Gary Soup

This time of year Dungeness is pricey here, too ($4-$5/lb) because it has to be flown in from northern waters, so $5.98 CAN is not bad for the middle of the prairies. Hmm, I wonder what Ben Hong pays for lobster where he is. I recall getting TWO whole garlic-ginger lobsters in a Chinese restaurant in Montreal Chinatown for $12.95 just a few years ago.

For shame, Dejah! The most beloved brand, Ma Ling (a proud product of Shanghai) is actually made in Canada for North American consumption. Head for your nearest big Asian market and grab a tin. Ma Ling is good enough to be in the Potted Meat Museum, though the Spam mavens at the Guide to Spam-like Products found it "bland" and "a poor substitute for Spam." The real luch meat master chefs are in Hawaii, where you can get a Bento Box with both lunch meat (top right) and Spam (bottom right). Maybe we should start another thread for Spam Fried Rice recipes .

Not really, Spam is still a cross-culture topic. I have a hapa (Japanese-Caucasian, in her case) friend from Honolulu. Growing up, "Hawaiian Steak" for Sunday dinner was the highlight for her of home cooking. "Hawaiian Steak" was Spam. In China, the Chinese equivalent of Spam is sometimes sliced up and served as one of the "cold dish" appetizers at a banquet-style meal. It's less saltier and tastier than the Spam we are used to in the US.

Just toss the whole critter in a pot of boiling, salted water and blanch it for about a minute. Then have your will with it. Your crabs are probably jimmies, as it's illegal to keep the females (at least in the U.S.) of Dungeness so there's no "goo" worth eating, though some people eat the sperm (I forgot the euphemism for it). Odd that you should bring this up, as I have been thinking all day about the beginning of dazha (hairy) crab season in Shanghai and contemplating a trip there in a month or so for a crab feast. We usually wait for our local Dungeness season, which doesn't start before Thanksgiving, when the beauties are plentiful and cheap (sometimes less that $2/lb.)

Joel, I meant that you will fall in love two or three times in the course of a single afternoon stroll, sort of a Jimmy Carter lust-in-my-heart kind of unrequited love. My wife doesn't read the forum (she tends to avoid reading English except when necessary) but wouldn't feel threatened. She knows I love Gong Li too, as evidenced by the 14 Gong Li movies I have on VCD .

Of course there's a darker side of the experience of bi-racial partners, as has been mentioned by you and a couple of other posters, but I, for one, don't don't see any devious undercurrents in the on-topic discourse here. If you really want to get into it, my wife would probably tell you she she gets more pain from her treatment by Cantonese for being non-Cantonese speaking than by her treatment by non-Chinese for being Chinese (just try applying for a job at the Chinatown branch of the state Employment Development Department). We once took a "Gamblers' Special" bus to Reno, and the tour guide (who happened to be from Nanjing) periodically adressed the group in Mandarin, even though some of the older members of the largely Cantonese group could not understand it, as they had never had to study Mandarin. Finally one younger man in the group admonished the tour guide: "This is America. You should learn a little Cantonese." It's out there in many forms. Heck, I get second looks (make that third looks) in China for using my chopsticks with my left hand. It's just pollution, IMHO . Meanwhile, chifan liao!

Well Marina, if I were to ask you that question the implication would be "Why do you neglect a superior cuisine for an inferior one?" Remember, this is a Chinese cuisine forum, frequented by people who love Chinese food. The OP is a Canadian-born Chinese who happens to be married to an Anglo. She's also a teacher of Chinese cooking, and her problem for the day was "When a person grounded in Chinese cuisine meets one grounded in a different cuisine, what are the mechanisms of approchement, and what obstacles are presented?" If it's about non-Chinese adapting to Chinese cuisine, and not the converse, it's simply because of the context.

Californians tend to call sweet potatoes "yams", usually with a varietal name like "Garnet Yams." Where I grew up, in upstate NY, we always called them "sweet potatoes." As a general rule, when in doubt, it's most likely a sweet potato. Yams are seldom sold fresh or whole, and are not even red-orange in color. In fact, they are seldom sold anywhere, except in ethnic specialty markets. Obscene picture of sweet potato/yam orgy

You can probably download the fonts from the Microsoft Web Site.

Wherever you are, it sounds like they don't even know "chow mein" from "chop suey."

Especially after a 212 year run.

Not in the Bay Area. Every Chinese restaurant I know of has a "chow mein" section on the menu, and you'll always get the soft, pan fried noodles, unless it's described as "Hong Kong" style, and then it will be as I decribed it. 40 years ago the "chow mein" items offered a choice of "pan fried or crispy" but the "crispy" option died out due to lack of takers.

You're right, I forgot that the northern noodles in China tend to be eggless. The fresh ones we get locally all have egg in them, regardless of size or "style".

Nah, you can't skip Shanghai, Joel. It has something in common with Montreal, each having the most tastefully fashionable women on their respective continent. Stroll along Huaihai Zhong Lu; you'll fall in love two or three times.

If you mean crunchy all the way through, as if deep-fried, I think that's what New Yorkers consider "chow mein". To me, it's reminiscent of school cafeteria stuff (though I think school cafeterias used to get it out of a big "La Choy" can). It was always topped with a gloppy soggy celery-laden topping with bits of chicken in it). This is the kind of "chow mein" that's thankfully becoming extinct, which is why you don't see it much on menus. The "Hong Kong" (not Cantonese) style is somewhat similar, using the thin noodles, but is usually fried crunchy on the bottom but soft on the top. I used to hate it, but I've come to like it, especially when topped with a moist seafood topping, because of the melange of textures. On the West Coast and in China, what is called chow mein (chao mian) is probably called lo mein (la mian) in New York. It uses a thicker noodle, and is always cooked soft. The other ingredients are added during the stir fry, not poured on top of the finished product. When you buy the fresh-made noodles hereabouts, they come in three sizes: "Hong Kong Style" (very thin), "Regular" (medium) and "Shanghai Style" (very thick). I think the medium noodles are used throughout mainland China, though the Cantonese sometimes use the thin ones in soup, especially in "Wonton Noodle Soup" which has both wontons and noodles. (I think they call this "long soup" in Australia.) In Shanghai the medium noodles are usually used in soup, and chow mein may be made either with the medium or the thick, chewy Shanghai noodles.

Seemed like they always had bean sprouts in them and were covered with a sticky gravy. You can encounter dishes in China with the name "furong"(=hibiscus flower), pronounced "fuyong" in both Cantonese and Shanghainese dialects. They're braised dishes that have a lot of egg white, not whole egg, in them.

It sounds like a great exhibition. I've followed Indigo Som's blog for some time, and am on her mailing list, and enjoy Harley Spiller's contributions to Flavor & Fortune. However, I thought the article was somewhat shallow and New York-centric. Luxurious Chinese restaurants were the rage on the West Coast long before Shun Lee, and Sichuan cuisine in America didn't emanate from New York City (maybe east of the Rockies it did). Chow mein is alive and well, only what New Yorkers call "chow mein" is nearing extinction .

You can browse high rise buildings in Shanghai (or any other world city) at this encyclopedic website. Most of the architectural charm is in the older buildings, which you can ogle at Paul Lee's website.

What operating system and browser are you using? With the latest versions of Windows and IE, it's all pretty much automatic. If you try to view a page with encoded fonts from another language, it will ask you if you want to download the fonts. If you have an older version of Windows, the simplest thing might be to download the free NJ Star Asian Explorer browser. You can use it instead of IE when you want to view Asian web sites. NJ Star Website If you're a Mac user, I can't help you

Gosh, where did you come up with that? That's my midnight snack! I just got back from a trip through upstate New York and Montreal and brought back some 2-year old, 3-year old and 5-year old cheddars. I also can't do without peanut butter (natural style) and good sausages. A sausage sandwich is my weekend breakfast indulgence, while my wife sleeps in.

That may have been a B/F who didn't make the cut. As I recall, he said "It just needs a little soy sauce," and proceeded to pour some on it. Incidentally, my Sister-in-law's first job when she came to the US was as an extra in "The Joy Luck Club". She was a maiden attendant in the wedding scene between the teenage girl and the young boy in China. It was filmed in a warehouse in Richmond, California.

Moi? I was experienced enough from 30 years living in San Francisco (mostly within walking distance of Chinatown) to know good Cantonese food from Chinese-American food, though I din't have much breadth of experience in other regional cusines. More importantly, I liked Chinese food enough that when I first went to Shanghai for four weeks in 1992 I didn't miss Western food at all. My wife is grateful that I have a "Chinese stomach" because she doesn't know how to cook Western food, nor has she much interest in doing so. I figure I now have about 4,000 home-cooked Shanghainese dinners under my belt (literally ) and almost as many lunchtime reprises of the same. There's obviously a lot of repetition, but she's constantly varying her approach and every so often something totally new pops out of her memory banks. She's also good at "reverse engineering" any new dish we try in a restaurant that she happens to like. Is your MIL Anglo-Canadian? If so I bet she also likes rice served in a bowl with fresh milk, butter and sugar added, though that may be more eastern Canadian.

Shanghai has plenty of ugly new buildings, but you are right about the Westin being the dumbest-looking of them all. Shanghai's love for buldings with post-modern "hats" is over the top, but the designer of the Westin Shanghai (I call it the "Jughead" building) took his inspiration straight out of "Archie and Veronica." Westin Shanghai and its Hat Jughead and His Hat [Edited to add Jughead's Hat]