Bay 12 Games Forum

Quote from: counting on July 12, 2011, 02:24:09 pm

(And I guess they couldn't, even if they want to. Since we used soy source in almost every cooking. It's impossible to sell fake soy source to Chinese housewives and cooks, cause they will tell immediately)

I know there are plenty of Thai and Chinese companies who produce hydrolyzed (i.e. non-fermented) soy sauce, and a lot of it (especially from those countries) actually tends to contain a surprisingly high amount of certain carcinogens. I know they're exported to English-speaking/European countries, but I don't know how much they're used in their nations of origin.

Actually I've even heard that some bad companies in China, using chemical process to break down soybeans to make soy source. (They made big news in the past, and illegal). And they are actually dangerous when digested. So yes, since Chinese merchants are well known for their somewhat lack of conscience, so there are bound to be some bad and fake ones. But since it tastes really different. (If you ate food using soy source for flavor all your life, then you also can tell the differences), hence it won't last very long in the market here. However for someone not so familiar with the taste, like in foreign market, it may be hard to tell.

There are actually brands of "soy source" using the process that doesn't using natural fermented process (although not chemical, hence not illegal), so they don't actually put the chinese name 麴 which is the fermented materials in their ingredient list, hence it essentially doesn't qualify as real "soy source" 醬油 in the traditional sense. But I think the cooks here can tell they apart with no problems. (people who are older like myself can tell the difference by the smell and color too, but for younger generations it's hard to say, since they eat western fast food much more often.)

Very common? I thought bird's nest soup (the english name for the first thing you mentioned) was extremely, extremely expensive?

燕窩 bird's nest : expensive and rare
木耳 the fungus replacement, plenty and cheaper (still not very cheap)
They looked and taste somewhat alike but big different. (One is from bird saliva, one is grown like mushroom). And what I meant by very common is the term and the usage of them is well known by almost everyone in China and East Asia. (Sorry, I am not a native English-speaker, so sometimes I mixed up the meanings of words and phrases)

Oh, you know what I love? Marmite.

The slogan "love it or hate it" is appropriate as I know only 2, maybe 3 people who like it. And the other two are related to me.

Everybody else seems to be disgusted by the black-brown paste.

And as I was told that Marmite is somewhat like the Japanese miso. Do you ever tasted miso before? Do they taste alike?

Quote from: Mushroo on July 12, 2011, 11:10:42 am

Cultures with long-lived people tend to eat a lot of pickled/fermented/cultured foods, there is definitely a connection.

Correlation =/= Causation

Cultures with lots of pickled/fermented/cultured foods are likely ones that have invested into preservation and hygiene, as both are required to be able to create such foods. A society that is hygienic lives longer than one that isn't. Humans are very vulnerable to disease compared to other species, and as such it's what tends to off us instead of natural predators, of which we have none.

And speaking of fermented food, we chinese have another second processes food called 豆腐乳, simply a kind of fermented tofu.

Despite being partially of German descent, I have never tried Sauerkraut. I must rectify this.

I'm trying Blue Cheese sauce for pretty much the first time right now. It's not....bad, it's just really overpowering, even on crackers.

What's that taste like, blue cheese? Not much recipes using cheese here. And be honest that I felt cheese kind of taste weird.

OK, I am in too. But trying to giving out invite sometimes work, sometimes don't. Still only able to add people from friends who are in google+ already. I only able to send invite to none gmail E-mail. No idea why 

Nori is very similar in taste and texture - possibly a little less extreme/more mellow. Its the same species of seaweed but prepared differently - isnt it dried instead of smushed?

Nori in Japan are dried, but used in soup here it's smashed. And Japanese export a lot of the dried nori to the neighboring country as packaged snacks. 海苔 is Nori and 紫菜 is wet not-dried nori.

A common food stand in Taiwan often looked like this and has some basic snacks
The chicken feet of duck's feet on the bottom right next of the green vegetable. (we called them 鳳爪- phoenix claws). The duck/chicken wings 雞/鴨翅 on the bottom left. (soy-sourced not fried). On top of the wings in middle left are two kinds of intestines and stomachs 粉腸, 豬肚. On the top left in a roll are chicken/duck liver 雞肝, heart 雞心, and kidney 雞胗. Most of time there will be others like chicken/duck's ass 雞屁股 (I am not kidding, a triangle shape meat which is the tip of the ass, and it has a poetic name as "smell from 7 miles away" 七里香). Also due to possible grossness for some people, the head 雞/鴨頭 and neck 雞/鴨脖子 of the chicken/duck are common as well. (We have food stand called 東山鴨頭, who specialized in selling the duck's head and neck and other part of the duck).

In the middle the black block thing is the infamous Pig's blood cake 豬血糕. Sometimes it's made of chicken/duck blood 鴨血糕/雞血糕, and mixed with rice, and then waiting it to clot. Sometimes it doesn't add rice in it but just clotted-blood block 鴨血/雞血. It can be fried or just cooked with soy-sourced. And the round orange thing below the pig's blood cake is a kind of tempura 甜不辣 originally from Japan, but hardly like the original in shape and cooking. The dark small block on the right of the pig's blood cake is the dried tofu 豆干 (Also there are not-dried but iced tofu 凍豆腐). They have different sizes and are almost always the cheapest snacks in a food stand. And on top of the dried tofu, the yellow pieces are sour vegetable 酸菜, a lot like pickled cabbage, and are often free additive with a bag of snacks.

There are something missing in the picture, like 米腸 which is rice stuffed into pig's intestines, a little like sausage but in white colors. (The actual sausage as well). A kind of pork ball 貢丸 made of pork, starch and cuttlefish, and not like western meat ball it's very compact. Also the skin of chicken 雞皮, the ear of the pig 豬耳朵, the chicken crest 雞冠, the leg, the chest, and the egg of course. There are some not so unusual of varied kind of vegetables, mushrooms, maize and other soybean made snacks. (made into the form of other snacks, so people who are vegetarian can eat them.) And a kind of kelp (Kombu) as 海帶.

It's not a soup, they're usually boiled, then fried. And in bigger chunks.

Spoiler: Like this. (click to show/hide)

And the smell when they're boiling is apparently just this side of a bio-weapon. Which isn't far from the truth, as they have to be boiled good and long to kill off the Yersinia-genus bacteria endemic to hogs. Yersinia pestis is better known as bubonic/pneumonic plague.

Nothing says good eatin' like a poop-chute full of the Black Death. 

So it is more like this 炒/滷豬大腸 ?
Which is fried/soy-source pig's intestines? (They are boiled with water first, pre-processed than fried or stewing with soy source), The stewed pig's intestines cut into small chunks, are a common kind of snakes you can buy on food stands as well.
There are pig's ear on the top right, and intestines on the bottom, and pig's tongue on the left of the plate.

I am not familiar with the term "chitlins", its made of pig's intestines as some kind of soup? I don't know what's weird about that either. There is a famous Taiwan street food called 大腸麵線, it's literally means a noddle soup with pig's intestines.

It looks like this

I don't know if they are similar or not? But I don't think anyone who lives around where I am will feel it bizarre. (People who DO afraid of it are probably more weird as I concerned.)

An tripe are stomach right? Pig's or Cow's? I think we have a recipe of cow's stomach soup
We believe that it is a medicine of increasing human immune system. As well as making your stomach strong (a quite twisted idea about what organ you ate is beneficial for the same organ you have)