[Sca-cooks] Provolone...

[Jones, Craig]

Also sprach Stefan li Rous:
>such as the "shredded zha toy (salted mustard knobs, sometimes rolled
>in powdered chili)"

I like Zha Toy; in the South (of China, that is) you're more likely
to find salted radish, but I prefer the zha toy, which is somewhat
similar in flavor and texture, but to me has more bite to it. Mustard
knobs, BTW, are stem growths slightly similar to, say, kohlrabi or
maybe Brussels Sprouts (which are themselves not all that similar,
but still...), which seem to grow as sort of a secondary crop in
certain cabbage-y type plants. In the case of mustard knobs, from
mustard green plants.

>>They are, however, high
>>in sugar, which makes them prone to burn and also something a
>>diabetic should be aware of. Maybe the package says something about
>>carb content that'll help you get the perspective for this?
>Oh! This hadn't crossed my mind. I usually thing of meats as being
>mostly protein not carbohydrates. Thanks, I'll take a closer look
>at the package info.

You'd best. They have a lot of sugar in them (many cured Chinese meat
products do) to keep them tender. There's also an astonishing variety
of Chinese jerkies (turtle, anyone?) that almost taste like candy.

>
>>My favorite method is just to steam them on top of a pot of white
>>rice. Chinese rice is often cooked, at least when they're not using a
>>rice cooker, by covering the washed rice with water by a depth of
>>half an inch or so (depending on the size, depth, etc., of your pot,
>>the amount of rice, and so on), boiling until the water is
>>evaporated/absorbed and you can actually hear the rice beginning to
>>stick to the bottom of the pot -- it sounds like old rice crispies
>>commercials -- and placing the sausages directly on top of the rice,
>>covering the pot, lowering the heat to minimal, and coming back in 20
>>minutes or so. The fats and juices from the cooking sausage will have
>>soaked into the rice, flavoring it nicely, and the sausages will be
>>cooked through.
>
>This sounds like a good one to try since I have rice. But if you are
>placing the sausages on top as the rice is beginning to stick to
>the bottom of the pot, isn't it just going to get worse and burn?
>Or is that enough grease from the sausage that gets down to the pan
>surface fast enough to unstick this rice and keep it from burning?
>
>Or do these juices just flavor the top portion of the rice and you
>
>end up throwing out what sticks to the pan?

Ideally, what happens is you boil the bejeezus out of the rice until
it starts to stick to the pan, place the sausages directly on top of
the rice (now that the water has been absorbed), and drastically
reduce the heat. Yes, sometimes the fat and other juices do get all
the way down to the bottom, and forms, with the rice down there, a
sort of crust which is good for various other dishes. You can remove
it pretty easily from the pan when it gets cold, which gives you
sheets of rice crust which are good deep-fried and used in various
soups and such, or you can just add water and reboil until it comes
away from the pan, also, ideally, in big sheets. This last is
considered a treat for the elderly and children.

Adamantius

--
"No one who cannot rejoice in the discovery of his own mistakes
deserves to be called a scholar."
	-DONALD FOSTER