Eating in China

I was in Hongkong in November 2005. For some reasons, my friends and old colleagues there kept taking me to Italian and French restaurants for meals. These places were extremely expensive. So eventually I insisted on eating in Chinese restaurants. A friend of my sister took me to a very interesting restaurant called Xianggang Lao Fandian (Hong Kong Old Restaurant 香港老饭店) at North Point 北角. They served a kind of Shanghai and Yangzhou style dishes 扈扬菜系. They are very similar to those I once had at Hangzhou. Yum!! The restaurant is attached to the Newton Hotel and it's not expensive to eat there at all. May be you would like to try it out next time when you're there. They also do some nice vegetarian dishes as well - very much to my taste nowadays.

The following is the Zuiji recipe that I sent to Shulan last week. It vanished when the site crashed. I'm now posting it again here as Shulan has requested:

Recipe for Zuiji (Wine Chicken)

Ingredients:

1 whole chicken, about 1.5 kilograms will be perfect
2 tablespoon salt
1.5 cups of Shaoxing wine (you can also use sherry or Japanese sake)
1 cup of cold chicken stock

Method:

Clean and dry the chicken. Rub the chicken with salt, both inside and outside. Let it stand covered in the fridge for 4 – 6 hours.

Place the chicken in a bowl so that you can catch the liquid (or chicken broth) from the chicken while it is cooking. Steam the chicken over a pan of boiling water for about 25 minutes. Remember to keep the water boiling throughout the process. Otherwise the chicken is not going to get cooked.

Remove the chicken from the steamer and let it cool down.

Cut the chicken into 4 or 6 large pieces. Lay the chicken pieces in a large deep bowl.

Pour the chicken broth from the steamed bowl through a strainer into the deep bowl. Add 1 cup of cold chicken stock and 1.5 cups of Shaoxing wine. Mix by shaking the bowl. Cover and keep in the fridge for about 1 day. Turn the chicken once after 6 hours.

When you are ready to serve the meal, cut the chicken into about 1 inch wide 2 inches long pieces. Arrange the chicken pieces on a serving plate and pour 1 tablespoon of the wine brine over it. Then you can garnish and serve.

The wine brine is the liquid that you used for soaking the chicken. You can save the wine brine and use it again for another chicken. But do remember to store it in the fridge or the freezer. It is also advisable not to soak the streamed chicken in the wine brine for more than 4 days. Otherwise the flavour might get too strong.

One word about the chicken stock: I used to make my own. But I soon found that good quality ready-made chicken stock in a tin or a cartoon is equally good. Here in Perth I can find them in all supermarkets. But whatever you do, don’t ever use stock made from stock cubes for this dish. Let me know if you want a good recipe for home-made chicken stock.

Bon Appetit!

oooh...that's a tough one.

I'd have to say my two favorite dishes are (Sichuan) ��� and 兔�.

I don't really have any bad experiences.

Why is everybody here able to use Chinese characters and only mine appear as question marks? :cry:

Can you all please use Pin Yin as well? This is an English board and as such you have to assume many of us cannot read Han Zi.

I once found a big chicken beak in my plate of stir fried eggplant. Had dinner with a friend from China last week who said he once found a live snail in his undercooked hamburger.

My favorite dish in Beijing is - and I'm serious - Beijing kaoya. I eat it as often as i can when I'm in town.

Thank's Fat Cat. Will save it immediatly. Won't be in HK for some time, unfortunately.

Eggplant with beaks, that's something. All hail the genetic engineers of China!

mala huoguo （麻辣��) at any of the big state run hotpot restaurants in Chengdu. Painfully spicy and delicious at the same time. Must be washed down with several bottles of locally produced beer.

I'll agree with the mala huoguo... although I also really like Mongolian Hot Pot (the kind with the mutton). One time I had nearly 2 pounds of shuan yang rou with beer and friends. My girlfriend (she's a hindu vegetarian) called me disgusting for two days afterwards... haha.

That's very ironic, an Indian calling someone disgusting. That's like George Bush calling Saddam Hussein a mass murderer.

What are you insinuating? Whoever you are, let me tell you something: you stink and your smell disguists me. :shock: :x :evil: