CIRCLE WITH A DOT

@virtualbri the chicken soup at Din Tai Fung is made in a similar way, even though it’s a Taiwanese place. It’s a good standard to try

@virtualbri no loss of moisture. It’s used for bringing out the most flavors in a very delicate way

The best way I can describe it is: after doing this for five hours on a slow simmer, plain water that has just been flavored with a single chicken breast piece about three inches wide, and placed with some herbs, can feel like the most intense chicken stock that might be prepared in the classical way with much more ingredients (intense but also ‘delicate’)

Why Double Boiling Is Good For Your Health

The Chinese philosophy of maintaining health through diet dates as far back as the 6th century BC, when the founder of Taoism, Lao Tzu, famously said, “...

MICHELIN Guide (guide.michelin.com)

Southern Chinese folks double steam soups too. They put ingredients for soup inside a steamer, which is itself placed inside a steamer. I love that style of soup so much

Honestly I wouldn’t bother doing that unless I specially went to a Chinese dry herbs store and got some really top shelf stuff to add to the soup

This style of preparation really makes exceptional soups especially with exceptional herbs and dried seafood and the best dried mushrooms

@chrisjrn you can make seasonings (soy sauce, sesame oil, etc) separately and add to the steamed food after. I prefer to do it that way. I steam for texture

yeah it needs to reach a boil then simmer, and learning the right steam times for each item

I steamed my entire dinner. Rice, vegetables, even dessert (custard buns).

I love steaming food (and it is not bland if you know what to do)

#Food #ChineseFood

@dicenbuttons yeah it’s good. I was reading her other book ‘Food of Sichuan’. I think she’s a good ambassador for this type of food (Sichuan regional food).

For other regions I would read Clarissa Wei’s cookbook, as well as Woks of Life, The Wok and A Very Chinese Cookbook

Woks of life is also a great site and the father son duo behind a Very Chinese Cookbook are on Americas Test Kitchen

Also watch videos from Chinese cooking demystified, spices n pans and Made With Lau

My wife saw me doing squats while reading a Chinese cookbook and she was like this is the most on brand thing for you

@Shunra thank you!

And in some weird way: my inarticulate answers to ‘why haven’t you left that place?’

Is that

There are not many places in the world where I can be all of those things. Some people think so, but not really, not for me specifically. I needed to come to this place because it’s the first place I’ve found, after a long time of searching, that’s let me be my autistic, queer, Singaporean, Chinese, American, self, with economic and social opportunities for my precise profession. It’s the first place I’ve found that’s got radical Asian queer activism that I can be a part of. It’s where I’ve not been asked where I’m really from. (YMMV with this one, but my Asian privilege in the Bay Area is that there are many wonderful ways to be here) It’s where most of my experience here has been additive. And yet, mourning the duality of the overall experience: no other place I want to be, right now, but it’s not easy.

The stuff that is not easy is terrible.

The stuff that is great is irreplaceable for me.

My immigrant grief is also that I no longer feel like leaving is an option, because the person I am here is also a whole person now. And that person does not want to leave the things and people that I love in this place.

My wife was trying to articulate her own immigrant grief, as a southeast Asian person who grew up in Paris. She feels she has a completely different personality in French, and in Paris. In her class, she said ‘I’m a bigger bitch in Paris’

They’ve started making tshirts of it and they wear it to class.

I think there’s something there:

- when I read what I write in Mandarin, I feel almost like I’m reading a different person. It’s not the same voice that I have in English. It’s also very distinct, like in English, but completely different. I am softer, and more ‘emo’ but also reserved.

- when I speak Teochew, which I consider my ‘co-native language alongside English’, I don’t need to think: words just come out and they are always right. All of the Vietnamese Chinese aunties in my neighborhood believe that I come from Swatow, actually, because I have an old woman’s Swatow accent. The accent of the 1930s Swatow that my grandparents left. It makes 70 year old Vietnamese Chinese aunties conscious about theirs.

- my love language is Indonesian. Truly, I don’t think I can ‘feel’ as strongly as I do in Indonesian. Is it because of all the lagu galau I listen to? It makes me ‘baper’ (bawa perasaan, to bring feelings, or, very emo)

- I don’t speak any Spanish yet, but I have a good feeling about it. I’m excited to meet the person I will become in Spanish. It’s probably someone I’ve never met before.

My wife is doing her Masters thesis on immigrant grief.

For me, language is part of it. I am a native speaker of English, but my modes for love, warmth, food, hearth and home are also in the other languages that I speak. I am a different person in each language. I experience the same places differently in each language.

A few days ago, planted face down on an acupuncture bed in Oakland, learning that I can speak about my body and its aches in Mandarin just like I used to in Bukit Timah.

Today, my neighbor told me in Teochew that she was going on vacation for the first time in decades. Everyone else in the building just sees her as a ‘poor English speaker’. I see her as the kind grandma who reminds me to celebrate festivals I don’t actually celebrate. (She’s Vietnamese: and she thinks we have the same holidays. There are overlaps)

Then we went to our favorite restaurant in San Francisco, where nearly everyone spoke Tamil. I don’t really speak Tamil at all, but my grandparents did, with our neighbors, and I understand it better than I speak. I know all of the food words. The Tamil lady came over and told me to buy a nicer ring for my wife because ‘we Indian women like nice rings’.

I order Indonesian coffee down the street from Indonesian coffee roasters. I get a lemper to go, it tastes exactly like in Indonesia (just at a shocking price in rupiah). My Thai is getting rusty, but still good enough to get Thai spicy food I need. No chilli, no life.

Whenever I can, I spend time in the Mission and in Fruitvale because I love being surrounded by Spanish and all the indigenous languages of Mexico, Guatemala and elsewhere.

Hearing all the languages spoken including the ones I don’t speak, remind me that I am not alone.

@saper unlike that situation, Spanish is spoken by millions of people where I live, so I think it’ll be immersive

I get to speak 3 of my other non-English languages regularly where I live, which is pretty much the only thing that keeps me in a good place. I get to access so much more of this country and the people in it.

@tsvga the way it’s set up (even before they got worse) doesn’t really make for useful language acquisition. Mango languages and Pimsleur are way better

@tsvga it’s never been useful for any language, I find

I’m going to learn Spanish. I don’t think it’s possible to live where I live, in this time, without participating in a world that is rich, vibrant, joyful, Indigenous, wonderful and welcoming. All of my favorite parts of living in California have been centered on what little I have experienced of Mexican, Salvadoran, Honduran and other cultures.