Recipe "Research"

In case people are wondering how I decide which recipes to try or how I kludge things together...

Well I usually start by searching google.

For Chinese stuff, I look first and see if any of my "usual" websites have the recipe.

They are:

The Woks of Life
https://thewoksoflife.com/

Carolyn Phillips
http://carolynjphillips.blogspot.com

Serious Eats
https://www.seriouseats.com/

Use Real Butter
http://userealbutter.com/

Rasa Malaysia
https://rasamalaysia.com/

If none of  those have it, I will start looking at Australian and New Zealand sites.  Then Malaysian and Singaporean sites.  Why? Because Australia and New Zealand are closer to Asia and the Chinese Australians or New Zealanders there tend to be from China or Taiwan.  Malaysia and Singaporean recipes will often be in English too, except the Chinese cuisine there has picked up a lot more local flavor, so they are a little different than what I'm looking for.  I mean I've tried some of them, and they are good.  But usually aren't quite the taste profile I'm aiming for.  Because I'm usually trying to figure out how to make something I ate as a child while visiting family in Taiwan.  And the Chinese food of Taiwan has it's own unique local color.

Then if I can't find the thing, I will eventually do a google search using Chinese.  

One of the things I do look for as I'm searching through recipes is commonalities and differences.  For example cumin lamb skewers.  All these recipes say lamb shoulder.  All of them have garlic, cumin, and red pepper flakes.  One of them added fennel, another one had something else.  One of them used soy sauce, another used salt.  Etc etc.  So I kinda thought about the skewers I've eaten in the past, then sort of looked at the various ingredients, looked at my pantry and made a spice blend.  I went with salt, sichuan AND black peppercorns, fresh garlic and rice wine.  Why rice wine?  Alcohol kills the gaminess, like allium plants. The reason rice wine probably isn't an ingredient in many of the recipes is because these are from the Xinjiang region.  The Uighers or Muslim ethnic minority lives there.  They are unlikely to be using alcohol.  But hey I'm not Muslim I'm Han Chinese, so in goes the booze!  Why fresh vs granulated garlic or garlic powder?  Bc GARLIC!  lol  Why 2 kinds of peppercorns, because I like the smell of fresh black peppercorns, and wanted the tingly aromatic flavor of  the sichuan.

Yes...  I cook kinda like I how I do fiber projects...  I think these things will go together.  Therefore I'm going to card, spin, weave, knit them together in a finished piece.  Some of it's quite random, some of it's really personal taste.