyone discuss this a bit further, with some thai names (with pronunciation) for these snacks and general foods that I should be expecting to see and look for? I'll mostly in Bangkok, and then further south near koh lanta for much of my two week stay. I'm really hoping that this time I can take proper advantage and not mindlessly wander through the great snacks uninformed. I've done that countless times, and loved it, but always felt like I've missed so much. Also a few random thai connections with travel buddies at previous trips took the time to show me some of the best food I've ever eaten in my life, but somewhere, somehow, I left with only the knowledge that I had eaten fantastically well, and not with the details of exactly what I ate, and how/where to find it in the future. Hope this post makes sense to some. I know that if someone asked me the same thing for my area, I'd likely turn them to a few major specialties, and my routine favorite places to find them. In this case the language is also an issue! So I think the ideal would be to simply have an extensive vocabulary list to walk around with and help with ordering/identifying, rather than simply locating the correct stall or restaurant. But so far my searching online hasn't produced some kind of list I can build or study from. Anyway, any thoughts? Thanks! J

looks like it.. forget the name for them. But they see far more everyday use in Hunan cuisine. That dish you just posted in particular is a very famous hunan dish, not sichuan. Typical home-style food. But every hunan restaurant in China will offer it.

definitely is wo sun.. I remember seeing an english translation of it in a restaurant once that mentioned it as some form of lettuce, but can't remember now. In any case when it is fully grown out, it does look like a kind of lettuce

mmm i believe that cubed gelatinous thingy is actually made from potato flour. Interesting eh.

ooh that strange noodle-like dish you have in the steamer there is pretty rare to find in most places. I've lucked upon it only once in Beijing, and it was near the fragrant hills. They usually serve it with like a vinegary hot sauce right? Oh delicious.

your kids sinned. At least have them eat KFC which has a reasonably advanced sinocized menu compared with locations in other places! Not the worst deal in the world. I spent several months in Shanghai and throughout Zhejiang/Guangdong with a colleague that for the first 4 months would insist on eating at mcdonalds every time! Beat that! I still just barely converted him.. but barely. He still wouldn't eat anything with bones in or nearby and the same for seeds for fruits... which were also called 'bones'. Also the idea of eating bamboo was crazy enough to always suggest to other diners that he'd take them back to north america and feed them 2x4s. I always wonder about families like your in china frequenting the MCDs' and KFC's and i can just imagine the arguments and frustration the parents must go through. You are all troopers! But I think by the sound of it your kids did quite well overall no?

not sure which kind you are trying to make exactly.. but these aren't the shaanxi, lanzhou style lamian, which are the most obvious type that come to mind if you say lamian in china. The guys here barely add flour when they fold. They also don't fold it so many times, and they can additionally make them about 3x faster! hah. Remember, that over-added flour will really taint the broth or stir-fry in my opinion. Different use I suppose.

interesting, actually 4y/hour is fairly common at places like starbucks or MCD/KFC. In Beijing I know a lot of expat owned places that require english-speaking staff pay about 7-8 normally. But anyway it's good to see some people taking notice and changing things, cause 4yuan!! horrifying

interesting take on things fengyi. It's true that I actually don't know too many foodies who are or who's family members are beijingers. A lot of foodie friends are from sichuan/hunan/fujian/guangdong so there is always too much north-south comparisons(animosity). It's quite funny actually.. but I'm sure that helps distort my appreciation for some of the local foods. It's also interesting to see us foreigners coming to China and finding immediate satisfaction in some foods over others. In that respect from the few times I've been to some of the imperial cuisine restos many of the dishes almost felt like they were designed to be appreciated by foreigners. I can't tell you what that does for all those north-south conversations again. hah. One place comes to mind that was kind of new-beijing-with-hints-of-imperial-style that I visited recently, but the name escapes me. It was behind the two LG towers around Jianguomen built inside a siheyuan. Really gorgeous.. and really busy. Unusual amounts of sugar though, but a few dishes were quite interesting. Most of the non-chinese loved it and all the chinese save two absolutely hated it. Anyway, traveling too far off topic here. I'm looking forward for the chengdu pics.. since I really fancy going there the next time the flights drop in price! That, and the OP's interesting and detailed take on chinese resto-beer travel reinforces why I like being here. (not including the scorpions, thanks)

Yes I've heard of this place, at first mostly from you.. and indeed it looks appealing and upon my first trip to Beijing I tried getting there many times, but kept getting caught up with something. Then maybe a year ago I tried getting some others to go once again and found a few who'd been there recently and advised me not to since it had 'changed'. Stupid, indeed. So I will eventually get myself over there. I'm not one to believe of most people's casual dismissals of a restaurant, but I suppose at that time it was enough motivation-killer to keep things simple and go for dimsum..!!

I've had this cooked by some northern fujian people and they always added a touch of wine, and lots of garlic and green onions. I have to see how exactly they prepared it though, but it was the best variation of such a common dish that I've ever had. Delicious

haha no mac access in guangxi province. I have to write that one down. I was in Yangshuo 3 weeks ago and had a mighty fine wireless signal accessible from right next door. Good thing I didn't tell them I had a mac! As for the photos, show us chengdu+xi'an! Always a fun time. The imperial stuff looks nice overall, but it is yet more evidence of a certain myth revolving around a so called 'imperial' food. What that is really no one is sure. But everyone's photos seem to exhibit lots of simple beijing/dongbei-style cold appetizers and then lots of greasy entres. Mind you the thing in common with most of these types of restaurants is that they usually have one or two great bread-based dishes. And the reason why these restaurants pile all the dishes on at once has a lot more to do with showing off the 'small portions, many dishes' to the point where all the colours and shapes overwhelm the diners eyes, taking the attention away from the relative mediocrity of the taste. Sorry for the rant, but some of those pictures remind me of times in the past where I too wished I had something simple and delicious in front of me like the Shuizhuyu you posted-- rather than just an empty wallet. I did have a slightly above-average imperial-style dinner at beijing's Red Capital Club Resto. This is one where all the staff are dressed as Mao guards. Too funny, and the food had hints of american-chinese adaptations too. Interesting experience. Beautiful place though

yes, that's a hangzhou specialty, and can be quite an excellent one too! Though I've found it often almost sickly-sweet, but here and there you'll catch one that is both sweet and aromatic, and where the lotus root still has a bit of its original texture intact.

heh. keep in mind that any recipe as simple as cold noodles could only be possibly found with sugar added in the most limited areas. I can't imagine ever seeing something like this outside of Shanghai. Everytime you see sugar added to a recipe for some chinese food and think 'that's a LOT of sugar'.. remember that in China 99% of the population would never consider adding sugar at all. Of course that applies to non-desserts though! But even snacks/desserts in general will use far less than most in north america are comfortable with. This however doesn't work with stuff like Bingtanghulu and other super-sugarfied random snacks.

mm post pictures from chengdu. I fancy going there asap. Went a long while ago when I had no good way of navigating the streets and it was wonderful then. But I'd bet very little tops traveling chengdu for food! (though changsha and guangzhou might make it to the top as well!)

heh definitely the 8 treasures thing is by no means standard. But this specific restaurant makes a good one and I was basing it on my experience there and at their other beijing location at baiyunguan (which is quite horrible by the way). Also as a side note to the roujiamo.. supposedly the lao tang or the old stock used for stewing the meat has been in continuous use for up to 300 years in specific places; with the new fresh meat being added in at the end of the day on top of the old. Absolutely no possible way to verify that, but if you ask any Xi'An people what makes the roujiamo so special they might suggest this fact.

Hi Rick, No problem.. Nothing squeamish here at all actually first, roujiamo is basically just a sandwich made with the 'mo' xi'an bread specialty. The filling is only meat (despite what you'll find in 'xi'an shops' elsewhere in china). The meat is basically just pork or beef stewed for extremely long periods, along with the juices and the fat to the point where it is all rendered super-soft and delicious. When you order they grab a fresh baked Mo from the oven and slice it open.. then spoon some meat and liquid onto the cutting pork. Then they chop it up and slide it into the bread. It's pronounced Row-Jia-moh The Yangroupaomo (yangrou is lamb meat) with basically a 'soaked mo bread'.. yes I suppose that sums it up. It's pronounced Yang Row Pao Moh. The mo is the same type of bread, although usually it is a lot harder. Then they give you a bowl of lamb and potato noodles and dice the bread up; mix it together and then pour on the soup. It can be delicious if you find a good one! Eight treasure congee is pronounced ba bao Joe. Inside it is a combination of certain fruit and assorted nuts, water chestnut, jujubes and I think some chrysanthemum.. but don't remember exactly.

well... too bad I didn't take names down properly, but I just returned back from a night in Xi'an (yes short.. !!$) yesterday and we completely gorged ourselves for the 36 hours we were there. I'd suggest a few things... First, print this map out: http://ditu.google.cn/maps?f=q&hl=zh-CN&q=...93,0.02429&om=1 Dead center in this specific map location is one of the best non-halal (ie. pork) Roujiamo places in Xi'an. You can show the map to your hotel staff to get some directions. Or print, then make an X in the center and show to a cabbie and tell him you want RouJiaMo. There will usually be a line-up lasting 5-10 minutes every time they run out of the mo breads. It's more expensive than most other shops at 3.5-5RMB (higher for the tenderloin meat) but honestly it is wonderful. Actually, its within my top-3 sandwiches in Asia. If they brought this to my home in Montreal all of the burger shops would be screaming for mercy. Also, you'll want to go for a walk down DongTingMen road which is right nearby heading eastward where you will find quite a few really fantastic Yangroupaomo places that serve it for 6RMB. Everything is a lot more impressive there than anything on the Muslim street. --Save for one shop..! But you'll have to ask around for it since I always forget the name: It'ss a Guantangbao (soup dumpling shop) right center on the muslim street that serves the best dumplings in China. You think I'm overdoing it with such a statement but go have a try. Also try their Eight treasure congee (babaozhou). I don't know if you might also be looking a place to stay. A new youth hostelling international place opened up there this week and unless they make some big changes I know I'll be staying there every single trip from now on. They are located near the south gate within the walls. Called XiangZiMen Hostel. 湘子门. You can call them here 029-62867888. For 220 for a great big bed you can't go wrong and they have some super deluxe suites too.. All within an old ming/qing-styled garden house. Have fun!

Oh i have horrible memories of THE kosher Chinese resto of Montreal. I'll keep the names out of this, but it's fairly obvious to all Jews in montreal. I think we have to keep in mind that given how bad most westernized Chinese places are, imagine them restricting ingredients and cooking for customers that have had restricted access to such cuisines in the first place.. doesn't add up! Of course the food will be horrible. That's not to say it can't be done, since I think there are great ways to cook fantastic kosher Chinese food. Maybe in NY or Paris this is possible, but not Montreal at least. And possible still doesn't make it presently so. Beyond all this talk about bad kosher chinese, the fact remains that Jews are nearly universally mystified and possibly obsessed with Chinese food. It's anecdotal evidence mostly, but I can say that I came to China to eat in the first place and there are LOTS of Jews here just like me. Maybe they didn't come here so clearly for the food, but it makes a very important and obviously valued part of their experience here. Nuts no?

careful though. (as always) can't type now.. cutting green onions ans also took off nearly my entire ring-finger-nail. fun1 . bloody onions now.

yes, and it is tasty. Weird, but tasty. Combined with some fat or meat and a main component of vegetables it is excellent.