Chinese Cooking: The Real Deal

My friend Lily, born and raised in China, makes some very tasty food.  She generously offered to give a demonstration for a few friends, and allowed me to bring my camera along.  I only wish this computer had smell-o-vision, so I could do justice to the heavenly aromas wafting from the kitchen.  But we’ll just have to make do with pictures.  Hold on to your hat, there are a lot of them.

Lily made four dishes in one hour, start to finish.  Each one is well within the capabilities of the amateur cook, and none of them require exotic ingredients.  She uses a wok, but says an American-style frying pan works as well.  So you have no excuse not to give these recipes a try.

Dish 1:  Fried Potatoes

 

 

Start with the most intimidating knife you can find.  I thought this cleaver was pretty impressive, but then Lily pulled out the one she uses for going through bone.  You’ll be happy to know there is no bone-severing in this tutorial.

Begin with five fresh, peeled russet potatoes.  Slice very thinly.  Don’t cut your fingers if you can at all avoid it.

Then stack the slices and cut them the other way, julienne style. 

Rinse with cold water and drain, to remove the excess starch.  (P.S. this also works for your shirts).

 Heat oil in a wok or skillet.  Lily uses Canola for high-heat cooking, and olive oil for cold dishes.  She never, ever, ever uses vegetable oil.  Emphatically never.

Toss in potatoes.  Put some salt in your hand and throw it in.  I’m estimating about 1 1/2 tsp.   

Add vinegar.  This is sushi vinegar, but apparently regular white vinegar is just the same.  Probably a couple of tablespoons, give or take.

Add white pepper.  Not black pepper.  Maybe 1/2 tsp? 

That’s it.  Put it on a plate.  I know what it looks like:  uncooked French fries.  But I also know what it tastes like:  heaven on a plate.  It was our favorite of all the dishes. 
Apparently fried potatoes don’t have to look fried.  Who knew?  Lily says the vinegar is the secret to giving it flavor and crunch.  My taste buds tell me Lily knows what she’s talking about.

Dish 2:  Eggs and Tomatoes 

Does this seem like a weird combination?  Yeah, it did to me, too.  But it’s pretty darn good, I have to say.  And the eggs — it’s like doing a science experiment!  You’ll see what I mean.

First, crack the eggs into a dish.  We used six eggs.  Whisk them with chopsticks.  What’s that, you don’t have any chopsticks lying around?  Sigh.  Fine, use a fork, or whatever.  Way to enter into the spirit of the thing.

While you’re beating the eggs senseless, the wok, with rather a lot of oil, should be on high heat.  It needs to be very hot when you put the eggs in.  Lily’s first rule:  if something is uncooked to begin with, you must cook it on high.  If it is precooked (like the ham and shrimp used later in this post), it can be on a lower heat.  Rule #2:  Always cook the meat first, then add the vegetable. 

Oh yeah, the vegetable — you need to prepare three tomatoes.  It’s really tricky:  slice them.  The end.

Okay, we have really hot oil, and we have our chopsticked eggs, and we are going to put them in the pan….

Woosh!  It’s totally fun!  Try it!

Now cook it like regular scrambled eggs.

Add the sliced tomatoes.  Pretty!

Add some salt, maybe 2 tsp.  And white pepper, maybe 1/2 tsp.

Pour it out onto a serving dish.  So good!  So easy!

Dish 3:  Ham and Asparagus

Again, I never would have put these two things together.  But you know what?  My picky palate and I both fell in love with this simple combination.  I think maybe my kids will even eat it, and that’s saying something. 

Guess what we’re going to start with?  Yes, oil.  It’s a theme, apparently.  In fact, Lily says that when she first came to the United States, she was aghast to find that we eat our salads raw.  RAW!  Raw lettuce, raw tomatoes, raw everything. I was confused when she said this, because, well, how else could you eat a salad?  Cooked, apparently.  In oil.  They cook everything.  Interesting, no?

Anyway, back to the oil.  Heat it up.  Meanwhile, cut the asparagus.  Here, Lily is showing how much of the bottoms she chopped off (the bitter, dirty parts).

Cut it on the diagonal.  I don’t know why.  Lily doesn’t know why.  Just do it.  Hey, it looks fancy, and that’s good enough for me.

Now cut the ham.  The idea is to have it generally the same size as the asparagus.  This is pre-cooked ham, so it’s going to be a quick dish.  Lily sometimes uses Canadian Bacon.  But today it’s ham.

Ham goes in wok.  Cooks a little.  

Asparagus goes in wok.  Cooks a little.

Add a small amount of soy sauce.  Not very much, maybe a tablespoon.  I probably would have added a lot more.  Which would have ruined it.  I learned a lot from Lily.  Don’t add any salt;  soy sauce has plenty already.  Add a little white pepper.  Cook about 3-4 minutes.  Don’t overcook or the asparagus will start turning yellowish.  Bleh.

Put it on a serving dish.  Salivate.  Repeat as needed.

Dish 4:  Shrimp and Green Onion

Important:  do not eat the green onion.  Did you know this about Chinese cooking?  I didn’t.  Green onion, ginger, etc, are used to flavor the food, and to make it look pretty, but you’re not supposed to actually eat it.  With that in mind:

Slice the green onion.  Normally it would be much smaller, but again, we want it to match the size of the meat.  In this case, shrimp.  So these are large chunks of onion.

The shrimp is pre-cooked and frozen.  The really small ones don’t taste good.  The really big ones don’t cook well.  Get this size, and all will be right with the world.

Defrost the shrimp by letting it sit in cold water.

Heat some oil (surprise!) and throw in the shrimp. 

When it has cooked down a bit, and the water and oil look whitish, drain the shrimp to get rid of the fishy flavor. 

Add a little water to the wok, and throw in the onions.

Add a little soy sauce.  About a tablespoon.

Cook a few more minutes and place in serving dish.

And there you have it:  four easy, delicious dishes, at approximately 15 minutes each. 

Add some rice (done in a rice cooker, no tutorial, the assumption being that even the most beginning of cooks can turn on a rice cooker, I suppose), and a pair of chopsticks.  Come on, be a sport.  It’s fun.  But just in case, there are forks in the drawer.

Many thanks to Lily, our Chef Extraordinaire.  Bon appetit!