Burmese Days

I've been having my eye on getting myself a Chinese pickling crock/jar. Had a few questions on the subject and thought I would ask you all. 1. I've seen jars with water locks and I've seen jars without water locks. Are some pickles suited for one jar over the other? Why pick a jar without a water lock? Is it just a budget/economical consideration? 2. I've heard whispers of a preference for un-glazed ceramic crocks over glazed or glass because, they claim, it's allows the ferment to "breath". Is there anything to this? I would assume the water lock allows for breathing and the un-glazed ceramic would be a home for pathogens. But I can't deny that I'm interested in it. Would appreciate any other thoughts and information you may be willing to share. Thanks!

This is great. I hope it's still up to date because I was planning on taking pottery lessons to make my own instead of paying the absurd prices online.

Somehow, through all of this research, I completely missed the fact that the primary author, Lu Yi, wrote another Cookbook! A Taste of China Western-Style Chinese Cuisine (Saveurs Chinoises) A cookbook in English and french focusing on Sichuan food for a western audience. Now, I can't quite tell yet if this book is for Chinese restaurant owners in the west or home cooks but I suspect it's the former from preface: "Sichuan Cuisine, Go for It! As China has become the 2nd largest economy, many people expect Chinese cuisine, especially Sichuan cuisine, to step on the world stage. However, the reality is far from satisfactory. Across Europe and the United States, the market share of Chinese cuisine is much lower than that of Mexican, Italian, Japanese, and even Indian and Thai cuisine. As for Sichuan cuisine, its market share is far lower than that of Cantonese cuisine in foreign countries. Why? My first concern is that there is a lack of standards for Chinese cuisine. It is common to have food regulations in the developed countries like the USA. In contrast, most people who run Chinese restaurants overseas do not receive professional training as chefs. In 1994, I ate cold sugar tofu served as "Mapo Tofu" in one of those restaurants. Although, the dish carried the same name of Sichuan cuisine, it was not the same as in China. Because of this, Chinese professional chefs are establishing the Sichuan cuisine standard consisting of 13 criteria, including Standards for Sichuan Cuisine, Standards for Sichuan Pastry and Culinary Standards for Classical Sichuan Dishes. We wish to build the criterion for Chinese cuisine based on this. Secondly, there is a lack of professional managers for Chinese cuisine in the international market. Many people who desire to invest in Chinese restaurants don’t achieve a sound progress because they fail to find a professional manager who is familiar with both Chinese cuisine and foreign languages and laws. Therefore, our school has carried out the strategy of internationalization to train international professional managers since 2005 with internship programs on American Caribbean Cruises and Mediterranean Cruises, in French and Singaporean hotels. Thirdly, there is a big diet difference between Chinese and Western cuisine. I notice foreigners find it difficult to get Chinese ingredients and kitchen utensils and equipment abroad. We use chopsticks whereas foreigners use forks and knives. Can you imagine one eating diced or slivered food with forks and knives? Because of this, we wrote this book to adapt Sichuan cuisine to foreign cooking styles. All the ingredients in this book can be found in your local grocery stores. All the dishes in this book you can make in your kitchen and eat with forks and knives. For instance, to fix the Chengdu Roasted Meat, which is like Twice-Cooked Pork, we have pork belly pieces substituted for pork round slices with skin on, and we roast it with Pixian Chili Bean Paste without stir-frying in a wok. Thus, this dish is more delicious and easily eaten with forks and knives. My Chinese dream is that everyone in the world can enjoy Sichuan cuisine, and that we can buy Pixian Chili Bean Paste in every corner of the world. This book on Sichuan cuisine is one step toward the world stage. That’s what I want to say as foreword. Lu Yi Jan. 5th, 2014 Written in the Xiaoxiu Book Store on the south bank of Lanqiao Bridge in Chengdu." I'll be sourcing this book shortly, but how exciting and fun! And, for those curious, I'm sure you can find this book online with some effort. Expect updates soon.

They look similar, though more rounded and less segmented, to Laos and Northern Thai shallots. The common bulb allium consumed there -

Any updates on how long it lasts? I'm finding myself questioning my current bag that 2+ years old. I only use it in small amounts for bread making but am consider picking up a fresh bag for ice cream purposes.

I'm pretty late to the party but while doing my seed shopping for the upcoming spring I believe I've solved this little mystery. Garlic is... well garlic. It's the bulb of the Allium sativum plant. Garlic Shoots aka Green Garlic is the immature garlic plant pulled out of the ground. The white part of the shoot is the garlic bulb that was planted. If left in the ground it would eventually grow a whole head of garlic. Garlic scapes are the flowering part of the garlic plant. It's normally picked from the plant to increase garlic bulb yield. In that sense garlic scapes are a delicious byproduct.

Here's a list of some resources that may be worth a shot. A classic encyclopedia of antique hallmarks. Mostly antique hallmarks only. https://www.925-1000.com/ Guide to identification with a massive Maker's mark lookup table. Very well organized. Mostly antiques. https://www.kovels.com/marks-identification-guide/identification-help/silver-identification-guide.html If all else fails, reddit communities are always worth a shot. You never know what type of experts are waiting around for a post like this. Here's the subreddit for hallmarks. https://www.reddit.com/r/Hallmarks/

In North American, Sichuan peppercorn can have a vast amount of seeds and stems. It really can vary. I've seen packages where 50% of the peppercorns still had their pits. Other times I've seen packages with less than 25%. Either way, it's clear. North America has bad Sichuan peppercorns. If less than, let's say... 25 percent? of your peppercorns, have their seeds - there's no problem grinding them. It's hard to tell the difference in quality from 5% pits and 10% pits. It's when theirs an exorbitant amount of pits that the "gritty" texture comes about. But if peppercorn producers aren't drying the peppercorns right, then there's probably a lot of other corners they're cutting. Often people attribute Sichuan peppercorns atrocious quality in the US to a ban on Sichuan peppercorns in America by the USDA. This is false. The ban was lifted in 2005 with the caveat that they must be pasteurized at "140 degrees Fahrenheit or above for 10 minutes or longer" to kill off any citrus canker bacteria that may be present. So it goes, this "pasteurization" is what's causing the low-quality peppercorns in the US. But how does that explain the massive amount of stems? All of the seeds in the bag? And can heating peppercorns to 140f really cause the peppercorns to lose so much flavor? I don't think so personally. This is substantiated by Taylor Holiday, an exporter of high-quality Chinese ingredients. "There is little discernible difference between those Sichuan peppercorns that had been heat-treated for export and those that hadn't... There's no excuse for the inferior, lowest-priced product, packaged years ago, sitting on US shelves besmirching Sichuan pepper's good name." I think it's fair to say that the US is getting the worst of the worst exported to us. There must not be enough demand for quality Sichuan peppercorn. Most of the time, the quality doesn't matter. As long as your bag doesn't have massive amounts of seeds and stems, you'll be okay. You may need to add more peppercorn to get the same numbing hit. Though, If you genuinely care about good Sichuan peppercorns, I'd recommend picking them up from Épices de Cru or perhaps The Mala Market. The downside is they are pricey. Save the good quality ones on a dish where the mala flavor profile is being fully utilized. For example, if you're making kou shui ji, you should definitely use the good stuff. If you're just adding some Sichuan peppercorns to a red oil or to cut the gamey-ness of meat in a quick marinade, use the cheap ones.

Minor correction. That's not leek, it's dacong, aka welsh onion. Leeks are Allium ampeloprasum. Dacong are Allium Fistolum. Leeks are more onion-y while dacong functions mostly as a large scallion. They're often the preferred to scallion in northern china where it is used in a similar way as the south uses scallion. Here's a photo comparing (in order from left to right) dacong, leeks, and scallions. Source

I agree that the ingredients aren't easily accessible and can be pricey. But that was never the goal of this book. It's not made with an American grocery store in mind. And neither is it the reason I bought the book. I wasn't trying to get a Chinese cookbook adapted for an American audience; I was trying to get a Chinese cookbook. One day soon I'll pick up one of Fuchsia's books, and I'm sure I'll love it. But my goal was the see what Chinese recipes looked like with no compromises or substitutions. For that purpose, Sichuan Cuisine has been a great book.

If we're talking about hand pulled noodles, I can't help but plug mthmchris's great noodle pulling guide The guide goes into extreme depth for the average cook - Consider yourself warned But the biang biang noodle recipe is surprisingly easy and makes a great lunch.

How interesting. I would assume it's closer to Latiaozi because it doesn't have any alkaline? It must take a huge amount of skill to pull them thin without any type of dough conditioner. How thin can he make the noodles?

As silly as it is, I actual don't own any of Fuchsia's books. I've just started to get into cooking seriously so I haven't managed to build up my cookbook collection. Sorry I couldn't be of more help.

Ladies and gentlemen, ... It arrived! I ended my last post reflecting on all the effort it took to find this book. I acknowledged that in all likelihood, this book would not be worth the work. I'm happy to say I was wrong. This book is a wonderful find, and I hope all of you get the chance to enjoy it one day. The most interesting part of all is this the recipe layout. I've never seen such cleanly outlined recipes. For the sake of an example, here's the Mapo Tofu recipe from the book. As the colloquial Sichuan dish in the West, it should be a good point of reference for many that read this post. Here's a transcription - Ingredients 300g tofu, 60g stir-fried beef mince, 20g baby leeks (chopped into sections), 80g cooking oil Seasonings A 25g Pixian chili bean paste, 10g ground chilies, 6g fermented soy beans Seasonings B 3g salt, 5g soy sauce, 1g MSG Seasonings C 1g ground roasted Sichuan pepper, 200g everyday stock, 30g cornstarch-water mixture Preparation 1, Cut the tofu into 1.8cm3 cubes, blanch in salty water, remove and soak in water. 2. Heat oil in a wok to 120°C, add Seasonings A and stir-fry to bring out the aroma. Add the stock, fried beef mince, season with Seasoning B, and simmer for 2 to 3 minutes; add the leeks and thicken with cornstarch-water mixture; Transfer to a serving bowl and sprinkle with Seasoning C. So a lot to go through here. I'm going to split up my comments and critiques into two categories. One that critiques the recipe and one that critiques the recipe layout/choices. Comments on the recipe Beef Everything about the beef was a little strange in this dish. They called for the beef pre-cooked and didn't go over the cooking step at all. While this would normally be fine all though a little strange, in mapo tofu, it's bad. The whole point of the beef is to use the fried beef oil as the base for the dish. The mince itself is tertiary. Because the recipe never outlined cooking the beef, the average home cook would most likely not realize that they needed to save the oil for cooking the Pixian bean paste. Aromatics The first thing I noticed when I read this recipe was that it had no aromatics besides the Sichuan pepper powder if you count that. No garlic. Not even the white portion of the green onion. This struck me as strange till I looked a little deeper at what the hell "baby leeks" are in this context. Welcome to the wacky world of obscure vegetables and aromatics. Where scientific names are never listed, and regional names differ wildly. Were they calling for Dacong, aka welsh onion (Allium Fistolum)? It's very often used across Northern China Is it talking about actual leeks (Allium ampeloprasum)? Or perhaps it meant Chinese chives, aka garlic chives (Allium tuberosum). No, this has nothing to do with garlic, garlic scapes, or green garlic besides the fact that its an allium. Speaking of garlic, it could be green garlic; immature garlic pulled before the bulb has matured (Allium sativum). It looks quite like a large scallion. Possibly it's garlic scapes, the immature flower stalks of garlic (Allium sativum). They're often removed by farmers to focus all the garlic's energy into bulb growth. Because of this, they're plentiful and cheap across China. I can come up with at least five more, but I think you get the point The characters listed for it are "蒜苗节20克". From my limited google skills, I've come to the conclusion that they're suanmiao, aka green garlic. A good sub if you can't find any in your area is... well... garlic. I'd add it right after you finish frying seasonings A but before you add the stock. 10-15 seconds should be enough time for it to cook. While you'll miss a lot of the pleasent textural aspects, and the garlic flavor will be more homogeneous in the dish, it should work pretty well as far as subs go. If you take anything away from this, know that dacong are not leeks, no matter how often they're translated as leeks in the West. They both taste similar, but dacong is tender and soft while leek can be tough and crunchy. Dacong closer to a scallion than an onion in flavor, unlike leek. Also, Chinese leek can refer to dacong, leeks, and Chinese Chives - so be careful with that term. This is why sources like liuzhou's Chinese Vegetables Illustrated thread are so important. So after that detour, back to the recipe. Critiques of the recipe layout and recipe choices Seasoning categories The seasonings categories are a brilliant idea. It's the linchpin of what makes these recipes so concise and neat. It makes perfect sense when you think of most wok cooking. A basic fried rice or stir-fry are cooked very fast. The timing between adding different types of ingredients is crucial and can be a surprisingly narrow range. Take a look at this basic gailan stir-fry. I've listed estimated cooking times for each step. Quick fry of the beef and remove ~45 seconds Fry the garlic and ginger~ 10seconds Throw in onion and chili ~30 seconds Splash of Shaoxing wine Toss in the (mostly) cooked beef ~15 seconds Add soy sauce Quick mix ~10 seconds Add cornstarch slurry Quick mix ~10 seconds Add blanched gailan Quick mix ~10 seconds Drizzle with some toasted sesame oil You can see that once you start, it's a very fast process. This leaves the cook with very little time to fiddle with their recipe books and even less time to deliberate over what to do. Compare that to this version of the recipe, which consolidates each ingredient type into categories. Ingredients - Beef slivers, blanched gailan Seasonings A - ginger, garlic seasonings B - onion, chili Seasonings C - soy sauce, cornstarch slurry Quick fry of the beef and remove ~45 seconds Fry the seasonings A ~10seconds Throw in seasonings B ~30 seconds Splash of Shaoxing wine Toss in the (mostly) cooked beef ~15 seconds Add Seasoning C Quick mix ~10 seconds Add blanched gailan Quick mix ~10 seconds Drizzle with some toasted sesame oil While it may arguable be a longer recipe, it feels neater. It takes steps away from the frantic parts of the cooking process and places them at the start, where you have all the time in the world. It forces the cook to create a form of mise en place. Of course, a good cook can use both recipes perfectly well and make great food. But to someone like me, who does not prepare well enough ahead of time while cooking, the second recipe is inarguable better. While the idea may be brilliant, the execution is less than perfect. For example, 2 out of three of the ingredients in seasonings C are used before seasonings C is called for. There is no need for a whole category when you're just going to list for the ingredients individually anyway. Measurements As you can see, the measurements are all given in grams. I can't count how many cups vs. grams arguments I've read on forums, but I can tell you this is the first truly grams only cookbook I own. Instead of a teaspoon, it calls for things down to a single gram's worth. I'm not sure how I feel about this. I greatly prefer grams to cups, but for sums smaller than 5 grams~ volume just seems better. I'm willing to be wrong, though, and I'm excited to try this book out. I might need to get a scale with better resolution. Conclusion I'm very excited to use this book more. I showed the mapo tofu recipe as a point of refrenece for everyone, but this book has much more to it than just mapo tofu. There are so many interesting recipes that I'm excited to try. I'll update this thread if I make anything else fro the book.

I looked pretty well but couldn't find any recipes which include any licorice-esque flavors. The closest I found was this spiced ma lai gao but it's spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg. It might be helpful to know where you heared of this type of ma lai gao? Did you try it somewhere or read about it?