eG Foodblog: hzrt8w - A week of Chinese New Year celebration

[insomniac]

That curry dish looked delicious.  Wasn't Macau a Portuguese colony at one point?  Are there any Portuguese influences in the food?

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Yes that is correct. Until December 20, 1999. It is now a Special Administrative Region of the PRC. Much like Hong Kong. It is like saying "I don't know what to do with you yet because you are not communistic. I will deal with you later."

One country, two systems.

Any Portuguese influences in the food? You bet ya! There were a few thread discussions in the China forum on that.

That's where we got our Dan Tart!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_tart

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And I thought Dan Tarts were all ours!! My favorite dessert. I do remember now reading the threads about Portuguese influence here, but the memory ain't what it used to be.

BTW, I think Chinese food would be perfect for an RV, esp. if you have a wok burner.

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that RV is bigger than a lot of houses near us

Edited February 23, 2007 by insomniac (log)

[SuzySushi]

Any Portuguese influences in the food?  You bet ya!  There were a few thread discussions in the China forum on that.

That's where we got our Dan Tart!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_tart

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I thought (and the Wikipedia article seems to back up the theory) that Dan Tarts were descended from British custard tarts. The Portuguese-style egg tarts are richer because they contain more egg yolks and/or coconut milk.

[hzrt8w]

And I thought Dan Tarts were all ours!!  My favorite dessert.  I do remember now reading the threads about Portuguese influence here, but the memory ain't what it used to be.

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It was from Portugal to Macau to Hong Kong.

Hong Kong Chinese perfected it, of course!

[hzrt8w]

I love your feelings about Coke. I hate it when I order a Coke and they ask if Pepsi is okay. No, it is not. I find it hard to believe there are people who can't tell the differnce between Coke and Pepsi.

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Thanks Amanda. I agree. I can taste the difference of Pepsi from Coke blindfolded everytime.

[hzrt8w]

I've noticed that most Chinese restaurants don't emphasize wine or alchol as much as other types of restarurants. I guess, in part, it might be harder to pair wine with Chinese food. But, at the same time, that's always puzzled me because I know that the sale of alcohol is where most restarurants make their biggest profit. How do Chinese restaurants compete with the loss of that revenue? And, why don't they?

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There are a few factors that contribute to this phenomenon that you observed, leviathan. Yes the profit marin of selling drinks - soda and alcohol - is much higher. From that I understand the full liquor license is hard to get. The "beer and wine" license is easier but still involves some work or capital. I have been to a few Chinese restaurants that offer beer and wine. And only a very few with a full bar. The mom-and-pop Chinese restaurants probably don't care to push wine and beer as perhaps most of their cliente would not order them any way. Most restaurants maintain their profit by low cost ingredient sourcing, and low cost labor.

I will post some of my thoughts on your thread about Chinese restaurant in the other forum when I am done with my foodblog.

[hzrt8w]

In addition to what MarketStEl said about not having to restock shelves as often, another reason US supermarkets have so many "shelf facings" (as they're called in retailing) of the same brand and item -- such as "15 cans of Del Monte creamy corn" --  side-by-side is for visual impact. Manufacturers also spent lots of money (called "slotting fees") in payments to supermarkets to make sure they get prime exposure.

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Thanks Suzy. I know now about shelf facings. It requires a lot of space to support it. But space is what we have in America.

And remember when Internet was in its hay days, the online grocers popped up all over the place? TV commericals showe the "Peach truck". From Grocer.com or something like that I think. Remember those. I was just shaking my head. People who got the Internet e-commerce fever and were not thinking clearly. No one will point-and-click and buy 10 apples by only looking at the pictures (what delicious apples should have looked) and wait for the delivery truck to come by and drop it off. Beside, they wouldn't be able to make money to operate this delivery mechanism (trucks, delivery workers, gas, etc.), plus all the logistics to support it, while fighting competition to offer low prices.

[hzrt8w]

If I remember correctly, some Chinese friends taught me another way to say "Happy Chinese New Year". 

My best phonetic attempt is, "Gonh-she, Gonh-she". 

(It looks like that could be a shortening of "Gung Hay Fat Choy".)

Any comments, hzrt8w?

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Your "Gonh-she" is the Mandarin dialect, "Gong xi". It is the same as Cantonese's "Gung Hay". Gong/Gung means "wishing (implied "you")". Xi/Hay means Happinese. Gong Xi means wishing you happiness. It can be used by themselves. The second Gong Xi is just a repetition, which is often done in the Chinese language. The "Fat Choy" part (or Mandarin's "Fa Cai") means getting rich.

Gong Xi can be used in any occassion. It is just "congratulations". Can be birthday, wedding (or devorce ), etc.. Gong Xi Fa Cai is more narrowly used during Chinese New Year.

[Gastro888]

In addition to what MarketStEl said about not having to restock shelves as often, another reason US supermarkets have so many "shelf facings" (as they're called in retailing) of the same brand and item -- such as "15 cans of Del Monte creamy corn" --  side-by-side is for visual impact. Manufacturers also spent lots of money (called "slotting fees") in payments to supermarkets to make sure they get prime exposure.

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Thanks Suzy. I know now about shelf facings. It requires a lot of space to support it. But space is what we have in America.

And remember when Internet was in its hay days, the online grocers popped up all over the place? TV commericals showe the "Peach truck". From Grocer.com or something like that I think. Remember those. I was just shaking my head. People who got the Internet e-commerce fever and were not thinking clearly. No one will point-and-click and buy 10 apples by only looking at the pictures (what delicious apples should have looked) and wait for the delivery truck to come by and drop it off. Beside, they wouldn't be able to make money to operate this delivery mechanism (trucks, delivery workers, gas, etc.), plus all the logistics to support it, while fighting competition to offer low prices.

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The funny thing is, depending on the marketplace, people WILL buy groceries on the internet. FreshDirect.com does very well in the NYC marketplace. I honestly don't know how they're able to offer so much, operate the way they do (I've been to their facilities and taken a tour - it's *SO* big!) and keep everything going. It's extremely easy to use and if I was making 6 figures and wasn't as pick as I am about my produce, I'd be using them all the time. It's super easy to have a delivery come to your workplace and you save so much time.

[hzrt8w]

History Desk at your service.  Approximately speaking; I don't even claim Wikipedia's level of accuracy.

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Thank you for filling in with the history of Safeway, Sandy. Very interesting.

These grocery supermarkets seem so different from region to region. Back when I was living in Southern Cal, we like Bristol Farm. Their markets in the Orange County area are very nice.

[hzrt8w]

Today’s lunch. A little more substantial than the liquid breakfast…

I came to Saigon Restaurant near Fruitridge and Stockton Blvd. Can you guess what kind of food they serve?

A medium Pho Tai. Pho a kind of the Vietnamese noodle. Tai refers to raw beef slices. Much like the Chinese, Vietnamese have different names for different kind of rice noodle. Pho, bun, bahn hoi, etc.. Pho is always in a broth.

There is a cook-off thread on eGullet on how to make pho at home:

Asian Noodle Soups--Cook-Off XVIII, eGullet Recipe Cook-Off Series

Vietnamese usually brought out some fresh herb for eating with the soup noodles. I usually pour all the mung bean sprouts onto the bowl and use a pair of chopsticks and the soup spoon to flip the ball of rice noodles – force the bean sprouts to sink to the bottom and use the rice noodles to hold them down. Since the broth is still very hot, it cooks the bean sprouts within a few minutes while I am eating.

An order of Vietnamese fried egg rolls (Chả giò). It is customarily served with lettuce leaves and a dip which is called Noc Ngam I believe. The dip is usually a mixture of fish sauce, sugar, rice wine vinegar, and water. Some gives you shredded carrots in it, and bits of red chili. The filling of Vietnamese egg rolls is different from Chinese’s. They use minced pork, mung bean threads, shredded carrots and chopped wood ear fungi. I usually wrap an egg roll with a lettuce leaf along with some fresh herb, roll it up, dip in the Noc Ngam and eat.

With the meal, also a cup of Vietnamese coffee with condensed milk and ice. They pack the ground coffee into the filter, close the lid and screw it on the top to tighten. Then they pour boiling water onto the top. Water will flow through the ground coffee and drip down to the cup underneath, which is first lined with the condense milk. I bought one of these filters. When I first attempted to use the filter, I didn’t realize I need to screw on the top piece. When I poured hot water on top, the ground coffee just floated and spilled over. What a mess! When it is all set, take off the filter, spoon-mix the condensed milk, then pour into the glass of ice. It’s so perfect!

[hzrt8w]

Did you wife eat this?  I love all your chicken dishes because they use white meat ( Don't hate me egulleters).  I remember you saying your wife only likes the breast as well.

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Hi Randi! Arrr.... you remember!

Just when nobody is watching, I tossed in a piece of bonese chicken breast in the pot! I hid it underneath the drum sticks and conveniently left it out of the picture. I sliced it up to serve her.

[hzrt8w]

I love baby octopus as well. How did they season and prepare them? How did they achieve such a red color, sriracha?

BTW, 'octopuses' is the most accepted plural form of 'octopus'. See usage.

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Hi Kent! Thank you. Octopuses it is. They are first cookd and then dipped in some marinade. I would love to know their recipe. The red color... probably some kind of food coloring.

[hzrt8w]

Daikon rice cake - perfect seasonal snack for teenagers. Thanks for a nice weekend project!

...

Enjoy your flying, and don't forget to learn as much as you can about weather...learning to love your instruments is no bad thing for VFR guys either (15 years of translating aircraft accident reports has warped my priorities! )

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Hi Helen! The diakon rice cake is really not too difficult to make at home. Next time I will take some pictures.

I love reading instruments. I am a computer geek! IFR would be my next goal once I get the VFR done.

Since I was small I have been very interested in subjects like geography, weather, physics, chemistry and general earth science.

[hzrt8w]

I have some wonderful photos titled "flying into old Hong Kong airport".  It makes one realize just why they moved the landing strip for jumbo jets someplace else!  What a crosswind!  and if you landed too long, there was a lot of water out there.

...

I grew up in the San Joaquin Valley - next depression south - but boy, that looks like home.  Thanks for posting the photo.  I notice that, despite the lack of rain, there are trees that look to be nearly drowning at the river banks.

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Yeah, the old Kai Tek Airport is really challenging to aviators because with your final approach you have to bank right slightly to get to the runway. There hadn't been too many accidents at Kai Tek over the years. We did have some accidents where the plane overshot and fell into the harbor.

The water level is not as high this year. Last year it was about twenty feet higher than what you saw in this picture as we got a lot of rain.

[hzrt8w]

As to the former, we have a new place in the Twin Cities that has all that you have shown, plus more.  It's such a civilized way to experience many tastes.  When you went, do they charge a flat rate per plate, or do different plates come with different prices?  I just remember the first dim sum I had in Singapore more years ago than I care to remember, and you were to put the plates under the table, and they counted them, and it was the same price per plate.

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Susan: Happy Garden has different prices for different dim sums.

Many years ago (in the 70's) Hong Kong restaurants did like you said - count the number of dishes on the table to figure out your total bill. Even back then there were different prices for different items. The waitstaff did the math in their head and came up with the total. And so did some customers. Perhaps the high arithematic skills of Chinese came from those exercises!

[hzrt8w]

Ah Leung, Did you happen to catch the big article in the Sacramento Bee's Taste Section today on New Canton?  I guess they aren't closed after all.

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No Stephanie, I didn't. Hmmm... I need to drive to New Canton and find out. I would love to have dim sum over there again.

[hzrt8w]

I had something that looked identical to the picture you took of "Sauteed scallops with mixed vegetables: baby corns, snow peapods, celery, carrots, green onions, straw mushrooms":

Is there any chance you could give me some guidelines on how that would be prepared? I noticed that it had a very light but tasty sauce which did not overpower the rest of the ingredients and was perfect over rice. It was very light coloured and quite thick (obviously thickened). Also, how do that get that lovely sheen? Is that a special type of starch (perhaps potato or arrowroot? cornstarch doesnt seem to get that sheen) or just added oil at the end or... ? Vegetables blanched or fully cooked before wok stirfrying?

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Hi internooo. Thank you. Sure. How about a pictorial recipe? Take a look at this:

Sauteed Scallop with Snowpeas (油泡帶子)

It is this exactly same dish, a home version. The sheen is from the oil. With your wok burner, there is no need to blanch the vegetable first. The starch... just regular corn starch will do.

[hzrt8w]

I love Garden brand wafers - the hazelnut one is a recent favourite of mine.  The wafer is nice & light and not too sweet.  I like to peel apart the layers and eat them separately (I like to eat food in layers when I can, it's just more fun).  I remember when there only used to be the chocolate, strawberry & lemon flavours.  Now they even have durian flavour!  I won't be trying that any time soon

I love Horlicks candy!  The original is better than the chocolate-flavoured one.  I haven't had Ovaltine in a LONGGG time.

Leung Uncle, I forgot to wish you and everyone else here "Boh boh goh sing"!

I think the festivities in my house have finally ended!  Whew, that was a lot of eating.  We still have lots of "goh" and "wu ha" though!  And lots of candied lotus seeds and coconut.  I prefer the triangular pieces of coconut to the strips (the colour really throws me off).

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Hi chocomoo! Thank you. Wishing you "boh boh goh sing" as well (a phrase that means gradually rising, which implies job promotions and academic achievements).

Yes the Garden wafers are the favorite of many in Hong Kong. They do many bakery products very well. I like them too. My facorite is the coconut flavor.

Edited February 24, 2007 by hzrt8w (log)

[hzrt8w]

Ah Leung, does Horlicks taste like Ovaltine?  I remember Ovaltine being a little darker in color.

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Karen: Horlicks tastes different thatn Ovaltine. Ovaltine is a chocolaty drink. Horlicks is a malt drink. It doesn't have the rich, smooth feel that is in a chocolate flavored drink.

And they make Horlicks candies too! I like those.

[hzrt8w]

Gong Xi Fa Cai, Ah Leung!

I'm still fairly new to eGullet, but wow -- I am totally hooked on to your blog and am going to browse your other contributions now!  Your beautiful pictures certainly bring back lots of memories of when our family use to do the full-on New Year celebration (we've since scaled back as my family is scattered all over the place now).  My mom's side of the family is Northern Chinese, so we did the dumpling thing for CNY.  Grandma, aunties, and mom would make loads of jiao zi, and would put a spoonful of sugar in just one of the dumplings.  Whoever got the sweet jiao zi would be extra lucky that year. 

Hope you get a chance to come up to Vancouver sometime and sample some our our Chinese eats here -- the Chinese food here is some of the best in N America!  (no bias here!  )

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Hi Beeds! Thank you! Gong Xi Fa Cai to you too!

Yes I understand that in Northern China, the custom is to eat dumpling (jiao zi) right passed midnight in Chinese New Year.

In Canton, we eat "tong yuen" (glutinous rice dumpling - shaped like a ball) on Chinese New Year Eve.

I have been to Vancouver a couple of times. That were years ago. Back then we didn't have eGullet. I just followed my hunch in picking a Chinese restaurant to dine - look at the patronage. Go to the one packed with Hong Kong Chinese. I had been to a few in China Town area in Vancouver. Agreed, best Chinese food in North America. The ones in Toronto are pretty good too. And so are some that we'd been to in Montreal.

Edited February 24, 2007 by hzrt8w (log)

[hzrt8w]

The dried shrimp interest me (among many of your other meals)....Are these ever eaten as a snack? the notion of snacking on these appeals to me...well the sound of it does at least.

I haven't ever tried them in any sort of fashion...so I am GUESSING that snacking of them would sound lovely...does it?

If so:

1.) Are they crunchy and salty?

2.) Do they have a strong shrimp taste?

3.)Where would I buy these here in chicago....I know you might not know this one. 4.) And - last but most least, what are they made out of (other than dried shrimp), i.e any seasonings, preservatives??? Salt I am guessing (could be wrong) but what else?

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Lindsay Ann: Dried shrimp are slightly crunchy and a bit salty. They do have a strong shrimp taste. Especially the smell. It may be quite fishy to some. One may not be used to it if not familiar with Chinese food. They are sold everywhere. You can find them in just about any Asian grocery store. They are tiny shrimp, sun dried. I believe they are cooked first before sun-drying, but not sure. Do they add any salt in the shrimp? I don't know.

Snacking on them... I do. Some might think it's a bit fishy, but I like it.

[mizducky]

About sugar in Coca-Cola--I too had heard the "conspiracy theory" explanation for the whole New Coke weirdness. It cracks me up. I have also heard that Coke bottled in Mexico is still made with sugar rather than corn syrup. I wouldn't know, as I'm a lifelong drinker of diet soda. (Nobody throw anything at me! )

About the dot-com home grocery delivery services--sigh. I remember Homegrocer.com--they were huge in Seattle for awhile. I thought their little trucks with the big golden peach logo were brilliant. I don't know what their business model was, but they actually seemed to be making a go of it. Then they sold to another company that had home grocery delivery businesses in another city or two, and the goal of going multi-city ... and then the dot-com bubble burst and the whole thing went tires-up. Pity. Homegrocer actually supplied dependably decent basic produce--I could at least order basics like onions and carrots from them without fear. But the real beauty part was using them for heavier groceries. Especially when I was in a lot crappier physical shape than I am now, there was just something so lovely about having someone else haul a whole load of bottles of pop and cans of tomatoes and bags of cat litter into your home for you.

[hzrt8w]

... But the real beauty part was using them for heavier groceries. Especially when I was in a lot crappier physical shape than I am now, there was just something so lovely about having someone else haul a whole load of bottles of pop and cans of tomatoes and bags of cat litter into your home for you.

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Agreed. There are a few who can really benefit from online grocery shopping, such as the elderly and the disabled. They pay other people to perform the home-delivery service! Having an online grocery do home-delivery with no additional charge would be so lovely. But treating this as a business though... how a company can maintain such an operation, especially the logistics in a larger regional scale (than just in one town)... I have been baffled by how they could possibly make money. But back then the general public believed that anything that had the name "Internet" would make money.

[hzrt8w]

Tonight’s dinner:

Usually we would go out to dine on a Friday night. But my MIL had called for a family gathering dinner tomorrow for the 7th day of Chinese New Year. It is called “Yun Yuet”, which means “everybody’s birthday”. So tomorrow night we will have lots to eat again.

Tonight we settled with making something very simple at home. Something that is very traditional Cantonese:

I bought a preserved duck leg (“Laap Ngap Bei”) from the SF Supermarket last week.

The back of the package. The meat is salted and preserved.

Rinsed two measured-cups of long grain rice. Cooked with water.

Added the duck leg on the top. I also added two Chinese sausages (“Laap Cheung”). This kind is made from duck livers.

Simmered with the lid on for about 15 to 20 minutes.

When they are done, some of the oil from the duck leg and Chinese sausages would sip in to the white rice and gives it great flavor and fragrance.

Chopped up the duck leg into smaller bite-size pieces.

Cut up the Chinese sausages into small slices.

Used chopsticks to fluff up the white rice.

Returned the duck leg and Chinese sausages back in the pot.

Mixed them up with the rice. Some people would add a few drops of dark soy sauce. We just ate it as is.

My portion.

Sauteed some Taiwanese Bok Choy with garlic.

Very simple, traditional home-made meal.

[hzrt8w]

A Geek’s World

Welcome to my study room, which doubles as a home office, which triples as a computer lab.

I have multiple computer set ups. What you see are three 19-inch old CRT technology monitors plus one 17-inch monitor. They are hooked up to different computers, some of which have dual screen displays. The rest… landline phone (2 lines on one phone with speaker phone feature), cell phone, my Palm PDA, a 7-inch DVD player and my two laptops. The laser printer is on the floor, next to my scanner and a color printer. Yeah, this room gets really hot in the summer even with air conditioner on. I have a small fan to circulate the air underneath the desk. The DVD player is hooked up to a wireless receiver to get signal from the main cable set-top box. I spend a lot of time in this room. I watch whatever my wife watches on TV in the living room. We have a 52-inch plasma TV in the living room. I love that gadget. First time we used it to watch the Winter Olympics in Turin and it was awesome.

The current keyboard is the one I like very much: a split QWERTY keyboard, resting on a retractable keyboard tray. I use a track ball.

Why many monitors? Well… Your Truly likes to keep an eye on the financial markets through out the day for trading opportunities. I need to find some way to afford a 40-foot RV some day! I also like to scan through the on-line news for the latest happening, webcams and look at the weather.

What do I do for a living? I am a, quote, computer consultant. Which is just a nicer name for “Jack of all trades, master of none”. I do computer programming, system management, architecture design and stuff. Not full-scale programming as in a commercially available software application. Just enough to automate things and let users access things easily using web tools.

My first programming language (if you call that a language) was B.A.S.I.C. back in the late 70’s. Then FORTRAN, COBOL, PL/I, Pascal in college. Later on C, which evolved into C++ and C#. And many of the scripting languages like Bourne shell, C shell, korn shell, perl and later on Java, Visual Basic, ASP, ASP.NET, javascript, etc.. In this field, the learning never stops. Every couple of years you need to renew yourself with the latest technology to remain employable. Those who don’t will be moved to the wayside.

I have been tinkering with computers for a long time. I don’t mean just the PC that you can purchase for your home use. We deal with rows and rows of computer cabinets in controlled environment, raised floor, UPS and all that stuff. Setting up computers, wiring them, networking, setting up peripherals, backing up, etc.. The computer industry has gone through leaps and bounds of changes over the past 20 or so years. My first hand-on computer building project was setting up a single-board computer using an Intel 8086 microprocessor on an S-100 bus in college. I had to find a chassis, a bus driver, power supply and hook them all up. That’s what got me hooked to the technologies and the unbound possibilities of what you can do with computers. Now you can find computers used in all walks of life. You know there are a few computers just in the car you drive? Fuel injection, anti-lock brakes, engine diagnostics and the GPS navigation system… all can’t do without some specialized computers.

Stacks of spare keyboards. They still work. Every time you buy a new computer, it comes with a new keyboard… So what do you do? Throw them away?

Stacks of computer mice. 3 button, 2 button, optical, mechanical, cord, cordless, mouse, trackball, thumpad, joysticks, tablets, even spaceball! I had tried many pointing devices. I settled with trackballs which I like the most.

Stacks of old laptops. The technology is advancing so rapidly. Every couple of years the laptop you use is obsolete. The newer operating systems always demand faster CPUs, more memory, higher capacity disk drives. They are chasing each other’s tail. The new Vista may demand a 64-bit chip to run well.

I brought a 15-pound laptop on a plane once. Back then they weren’t really called laptops. Just portable computers. The battery lasted only like an hour and a half. Every so often I needed to save a file and could hear the clickily-click of the spinning floppy disk.

My older desktop at home. I don’t bother with putting back the cover on any more. Every couple of weeks I might just unplug some boards and plug in new ones to test things out. Why bother?

I often see some young guys come up to me and say “Oh, I know a lot about computers” and then show me their desktop PCs in pristine condition. No you don’t! Anybody who has not opened up a computer chassis to see what’s inside and how things are connected should not say they know a lot about computers.

I use only one set of keyboard and trackball. They are connected to different computers through a KVM switch (KVM - Keyboard, Video, Mouse). Switching between different computers is just a matter of hitting the SCROLL-LOCK key twice. The one on the top is called the "A-B switch". It is a mechanical switch for sharing the printer, obsolete these days by network printers.

The computers are connected via a Linksys router. Some wired. Some wireless. On through the cable modem to the outside world.

My other, smaller QWETY keyboard set up in a different room. This one is tiny. I have to watch out for carpal tunnel syndrome using this one. From this tiny keyboard, I can command the shut down and start up of servers all around the world with the pushes of a few buttons.

It is really fascinating… that my hand muscles cause my fingers to type on this keyboard, which generates electric pulses, the computer processor stores what I typed into bits and bytes in memory, and the data get sent through my cable modem, going through many analog-to-digital conversions again and again, through the network backbone and transmitted to eGullet’s server. From there, the data once again got transmitted from their server through the many switches, and through the undersea fiber optic cables, half way around the world and got to your computer, which processes the information and display it on the screen for you to see, no matter whether you are in Amsterdam, Oxford, Dubai, Beijing or Kuala Lumpur. Long live the Internet!

Edited February 24, 2007 by hzrt8w (log)