hmmmm....Food!!!! What we like to eat!

Re: Your Favorite Foods...What you like to eat

Whats the most common fish they have in those tanks in the Restaurants?

Or that vegetable that looks like a water melon in size anyway.the stalk may have fine prickles on it.

Ive had it tossed into a soup, where it goes all mushy

Re: Your Favorite Foods...What you like to eat

vesicles said:

That was the first dish I was taught how to cook (probably true for all/most of the Chinese).



You should also love soy sauce. My dad who is from Shandong adds soy sauce to everything. I have the similar habit, which annoys the heck out of my wife who is from Shenzhen (South). She thinks that dark color is disgusting.

As for the Cantonese cuisine, in my opinion, they use their sauces all wrong. they put sweet stuff in savory dishes and put salt and meat in dessert-like dishes.

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I have been cooking T&E for about 3 years now, I can never get it right, thank god I am usually extremely hungry when I eat it so I don't really care that much.

I like soy sauce, however I am also a vinegar lover. Soy sauce should be added to most dishes however, I have a few white and South Asian friends who add it to white rice which is weird to me. Vinegar however is god, I mean when I eat dumplings or anything with chives I always have a dish of vinegar (and sometimes garlic).

Yea Cantonese cuisine is extremely bizarre, I hope I don't have to eat at a dim sum place again. lol.

Re: Your Favorite Foods...What you like to eat

bladerunner said:

vesicles said:

That was the first dish I was taught how to cook (probably true for all/most of the Chinese).

Now Thats really strange. I certainly wouldn't have placed tomato as a widely consumed vegetable amongst the Chinese Traditionally anyway


So fried Won tuns in sweet and sour sauce is out........ Huh?

I cant stand Korean Food . The smell puts me off.
I live in an area that has a high Korean concentration and in my local shopping suburb theres this Korean Restaraunt, and highly patronised by the local Koreans, man you can smell the food many metres up the road., what a pong

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Tomato is a new world fruit (imported from the west), if I remember right but don't quote me on this, tomatoes were introduced during the Kangxi period. However us Chinese being resourceful has incorporated into our cuisine. Hell, we produce 3 times the amount of tomatoes that is produced in US (around 11 million tons), so from this we should at least do something with it.

I have a feeling you are joking, but just in case, fried wontons in sweet and sour sauce is not even Chinese (it is also gross).

Sir! How can you criticize Korean food, I had some when I left the gym today. I like the smell, it is very similar to some peasant foods in China. It is usually spicy too which is why I like it, mmm kim chi. You should go try it, I guarantee that you will like it.


Lastly, bitter melon is gross.

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Re: Your Favorite Foods...What you like to eat

Damingli85 said:

I have been cooking T&E for about 3 years now, I can never get it right, thank god I am usually extremely hungry when I eat it so I don't really care that much.

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To me, the key is the doneness of the eggs. You cook your eggs first and don't get it out of the pan 'til it's golden and has some brown spots on it. Then cook the tomatoes with it and add some salt. That's it. I guess this is one of the few dishes that I don't put soy sauce in. However, if you cook egg and tomato as a kind of sauce for sphagetti, you definitely should put soy sauce in the egg-and-tomato. If you love egg-and-tomato like I do and haven't tried it as a sphagetti sauce, go try it TONIGHT (don't forget the soy sauce). It's absolutely delicious!!!

Damingli85 said:

I like soy sauce, however I am also a vinegar lover. Soy sauce should be added to most dishes however, I have a few white and South Asian friends who add it to white rice which is weird to me. Vinegar however is god, I mean when I eat dumplings or anything with chives I always have a dish of vinegar (and sometimes garlic).

Yea Cantonese cuisine is extremely bizarre, I hope I don't have to eat at a dim sum place again. lol.

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Finally, one of my people!! It sounds like you have some "ShanXi" blood in you, like me. I LOVE vinegar as well. when eating dumpling, I would spend 5 minutes making my sauce: lots of vinegar, some soy sauce, hot sauce and a whole block of bean curd (one of those fermented tofu) AND raw garlic, which goes extra well with dumpling. My idea of a dumpling sauce should not look like liquid, but a viscous goo.

Re: Your Favorite Foods...What you like to eat

vesicles said:

Finally, one of my people!! It sounds like you have some "ShanXi" blood in you, like me. I LOVE vinegar as well. when eating dumpling, I would spend 5 minutes making my sauce: lots of vinegar, some soy sauce, hot sauce and a whole block of bean curd (one of those fermented tofu) AND raw garlic, which goes extra well with dumpling. My idea of a dumpling sauce should not look like liquid, but a viscous goo.

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My father's grandfather was a landlord in Shanxi lol. I have been known to drink vinegar at times because I want to stimulate my stomach (it can be a great dieting tool). Now talking about fermented bean curd, I LOVE IT. Normally I am a very mannered person when it comes to food, when it comes to the last piece of food I would usually offer it to others even when I am hungry, but when I have my mantou and there is only a piece of bean curd left, I will kill for it. Like I said way before, my taste is extremely northern. Mandarin (Northern) Cuisine has no competition in my book.

Re: Your Favorite Foods...What you like to eat

bladerunner said:

vesicles said:

That was the first dish I was taught how to cook (probably true for all/most of the Chinese).

Now Thats really strange. I certainly wouldn't have placed tomato as a widely consumed vegetable amongst the Chinese Traditionally anyway


So fried Won tuns in sweet and sour sauce is out........ Huh?

I cant stand Korean Food . The smell puts me off.
I live in an area that has a high Korean concentration and in my local shopping suburb theres this Korean Restaraunt, and highly patronised by the local Koreans, man you can smell the food many metres up the road., what a pong

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Yeah, the Chinese name for tomato is literally the red fruit from the West. Tomato has always been abundant in China.

what kind of smell are you talking about? I've had Korean food a couple times and haven't noticed any special smell. I guess you are not talking about the smell of Kimchi (spelling?), which to me smells delicious. you can almost tell it's SPICY and mouth-watering delicious just from the smell.

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Re: Your Favorite Foods...What you like to eat

Damingli85 said:

My father's grandfather was a landlord in Shanxi lol. I have been known to drink vinegar at times because I want to stimulate my stomach (it can be a great dieting tool). Now talking about fermented bean curd, I LOVE IT. Normally I am a very mannered person when it comes to food, when it comes to the last piece of food I would usually offer it to others even when I am hungry, but when I have my mantou and there is only a piece of bean curd left, I will kill for it. Like I said way before, my taste is extremely northern. Mandarin (Northern) Cuisine has no competition in my book.

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OH MY GOSH!! You are truly one of my people! My maternal grandparents were from Shanxi (Taiyuan). They moved to Shenyang, Liaoning when they were young (my grandpa went to Medical school in Shenyang). I grew up in my grandparent's house (while my parents were sent to the countryside in the mid/late '70's). That's how I acquired the "vinegar tongue". I used to drink vinegar too.

Damingli85 said:

when I have my mantou and there is only a piece of bean curd left, I will kill for it. Like I said way before, my taste is extremely northern. Mandarin (Northern) Cuisine has no competition in my book.

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Mantou with bean curd... I haven't heard any body eating like that in a loooooong time. I myself haven't eaten like that since I left China. Last weekend, I happened to see some mantou and bean curd in the fridge and decided to eat it the "old style". And that brought back a lot of good childhood memories.

Damingli85 said:

Like I said way before, my taste is extremely northern. Mandarin (Northern) Cuisine has no competition in my book.

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I'm with you 120% on that one.

Re: Your Favorite Foods...What you like to eat

vesicles said:

bladerunner said:

Yeah, the Chinese name for tomato is literally the red fruit from the West. Tomato has always been abundant in China.

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Around here I ve heard it called "Farn Care" whats your Chinese pronunciation for it.

And with all this vinegar you northerners seem to enjoy consuming, not too good if you've got stomach Ulcers

what kind of smell are you talking about? I've had Korean food a couple times and haven't noticed any special smell. I guess you are not talking about the smell of Kimchi (spelling?), which to me smells delicious. you can almost tell it's SPICY and mouth-watering delicious just from the smell.

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INDESCRIBABLE. Certainly not fragrant like 5 spice powder.
More off putting, When Friends visit me and we go down the road for a few cold ones, they often ask what the weird smell is as we approch the restaurant. I guess Ill never know unless I walked in and asked for some of that stinky stuff. but I might get a black eye for my trouble.

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Re: Your Favorite Foods...What you like to eat

about danger of consuming vinegar, the acidity of vinegar, which is about pH 4, is a lot less compared with the acidity of your stomach (pH 0.8 before meal). So mixing up a little vinegar into stomach is like adding a pot of water into a lake. No big deal.

I think some people in Shanxi actually drink vinegar like wine during meal. Of course that's not the everyday-vinegar we get from grocery stores. It would be some kind of specially fermented/brewed vinegar. I certainly would like to get my hands on one bottle if I have a chance.

Also, just to clear a common myth, it's not the acidity or stress that cause stomach ulcers. It's the infection of a type of bacteria, helicobacter pylori, that gives you stomach ulcers. The guy, Barry Marshal, who discovered this won a Nobel price a couple years back. As a matter of fact, I had dinner with the guy last month at the international gastroenterology meeting in Chicago (my boss is a good friend of his).

Re: Your Favorite Foods...What you like to eat

My father lived in Shenyang for a good while when he was young. My grandmother taught me to use vinegar when I was little, I guess she picked it up when she was raising my father there.

When I was younger, I would eat bean curd and mantou so much that my parents would at first buy me a container and buy one for the family. However when I start eating their share, they would hide theirs.

Anyone who knows anything about vinegar knows that Shanxi produces the best vinegar hands down. Good god I want some in my apt now.