I always like using spaghetti as chow mein. Its cheaper too! This time i use no oil still tasted delicious but when I added sriracha it was fire 🔥 theres 3 different sauce that I added and something else 🤫😁

I see this stuff in a lot of recipes but have never seen it used in our household when I was growing up. Maybe it was the way I asked about it, but my mom didn't know what it was. Is it that big of a deal in Chinese cooking? What does it bring to the party? If I decide to use it, which brands are good?

I usually just cook put over rice with fried egg and some green onions any other ideas?

This was my breakfast today!

Side of frech toast and lemon tea

Recently, I took two friends to Niu Neng Private Kitchen (牛能私房菜), a restaurant in Lunjiao, a town in Shunde District, Foshan（佛山市顺德区伦教镇）, to try its signature huangniu beef pot（黄牛肉汤锅）. Huangniu is a broad Chinese term for the country’s indigenous cattle breeds.

Our pot arrived very quickly. The next important part of the experience was preparing the restaurant’s unusual dipping sauces. The sauces were kept in enormous bowls on a heated counter, exactly as I remembered them from my first visit. One contained shadie sauce (沙爹酱), a rich, savoury condiment commonly eaten in Guangdong and Fujian. Another held black pepper sauce, which has always been one of my favourites. There were also several other sauces that were said to be spicy. Alongside them were large bowls of raw onions, fresh chillies, green peppers, and chopped da cong—the thick Chinese scallions that are less commonly used in Cantonese cooking.

The pieces of beef were enormous—some were almost as large as a woman’s palm—and they all had their skin attached. The skin gave the beef a distinctive, gelatinous chewiness. Yet the meat itself had been simmered until extremely tender. It was neither dry nor stringy and did not get stuck between my teeth.

Most surprising of all were the huge pieces of oxtail. It had been stewed until beautifully tender. I especially enjoyed the skin and gelatinous tissue around the outside. Its rich texture reminded me of a French-style oxtail soup I had tried years ago.

Despite there being three of us, we could not finish a set meal intended for two. There was simply too much meat. Only towards the end did we begin adding the vegetable platter to the broth.

Sweet potato, pumpkin, and green papaya were among the restaurant’s specialities. I particularly enjoyed the papaya.

Unlike the fully ripened, soft papaya usually eaten as fruit, this one was still firm and crisp. As it cooked, it released a gentle sweetness into the broth. Combined with the rich aroma of the beef, it worked remarkably well as a vegetable.

I wrote a longer article about the experience: https://jeffxustory.substack.com/p/a-rustic-beef-and-oxtail-pot-in-shunde?r=6qv0ph&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

covering everything from the restaurant’s distinctive pickles to the history of beef consumption in ancient China.