Dejah's foodblogging this week!

What a challenging task! I am the blogger for the week, started yesterday, running until next Wed.

Take a peek ... in General Food Topics

Take a peek ... in General Food Topics

Couldn't find what you were referring to. Can you provide a link?

Dejah: To parallel your weeklong food blog, I have a food blog of my own. Nothing extravagant like yours, just the day to day, authentic Chinese cooking. No breakfast (maybe sometimes slices of toasts), lunch is time for finishing left overs, dinner is the only meal I spend time making. In the weekend, perhaps, I can afford the time to make some lunch.

Thu 8/5/04: Soy sauce chicken, green beans with sa-cha sauce

Fri 8/6/04: Ma Po Tofu, Ong-choy with shrimp paste

Sat 8/7/04: Lunch: Pot stickers. vegetable soup

Dinner: Steamed chicken with black mushrooms and woodear/lily-buds, pea shoots with dried scallops

Sun: 8/8/04: Lunch: Wonton with rice noodles

Dinner: Indian tandoori chicken, green bean with curry sauce

Mon: 8/9/04: Shrimp with salt and pepper sauce, stir-fried mustard greens

Tue: 8/10/04: Freshly baked Chinese BBQ pork, bitter melons with fooyu/garlic

Wed: 8/11/04 (plan) Hot braised tofu with BBQ pork and black mushroom, baby bok-choy

I cook Chinese dishes about 90% of the time. As for the rest, I experiment with Italian, Thai, Japanese, Vietnamnese, Malasian/Indonesian, Indian, etc..

We can exchange recipes if you see anything that interests you.

hzrt, I'd love to have your recipe for Indian tandoori chicken. Do you cook yours in a conventional oven, the BBQ, or do you actually have a "tandoori oven"?

How about your BBQ pork? and your potstickers? I am always looking for different ways to cook my favourites.

I cook Chinese food most of the time. . . This week was a liittle different because my sister and family were here. The Canadian fare was by request. They get all kinds cuisine in Vancouver, but not old Canadian family favourites like our beef stew, banana cream pie, etc.

You need to take pictures of your food! This blog has given me the impetus to do my cookbook for the family and past customers. This morning, we are having porridge to clean our system of last night's over-indulgence!

I don't have an tandoori oven. My wife has already been complaining that I have too many gadgets in the kitchen. Can you imagine if I bring in a tandoori in the backyard just for making tandoori chicken??? Just baked in a conventional oven. For that same reason (too many gadgets), I don't have a wok either. All my Chinese food dishes are made on a 12 inch flat pan.

It's funny I see some people... when they get excited about cooking Chinese food, the first thing they do is to buy a wok as if it is a prerequist. For some thirty odd years of cooking, I have never owned a wok.

My digital camera went to heaven some time ago. Maybe it's time to shop for the new generation models.

Recipes to follow.

For the average home electric range or low btu domestic gas range, a fry pan is what I use. A wok is so inefficient and clumsy in those circumstances. However if I have a crowd to cook for, I'll use a wok over my 80,000 btu burner. Now, that's cooking with gas.

This is a big gripe of mine, when every Tom,Dick and Harry( or Tina, Daisy and Jane) evening community college cooking instructor and all the glossy cooking magazines extol the virtues of using the wok, for with a wok, you get instant and delicious "stir fry" dishes just like the Chinese takeouts. Truth of the matter is, by using a wok over a weak flame you cannot "fry" anything in reasonable time. What you get is a soggy, sodden slew of substance that would not have the remotest of resemblance to Chinese food, in my estimation.

There, that's my rant of the day.

However if I have a crowd to cook for, I'll use a wok over my 80,000 btu burner. Now, that's cooking with gas.

Do you need a special permit for installing that burner in your home?

When I get my own house, I would like one of those "jet engine" wok stoves. For the time being, I make do with a really thick cast aluminium wok. I feel the thickness of the metal helps conduct heat better, even if the heat source is inferior.

This is a big gripe of mine, when every Tom,Dick and Harry( or Tina, Daisy and Jane) evening community college cooking instructor and all the glossy cooking magazines extol the virtues of using the wok, for with a wok, you get instant and delicious "stir fry" dishes just like the Chinese takeouts. Truth of the matter is, by using a wok over a weak flame you cannot "fry" anything in reasonable time. What you get is a soggy, sodden slew of substance that would not have the remotest of resemblance to Chinese food, in my estimation.

There, that's my rant of the day.

HMMMMMMMMMM-----------!!!!!!!!

There! That is my rant!! LOL!

Before my first wok, for years, I used a large iron frying pan. Worked beautifully. Great tool!

HZRT - What is the 'salt and pepper SAUCE' you used in that shrimp dish?

Anyone---- About posting pictures --- is there a trick to doing it? I know how to transfer an image, but even getting my digitals to Webshot has been difficult.

Laksa, great question. I have the "big" burner at my cottage, where I do all my entertaining and it is placed on the deck attached to the kitchen. But you can get a commercial stove or wok burner installed inside your home, providing you have a commercial grade fire suppression system installed too. Of course, the insurance companies have to be appeased with a sacrifice of substantial money. You have to check out the local regulations.

This is a big gripe of mine, when every Tom,Dick and Harry( or Tina, Daisy and Jane) evening community college cooking instructor and all the glossy cooking magazines extol the virtues of using the wok, for with a wok, you get instant and delicious "stir fry" dishes just like the Chinese takeouts. Truth of the matter is, by using a wok over a weak flame you cannot "fry" anything in reasonable time. What you get is a soggy, sodden slew of substance that would not have the remotest of resemblance to Chinese food, in my estimation.

There, that's my rant of the day.  

HMMMMMMMMMM-----------!!!!!!!!

There! That is my rant!! LOL!

Before my first wok, for years, I used a large iron frying pan. Worked beautifully. Great tool!

HZRT - What is the 'salt and pepper SAUCE' you used in that shrimp dish?

Anyone---- About posting pictures --- is there a trick to doing it? I know how to transfer an image, but even getting my digitals to Webshot has been difficult.

ahem....

I just have a household General Electric stove, at least 15 years old, and it works very well with my 14" cheapy rustable wok. My s-i-l has a gas stove, and I find it slower to heat my wok than my electric.

I DO agree with you that, unless you have 80,000btu burner, one cannot reproduce that restaurant flavour. I miss my old restaurant stove. In fact, I dragged it out of the restaurant before the demolition crew came in. It is sitting in our garage. I thought of installing it for an outdoor kitchen, but the thought of having to clean up the baked- on grease on the backside from the late 70s on kinda discouraged me. One of my friends is going to haul it to his farm and use it for an outdoor kitchen.

Jo-mel:

As for posting the pictures, this is our proceedure:

Download the pictures from your digital camera to a folder in your computer.

Then when you go to upload your pictures on image egullet, you hit "BROWSE", then go into your folder and type in the jpg number.

Once you have entered all your pictures, hit the "upload" button.

It will show you your entries.

Copy the line and paste onto your post.

I think this is what you are asking...but the WEBSHOT kinda threw me...

Is this the info' you need.

Funny. It took doing the blog for me to figure out how to post a picture.

Great blog, Dejah.

hzrt8w, if you don't mind, would you please share your BBQ pork here? What's your favorite cut for this?

Dejah -- That is exactly what I am looking for! Thank you soooo much! I will work on it and see if I can do it.

That Webshot thing is an on-line site where you can store pictures, but their directions are/were NOT clear. I use Camedia to store my digitals, and will open a special e-gullet folder.

Thanks again!!!

Great blog, Dejah. 

Thanks you, Betty. It was a lot of fun. Now that the family has left, I need to go on a diet...

hzrt8w, if you don't mind, would you please share your BBQ pork here? What's your favorite cut for this?

Sure. I will post it once I get a chance to type in the recipe. Probably tomorrow. My wife and I like lean lean pork. I know it's less flavorful, but that's one big reason why we don't buy the fatty BBQ pork from restaurants. The others would be the red food dye, and that most restaurant burn the tips of their BBQ pork.

In places like San Francisco or San Gabriel Valley, I like the taste of the BBQ pork they make in restaurants. Very tasty. But I now live in Sacramento, so far I haven't found any restaurant that can make BBQ pork up to par.

I am not sure on the name of the cut. Probably shoulder loin? I like the cut with no fat at all.

Jo-mel: maybe I had mis-spoken. I made Shrimp with salt and pepper (椒盐虾)

It's fairly dry. I shouldn't have said "salt and pepper sauce". Let me know if you still would like to know how I make mine. Would be happy to share.

The image uploading at Gullet is very easy.

In recent year, turkey fryers are popular. I like those turkey fryer burners. When in family gatherings, I like to borrow the burner and the wok from my brother-in-law and make some more restaurant-like Chinese dishes (with wok-chi) in their backyard.

Dejah, would you mind sharing your recipe for your bao dough? I don't think I've ever seen such gorgeous-looking bao in my life! Every time I make it, it comes out really dense and - bleh.

In recent year, turkey fryers are popular. I like those turkey fryer burners. When in family gatherings, I like to borrow the burner and the wok from my brother-in-law and make some more restaurant-like Chinese dishes (with wok-chi) in their backyard.

I was wondering why no one had brought up these burners. The partner is a home-brewer and we bought a Camp Chef burner with leg extensions to do the wort boils outside on the porch. Not long after we went out and bought a big-ass wok, a couple of spatulas and have been stir-frying like crazy all summer long. It really is nice to do stir-frying outside, because you don't smell up the house. Kang kung (aka ong choy) and other veggies taste so much better cooked this way, and all the stuff with tons of chillies (Thai and Singaporean stuff mostly) is much easier on the nose and lungs when it's cooked outside.

regards,

trillium

Trillium, I've been doing that for years, porch cuisine with my big honking burner. I love it. We do everyting on it. if I'm having a big corn boil, I can do 36 ears at a time in a big sock pot, same for lobster. My wife does her preserves on it. It's the only way to achieve "wok hei" outside of a restaurant kitchen. The good part is that these super hot "turkey fryers" only cost about Cda.$60.

Dejah, would you mind sharing your recipe for your bao dough? I don't think I've ever seen such gorgeous-looking bao in my life!  Every time I make it, it comes out really dense and - bleh.

Hi transparent,

Here's the recipe for bao. I wrote down the measurements and steps as my Mom made bao, a long time ago. The only change we've made is using cake and pastry flour now instead of all-purpose. We found this made the baos whiter and fluffy, not as "chewy".

I can't remember how many this batch made tho' because I usually double the recipe each time... I will be making some more this weekend in a dim sum lesson, so I may remember to keep track then.

4 cups flour, all purpose for chewy, cake and pastry for fluffy

1 cup of sugar ( to the 7oz. line, why? "cos Po-Po said so. )

1/2 tsp salt

4 "full" teaspoons (not the measuring kind, actual tsps.) of baking powder.

Shift dry ingrdients together.

Add 2 cups LESS 1TBSP cold milk.

I use my dough hook on the KitchenAid and knead the dough until it comes away from the sides of the bowl...10 minutes?

Rest the dough for about 10 minutes, add 1 TBSP of vegetable oil. Knead again for 10 minutes, until smooth.

Cut into desired pieces, roll out with the edges thinner than the centre.

Tortilla presses work great! I thin out the edges when I pleat.

Put filling of choice in the middle. Pleat the edges and pinch together at the top.

Place the bao on a medium size paper cupcake liner with the pinched top up.

These will "fan out" when steamed.

Bring a steamer of water to boil. Steam buns for 17 minutes.

I use different kinds of filling. One, of course, is the char sui. I also make one with chicken, Chinese mushrooms, lap cheung and onions. The third filling is curry chicken with onions.

Let me know how you make out.

1 cup of sugar ( to the 7oz. line, why? "cos Po-Po said so.

Love it!!

Thanks a lot for the recipe, Dejah! I'll definately try it out when I get the chance to.

Sorry I ran out of time. I will be out of town for a few days. I will post my recipes after I come back.

hzrt8w, if you don't mind, would you please share your BBQ pork here? What's your favorite cut for this?

I like using pork tenderloin for BBQ pork. It's lean and the shape is perfect for hanging in the oven and for slicing to serve as appetitizers.

But, for char sui bao, I like a bit of fat to keep the filling juicy and for flavour, so I use pork butte roast. I'd trim some of the fat off around the edges but keep the fat within the lean parts.

hzrt, I'd love to have your recipe for Indian tandoori chicken.

As promised, here is the recipe of my Indian Tandorri Chicken.

I understand that, perhaps like Mapo tofu and King Pao Chicken, everybody has his/her favorite way of making Tandoori Chicken. I know very little about Indian cooking. I am hoping others reading this thread can give me pointers in making tastier and better presented Tandoori Chicken.

Mrs HZRT refuses to eat dark meat so I am making this with chicken breasts with skin and bones.

Recipe for Tandoori Chicken

Ingredients:

- 2 pieces of chicken breasts (with skin and bones), 1 piece of chicken thigh

- 4-5 tsp Madras curry powder

- 1 tsp salt

- 1 tsp cayenne powder

- 1 tsp paprika

- 1 tsp cumin powder

- 1/2 tsp allspice powder

- 1/2 tsp cinnamon powder

- 1/2 tsp black pepper powder

- 1/2 lemon, juiced

- 2 tbsp plain yogart

Method:

- Mix the spices together, pour on to chicken, add lemon juice and plain yogart. Rub the mixture evenly on the chicken pieces.

- Leave chicken to marinate for over 4 hours or overnight in the refrigerator

- Put chicken pieces in skewers (so the grease from the chicken will be well drained), put on a rack in the oven.

- Bake chicken in the oven at 300F for about 1 hour

Put chicken breasts and thighs in mixer, get ready for marinade.

Mixing the spices in a bowl.

Chicken breasts and thighs after marination.

Put chicken pieces on skewers, then bake them in oven.

Finished Chicken Tandoori.

Footnote: The Tandoori spice mix varies each time depending on the mood of my day. I always start off with Madras curry powder and salt. Then I mix in cumin, corriander, black/white pepper, cayenne, paprika, cinnamon, star anise (powder) or other aromatic spices with different portions each time.