Chinese food: making your own

[HelperGuy]

The other thread about the Chinese place in Laguna Centro got me to thinking: Revimmigrant cooks her own Chinese and Asian all the time, as well as eating out. I spent three years learning how to make wok food back in the day, and I have a few favorite dishes. Many cooking items for Asian are findable here, although some (like teriyaki sauce) are truly expensive. Back home, "they" have a new Asian grocery store, giant place, but no such luxury here. I started last week making my own teriyaki sauce, since it's mostly soy and sweetener anyway, and saving a ton of money.

The question for the foodies here: what do you favour making, what do you wish you could get, what secrets might you have picked up? For example: five-spice powder, easily bought back home, needs to be made here (the stuff costs a fortune at Toyo). Star anise is one of the main ingredients, and it's not cheap either, but five-spice powder is a staple in Chinese cooking. It lasts forever, so now I make my own.

Another: oyster sauce can be found at WalMart in a ridiculously expensive plastic bottle, or the Lee Kum Kee brand can be found at SuperLake at a price almost as low as back home.

[Betsy]

I buy star anise at the little store on the corner across from Zona Zero in Chapala, it is not expensive there. I suspect it may not be the freshest star anise available but I don't have anything to compare it to, I have never bought it antwhere else ...ever.,

Teriyaki sauce is easy to make and way better than the comercial kind. I use food.com a lot for recipes or I just google it. One of my favourite recipes is a P.F. Chang copycat recipe for lettuce wraps.

Walmart has been having really beautiful sno peas lately , we love those. I have gotten pretty good at making pho and really good at making Thai spring rolls. The only ingredient issue I have is that my basil plants always get la plaga and die...I have long forgotten about all the things I 'wish" I could get here, and that list was once very long.

The owners at Simply Thai love to talk cooking and have given me some great tips.

It takes practice, but I enjoy making sushi rolls also, I use boiled or Tempura shrimp and the usual vegitables. I don;t know how authentic my efforts at Asian fare are but they are usually pretty good.

[More Liana]

In my much younger days, I was a Chinese chef in a restaurant in New York, specializing in Sichuan and Hunan regional cuisines. Weird, huh? But true.

Now I prepare Chinese food about twice a week--sometimes less, sometimes more. When I lived in Guadalajara, I shopped for Chinese vegetables at the Mercado de Abastos. There's a stand in the far back of the retail section that specializes in those. In addition, there is a store on Av. Arboledas, to the far west of the Abastos, that sells some Chinese staple ingredients--for example, hoisin sauce in a five-pound can, Pearl River soy sauce, black vinegar, and sesame oil in large-ish containers. Five pounds of hoisin sauce was always way too much for me, but they also sell standard-size containers of things, and at much better prices than you find in Ajijic.

Spices: Mamá Coneja sells star anise. Most any tianguis sells fresh ginger root and scallions. I use a lot of chile serrano to add the famous Sichuan kick to my dishes. Friends coming from the States have brought me Sichuan pepper, now that it is once again legal to sell it in the USA.

I have never in my entire life used teriyaki sauce. It's not Chinese...and the iteration that is available in Mexico isn't really Japanese, either.

In Mexico City, we have the Mercado San Juan, where almost anything fresh that's necessary for Chinese cooking is available. We also have several Asian supermarkets--not Ranch 99 or Northgate, but good nonetheless. I can get wonton skins, fresh tofu, and a host of other things, right here in the neighborhood. In other neighborhoods, there are other Asian stores. And we recently discovered that there is a thriving Koreatown just to one side of the Zona Rosa--think baby bok choy, Chinese broccoli, etc.

We are very lucky here. There was a time when 'chop suey' (another non-Chinese dish) was about all you could get in Mexico.

[HelperGuy]

I buy star anise at the little store on the corner across from Zona Zero in Chapala, it is not expensive there. I suspect it may not be the freshest star anise available but I don't have anything to compare it to, I have never bought it antwhere else ...ever.,

Thanks for the tip! Will I know it's the right store if I walk over there?

One other item I miss is tapioca starch: it is so potent compared to corn starch, and so expensive here, yet they almost give it away back home.

[Betsy]

The store has plastic bins of nuts and candy in the window ...I'm sure you have seen it... it;s right on the corner at the main street.

[Guest RevImmigrant]

I wish there were more consistency in what the stores here offer. Because of the lack of consistency (one time they have it, the next time they don't), I usually buy several jars if I see something I want and use fairly often. Even at the Toyo market, which is run by Japanese or at least Japanese-Mexicans, I have found this lack of consistency. Perhaps it is the supplier; it's hard to say.

I don't really notice prices at the grocery store since I just buy ordinary things (no caviar, no lobster, no truffles, etc) so I have a small bottle of 5-spice powder from Toyo, but use it sparingly since the star anise flavor is not my favorite. I like Chile Arbol for some of the hot and spicy Sichuan dishes and every grocery store has them. Getting the chiles here is not a problem for the most part even if the ones we can get are not what some recipe calls for, i.e. I found a recipe for Sichuan hotpot broth that called for bird chiles so I used the chile arbol instead and it was very good.

Thank you for the tip about the serranos, cristina. I'll try them in some dish sometimes.

When I was in Houston 2 years ago, I stocked up on Chiu Chow Chile Oil (and still have some). I got a red at Customs when I came back and the inspector had a surprised look on his face when he found all of these jars wrapped in bubble wrap, particularly when I told him what they were, but he passed them w/o comment or import duty. I also wish we had Sichuan peppercorns here, although I still have some I brought from Germany.

I bought a bread machine so I could make the dough for steamed buns; the filling is easy to make whether you use char su for Char Su Bao or the meatball for Baozi. I wish we could get the dough rounds for Har Kow and Fan Koh dumplings. I tried making some last month and the dough was a disaster, although the filling was good, so I ended up using wonton wrappers and steaming them (they were good too). Sichuan bean sauce would be nice to have too. I've been using Ground Bean Sauce, which I found at Toyo, and adding some ground chile to it.

Since you can get the large cans of things like hoisin sauce (I've seen them at Toyo too), perhaps some of us should get together, make a list of what we want and buy the large cans and divide them between us. We can get containers to put the stuff in once we have it. I'm always good for a shopping trip to Guadalajara and my Beetle doesn't use much gas! Let me know.

Helper Guy and Betsy, are you going to the new food group organizational meeting Monday?

[bmh]

There is a good Korean store on Las Americas on the left handside going towards Zapopan from Centro just before you get tot eh Cristobal Colon Statue and cross Lopez Mateo. There are also Korean restaurants in that area.

[HelperGuy]

Helper Guy and Betsy, are you going to the new food group organizational meeting Monday?

To paraphrase Groucho, "I can't belong to any group that would have me..."

[Guest RevImmigrant]

Personally, I've never gotten into Korean food. While they use many of the same sauces and spices as the Chinese and Japanese, it tastes so different. Even their soy sauce tastes different for some reason. The only Korean dish I like is bulgogi.

Toyo has some Korean food now too.

[bmh]

This place has Korean customers and Korean owners as well as a frozen food section. It is pure Korean not japanese/Chinese whatever the mixture is.

We buy the soy sauce there as well as special noodles and many other Asian ingredients. ,rice, meat and vegetables.It is not a restaurant just a grocery store.

[ajijicbound]

I've looked everywhere for instant tapioca but bought the pearls and will pulverize them. I've seen instructions on the internet that says that's all you need to do, also you can make your own five spice with spices from the spice store next to gossips and control how much flavor of each you want in it.

Now, if anyone knows where to buy fish sauce here, let me know, besides Superlake.

[Guest RevImmigrant]

Toyo in Guadalajara has it and also the small deli on Av. Terranova in Guadalajara. It's Thai fish sauce not VietNamese, very salty, but good..

[gringal]

Just wondering: Why is it that when a thread gets going about how unsatisfactory a certain kind of exotic (for Mexico) food in restaurants is, people that clearly don't understand the concept of "retirement" hop in with fine sounding ways to cook it ourselves? I don't wanna cook it. I want to sit down in a restaurant, have someone bring me some, and take away the dirty dishes afterward.........to be cleaned along with all the kitchen utensils involved in cooking it !!!

Just funning. I cook a lot.

[ajijicbound]

Gringal, this topic is about making Chinese Food yourself. It's on topic. Anyway, I got star anise at the spice store next to Gossips last week, they also have another type of anise and cardamon. I bet she can get you anything you want.

[HelperGuy]

Now, if anyone knows where to buy fish sauce here, let me know, besides Superlake.

I bought two bottles of Ponzu at CostCo for $40 the other day; it's generally used as a fish sauce, although this one is mostly soy with other flavourings. WalMart has it for about $30 a bottle in their "Asian section".

Just wondering: Why is it that when a thread gets going about how unsatisfactory a certain kind of exotic (for Mexico) food in restaurants is, people that clearly don't understand the concept of "retirement" hop in with fine sounding ways to cook it ourselves? I don't wanna cook it

I agree; especially last year when someone was looking for a good pizza place, and another replied 'make your own'... But I didn't start the thread because of bad local food; I actually quite enjoy making my own Chinese food. And RevImmigrant, a computer customer of mine, turns out to be an interesting gal who is always cooking Asian and even picked up some stuff for me a few weeks back at Toyo, where she goes all the time... so I thought it would be interesting.

Anyway, I got star anise at the spice store next to Gossips last week, they also have another type of anise and cardamon.

I didn't realize that star anise is so easy to get around here, so I only checked at the "usual" places where I look for unusual items (like SL). Duh.

[Bisbee Gal]

Ponzu isn't the same as fish sauce; Ponzu is a citrus-based sauce, though it has some fishy stuff in it (bonita flakes). But no where near as intense as fish sauce (which is made from fermented fish).

I've seen fish sauce locally at Super Lakes, though I bring it down from the US. A little fish sauce goes a long way.

[More Liana]

Ponzu isn't the same as fish sauce; Ponzu is a citrus-based sauce, though it has some fishy stuff in it (bonita flakes). But no where near as intense as fish sauce (which is made from fermented fish).

I've seen fish sauce locally at Super Lakes, though I bring it down from the US. A little fish sauce goes a long way.

Exactly. 'A sauce for fish' is not the same as 'fish sauce'.

Vietnamese fish sauce tastes just god-awful--like something rotted in a barrel--if you put a drop on your tongue, but it gives a great sweet finish to the dishes it is used in as an ingredient.

[MtnMama]

A lot of the fresh vegetables can be found at the Organico Market on Tuesday but not every week. They have beautiful sprouts, sno peas, bok choy and much more and it is fresh. Picked within a day, not sitting around a warehouse being sprayed with chemicals.

[maggilu]

Do any of the people who cater or deliver food do Chinese?

[ichbinsaege]

I miss Mock Duck. I used it a lot when cooking any Asian food back home. I was a vegan/vegetarian for many years. I eat meat now, but I still love the taste and texture of mock duck. I brought a couple of cans down here when I moved here, but they are long gone. I did, however, save the label from a can so I can see if someone can get it down here. Unless one of you know where I can get it. I'd be super happy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mock_duck

[Alegria]

I bought Fish Sauce at SuperLake a couple days ago. They were tucked away on the bottom shelf of the Asian foods aisle. A 23 oz bottle was only 36 pesos.