Gary Soup

If you are Jewish (especially New York Jewish) you know why this link is seasonal. It's a fascinating dissertation, and at the same time kinda funny for its seriousness. (Maybe we just like Chinese food because we're smarter.) Safe Treyf: New York Jews and Chinese Food

Thanks, it sounds like a good fit. The Ferry Building Market Hall is a mix of specialty food shops and mostly lunchtime eateries in a historic building. It's not really a dinner destination place. I was a little skeptical because RF apparently has some 300 outlets in Japan. It'll be interesting to see how much quality control they can maintain.

A question for eGulleteers in JP: A new deli from Japan will be opening shortly in San Francisco's Ferry Building Market. It's called delica RF1, and will feature something called "sozai." It's apparently a big chain in Japan and somewhat fusion-y (on the flip side, as it were). Is it any good, or just typical Mall food court quality? Anything to look for? Thanks Delica RF1 Announcement

We've never used tofu skin, but will use tofu "sheet" (bai ye) cut in strips and knotted. Also "you mian jing" (fried gluten puffs), a nod to my wife's ancestral home of Wuxi. I forgot to mention, we always use cuttlefish or squid, too, to provide a little textural variation. There's usually only 3-5 of us at this meal so we have to restrain ourself from uisng two many ingredients at a sitting.

I love table-top cooking so could you be kind enough to go into more detail on this burner and pot that you mention? Thanks. Since one picture is worth 10,000 words, here are pictures and descriptions of a burner and a pot similar to the ones we use. We don't usually shop at the Wok Shop, as they are pricier than other Asian goods store, but you can order from them if you can't find what you want locally. The butane burner gives a nice high heat and is nearly odorless. All the ventilation you really need is to crack open a window nearby. We use a spicy broth on one side of the pot, and a mild one on the other. Butane Burner "yin-yan pot" (I suspect the Wok Shop made that name up).

Hot pot (huo guo) is a modern Christmas Eve tradition in Shanghai, where my wife is from, and we've made it a family tradition here (not always on Christmas Eve, for logistical reasons, but close to it). We've taken to using a butane burner on the table, since no UL-approved electric hotplate will keep the stock continuously simmering when you load it up with goodies. Last year I bought a double-compartment pot which (despite the warnings from others) showed no leakage between the two compartments. Some of the stuff we throw in is: - A variety of thin-sliced meats (beef, pork, chicken, mutton) - Fish - Fish balls (and sometimes pork balls) - Shrimp in the shell - Bean Thread - Thin dried noodles - Fried Tofu - (Sometimes) whole eggs in the shell - Leafy green stuff that I never eat Does any one else out there do this? What do you toss into your hot pot? Any favorite recipes for dipping sauces? (We're always looking for new ideas.)

I guess you're not known as "project" for nothing...

In theory, you're probably right, but it's an unrealistic hope, unless you are making them yourself or have your own private chef. In the places with rolling carts (which the places we favor happen to use), the only possible strategy for optimizing your experience is to try and get seated near the kitchen where you can get your food as freshly cooked as possible; you have no control over the order in which the carts come out of the kitchen. In the places around here where you order your dim sum, you are expected to mark your whole checklist before you turn it in, and again you have no control over the order (or the pacing) of the service. Either way, they're not likely to cut you much slack; you're just one of 50-100 tables. Dim sum is like life -- you never know what is coming next.

I maybe a bit un pc here but the thought of inexpensive sushi scares the bejeezuz out of me. Well that and the sushi boat thingy. "Inexpensive" is a relative term, of course, but you can find a wide range of markups for the same quality of ingredients and skill of preparation in any cuisine. A higher markup might be due to location, spit-and-polish of the premises, a "name" chef's salary or just as a ploy to develop cachet. I'm not a sushi hound, but to cite examples in other cuisines, Yank Sing is not 3X the quality of Y. Ben House, and in fact might not be even it's (your previously expressed perceptions notwithstanding). A Vietnamese hole-in-the-wall might be the equal of The Slanted Door for 1/3 the price, and let's not even start comparing the "Tandoor-loin" spots with the pricy Indian restaurants. Sorry, but I haven't yet bought into the "if it's not expensive, it can't be good" theory.

Is the expression translatable, though? It conveys the sense of "Original (Chinese) Immigrants", I suppose. Kind of like the "Daughters of the American Revolution" or the "Native Sons of the Golden West"

Ah, Dejah, I don't cook, I only eat. My wife cooks Chinese exclusively, but she's Shanghainese, not Cantonese. For us, dim sum is all "eating out" stuff. It seems like you've got a grip on making dim sum aleady. No taro croquettes (aka taro "puffs") in your source materials? I may have a recipe around for the bee's nest taro, I'll look for one. I buy Chinese cookbooks mostly to stare at the pictures, so I'm not sure if it'll be in English. BTW, where I grew up dinner was also called "supper" and lunch was called "dinner".

Welcome, Dejah! As prasantrin suggested, there is no particular order for dim sum. The carts roll by in seemingly random order, and you grab what you want when you can. In San Francisco, people typically make do with egg tarts for dessert, and congee is about the only soup that you'll see at dim sum, unless you're blending dim sum in with lunch or dinner. If you ask me (which you didn't) my must-have dim sum item is "bee's nest" taro croquettes! Odd that you live in a town with youtiao but no dim sum.

Kind of like those motels that advertise "Clean Rooms" on their signs.....

It can be done - I have a friend who made it. It even turned that pleasant shade of pink. Unfortunately I can't remember what type of vinegar he used. But, I'm sure some one else here can help with that. Sounds like that sweet red rice vinegar. It could probably also be pickled in Zhenjiang vinegar. After all, shredded ginger in Zhenjiang vinegar is what you dip your Xiaolong Bao in. You don't? Preserving ginger has never occurred to us, though, as we live a 15 minute walk from Chinatown and my wife shops there daily.

Two bogus recipes for sure! Actually, the first one sounds like a pretty good shot at a satay-style dipping sauce and might better fit the definition of a "seafood sauce" (which "hoisin sauce" literally means) than the more familiar plummy hoisin sauce. (Since when is a duck "seafood", anyway?)

And you are Cantonese, as I recall, and might be expected to have more of a predilection for sweet sauces. (Hey, how would pure maple syrup work on the cheung fun? ). My wife is Shanghainese, and probably has never seen hoisin sauce except on a little plate next to a Peking duck. If she wants to make a nastily sweet "twice-cooked" pork, she just throws in a chunk of that brown sugar candy. The default "hong shao" ingredients take care of the rest.

That was my reaction, essentially "why?" I can't think of any use for it, unless mags is making Peking duck from scratch, too. My wife cooks Chinese food every day of the year, and we've never even had haixian sauce in the house. It might be interesting to try making one's own soy sauce, though.

Not from Japan, but from China: circa 1995 a popular item of apparel in Shanghai was a T-shirt emblazoned with the word(s?) WOBEGO NE (space included).

I've never been tempted by Calpis sodas.

Dunno about that one.... I've eaten horse, dog and not a few bunny rabbits, but some creatures are too beautiful to contemplate eating. And the swan you cook could be a descendant of the swans that Oliver St. John Gogarty donated to the Liffey River. Of course, there are probably some food pervs out there who are thinking "Hmmm... swan foie gras."

I avoid Brandy Ho's because they so loudly proclaim NO MSG! on their signboard. To me that's a sign of pandering to a gweilo audience. Better Henry's Hunan, or Sam Lok on Jackson Street around the corner for Sichuanese, if you're craving honest spice.

Wasn't that easy, ? I'm not sure the "xi" in xigua refers to the (foreign) west, though that may be the case. There's also the "donggua" (winter melon) and "nangua" (pumpkin). Oddly, according to my dictionary, "beigua" also means "pumpkin" though I've never heard the term used.

Williams-Sonoma has a long track record of perspicacity in marketing. Otherwise, who would pay their prices? I think it's safe to say they've already counted the votes on this issue, and know where the "small and fanatical minority" lies.

I guess this is the place for a cherished ancecdote about recipes. Maybe some antiquarian recipe collector out these can unearth the proof that I'm not pulling legs here. Back around 1968 or 1969 I worked with a computer programmer (yes, Virginia, we had computer programmers in those days) at UC Berkeley. I don't recall her name, but she had a wicked sense of humor. Sunset Magazine at the time had a bounty for reader-submitted recipes (a munificent sum of $5 or $10). My friend purloined an old recipe for Rabbit Pie from somewhere, re-wrote it and submitted it entitled "Deep Dish Hare Pie". It was published under that title.

I'm not sure what you're referring to. With Windows XP and IE5, it's pretty much automated (just be sure you have Chinese listed under "languages" and a font selected for Chinese under "font" in the "Tools/Internet Options" dialog). I just cut and pasted from the source website and voila! You can also do your own inputting using PinYin via Windows if you have Chinese Language Support enabled and the appropriate IME installed. If you've been using an add-in like Chinese Partner, Chinese Star or RichWin, forget it. None are compatible with the latest versions of Windows, and probably won't be upgraded since Bill Gates' human wave of programmers have taken up the task of providing similar capabilities for "free" (as if there was such a thing as a free lunch). BTW, "fan" officially just means "foreign" (which of course was previously associated with barbarism). The prefix "yang", which carries the sense of both "foreign" and "modern" is also used, at least in Mandarin and Shanghainese, as in "yangcong" (foreign scallion) for onion, and "yangshanyu" (foreign yam) for potato.