This word has been used q;uite a few times in AWADtalk, but not recently.
I just encountered it in a article in The Vocabula Review (thanks Jackie)
used in an interesting way, in the end of the paragraph:

This linguistic chaos has other interesting results. One of
these is that the most useful language to know in the
Gulf after English is Hindi, or its Pakistani variant, Urdu.
This is because nearly all nationals from the Indian
subcontinent, from the interiors of Afghanistan to the tip
of southern India and even into Sri Lanka, will at least
understand, if not speak, basic Hindi or Urdu. This is
not really an exaggeration. International news reports
frequently mention that the most popular movies in
Afghanistan are now Indian films in Hindi. A Tamil or
Malayalam speaker will use Hindi when addressing a
Bangladeshi, as will a Pashto speaker conversing with a
Sri Lankan. Although they may all speak basic English,
understandably they feel more comfortable with Hindi
or Urdu, the koine of the Hindustan subcontinent.

koine
n.
5Gr (hc) koinc (dialektos), (the) common (dialect) koinos: see COENO36 [also K3]
1 the language used throughout the Greek world, from Syria to Gaul, during the Hellenistic and Roman periods: its spoken form consisted of colloquial Attic, supplemented by Ionic words and borrowings from other dialects: the New Testament is written in the koine
2 a regional dialect or language that has become the common language of a larger area

to koine a phrase?

ko een? nay

moo

goo

gai pan

1 pound skinless, boneless chicken breast halves, sliced
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 tablespoon Chinese rice wine or dry sherry
1/4 teaspoon white pepper
1 pound button mushrooms
1 1/4 cup chicken broth
1 cup peanut oil
1/3 cup thinly sliced bamboo shoots
3/4 cup thinly sliced Chinese cabbage
2 teaspoons of fresh ginger finely minced ( 1tsp of ground if
you must)
1/2 teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoons water

Sprinkle chicken with 2 teaspoons cornstarch, rice wine, and pepper. Mix well. Simmer mushrooms in chicken broth 5 minutes. Drain, reserving broth. Heat oil in a wok. Add chicken and cook, stirring, just until pieces separate and chicken is no longer pink. Drain into a sieve over a bowl. Return 1 tablespoon oil to the wok. Add mushrooms, bamboo shoots, ginger and Chinese cabbage.Stir fry 2 minutes. Add chicken broth and sugar. Bring to a boil. Return chicken to the wok. Dissolve remaining cornstarch in water and add to the wok. Cook, stirring, until thickened.

Serves 4.

Good Lord, its a food thread!!

Food thread, dxb? Nobody'll ever notice way down here.

Little experiment:

How many of you have ever tried making those Chinese 'potato chips' that are really rice chips? They look like big, colorful tiddly-winks. You get a deep pool of peanut oil near-boiling in your wok, drop the tiddly-wink rice chips into the oil, and immediately they puff up big, like cauliflower ears?

Believe it or not, I had something like that in Mexico. I have no idea if they were rice-based or what........

Are these similar to prawn crackers?

Aren't prawn crackers crackers? I mean, aren't they square like crackers?

These rice chips are perfectly flat--like large, translucent tiddly-winks. But when they hit the oil, their shape completely changes into unusual, neary amorphic puffs--like puffy clouds about the size of a kiwi fruit or perhaps a little smaller. They are loaded with oil once puffed--very greasy. But the flavor is nice--and, yes, I can imagine some kind of shrimp flavor has been added in the processing.

What you have described sound like what we call prawn crackers. I've never seen them in an uncooked state but I imagine they start out as discs, but they don't end up the shape of whole kiwi fruit, so maybe there is something different. To look at they are like extra thick, puffy, light versions of potato crisps (what you call potato chips) and they snap cleanly but are rather oily. I am red-green colour blind, but my impression is that they probably have a very pale pink tinge which makes them look off-white to me. I guess the colour comes from the prawns. No one ever orders them but the Chinese take-away place always gives them to you anyway!

Potato chips to us are what you call French fries, though traditionally ours are of bigger cross section (about a quarter inch square) than the McDonald's variety. The thin French fries are worse for you as they have a greater surface area per kilo, therefore taking up more oil. But they cook quicker.

Gotta go. Have a good weekend.

No, dxb, not the shape of kiwi fruit, but about the size of kiwi fruit. The shapes are quite varied in these rice puffs. Maybe we are talking about the same Chinese junk food!

just google "prawn crackers", and you'll get a mouthful!

(actually, I use http://www.alltheweb.com. better, I think)

What do you like about AlltheWeb? Better than Google?

I at least like being able to say I'm gonna google something--kinda hard to say I'm gonna alltheweb something.


'Course, we no longer say we're gonna Xerox something; we just say we're gonna make a copy or just copy something. I suppose one day I'll just say that I websearched something--but googling does cut to the chase, and here not a paper one, but an electronic one.

Just checked out the photographs of prawn crackers. Nope, they're definitely not the tiddly-wink puffs I was thinking of. The puffs I've seen and have cooked are much more globular.

What do you like about AlltheWeb? Better than Google?

well, sciolistically, I would say that google feels more commercial, more "popular", and I guess that's why I avoid it. alltheweb feels more "real", and less like I'm caving in to the mass-movement of society.

[make odd face here]

Alltheweb gives "meaning of names" 15.6T on the googlometer to Google's 4T. FW*TW.

and macroverbumsciolist (cross-threading) get two(2) Google hits and zero(0) on alltheweb. now what?

I suspect what you're talking about are kerupuk (which would fit in nicely with Dr. Bill's alphabetical list about now). They come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes.

I couldn't find a decent picture of kerupuk, but here's one (complete with recipe (only in Indonesian unfortunately)) of rempeyek, which are similar in shape to some kerupuk and which I actually prefer:

http://cyberwoman.cbn.net.id/detil.asp?kategori=YourTips&newsno=66

Bingley