"Asian foods" news and stories

There is something joyful about a stir-fry -- the percussive tap of a wok chuan (spatula) sliding vegetables around carbon steel, the hiss and spit as the food cooks, the fragrance of citrus in a spicy orange-beef-and-broccoli medley or the smell of the sea in a combo of scallops, cilantro and black bean sauce. Blogger qlinart swears this Thai-inspired stir-fry of Asian eggplant, chicken, red peppers, chiles and basil can be prepared in less than a half hour, and that the recipe is easy enough for a novice cook to make.

Years ago, I was given a copy of Irene Kuo's The Key to Chinese Cooking. Her detailed illustrations and step-by-step guides -- plus her amazing recipes -- taught me well. For more on the lure, and lore, of the stir-fry, pick up Grace Young's beautiful The Breath of a Wok.

Become a member of the Slashfood Flickr pool to get a shot of having your photos featured in Feast Your Eyes.

If you're becoming more and more into Asian foods, or are new to Asian foods, then I've just come across a cool site that serves as a decent resource, www.asiafood.org. The site has recipes, links to other Asian food resources, feature articles as well as restaurant reviews (though they seem to focus only on a few sleect places like NYC). However, the greatest information is AsiaFood's glossary. It doesn't have pictures, and the definitions are brief, but for quick information, it seems to do the drink. For example, maybe you need to find out what gamboge is. Well, it's an acidic fruit from southern India and Sri Lanka! 

AsiaFood's glossary helped me out a little today when I was trying to figure out what the heck grass jelly is.

I swear Asians have the weirdest things to drink. This was first made clear to me when I would take a small can of an orange juice-like drink called Sac Sac to school. The drink has lots of the tiny mandarin orange pulp sacs, which is really not all that different from fresh squeezed range juice that hasn't been strained of its pulp, but the name, Sac Sac was weird. I won't even go into the grape drink that has peeled whole grapes in it that feels like I'm eating eyeballs.

Now comes Grass Jelly Drink, which I tried for the first time a couple of days ago and am now thoroughly addicted. Grass jelly (in Chinese: sh?o xi?n c?o) is an Asian food made by boiling a special type of grass in the mint family with potassium carbonate. As the liquid cools, it gels. The jelly is cut into tiny cubes and mixed with a sweet, flavored liquid to make the drink. Mine was litchi flavored.

The only bad thing about the drink is that the grass jelly sinks to the bottom of the can. You have to shake it before you drink it, but unless you pound the whole thing in one big gulp from the can, the grass jellies sink back to the bottom. 

I've also seen grass jelly as an "add on" in boba teas.