Chinese Eats at Home (Part 3)

[rotuts]

Id like to hear more about that Ck/ChineseSauage dish and the Rx if possible I have a number of MYan's books and used to follow his PBS show back in the day.

I made a similar dish in the Fuzzy cooker, the inspiration came from Ken Hom.

[Dejah]

Here's one that I make quite often in the fall and winter. The contents have been taken out of my sandpot:

Bone-in chicken, rehydrated Chinese mushrooms, deep fried tofu, lap cheong, baby bok choy (Chinese cabbage or savoy would be just as good), and fun see or rice noodles. The noodles are usually on the bottom and absolutely delicious soaked with the sauce!

Waterchestnuts, bamboo shoots would also be a good addition to this. If I know huiray after seeing all his posts, he would put ALL of the ABOVE in. AND, it wouold be delicious.

I start this dish on the stove then finish in the oven.

When I do salted fish rice or lap mai fan in the claypot, I can hardly wait until we get the fan jiu at the bottom!

[patrickamory]

Hi David,

What kind of Chinese sausage did you get? I've seen varieties available in Chinatown but can't figure out which one to buy... various pork, duck and liver contents, shrinkwrapped or non, some with preservatives. Are you based in US?

[rotuts]

Ive been using chinese sausage for some time, and I favor the ones w/o liver. you have to take a magnifying glass to read the contents and I get the non-liver one that have the least calories ie less fat.

I peel off the shrink-wrap after a light longitudinal score with a sharp knife. I like there sl sweet porky taste.

[David Ross]

My Asian market in Spokane gets Chinese sausage from a company in Seattle-

The recipe came from Martin Yan's Chinatown Cooking cookbook-

Soak 2 dried mushrooms until soft and slice.

Marinate 6oz. boneless chicken in 1 tbsp. soy sauce and 1 tsp. cornstarch for at least 10 min.

Bring 2 cups chicken stock in the claypot to a boil on the stovetop. Stir in 1 cup long-grain rice, 2 pieces ginger, (I also added some halved garlic cloves), and the mushrooms. Lay the chicken and sausage on top of the rice and put in a 350 oven. Bake about 25 minutes. Garnish with cilantro.

Next time I'll add some green onions to the garnish and maybe some quartered limes and a drizzle of soy..

[huiray]

Here's one that I make quite often in the fall and winter. The contents have been taken out of my sandpot:

Bone-in chicken, rehydrated Chinese mushrooms, deep fried tofu, lap cheong, baby bok choy (Chinese cabbage or savoy would be just as good), and fun see or rice noodles. The noodles are usually on the bottom and absolutely delicious soaked with the sauce!

Waterchestnuts, bamboo shoots would also be a good addition to this. If I know huiray after seeing all his posts, he would put ALL of the ABOVE in. AND, it wouold be delicious.

I start this dish on the stove then finish in the oven.

When I do salted fish rice or lap mai fan in the claypot, I can hardly wait until we get the fan jiu at the bottom!

Eh, nah... I'd leave out the bok choy - personally, I much prefer bok choy to be crunchy and tend to leave behind soft, limp bok choy. Ditto the Wong Nga Pak. Savoy cabbage would be nice. I'd prefer not to use water chestnuts but the bamboo shoots might go in...then again maybe not, if I'm using savoy instead... ;-)

I think folks here (including you) have shown that they do claypot cooking or "Chinese casserole" cooking for Chinese eats at home in their home kitchens, heh. :-D

I still can't believe you eat all that for lunch. . And, do you dine alone or do you have 10 kids?!

Why not? :-)

I usually dine alone. No kids.

[huiray]

Here are four varieties of Lap Cheong (Chinese sausages) I currently have in my larder and that I presently use. I'm out of a liver sausage variety at the moment.

Grain alcohol flavored; soy flavored; wine flavored; ordinary/standard flavor.

Patrickamory, why not just buy a bunch of them and try them all? :-) They'll keep for a long time too...

Here's a

in Singapore's Chinatown. ;-)

[liuzhou]

It's that time of year again. My neighbours are drying their home made sausages and home smoked ducks in preparation for the Chinese New Year (Spring Festival) on February 10th.

Less adventurous souls head for the supermarkets

[Dejah]

Liuzhou: The ducks look different from the ones I buy at the Chinese supermarket here in Canada.

So, these are smoked as opposed to cured with seasoning, wine, etc then wind-dried as with lap cheong?

When we first arrived in a rural Manitoba village (1958), we couldn't buy lap cheong and lap gnap unless they were shipped from Vancouver. So, my Mom made these for our family. I can still see the meats hanging in our screened porch.

[liuzhou]

Liuzhou: The ducks look different from the ones I buy at the Chinese supermarket here in Canada.

So, these are smoked as opposed to cured with seasoning, wine, etc then wind-dried as with lap cheong?

So far as I can make out a bit of both. They are certainly seasoned for a day or two then smoked. I watched them doing it - unfortunately no pictures. Hopefully they will do another batch. Then they hang them up for days to dry in the wind. In fact, today I heard them complain about the weather being too wet. The sausages are smoked too. I can smell the smokiness from here right now.

I've never paid much attention as I don't like Chinese sausages much, but I shall interrogate the neighbours more closely next time!

Edited January 24, 2013 by liuzhou (log)

[rotuts]

I wonder if Chinese Markets in the USofA have the smoked versions. Id love to try them. difficult to ask as very little english is spoken by most of the crew at the places i go to.

[patrickamory]

huiray, thanks for the recommendations.

liuzhou those sausages and ducks look amazing!

[huiray]

Patrickamory, you're welcome. Did you have a chance to look at that youtube video link I posted? ;-)

BTW there are various recipes for "Lap Cheong" even for the "same" general "flavor" and some folks partially smoke them and some just air-dry them. There is no single way to do it.

A couple other links you might find interesting...

http://forum.sausage...opic.php?t=4413 [Note the last post here especially]

http://unclephilipsg...se-sausage.html

[Dejah]

Liuzhou: You mentioned up-post about sand pots - that restaurants deliver food in them and that they are quite disposable... Do you pay extra for them? Do you get to keep the clay pots? I just wondered about the cost...

With our -40 windchill temps of late, we've been enjoying Hot 'n' Sour soup. I made a big pot of the basic stock / ingredients last weekend. When we want some, I put some into a smaller pot, add meats and tofu, and thicken slightly. Havin g kept it int he fridge for a few days, the spiciness and tang has intensified! Man! It was great!

Did a stir-fry of julienne vegetables and beef served over shirataki noodles. Cannot comnpare the noodles to the usual chow mein noodles as these do NOT crisp up, but they are 0 carbs.

[Jason Perlow]

Last night's "moo goo gai pan with black rice"

Edited January 26, 2013 by Jason Perlow (log)

[Jason Perlow]

Wok shot of same. This was improvised with black bean, mushroom powder, lots of mushrooms, oyster sauce, tamari soy, mustard greens, basil. Chiles and garlic. Five spice, white pepper. Leftover veggies that wanted to be eaten.

Edited January 26, 2013 by Jason Perlow (log)

[liuzhou]

Liuzhou: You mentioned up-post about sand pots - that restaurants deliver food in them and that they are quite disposable... Do you pay extra for them? Do you get to keep the clay pots? I just wondered about the cost...

Yes, some restaurants deliver food in the sand pots.Yes, we get to keep the pots. No, we don't pay extra as such. I suppose the cost of the pots is factored into the price of the dishes.

That said they are the most basic pots going. They are only glazed on the inside and are relatively light in weight, I have no idea what they would cost; in fact, I wouldn't know where to buy them. These ones are certainly not available in the local kitchen supply shops or in the local market. I guess there must be a wholesale supplier somewhere. I think they would be pretty cheap.

It turns out I have about half a dozen of these things (and I've certainly never deliberately bought one). Most have been redeployed as flower pots! This is the only one not sprouting vegetation. Yet.

Edited January 26, 2013 by liuzhou (log)

[liuzhou]

Dinner tonight.

Yellow croaker (黄花鱼) fried with shallots, garlic, chilli bean sauce (豆瓣酱) and scallion.

Cauliflower with bacon (腊肉炒花菜)

Rice

[liuzhou]

Re sand pots again.

Two clarifications and an update.

CLARIFICATIONS

1) The places which deliver food in these pots only do delivery / take away so there is no eat-in service to confuse pricing.

2) The pot pictured came with a lid, now long lost.

UPDATE

This morning, I went to a different market and they had the sand pots used by the restaurants. I was given an initial price of 5 yuan for one (including lid), but this was soon reduced to 3 yuan (US $0.48). That is the retail price for one pot. I'd imagine wholesale, in bulk, they would be less than 1 yuan each (US $0.16).

With a typical take away meal costing around ¥12 - ¥18 , the price of the pot becomes fairly insignificant.

Edited January 27, 2013 by liuzhou (log)

[liuzhou]

In the meantime, I still eat.

Tonight I made

Pork with black bean sauce (home made - no jars involved!)

with very briefly fried lettuce with oyster sauce and Sichuan single-head garlic.

And rice.

[Dejah]

Liuzhou: Lettuce in oyster sauce is one of my favourite things to eat. I love it under a plate of braised mushrooms, under abolone, or just by itsrlf. So simple yet so good! It's like the baby bok choy in a braise claypot dish. If out in later, it can still have some of that crunch, but oh boy! It absorbs the flavour yet adds the "swetness" to the dish. Thanks for reminding me to make this more often, especially when there's is no other veg. in the crisper or I am lazy.

I tried the bottled black bean sauce once and it went into the garbage. Maybe it's not the right brand, but it tasted chemically, too salty, just not right. Homemade is easier to control, and the dried fermentated black beans keep so well. I like to steam pork ribs with this sauce.

The claypot service is like the East Indian "tifin service", except diners don't get to keep those containers. The pots are very cheap then in China. I imagine most will end up as flower pots or in the garbage. Seems like such waste when we tend to use ours so carefully. I will have to look out for such a service when I visit next spring. Don't think I'll bother bringing any back in my luggage.

[Hassouni]

In the meantime, I still eat.

Tonight I made

Pork with black bean sauce (home made - no jars involved!)

with very briefly fried lettuce with oyster sauce and Sichuan single-head garlic.

And rice.

This looks superb - do you mind saying how you made it?

[huiray]

I don't know what sort of bottled bean sauces you have available, but at my local Chinese/Asian grocery (not that big, *certainly* not on the scale of H-Mart or Ranch 99, for example) there are yards and yards of shelves with dozens and dozens of different types of bottled bean sauces. Many of them are various varieties of black bean sauces of different characteristics (hot, non-hot, salted, fermented, non-fermented, with different additions and components) from various regions and provinces of Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, even Indonesia, etc. Do you have more than a few or so brands/types available to try out?

Lettuce with oyster sauce is a common dish in many places, I make it frequently too. The "usual" lettuce offerd in restaurants varies depending on where you get it - frequently a baby version of romaine, in other places Taiwan A-choy. Nice dish. Usually by blanching in oiled hot water, sometimes by stir-frying. "Yau Mak Choy" usually with "Ho Yow" and often with fried garlic is an ever-present dish available in Malaysian and Singaporean Chinese restaurants, in particular. I do it with all sorts of lettuces but usually the ones with slightly more crunch and "toughness" which can take the hot water or hot pan without turning to mush. The common Western green-leaf lettuce works well, in addition to romaine.

[Dejah]

I like Romaine, especially the heart, which I split length-wise. No pre-blanching is needed really, expecially with iceberg, which I also chunk. After sauteeing a couple minutes, I spash in a bit of stock (or water, then add oyster sauce. I could make a meal with just that!

There ARE rows of black bean sauce at the larger Chinese supermarkets, but usually, I just like the simple make-at-home stuff.

[huiray]

I like Romaine, especially the heart, which I split length-wise. No pre-blanching is needed really, expecially with iceberg, which I also chunk. After sauteeing a couple minutes, I spash in a bit of stock (or water, then add oyster sauce. I could make a meal with just that!

If I blanch, I don't sauté. If I sauté, I don't blanch. I think I described what I do in those posts I referenced?

I've always used all parts of a typical head of Romaine or other lettuce save the yellowed or clearly degraded outermost leaves. I like the extra crunchiness and slight toughness of the outer leaves, and would consider even Western-type salads using just the hearts (with all outer leaves discarded) to be slightly "lacking" in range of texture.

Edited January 27, 2013 by huiray (log)