Pork and Cucumber Stir-fry

Until the age of 6, I had never eaten raw unpickled cucumbers. Like everyone else in my Cantonese family, I ate cucumbers only in stir-fries, never imagining that they could be served any other way. So it was a shock in the elementary school cafeteria to find that Americans eat this thing called a salad, with itty bitty pieces of raw unseasoned cucumber, mixed with equally bland raw carrots and iceberg lettuce. I'll admit. It took me a few years to get used to raw cucumbers, especially when the accompaniment was Thousand Island dressing.

Lately I've rediscovered the joys of stir-fried cucumbers. They're sauce sponges, soaking up the best flavors of whatever meat or liquid they're cooked with. The best kind to use for stir-frying are Chinese cucumbers, also called Asian or Peking cucumbers, the long skinny ones with a bumpy outside. They tend to be more crisp, though other varieties would also work.

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RecipesDiana KuanPork, Recipes Comments
Chinese Herbal Jelly

At first glance, anyone who didn't grow up in an Asian culture might scrunch up her nose at herbal jelly. It's black, it's shiny, and it jiggles. But really, herbal jelly, or grass jelly, is like JELL-O, only naturally colored. Whole Foods is losing a big opportunity to market this as the next "it" health food.

Maybe it's the fact that it takes the shape of the tin can it comes from, that may turn people off. If, as a culture, Americans have moved past canned cranberry sauce, we might not be too thrilled with something similarly ridged but not candy-colored. Although grass jelly is made from an herb in the mint family, the taste is pretty neutral. Which is why Asians love it in desserts. In Hong Kong cafés and dessert shops serve grass jelly with mangoes, coconut, and other tropical produce. At bubble tea shops like Saint Alp's you can opt for little grass jelly bits instead of tapioca pearls.

In Hong Kong and southern China, you can find also tortoise jelly in tea shops with big gold or silver pots. Called gwei ling go in Cantonese, the genuine stuff is made from powdered tortoise shell and can get be as expensive as 300 HK dollars (about $38) for a rice bowl's worth. Don't worry, PETA members: imitation tortoise jelly is much more common and usually costs $1 or less. It's made from different herb than grass jelly, but tastes pretty much the same.

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BlogDiana KuanCulinary Culture, Dessert, Drinks Comments
How to Make Chili Flower Garnishes

I don't have the dexterity of a Thai watermelon carver, but every once in a while I like to add a decorative touch to everyday foods. Remember the chili flowers from my Sichuan-style chicken noodle soup? A couple of readers wrote in to ask how to make them, so here is my belated post. All you need to start are fresh chilis and a pair of clean, pointy kitchen shears. And maybe some gloves if you plan on touching your eyes within the next few hours.

1. Snip off the tip of the chili. Snip the chili in half length-wise, almost to the stem. With the shears, carefully scrape out as many seeds as possible.

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Mulberries!

And a few days ago, strolling through a market in Zhongshan, I saw pints of fresh seasonal red bayberries, which I almost bought. Then I saw what was next to them. Lo, what are these? They looked like blackberries, but oblong. "First of the season!" exclaimed another customer to her husband. I typed the Chinese characters from the sign into my translator.

Growing up, I always associated mulberries with posies, pickled peppers, and curds of whey; as in, they were just the stuff of nursery rhymes. Growing up in suburbia, I never saw any mulberries in supermarkets, and assumed they were just the figment of some clever 14th-century storyteller's imagination. How wrong I was about everything!

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BlogDiana KuanAsian Fruits and Vegetables Comments
Huangshan Food and Mountain Biking

I didn't visit Huangshan, China's famous Yellow Mountain range, for the food. Jacob wanted to ride in the annual mountain bike festival and I needed to see nature again. (Fellow expats know that Chinese cities can be energy-drainers.) But food, or hints of it, weren't hard to find.

I tried hard to find a narrative thread for this post, but decided that the photos themselves do a much better job of showing the area.

Take, for example, this sea of yellow. Isn't this a pretty backdrop for thigh-burning, adrenaline-fueled exercise? We came at the optimal time to find that Yellow Mountain was, in fact, surrounded by lots and lots of yellow. What are these plants and why are they everywhere, from the sides of mountains to people's from yards? Rapeseed. I would not be surprised if China's entire supply of rapeseed oil came from the Huangshan area.

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Pork Adobo

I became addicted to adobo while living in Brooklyn. Albert, my roommate from Guam,  made chicken adobo one night and handed me a plate with some fat chicken thighs, a thick brown sauce with onions, and a clump of rice. Keep in mind that at this time, I was making dainty hors d'oeuvres everyday in culinary school and hadn't eaten good home-cooked braised meat in months. One bite and I was in heaven.

"What's in this?" I asked.

"Soy sauce, vinegear, honey, pepper."

"No, there's something else," I insisted.

He whipped out a small spice bottle. Mrs. Dash Original Blend. Just what his mom used to use.

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RecipesDiana KuanFilipino, Pork, Recipes Comments
Lan Fong Yuen - More than Great Milk Tea

I have written before about Lan Fong Yuen, the food stall in Hong Kong where pantyhose milk tea was supposedly invented. Sure, it's crowded, gets a lot of tourists, and makes you wait just to snuggle next to strangers. But I love that they still make their milk tea the old-fashioned way, by straining it through stocking-like nets. I also love that everyone can watch. Though the tea guy usually moves so fast that I haven't been able to get a better photo than the one I took in 2006.

At least I can console myself with some nice food close-ups. The pork chop bun up top is one of Lan Fong Yuen's specialties. Pork chop buns (a burger with a fried pork cutlet) originated in Macau, but in the past few decades have become standard cha chaan teng fare in Hong Kong. I still like the Macanese version better, since the bread is a crusty Portuguese roll instead of a sesame bun. But the pork matters most. If I'm in the mood for something fried, juicy, and porky, the wrong bread will not deter me.

Have you ever tried Hong Kong-style French toast? This is another greasy comfort food favorite. Forget whole grain or rye or other healthy brown breads. This one is puffy Chinese white bread dipped in an egg wash, pan-fried, and smothered with butter, peanut butter, or sweetened condensed milk. Lan Fong Yuen's is rich, but tame in comparison.

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BlogDiana KuanHong Kong, RestaurantsComment
Pairing Wine with Chinese Food - Thoughts?

Whenever I buy a new bottle of wine to try, I instinctively think "Okay, anything but Chinese for dinner." But really, why can't my favorite alcohol and (one of) my favorite cuisines just play nice? In China and many parts of Asia, the de-facto alcohols are rice wines, beer, and for the modern high-roller, whiskey. Drinking grape wine with Chinese food is much more complicated, because of the food's possible spices, smoked flavors, and sometimes pesky cilantro. Lately, however, the food media has been stepping up to the challenge.

Some brief insights:

Eric Asimov's recent column for The New York Times focuses on "Asian genres". Although most of the word count is devoted to Indian food, the same theories can apply to Chinese. "Sparkling wine often complements spicy food for the same reason that beer often works: the bubbles scrub and refresh the palate. Gewürztraminer is often recommended with spicy Asian cuisines, but I much prefer riesling, especially if it has some sweetness."

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BlogDiana KuanDrinks Comments
Ming Court - Michelin-Starred Dim Sum in Hong Kong

Mongkok in Kowloon is more known for its markets and red-light district than restaurants. So earning a Michelin star was a huge achievement for the 4-year-old Ming Court in Langham Place Hotel. Sure, there was some controvery last year when the first Hong Kong Michelin guide came out, over how Michelin ignored more Chinese-oriented, low-end restaurants with fabulous food.

But really, we all know that Michelin always skewers high end, no matter which country, and has certain standards for service and cleanliness. It won't give a star to my favorite dai pai dong, which doesn't fit with the Michelin image. For great local picks I'll turn to HK guides or my family, but there's no denying a Michelin rating is great international press for a restaurant.

Ming Court's lunch and dinner menus vary from very traditional (braised sea cucumber) to nouveau Cantonese (fried lobster with cheese, plus abalone sauce and angel hair pasta). Their dim sum, however, consists of classic dim sum dishes with a twist. My favorites of the morning were pan-fried buns stuffed not with pork but minced mushrooms (first photo.) They were as fluffy as you'd expect dim sum buns to be, with a perfectly crispy, golden brown bottom studded with white sesame. I also had a nice dish of fried crullers wrapped into cheong fun (wide rice noodles), usually two separate dishes, with soy sauce and vinegar poured on top. The standard har gow, siu mai, and regular cheong fun are also available

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BlogDiana KuanHong Kong, Restaurants Comments
Chinese Food Chat: Robyn Eckhardt of Eating Asia

Southeast Asia is a food lover's playground, and no food blog captures the region better than Eating Asia. Robyn Eckhardt and her husband Dave Hagerman have spent the past 4 years hopping around Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, and other spots, blogging and freelancing for publications such as The South China Morning Post and Time Out Kuala Kumpur. From banh mi snackdowns to portraits of Penang's cooks and street vendors, Eating Asia's posts reveal a intense passion for both the food and the people behind the food. And the photos will leave anyone starving for more.

How did you become interested in blogging about the cuisines of Asia?

First came an interest in writing about the cuisines of Asia and, following logically from that, a desire to write well about the cuisines of Asia. I wanted to become a better writer but I needed a prod to practice. The blog gave me a reason to sit down in front of the computer on a regular basis and write (the photographer had a similar impetus to blog). What was your perception of Chinese food before you first visited China?

Oh goodness, I grew up in suburban Detroit in the 60s/70s, so you can probably imagine what my perception of Chinese food was! My family often picked up Chinese carryout on Sundays -- egg foo yung (I still don't know exactly what it was), chicken chop suey, fried rice, chicken peanuts, bland and mushy mixed vegetables. In uni (still in Michigan) my roommate introduced me to crab rangoon and my now-husband introduced me to guotie with chili oil, but that's as far as it went.

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BlogDiana KuanChinese Food Chat, Global Chinese, Interview Comments
White Port, the Underrated Apéritif

One of the reasons I love visiting Macau is for the inexpensive wine. Yes, the foodis wonderful, but wine is the only thing I get to tote back to mainland China and enjoy weeks (okay, days) later.

The former Portuguese colony used to have no import taxes on Portuguese wines. Even now the import taxes are so low that bottles of good Portuguese wines start at about 5 USD, much cheaper than French, Italian, even Chilean. (I have a tip on a bar that serves 75 cent glasses of reds and whites, and $1.25 glasses of port. I'll report back in a later entry.) According to a well-traveled local friend, Macau has the least expensive Ports anywhere in the world, including Portugal, since the wine producers want to keep the market in Asia open. True enough, it's common to see Hong Kongers and China-residing expats hauling home suitcases of Portuguese wine.

On this trip I decided to bring back white Port. Rather than drinking it as a dessert wine like red Port, you chill it and drink it as an aperatif. It's richer, more mouth-filling than a fino or amontillado sherry. (My Ramos Pinto dry white has a nice hint of peach.) Besides, on chilly winter evenings before dinner, you need something heavier in your belly to keep warm. Especially after a long day in front of the computer.

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BlogDiana KuanDrinks, Macau, Wine Comment