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branedotorg
Jun 19, 2009
There was another good chinese foos thread a few months ago, has anyone seen it?
Great OP though, what region would you say most of your food is based on? I'd guess cantonese from the ingredients.

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branedotorg
Jun 19, 2009
For the record I'm a white australian who manages a bar with a very authentic thai kitchen & i've done about 5-6 days of 'foodie tourism' level chinese cooking classes in china in the ghangzhou, shenzhen & haikou provinces. I've also been cooking sichaun food at home for about 7-8 years with a little help from books & some people i've met through authentic local joints.
Happy to throw out some advice too if/when required.

branedotorg
Jun 19, 2009

Frosted Ambassador posted:

Great OP, I'm excited for this thread! I recently went to the local Asian grocery store in search of a wok, and they were all Teflon coated! Can anyone recommend a good online dealer?

I'm planning to buy a couple books on Sichuan cooking. Has anyone had experience with Land of Plenty or Mrs. Chiang's Szechwan Cookbook?

I prefer Fuchsia Dunlop's Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China (but it's a memoir with recipes rather than a cook book, great for background) to Land Of Plenty but either are excellent.

branedotorg
Jun 19, 2009
There's an excellent series of pictorial recipes put together by a guy named Ah Leung who used to post on egullet. Warning though the recipes are in old style windows help format, for vista or 7 you'll need to download a .chm/.hlp viewer from microsoft.
Point being his recipes are fantastic home style chinese cooked almost entirely in a flat frypan.

http://www.freewebs.com/hzrt8w/LeungPictorials.htm

branedotorg
Jun 19, 2009

PorkFat posted:


A couple things to keep in mind: Pearl River Bridge light soy sauce is king. Japanese soy sauce is poo poo as it has alcohol in it. Korean soy sauce is pretty much the lowest you can get before you hit La Choy territory. Don't season your wok with a paper towel. Just stir fry an onion until it's cinder. Would you rather have your food taste like food or burnt paper?


My local korean shop (there's three within 300m of my place) has about 30 types of soy from fresh to aged gangjang stuff.

Most japanese soy doesn't actually have alcohol in it either btw.

branedotorg
Jun 19, 2009
It wasn't pearl river, it was hong shaui made with human amino acids. It's not exactly hard to find on google.
Personally i only use chinese soy in chinese dishes & keep the japanese & korean sauces for appropriate dishes.

branedotorg
Jun 19, 2009

gret posted:

Not to step on ZetsurinPower's toes, and I would also be very interested in his mapo tofu recipe, but I usually follow Chen Kenichi's mapo tofu recipe, which is very tasty. However when he says firm tofu I believe the soft tofu sold here in the U.S. is the closest approximation.

I use firm-silken. Sometimes i blanch it, sometimes not.

branedotorg
Jun 19, 2009

TapTheForwardAssist posted:


Anyone got a better technique (short of actually following recipes, I like to make shite up) to better capture the flavours which distinguish Sichuan from other regional cuisines of the Red Chinee?



Gravity posted two excellent & classic sichuan dishes in this thread, dan dan noodles & fish fragrant pork (eggplant is also often used with this sauce).
I'd also look for recipes for ma po dofu, kung pao & tea smoked duck/pork & sichuan hotpot with either beef or whole fish.

Other excellent sichuan styles include cold meats dressed with five spice & soy dressing, poached vegetables with garlic sauces (also cold) & the more rare braised meat & root vegetable stuff i think they call wet cooking.

The main flavours in my mind are hot, spicy, numbing & cold.

branedotorg
Jun 19, 2009

Flash Gordon Ramsay posted:

This sounds like bullshit to me. How could a little baking soda sprinkled on the meat significantly change the internal texture of the meat in any way?
Only needs to go 1-2mm into the meat if it's cut from semi-frozen with a cleaver.
Whitebait is also excellent with a similar batter.

branedotorg
Jun 19, 2009

ShadowCatboy posted:

The trick to a good mapo tofu is getting the right brand of chili sauce and tofu, really.

I made some more braised pork belly recently (actually been making it drat frequently) and I think I perfected my personal secret recipe. I'll post pics later.

I usually use the lee kum kee toban dai chilli bean sauce. I've tried a few other random chinese ones & a few of the pre made sauces but they aren't quite the same.
For ma po dofu i would use 'silken firm' tofu. Silken is good although it should be poached to firm it up after cutting or it wont hold shape when folded in to the sauce.

branedotorg
Jun 19, 2009

GrAviTy84 posted:

You just need to be more gentle.
I'm talking about the kind that will hold a thumbprint if you touch it roughly.

branedotorg
Jun 19, 2009

fatherdog posted:

There's a dish I've had at several chinese restaurants called, variously, "Singapore Mei Fun", "Singapore Chow Mei Fun", or just "Singapore Noodles". It has a very consistent flavor across several different restaurants in different areas. However, I've been unsuccessful in attempts to reproduce it at home.

I've found a number of recipes online and most of them look accurate as far as I can tell. All of them involve curry (the dish definitely involves a light yellow curry). It seems like I can't find the correct brand or type of curry to produce the flavor I'm looking for.

Does anyone have any experience with this dish?

It's standard 'yellow' curry powder. Any generic western curry powder will do or use one of the vietnamese brands if you can get it (although they are essentially the same as a madras style curry powder). In Australia i'd use Keen's or Clive of India brands. White sugar too.

branedotorg
Jun 19, 2009

Sjurygg posted:


Variations are welcome, if anybody wishes to bring them up. I think this is a pretty good recipe, and it's officially approved by the Chinese in-laws.

I usually put in a tbl of fermented black beans, gently mashed with the back of the cleaver, you can rinse off the packing salt or not depending how salty your broth is. I also use dried chillis in the initial aromatic fry off to heat the oil rather than fresh chilli, remove them & add a few back on later as a garnish. Otherwise it's the recipe i got from an old lady in a sichaun restaurant (in australia). The black beans seemed pretty common in the south of china when i was there too.

branedotorg
Jun 19, 2009

Captain Stinkybutt posted:

"doh-bahn-jahng" is the closest I can come to describing it.

Lee Kum Kee brand has toban dai written on the label

branedotorg
Jun 19, 2009

bolo yeung posted:

Does anyone have a recipe for those green beans that they serve in almost every greasy Chinese buffets?

Also, if anyone has an analogous (real) Chinese version of some kind of a green bean dish, I would appreciate it.

Google 'dry fried string beans' - i prefer the sichaun style with minced pork, preserved sichaun vegetables & a few black beans.

branedotorg
Jun 19, 2009

Ghost of Reagan Past posted:


Awesome. I'm out of wrappers or I'd make some of these right the gently caress now. And do you happen to have transliterations? I can read precisely zero Chinese, and one of the folks who may come to any hypothetical dumpling dinner speaks Chinese. I'd like to have some words to butcher.



If you are out of wrappers you can make little 'omelette' dumplings ... I had some in china that were chicken and goji berry and some with minced pork and garlic chives. add a enough beaten duck egg to be about 4cm across to a hot pan, tsp of filling, fold, let it seal, flip the a splash of water or stock and lid on so it's a little steamed.

branedotorg
Jun 19, 2009

femcastra posted:

Okay, today I bought a bag of taro root because it was 100 yen and I was curious. And I didn't actually know what I was looking until I got home and googled.





Looking at suggested recipes, I get deep fry/tempura, shabu shabu, Japanese curry and miso soup. That's all find and sounds great, but are there any awesome Chinese recipes that I can chuck a bunch of taro root into?

I'd probably slow braise some brisket or pork shoulder or chicken thighs in broth and chu hou paste then throw in some taro and potato or big chunks of carrot toward the end. Serve with rice.

branedotorg
Jun 19, 2009

Mons Hubris posted:

Got another Fuchsia Dunlop question. I got Every Grain of Rice recently and am enjoying it very much, but a lot of the recipes call for chili oil, with or without sediment depending on the recipe. I've been using laoganma - does she mean something else?

There's a fairly serious recipe here
http://www.ladyandpups.com/2012/10/25/sichuan-chili-oil-eng/

Lao Gan Ma has sichuan pepper in it so it's fine, although AFAIK it should be just the oil, not the bits.

branedotorg
Jun 19, 2009

Mons Hubris posted:

Man, I don't think the Asian market here even has green sichuan peppercorn. Is that a common ingredient?

Dunno, I've seen them occasionally in Melbourne but TBH I think you can live without. The flavour is apparently lighter than than the red but that's second hand knowledge from the internet.

branedotorg
Jun 19, 2009
I've had steamed glutinous rice dumplings filled with minced pork, dried shrimp and crushed peanuts made by thai chefs. Not sure how authentic they were but amazing.

branedotorg
Jun 19, 2009

Grand Fromage posted:

I am going to make Sichuan dry fried green beans. I found two recipes:

http://appetiteforchina.com/recipes/sichuan-dried-fried-green-beans/

http://food52.com/recipes/20767-fuchsia-dunlop-s-sichuanese-dry-fried-green-beans

They're pretty similar, which one would you go with/which is more authentic, if not both?

I'm still looking for a 青椒炒牛肉 recipe too, I have plenty of Chinese results but nothing in English that I can actually read. I've found a couple things with bell peppers, but I've always seen it with spicy green ones.

I like it when it has fermented black beans, a little bit of minced pork in it too. The pressed pickled mustard greens are a must add imo, I think they're called zhai ca (sp?).

branedotorg
Jun 19, 2009

DontAskKant posted:

Bon Appetit has long been in the pocket of Big Bay Leaf.

What are some ways Sichuan pepper is used in western dishes. Ive thought about the obvious sichuan tangerine/grapefruit sorbet or with other citrus things, but i don't know where it would work with other stuff. Might go well in zataar.

I keep seeing it used in deserts.

branedotorg
Jun 19, 2009

EVG posted:

Thanks for the advice! Actually cooked the noodles separately and put them in. Not sure what noodles I used, just grabbed one of the packages of misc. chinese noodles I had in the cupboard. I think I do have thinner ones, will use those next time.

The broth was dark because of the soy, and also it was actually stock. Didn't realize that when I thawed it from the freezer, but was pleasantly surprised to find SoupJello when I went for leftovers the next day. A bit of a waste for that lovely concentrated stock - teach me to label things in the freezer next time.

My Asian grocer has all of the weird bits of meat (it's in the vietnamese neighborhood so everything you've ever seen as an ingredient for Pho, they gots). I'm particularly intrigued by the pork neck bones. Anything delicious I can make with a pile of those? Pork stock would be the obvious, but I wouldn't know what to do with it (besides Ramen, and that would be like a 3 day undertaking to do right with all of the other things I'd want to add). Or other unusual pork or beef bits I should play with?

Make Hu Tiew Mi, it's a Vietnamese pork soup or Tom Saap a hot and sour Thai soup. Both use a broth based on pork bits, I'd say the Tom Saap is easier to make if that matters.

branedotorg
Jun 19, 2009
What is the name of the 'dumplings' made from beaten duck egg?

Essentially you make a minced pork and whatever filling and then spoon beaten egg into a hot wok, then add a little of the filling and fold - like a tiny filled omlette.
I had them somewhere north of Shenzhen.

branedotorg
Jun 19, 2009

caberham posted:

Hey guys food translation question. What is 菜渣 (cai zha) in English? I'm talking about extra the pulpy/stringy fibrous part of vegetables. Is there a specific name in English? And is there a term 汤渣 (tang zha), the left over solids to make soups and stocks.


Do you have a picture? Do you mean jian bing? Like a thin pancake like layer wrapped in an omelette?


Not it but thanks - I actually went to the tourist cooking school for a day, it was pretty fun.
http://www.yangshuocookingschool.com/courses.php

They made similar ones here and I ate them a bit between here and Shenzhen.

Re your question if they aren't labeled cai zha they just called mustard greens AFAIK

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branedotorg
Jun 19, 2009

itsjustdrew posted:

Basic question. How do you cook rice to give it the classic chinese / asian textures, almost sticky, and is it just standard long grain? I don't think it's stick rice / glutinous rice.

Cook it in a rice cooker. Wash off the starch. Use the right amount of water for mine with long grain and jasmine it's about 1:1.5 rice to water.

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