Overseas Chinese Web Guide

I recently purchased “Simple Chinese Cooking” by Kylie Kwong and tested out some recipes. As a point of reference, I also own and use “Fragrant Harbor Taste” by Ken Hom, “Chinese Cuisine” by Huang Su-Huei (Wei-Chuan Cookbook) and Chinese Cooking at the Academy by the California Culinary Academy.

1. Visually Stunning. “Simple Chinese Cooking” is a visually stunning masterpiece that features gorgeous photos of the finished dishes. These really inspired me to cook and try out her recipes.
2. Step-by-Step. Kylie Kwong’s cookbook includes step-by-step photos for some recipes—a helpful if you are a novice in the kitchen and can’t quite parse the language of cookbooks.
3. New Ingredients. To test out some of her recipes, I had to visit the local Asian grocery store. I keep a well-stocked kitchen, but she called for some ingredients not found in my other cookbooks, such as ketjap manis, fish sauce, and malt vinegar. The ketjap manis and fish sauce may come from a pan-Asian influence. Not sure about the malt vinegar. Actually, I had to find the malt vinegar at a specialty food store. My local Asian grocery store didn’t carry it, and I haven’t come across many Chinese recipes that call for vinegar except for sweet and sour sauces.
4. Chinese Salad. The book is expansive in its reach and is divided into the following categories: stocks, soups, beef, pork, chicken, duck, seafood, eggs, tofu, vegetables, salads, rice, noodles and wontons, and side dishes and pickles. When I saw the salad listing, I had to see what dishes she had in mind. By salads, she means cold vegetable dishes, such as bean sprout salad, chilled cucumber salad, and tofu, black cloud ear fungus, Asian herb and sesame salad.
5. A Good Second Cookbook. If you are looking for 10 ways to cook beef, this isn’t your cookbook. Just five beef recipes. And four pork recipes. By way of comparison, the Wei-Chuan had 39 beef and pork recipes and Fragrant Harbor Taste has 24 meat recipes. In other words, “Simple Chinese Cooking” is not an exhaustive compilation of Chinese recipes. However, if you already own one of those encyclopedias of Chinese cooking, “Simple Chinese Cooking” is a good second cookbook to add to your collection.
6. Stir-Fried Hokkien Noodles with Prawns, Chili and Bean Spouts. I couldn’t find Hokkien noodles at the market, so I substituted Shanghai noodles instead. I think any thick Chinese noodles will do. I also used red peppers instead of red chilis since I am not a fan of spicy foods. The dish came out well and received good reviews. Oh, the other thing I noticed is that a lot of recipes in this cookbook call for red onions. My other cookbooks usually list brown onions instead.
7. Sweet and Sour Tomatoes. Listed under Side Dishes and Pickles, this is really a simple tomato salad. Tasty, even with raw red onions.
8. Steamed Silken Tofu with Stir-Fried Spinach. I loved this dish. Used regular salt instead of sea salt. Also, used baby spinach instead of the standard bunch. Really easy to make, if you have a steamer.
9. Steamed Fish Fillets with Ginger and Spring Onions. Unlike every other recipe for steamed fish that I’ve previously tried, this one calls for pouring a 1/3 cup of water over the fish before steaming. I guess the net effect is that the fish is steamed and poached at the same time. The fish did cook faster than I expected. Will need to test this recipe again with a different type of fish.
10. A-. Hopefully, I’ll be able to test a few recipes each week and eat my way around the cookbook. Although some recipes call for non-standard ingredients, overall, the cookbook does offer a simple recipes to delicious Chinese dishes. I do wish that she would have included Chinese names to all her dishes so that I can tell what each dish aspires to be. Otherwise, every author can translate their dishes differently.

P.S. I rarely set foot inside a bookstore these days. So, if you are a cookbook author, create a website that lists all dishes included in your cookbook. Before I buy a cookbook, I want to know what new dishes I can prepare. This will really help me decide whether or not I want to buy your cookbook.

New York Times: BiggerThanLasVegas?That’s Macao’s Bet. Las Vegas’s days as the capital of excess may be numbered. The $2.4 billion Venetian Macao Resort, scheduled to open here Tuesday, will give Sin City more than a run for its money.

My favorite line from the article? “But Macao’s average gambler is still a day-tripper from Hong Kong or nearby Chinese cities in the Pearl River delta. These visitors are so frugal that they often bring their own food and do not rent hotel rooms.”

So I just received my first wireless phone bill book from AT&T. Talk about not being able to teach an old dog new tricks. Despite all the time AT&T spent working with Apple, none of Apple’s minimalist design philosophy rubbed off. I mean a 35 page bill? I’m waiting for Greenpeace to ding Apple again for selecting such an environmentally unfriendly partner. A big chunk of the bill was the itemized list of all data transfers over the (lagging) EDGE network. Since the iPhone plan provides unlimited domestic data transfers, why itemize it? 8:41 AM - 1 KB. 8:49 AM - 24 KB. 9:08 AM - 23 KB. 9:23 AM - 49 KB. 9:42 AM - 23 KB. 10:00 AM - 31 KB. Talk about worthless information. Save a tree.

I stopped by Sushi House in the Palo Alto Town and Country complex for lunch today. I saw some respectable reviews on Yelp and decided to give it a shot. I ordered the tempura and salmon teriyaki bento box with a side order of hamachi (yellowtail). The hamachi and tempura were good. The miso soup was exceedingly salty. Wasn’t a big fan of the salad. I don’t think the dressing was well incorporated so some bites were seasoned and others were just plain lettuce. But, worse of all, the salmon teriyaki was overcooked. I don’t like dry, overcooked fish. And, to top it off, they charged me 75 cents for a cup of tea. C’mon. Do you really have to nickel-and-dime me on the tea? Let’s say that while the tempura was good, it wasn’t good enough to overcome the overcooked fish.

I attended the free Vienna Teng concert at Bol Park in Palo Alto last night. For those who have never heard of her, Vienna earned a B.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University, only to forgo software engineering for a career in music. Awesome performance. I’m always excited to see successful Asian Americans in careers other than medicine, law or engineering. Not that I have anything against doctors, lawyers or engineers, but I believe these artists, journalists, writers, actors, chefs, etc. all enrich our collective culture and experience. I’ve been listening to her music for some time (iTunes), but the concert was the first time I heard her live. She sounds very different live. She sang with a deeper and richer voice than I was used to.

New York Times: In Silicon Valley, Millionaires Who Don’t Feel Rich. By almost any definition — except his own and perhaps those of his neighbors here in Silicon Valley — Hal Steger has made it. Mr. Steger, 51, a self-described geek, has banked more than $2 million.

A million just ain’t what it used to be. If Mr. Steger had dreams of being a millionaire when he was 18 (back in 1974), to reach that goal in today’s dollars would require $4.2 million according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. So, even though he has banked $2 million, he’s less than half way there.

If you are targeting to save a million by the time you reach retirement, you may want to recalibrate your goals to account for inflation. When everyone’s a millionaire, being a millionaire won’t be anything special anymore.

The Corner Place is a Korean restaurant located at 19100 S. Gridley Road, Cerritos, CA. (Cross-Street: South Street). I had lunch there last week and had ordered one of the dongchimigooksoo combos. For just under 11 bucks, you get a full-size lunch box AND a bowl of their delicious cold noodles. Usually, I just order the dongchimigooksoo, but I couldn’t pass up the combo. Although the broiled croaker was delicious, I could have found something similar at a number of other Korean restaurants. However, I just can’t get enough dongchimigooksoo, which is a bowl of delicious noodles floating in a cold, vinegary broth. I’ve looked and looked everywhere and haven’t found another Korean restaurant that has anything remotely similar. I really need them to open a branch in Silicon Valley.

Considering the prevalence of credit and debit cards in everyday commerce, you would think that the someone has already figured out the ideal layout for all the various keys needed to process a transaction. I see some version of this keypad at ATM machines, supermarkets, retail stores, wholesale supply stores, gas stations, etc. But, none of them are exactly like this one. Surprisingly, the gas station preserved the layout of the basic 0–9 keys for punching in PIN numbers and ZIP codes. Whew! However, they managed to violate every other convention.

Rule No. 1—Group Related Items. So, this gas station has three buttons for payment types: Pay Inside, Pay Here Credit and Pay Here Debit. But the pay inside button was yellow, and the other payment buttons were green. Additionally, if you wanted to pay inside, wouldn’t you go to the attendant and pay with your cash or card first? Who’s going to go to the pump, press the pay inside button and then head to the attendant?

Rule No. 2—Follow Standard Color Conventions. Green means go; red means stop. Why didn’t the designer follow this universal convention? Here, the gas station has two green buttons and two red buttons. The green buttons are for payment and the red buttons are for help and cancel. Because color has a different meaning at this gas station, all users must spend a few seconds reading all the buttons to find the one they are looking for. All these seconds add up.

Rules No. 3—Simplify, Simplify, Simplify. The designer should have made Yes and Enter the same button and coded it green. Cancel, no and clear should have been integrated into one button and have been coded red. Get rid of the Pay Inside button. Change the color of the Help button to Yellow. Change the Pay Here Credit and Pay Here Debit buttons to blue. Also, simplify the text to just Credit and Debit. I think most people will figure out what that means and having Credit and Debit appear larger will make it easier to read.

Yahoo! News / Reuters: Walmart.com to Let Customers Review Merchandise. Shoppers will be able to review and rate the merchandise sold on Wal-Mart Stores Inc’s Web site beginning on Thursday, as the retailer works to expand its online capabilities.

Finally. My two main sources of online reviews are Consumer Reports and Amazon.com. Consumer Reports offers authoritative, independent reviews based on objective product testing. Great for comparing across brands or product lines. Amazon.com offers more anecdotal reviews.

The weakness of online reviews is that they are online. Before I bought my Apple iPhone, if I spotted a product I was interested in at a retail store, I had to go home and look it up. Now, I can read the review while I am still inside the store. If only Wal-Mart will publish their online reviews INSIDE their retail stores, then all shoppers can benefit from our collective experience. That’s an idea!

When EDGE takes way too long to deliver a web page, I turn to Google (again). The Cached link has come in handy on more than one occasion when I got tired of seeing the page loading icon. Click back to the search results page and view the Google cached version. The next best thing to having lynx on the iPhone, I guess.