Chinese | Sybaritica

I was experimenting with a dim sum dumpling filling that would normally be more associated with a variety fried in wheat starch dough rather than steamed in the Basic Wheat Flour Dough I’ve used here. The filling in question is composed of chopped scallop and chives with some light seasoning but that is all I am going to say about it here because, quite honestly, it didn’t turn out as well as I had hoped.

The reason I have featured this experiment today is the particular shape of the dumplings. While browsing recipes online I came across one for dumplings that were described as Shu Mai despite not having the usual ‘pleated purse’ shape. Possibly, purists might say these are not actually Shu Mai for that reason but they are ‘open-faced’, steamed, and use a flour wrapper so possible they still fit the general category.

Anyway, the end result is, I think, much prettier than the standard shape and is much more easily formed. One simply puts a dollop of the filling in the middle of a dough circle and then pinches each ‘corner’ causing the sides to come up around the middle. My readers might like to try it themselves with filling mixtures of their own creation or possibly with the more standard Shu Mai filling used in my Shu Mai with Pork and Shrimp…

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If you have ever tried any of the Chinese delicacies generally known as ‘soup-dumplings’ or their (often) larger, and well-known cousins, Xiaolongbao, you have probably enjoyed the way that the steaming, liquid content squirts in your mouth when you bite into them. Quite possibly, it also occurred to you to wonder how on earth the cook gets the delicious broth into the dumplings in the first place…

Not long ago, when I featured the technique for making a Basic Chinese Pork Stock, I hinted at this ancient Chinese secret. If you haven’t guessed the answer yet, read on…  Read more

I have seen a number of Asian Family™ products turn up on our local supermarket shelves in the last little while but their Hoisin Paste is the first I have tried. Normally, I use the Lee Kum Kee™ Brand Hoisin Sauce, which is pretty good, and in my written review of that product I provided something of a discussion of Hoisin Sauces in general. Much of what I said in that post, including the comments relating to usage, applies to the Asian Family product so, today, I will limit my comments to a comparison of the relative qualities…  Read more

I very much enjoy making my own dumplings but when I saw these commercially prepared frozen Potstickers in my local supermarket, I was curious to see what they might be like. This particular variety is produced by a company I have not heard of before called InnovAsian Cuisine and a visit to their website reveals that they do quite a number of similar Asian snacks and entrees. I don’t expect to be buying many of these on a regular basis, to be honest, but the Pork Potstickers definitely seemed worth a try…  Read more

Date of Visit: July 5, 2014

When I was planning my recent trip to Halifax, I did some searching interesting Chinese restaurants on the internet but was unable to come up with anything beyond the highly westernized types I like to call ‘Chop Suey Joints’. It was thus with a measure of pleasant surprise that I came across this tiny little hole-in-the-wall Sichuan place just a few minutes walk from my hotel. The name, which means ‘Cheng Capital’ refers to the city now known as ‘Chengdu’, and as the menu explains, the establishment specializes (very ably and well, as it turned out) in the spicy cuisine of Sichuan’s capital…  Read more

Today’s dish is a pretty good example of what often used to appear on westernized Chinese restaurant menus as ‘Moo Goo Gai Pan’. That name, or some variant on the spelling, is a rendering of the Cantonese words for ‘Button Mushrooms with Chicken Slices’. Generally, the mushrooms in most restaurants would be the canned variety and the basic ingredients would almost always be ‘bulked out’ with one or more additional vegetables. Today, I am also going to use canned mushrooms but I am limiting the ‘bulk’ to just a little broccoli…  Read more

When I was a law student, I shared an apartment with two other students, one of whom had recently moved to Canada from Hong Kong. Like many Chinese immigrants, he adopted a Western name for himself but his choice, which was Gordon, was rather a poor one as he couldn’t pronounce it. Accordingly, my other room-mate and I re-dubbed him ‘G’…

G. was not a particularly accomplished cook but he had learned a few basic dishes from his mother and, one of these, which he cooked on a regular basis, is the one I am preparing for you today. This preparation represents my earliest introduction to dried squid as a culinary ingredient and I have loved it ever since…  Read more

Well, I REALLY, REALLY hate to do this to you… We were progressing so well in our culinary Chinese lessons and, now, I have to introduce a nasty new complication that is going to make our job that much harder…

Take a look at the two noodles bowls in the picture above. We encountered the left-most Chinese character a few weeks back and identified it as ‘miàn’, meaning the wheat-flour noodle of the ‘Chow Mein’ type. Well, as it turns out, the character on the bowl on the right is also ‘miàn’. In fact, it is the actually same character.

Well, sort of … Unfortunately, I now have to break the news to you that there are, in fact, two parallel systems of Chinese characters. We’ll take a look at the actual details of that in a moment but, first, you need to know a bit about the story behind the situation…  Read more

We frequently get long thin Asian eggplants as well as the fatter European variety here in our local stores. Unfortunately, the former always seem to be of poor quality after having made the long flight north. When I espied some nice ones this morning, I decided I would stir-fry them with beef…  Read more

Salted cucumber preparations are common in many Asian cuisines, particularly in Japan and Korea. This particular variety is Chinese and is pungent with scorched chili, Sichuan peppercorn, and the tang of Black Vinegar…  Read more