Jump to content

  • Welcome to the eG Forums, a service of the eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters. The Society is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of the culinary arts. These advertising-free forums are provided free of charge through donations from Society members. Anyone may read the forums, but to post you must create a free account.

Mystery Ingredients

liuzhou

By liuzhou
in Cooking

 Share

Recommended Posts

liuzhou

liuzhou

Posted
  • Topic Starter
Posted

Time to put you out of your misery and reveal all.

 

hmmm.jpg

 

This is 蕨根粉丝 (jué gēn fěn sī).

Brake Root Vermicelli  - aka Fern Root Vermicelli. Popular in Sichuan and neighbouring Shaanxi province. Usually served cold. The noodles are made from the starch extracted from the brake fern roots (the same plant that gives us fiddleheads), along with some sweet potato starch and oil.


brake noodles1.jpg
 

Here is the information printed on the back in Chinglish:

brake noodles2.jpg

 

More info and recipes:

Black Noodles

Mark Hix recipes: Our chef gets creative with pasta and spring vegetables

Slurping Shanghai I: Fern Root Noodles at Dunhuang Xiao Ting

Fern Root Vermicelli With Chicken And Dried Enoki Mushrooms

  • Like 10

...your dancing child with his Chinese suit.

 

"No amount of evidence will ever persuade an idiot"
Mark Twain
 

The Kitchen Scale Manifesto

Duvel

Duvel

Posted
Posted (edited)

Thanks - as unusual as interesting. Please let us know how it turns out as a final dish ...

 

As for the noodles' bracken fern origin: a rather long time ago while doing my PhD thesis in organic chemistry I developed a synthetic pathway to certain chemical structures that are very closely related to Ptaquiloside, a glycodside found in bracken fern and related plants. The major interested in those structures was that they are very reactive and react with DNA in living cells (good if you can target specific cells, bad if you alkylate just anything as the ptaquiloside does). My methodology never really produced anything workable, but I read the entire literature on bracken fern toxicology back and forth. And have not eaten it since then ... maybe your noodles might be a worthwhile (re)start.

 

Further reads: http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/motm/ptq/ptqh.htm

Edited by Duvel (log)
  • Like 1
liuzhou

liuzhou

Posted
  • Topic Starter
Posted

Well, the vermicelli was too obscure, it seems. This one may be too easy!

 

hmmm.jpg

 

Guesses?

...your dancing child with his Chinese suit.

 

"No amount of evidence will ever persuade an idiot"
Mark Twain
 

The Kitchen Scale Manifesto

liuzhou

liuzhou

Posted
  • Topic Starter
Posted
On 04/10/2016 at 2:07 PM, Duvel said:

Thanks - as unusual as interesting. Please let us know how it turns out as a final dish ...

 

Here

...your dancing child with his Chinese suit.

 

"No amount of evidence will ever persuade an idiot"
Mark Twain
 

The Kitchen Scale Manifesto

andiesenji

andiesenji

Posted
Posted

bingpiantang ?

"There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty. The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What's up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don't think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass!" Terry Pratchett

 

liuzhou

liuzhou

Posted
  • Topic Starter
Posted
1 hour ago, chileheadmike said:

Tamarind paste?

 

No.

 

30 minutes ago, andiesenji said:

bingpiantang ?

 

No.

...your dancing child with his Chinese suit.

 

"No amount of evidence will ever persuade an idiot"
Mark Twain
 

The Kitchen Scale Manifesto

Alex

Alex

Posted
Posted

Fossilized dinosaur scat?

  • Like 4

"There is no sincerer love than the love of food."  -George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman, Act 1

 

"Imagine all the food you have eaten in your life and consider that you are simply some of that food, rearranged."  -Max Tegmark, physicist

 

Gene Weingarten, writing in the Washington Post about online news stories and the accompanying readers' comments: "I basically like 'comments,' though they can seem a little jarring: spit-flecked rants that are appended to a product that at least tries for a measure of objectivity and dignity. It's as though when you order a sirloin steak, it comes with a side of maggots."

 

A king can stand people's fighting, but he can't last long if people start thinking. -Will Rogers, humorist

quiet1

quiet1

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, Alex said:

Fossilized dinosaur scat?

 

'I think it looks vaguely like parts of the bones I've bought for my dog, the ones in pet stores that have been coated in some mystery sauce and dried, but I wasn't going to say it until this comment. :D

Shalmanese

Shalmanese

Posted
Posted
12 hours ago, liuzhou said:

Well, the vermicelli was too obscure, it seems. This one may be too easy!

 

 

Guesses?

 

They look like Mexican Piloncillo sugar.

  • Like 2

PS: I am a guy.

Anna N

Anna N

Posted
Posted

Something that makes use of 1000 year eggs?

Anna Nielsen aka "Anna N"

...I just let people know about something I made for supper that they might enjoy, too. That's all it is. (Nigel Slater)

"Cooking is about doing the best with what you have . . . and succeeding." John Thorne

Our 2012 (Kerry Beal and me) Blog

My 2004 eG Blog

liuzhou

liuzhou

Posted
  • Topic Starter
Posted

A few people have been very close. I'm not saying which just yet.

 

No eggs involved.

...your dancing child with his Chinese suit.

 

"No amount of evidence will ever persuade an idiot"
Mark Twain
 

The Kitchen Scale Manifesto

Tere

Tere

Posted
Posted

I think it's a sweet thing since they look like a giant fruit pastille. Candied Chinese hawthorn?

 Share
Go to topic listing
×
×
  • Create New...