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A famous saying in China goes: "A perfect life is possible if one is born in Suzhou (home of the most beautiful women), dressed in Hangzhou (finest silks), dies in Luzhou (best willow wood for coffins), but eats in Guangzhou (Canton, capital city of Guangdong province and home of classical Cantonese cuisine)." Cantonese food was considered the most delicious by the Chinese themselves. Non-Chinese diners in the U.S., familiar with Cantonese-style restaurants, might disagree with this assertion. Typical Cantonese food in the U.S. has been altered, sometimes beyond recognition, by circumstances; it's Cantonese in concept but not execution. Chinese workers from the districts of Toi San And Sun Tak (near Canton) were among the first Chinese immigrants to the West in the 19th century. U.S. immigration policy at that time seriously limited the number of Chinese women allowed in -- the idea was that when the railroads were built, the Chinese would go home. The laborers cooked for themselves, as best they could, and when the railroads were built, they settled in American cities and some opened restaurants. They cooked the food they knew -- village-style, home cooking -- and were further limited by climate, available ingredients, and distance from tradition, as well as their practical need to please Western palates. And so we got yucky Chinese food -- cloying sweet and sour pork with canned pineapple, awful chow mein and chop suey, eggy sticky shrimp with lobster sauce, tasteless brown sauces thickened with cornstarch, msg headaches. The 1970s was a golden age for Cantonese cuisine in the U.S. because of changes in immigration policies that allowed many more Chinese from Hong Kong into the U.S. Huge dim sum restaurants opened, and many chefs from Hong Kong arrived. I was lucky to be studying Chinese in New York at the time, and got invited to many Chinese banquets, as well as wonderful family restaurant meals where I ate food much closer to the classic Cantonese repertoire. My best friend's mother often took me on day-long eating and food shopping expeditions in Chinatown. At that time, the meat, seafood and produce were exceptionally fresh, because people demanded it. I was amazed at how so many of the Cantonese people I met were obsessed with food (on an eGullet level). I watched people order what they wanted without even consulting the Chinese menu. They simply wrote down the dishes they wanted on a piece of paper and handed it to the waiter. Everyone seemed to know the best places to go to as soon as they appeared. Guangdong province is in the south, with a long coastline and several large rivers down which produce can be shipped from the interior. The climate is semi-tropical; two rice crops are harvested a year. More than in many areas of China, there was usually enough food, and a great variety of ingredients. These factors shaped a delicious cuisine whose underlying philosophy is absolute freshness and a concurrent desire to preserve the essential nature and sweet flavor of each ingredient. Various techniques are employed to achieve this. One method is to cook food for short periods of time, or to use very mild forms of cooking. Food is poached in boiling water and then removed from the fire to finish cooking in the slowly cooling liquid. White cut chicken is an example of this method, as is soy sauce chicken (both are the chickens you see hanging in restaurant windows). For these dishes to work, the chicken has to be absolutely fresh. (The Cantonese prefer chicken slightly undercooked to Western tastes, leaving a little blood near the bone.) The delicate flavor of the white cut chicken is set off by a dipping sauce of soy sauce, chicken broth, ginger, scallions and sesame oil. Shrimp are also cooked with this method -- boiling water is poured over very fresh shrimp in their shells, left to stand for a few minutes and then drained. More boiling water is poured over, drained again, and the shrimp are then eaten with a dip of tangerine juice, minced scallion, soy sauce and shredded ginger root in vinegar. Brief steaming is another method that preserves the fresh, sweet taste. Whole fish such as sea bass, bream or carp are steamed until just cooked and served with a thin sauce of soy, chicken stock, ginger, scallions and wine. A little oil can be heated just before serving and poured over the fish. Greens of all kinds are blanched to preserve the natural flavor. The Cantonese even have a dish similar to sashimi -- a live carp is pulled from the water, knocked on the head and stunned, split, gutted, scaled and filleted and eaten immediately with a dipping sauce of ginger, soy, boiled peanut oil, scallion and white pepper. Stir-frying also is designed to retain the pure flavors of ingredients. Only a small amount of oil is used and the food is quickly whisked through the oil under very high heat in a manner described as "flame and air." The savory quality of Cantonese food is often achieved by combining seafood flavors with meat. Oyster sauce, shrimp sauce and shrimp paste are widely used (similar to the use of fermented fish in Southeast Asian cooking). Shrimp shells and heads are boiled in meat or chicken stock to add depth of flavor to soups and sauces. Sometimes meat is added to seafood dishes to enhance the savoriness. An example is the classic Lobster Cantonese, in which minced or shredded pork is stir-fried with onions, garlic, ginger and soaked, mashed salted black beans together with lobster (or crab). Chicken stock and wine are added at the last minute, creating a little explosion in the wok, and then again in your mouth. The Cantonese specialize in crispy foods, where the skin of pork and poultry is crisp and crackling, such as Crispy Skin Roast Pork (belly pork). Here the crunchiness of the skin is set off by the plain white rice served with it. Chicken is prepared as Crispy Deep-Fried Steamed Stuffed Chicken or Twice-Marinated Crispy Skin Splash-Fried Chicken. Pigeon is also deep-fried. A Cantonese specialty comparable to Peking Duck is Suckling Pig, served with the deep brown, crisp skin (that's brushed with a marinade before roasting) peeled off, cut into squares and served, with the tender meat, with small steamed Lotus Leaf Buns, scallions and hoisin sauce. Cantonese- (or Hong Kong) style Chow Mein is cooked using more frying oil than in other regions. The noodles are pressed down into the pan to make them crisper, and then turned and fried on the other side, to create a sandwich of crisp outer noodles with tender noodles inside. Home cooking features slow-cooked dishes in earthenware casseroles, among them beef stew braised with daikon radish and star anise (the beef cut is similar to flanken), fish head in casserole, and red braised pork knuckle or belly. Congee is also a common snack food in Canton. For spiciness, fermented black beans and small amounts of chiles are used. Subtle scents and flavors are introduced by adding drops of sesame oil or by wrapping food in lotus or bamboo leaves, such as lotus leaf sticky rice with duck, roast pork, dried mushrooms and chestnuts, and aromatics. I've always been fascinated by the array of dried foods and preserved meats in Chinese stores -- pork sausage, duck liver sausage, bacon, dried fish maw (air bladder), dried scallops and squid and shrimp, all the different dried mushrooms, deep-fried and then dried squares of bean curd which are stuffed with savory meat or seafood minces and then steamed, and the salted preserved vegetables in earthenware jugs, and fermented bean curd (the latter often added to quickly wilted greens such as watercress). Textural foods, such as bird's nest, tree fungus, beche-de-mer, fish maw, and shark's fin, are Cantonese in origin, and are mostly found in banquet cooking. Great Assembly of Chicken, Abalone and Shark's Fin is an extravagant banquet dish, in which the shark's fins are cooked separately for over 7 hours and then gently cooked together with lean pork meat, pig's feet, ham, onions and a hen for another 4 hours. The pork, feet, ham, onion and chicken are then removed and put aside for other uses. A young chicken is then quartered, parboiled and left to simmer with the shark fins for another half hour. Abalone and soy sauce are briefly added. The chicken and abalone are cut into thin slices and arranged at the bottom of a deep, ceramic cooking dish. The liquid in the pot is strained and returned to simmer with the fins for another 30 minutes. The fin pieces are then arranged on top of the chicken and abalone. Some of the sauce, now thickened, is poured over to moisten and the pot is steamed for 5 minutes and then served. The shark fins are there primarily for their texture, but that's the point of the whole time-consuming process. My friend's mother used to make a medicinal soup using the double pot method of cooking. She put blanched squabs inside a pot with chicken stock, ginger, scallions, ginseng root, and rice wine. The pot was then covered and placed inside a bigger pot filled with water, which was then covered and cooked for a long time. And then there's dim sum, which epitomizes all of the savory deliciousness and love of eating found in Cantonese cooking and among Cantonese people.

Specifically Kung Pao Chicken or would beer be more appropiate? Thanks!

talk to me. i love this stuff, and i'd like to make it at home. since i found myself with a jar of tahini, i figured i'd give it a shot. boy is that some bitter stuff. various searched led me to several recipes, none of which seemed very good. so i combinded them all to come up with a mixture of peanut butter tahini chili oil sambal soy sauce ginger rice wine vinegar garlic sesame oil sugar light brown sugar cucumber garnished with cilantro an scallion the final product was edible, but not what i was hoping for. and it had a bitter finish under all of the other flavors. any thoughts?

This is a continuation, from the NY board when we were discussing the "Best Chinese seafood in Flushing." I was wondering what are the differences between Peking duck and Cantonese duck? Until recently I thought there was only Peking duck. Could it be that there's no difference between the two, except for the name? Peking duck is associated with upscale dining, while Cantonese duck would be at the other Chinese restaurants. -------------- Steve

I'm trying to figure out how my mother used to make this stuff. The aroma that filled your head as you ate it was soooo good. mike

Okay. So about a week ago the Perlows call me up and ask me to meet them at China 46--the site of the second NJ eGullet dinner. Jason, out of a perverse need to try everything on the menu at least once, notices that there is a dish we haven't tried yet. I'm not sure of the exact name, but it was a boring name--something like Capsicum Beef. The dish was FAR from boring. In fact, it's been the source of something of a culinary mystery for Jason, Rachel, myself, and now tommy and mrs. tommy. Actually, to be accurate the REAL source of the mystery was the accompanying condiment (which was also apparently a marinade for the dish as well). Describing it afterwards, I explained it to tommy, via the Messenger, as follows. Please excuse my worse than usual command of the english language... tommy and the mrs. have had this now, and by his reaction they seemed just as pleased, but mystified, as the rest of us (except Rachel Perlow, who hated it) were. I still think my description to tommy was somewhat inadaquate, but after eating it tommy thinks that my description isn't that far off. Anyone have any idea what the heck we are dealing with?

My brother who now lives in HK, is looking for a recipe for Lobster w/braised E-Fu Noodles. According to him, it's a classic Chinese dish popular in Hong Kong. And can also be ordered in Chinese restaurants in parts of North America. He's cooking 2 live lobsters on Saturday, & would like to make this recipe. I've checked all the Chinese cookbooks that I can find, but no luck in finding a recipe for this. Can anybody here help me. The major ingredients for this dish are lobster, chicken consomme/stock, E-Fu noodles(Chinese egg noodles), and ginger & onions. Thanks for any help. ____ Steve

I'm interested in giving Chinese food a whirl. How do you guys prepare it? Any quick recipes for lo mein and Gen. Tso's chicken?

There is now a growing movement calling for the banning of shark products. Of particular interest are the calls for the banning of sharks fin soup. There appear to be two reasons. The first is that much of the sharks fin is harvested by simply cutting off the fin and throwing the shark back into the ocean to die. The second is that some scientists are saying that shark numbers are being severely depleted. Any thoughts on this matter?

On the usually-dormant NYC.FOOD Usenet group, an amazingly high-traffic flamewar broke out recently regarding chopstick etiquette. Statements were made along the lines of "Chinese people never, ever eat rice with chopsticks" and "There are no chopsticks in Thailand." Having never paid much attention to chopstick etiquette (though I once saw a martial arts film wherein I learned that you don't leave your chopsticks standing up in a bowl of rice), I'd be interested in receiving some education. China? Japan? Southeast Asia? Mongolia? Toronto? What are the rules?

EATING IN TEMPLE ST. KOWLOON, HKG Night Market, Temple St. what a concept. A must for every visitor to HKG. More specifically, eating in Temple St. can be adventurous and fun. There are many small places, as well as outdoor seating by the sidewalk. Last trip, in November, we sat down in a hugh semi covered off-the-street kind-of-a-place. Picture, if you will a typical Mall type of a food court, except that these places are makeshift, look shanty like, and each kitchen has most seafood on display.Unlike the food courts here, they also have a few large tables with plastic chairs for themselves. Very few tables for two, the mone that are there tend to be on the sidewalk proper. Food here is inexpensive and good. Menus are in Chinese and a few of the kitchens have a photo-copied English menu with limited choices. You don't want that do you ? Large and small groups of people congregate in the these tables, order Heineken beer in large bottles, and an assortment of seafood appetisers - snails in large bowls. Order an assorted platter and the good folks of the kitchen associated with your table will drag in a small LPG bunsen burner on to yourtable. On top of it will be a round can like container with a partition in the middle. Each partition contains a different kind of a broth. Then comes the big platter, with slices of meats, live prawns in wooden skewers,and Chinese lettuce and Watercress. On the side, one has hot-oil (as in spicy), teriaki sauce, and yes, a bottle of Tabasco As the broths start bubbling, dip in the skewers of live prawns, or douse the watercress, or the other meats and seafood, eggs (of various birds). When you feel that the prawns or the vegetables are reasonably done, pull it out, dip it in your choice of sauces, and slug it down with Heineken. All this for 10-15USD per head. Bon Appetit.

Does anyone know of a place in central jersey that does weddings for 150+ people, but serves Chinese food?

Might one of you kind people be able to provide me with instruction in the matter of making egg drop soup? Of course there is the essential technique of adding the egg to the stock, and I have no idea how to do it correctly, but I wouldn't be averse to hearing about how to make the underlying stock as well. I wish to do everything from scratch, and preferably without corn starch. Thank you very much.

The last couple of years we have celebrated new year's day with going out for dim sum in the International District. Honey Court used to be our favorite place, but I no longer recommend that place. Does any one have any other suggestions or favorites? Dim sum would be nice, but if we don't find a good place, we'll probably head out for some Pho instead. I've been wanting to try Saigon Bistro, anybody been there?

I was speaking to a friend recently. This person had lived in NYC for a period. I was asking her, which Cantonese chinese restaurants in NYC would she recommend for me. She told me that are none great Cantonese chinese restaurants in NYC. I should of preface by saying, that she left NYC around 7-8 years ago, but she still keeps in touch with friends in NYC. And she does know her Cantonese food(she's living in Hong Kong now). Does anyone here, who can recommend a top-notch NYC Cantonese restaurant for excellent food? I would appreciate any suggestions. ------ Steve

Anybody know what's in this mysterious Chinese sauce? What part of China is it from?

There seem to be several hundred varieties of soy sauce available out there. I have some basic idea of the differences but does anybody have the capacity to instruct us fully?

having a lot of trouble getting mine to taste like the ones at restaurants.

Dinner tonight was at a new Chinese restaurant called Lotus in West Orange. It was fair. We had watery cold(semi-warm actually) sesame noodles, Hunan chicken with an off taste and very good stir fried tofu with a hot sauce. The last time I went out for a really great Chinese dinner in NJ was at Sally Ling's in Westwood and they closed. Where do you like to go for Chinese food?