aprilmei

Street vendors have specialized cooking utensils. Basically they need to build everything on top of a small cart (to be mobile). All they have for heating is a kerosene burner. Baking, as in using hot air, is an inefficient way of cooking compared to steaming -- because baking is an inefficient way of heat transfer compared to steaming. I am not sure why the name used is the one usually associated with baking. Perhaps it sounds better in Cantonese. But the quail eggs you get some street vendors are steamed. In the winter time, you can see clouds of water droplets hovering around the cart. The so-called "salt baked chicken" sold in restaurants these days... you think they really bake the chicken in a bed of salt in the oven? Think again. They boil the chicken in a brine solution with things like 5 spices added. ← Actually, I really do think they're baked in salt, not boiled. Not necessarily in the oven, though. I made it once before and did it in the wok. There are restaurants that specialise in it (Hakka places) and also roast meat vendors sometimes sell it.

I'm Toisanese, from the village of Kow Kong (nine rivers). When you were growing up overseas, did your family belong to the "village association"?

Aprilmei: you must be living in the neighborhood of the top one percentile of the population. I grew up in the neborhood of the commons. Still many people don't do serious cooking at home. We may not dine at the high-end restaurants. But in Hong Kong there are always eateries with decent food to fit everybody's budget. ← Not true. So many people here have domestic helpers and they're not rich. Even families living in one-bedroom places - that's four people (father, mother and child, plus the domestic helper) will have a maid living in one small apartment. Full-time maids cost only HK$3,250 per month (that's about US$400). That's the legal rate, btw; some helpers from Indonesia are paid about half that rate. I've been in homes where the domestic helpers live in the kitchen - they sleep under the table. I don't think that's legal - I believe they're supposed to have their own room. And paying them less than $3,250 is DEFINITELY illegal but it goes on all the time. I don't actually know all this stuff first-hand because I don't have a maid (although my boyfriend does).

She called you fei mui? LOL. Sorry, but that's how people in Hong Kong are - very blunt (to put it mildly). It surprised me when I first moved here. I was in a restaurant where there was a rather chubby waiter (not American-size chubby, though, Chinese-size chubby). A customer yelled out "fei jai!" and the waiter immediately turned to him. He didn't look at all offended.

There are lots of different kinds. I've never seen the one wrapped in leaf, though. Did you try it? was it sweet? I love loh bak goh and wu tau goh but those are the only two savoury ones I've ever seen (except for the plain "rice cakes" that are stir-fried or put in soups). Of the sweet ones, I love the ones made with coconut milk (which are white) and water chestnuts (kind a a weird, translucent grey colour). There have also been other types of them but they haven't been very memorable. Also, some places put edible gold-leaf on their goh. It doesn't taste any different but it must appeal to someone because people seem to be buying it.

Yes, not everybody here can cook. It's partly because so many people have full-time "domestic helpers" (maids). The employers can tell the maids HOW to cook but if they had to do it themselves - fergedaboudit.

They weren't steamed, at least I don't think so. The vendors had a big bed of salt and they sifted through it to find the eggs. I assumed it was kind of like salt-baked chicken except that the eggs weren't wrapped in grease-paper like the chicken is. I wondered how they did it because like chefzadi, I have images of bursting eggs if they were roasted without being cooked first. And I can't imagine street vendors having time or the facilities to brine all those eggs in advance, not when they're charging only a few HK$ for a bag of eggs. They don't make a whole lotta money, although knowing how frugal the older generations are, they probably have more savings than I do (and good for them, too!)

I wish I had asked how they cooked them. I never thought to ask because it used to be so easy to find the vendors so why should I bother doing it myself? But the HK government isn't granting licenses to street vendors any more, so it's getting hard to find the traditional food.

It all depends on how much water you add to the loh bak and rice flour mixture. My mother says to add enough water "until it looks like thick oatmeal". She uses the water used to boil the loh bak.

There used to be street vendors who would sell quail eggs roasted in salt. They were delicious; I'd eat a whole bag at once (that's 12). Can't find them any more.

You also have to remember that our traditions are constantly evolving. For instance, in Hong Kong we haven't been able to eat whole chicken for the past several years at CNY because of bird flu (not this year, so far. keeping our fingers crossed). Since all the chickens were slaughtered to avoid the spread of the disease, we just haven't eaten it. Is my aunt upset? yes, but she lives with it. And with all the food that she makes, do we go hungry without the chicken? certainly not! she's a fabulous cook.

I vote for the second one. I think these cookies might be Malaysian Chinese. At least, I never ate them until my Malaysian Chinese friend started bringing them back each year. Are they eaten only at CNY or year-round? Can you also make the ones flavoured with pandanus? This friend also brings back other treats. I especially love what she calls "love letters" - they're kind of like Chinese egg rolls (the biscuit egg rolls, not the fried savoury ones) but they're folded over (not rolled) and filled with sugar and crushed peanuts and sesame seeds.

I believe that Fuchsia has a recipe for this in her book. Meant to say in my above post that it's papaya juice that's supposed to be good for eating with spicy food, not mango. If you're still in Hong Kong, you should try Man Jiang Hong for Sichuan food. It's good, authentic and much cheaper than Shui Hu Ju. It's at 1/F Thai Kong Building, 482 Hennessy Road, Causeway Bay, tel: 2838 8811. Entrance is not on Hennessy Road but around the corner, I believe on Percival Street. On the ground floor you'll see a food counter - it used to sell a lot of ingredients for Sichuan food but the selection is now pretty limited. The restaurant is upstairs. They have Sichuan hotpot but I like the regular menu much better. They have this chilli chicken dish that you like plus lots more.

I don't think you're supposed to eat the chillies (which are dried, btw) - you're just supposed to pick out the pieces of chicken. It's kind of like a treasure hunt, trying to find the edible bits. Mango juice is supposed to ease the burn.

The only kind we make is loh bok goh. You're right, it IS so much better than the commercial types - like night an day. In Hong Kong, various types of goh are given as gifts. I love the sweet ones with water chestnut or coconut, sliced, dipped in beaten egg and sprinkled with a tiny bit of sugar, then pan-fried. The sugar caramelises as it cooks - yum. White rabbit candy reminds me of being a kid. Not a bad thing, though. We also set out those colourful chewy fruit-flavoured candies that are kind of like Starburst; can't remember what those are called. And those fruit-flavoured jelly candies too.

Is this a banquet that happens to be at CNY or is this a CNY banquet? If it's the latter, there are certain dishes that are traditionally eaten: faat choi jai (the vegetarian dish that contains among other things, faat choi - or "hairy moss" seaweed, water chestnuts, bamboo shoots, dried mushrooms, etc), fresh clams in the shell (supposed to bring wealth), saang choi (lettuce, again, it's supposed to bring wealth), whole fish and chicken (you have these covered in your menu). Also, if possible, goh (CNY steamed puddings - loh bak goh, neen goh, wu tau goh, etc). Well, actually, you don't usually eat them at a CNY banquet but they are eaten at this time of the year.

I add a bit of Yunnan ham (or ham bone) to my chicken broth (which I usually make from bones, not the whole chicken). In the States you'd have to use Smithfield. I learned this tip from one of Florence Lin's books (the fabulous one on dumplings and breads). Not too much because the flavour shouldn't be overwhelming, just enough to deepen the flavour and add some salt.

If you go to Chinatown, you might be able to find chestnuts that have been peeled of the hard outer shell - makes things much easier. Even if you can't find them half-peeled, though, the secret to easy peeling (relatively easy) is to do it when they're hot. Yes, it burns your fingers. But it really does work for both the outer shell and the papery husk. You just need to take them from the hot water a few at a time and work as quickly as your sore little fingers will allow. If it starts to get difficult to peel, drop them back in the hot water and work on the other chestnuts. Oops, I see that you roast your chestnuts (I boil them for use in Chinese dishes). But it works the same - they still peel better when they're hot. When I buy cooked chestnuts from the vendor (they still have street vendors selling roast chestnuts in Hong Kong) they don't peel easily when they're cool so I pop them in the oven, heat them up and both the hard shell and inner skin come off without much effort.

Like Yuki says, but use it in small quantities - it's pungent. You should first fry it in a little oil in the wok before adding the other ingredients - it brings out the fragrance. Actually, that's a bad way of putting it; it is quite smelly, even without frying it. It changes the fragrance...

It normally is a good time to visit but unfortunately, the pollution this year is absolutely dreadful. I'm sitting here, looking out of my office window, and I can't even see across the harbour. You'll have a good time if you don't have to breath

Are key limes the same type of lime you find in Thailand and SE Asia? They look like the ones in the photo.

Fat choi is usually referred to as hairy moss seaweed, even though it's not grown anywhere near the sea. It's harvested in semi-desert areas of northwestern areas of the mainland including Gansu, Tibet and Inner Mongolia. The harvest of it is causing erosion and deforestation because in those areas, there aren't very many plants growing wild. It's actually against the law to harvest it and sell it on the mainland but I saw it being sold openly in Shanghai when I was there last year. It's also still legal to sell it in Hong Kong, despite the efforts of conservation groups. There are newspaper reports about it every year at Lunar New Year, when it's traditionally eaten.

The juice of balut IS delicious. You're basically eating the most intense chicken soup imaginable - the baby chick is cooking in its shell, without any additional liquid to water it down. The first bite is the scariest just because it looks so ugly. But once you get over that, it's fabulous.

But how do they get the cockroaches clean enough to eat - aren't they filthy? Can you imagine having a job as a cockroach cleaner (little brushes to scrub their little feet ) Or are they specially raised?

I saw scorpioins being sold at the markets in Guangzhou but they were alive, not cooked, and since I had no idea how to prepare them, I didn't buy them (not sure if I wanted to bring them back to Hong Kong anyway - what if they got loose?). But I have eaten bugs in Bangkok where they're sold as street food. The vendor I went to had about eight different types of bugs, including large grasshoppers and "things-with-wings" several inches long, that I was too scared to examine more closely. There were also these water beetles that terrify me - they're about 2" long and when they fly or crawl into my flat, I run screaming from them. I'm a very adventurous eater but I had a hard time eating bugs, mostly because I'm a scaredy-cat and am afraid of them even when they're alive. I decided that this was a stupid phobia that I needed to overcome, and so, with the help of my Thai friend, I bought three types - small grubs about 1/4" long and fairly round, what Supapohn called "express trains", which were long (about 1") and very thin, and crickets. They had all been fried and the vendor sprinkled some white powder on it (it might have been MSG - I should have asked) and what I believe was Maggi sauce. The express trains were good - I had no problems with them at all. The grubs were fine too, once I got over my initial squeamishness. A faintly crisp bite on the outside and soft inside, but not squishy. I guess the texture of the interior is closest to eating all that yummy stuff on the inside of the crab shells (I think it's the guts and/or roe). The crickets were the hardest. I ate the wings (very crisp) but I just couldn't eat the body/head parts - the eyes were staring up at me! I tried but failed...