Read an Excerpt
Introduction
Phoenix claws and jade trees are poetic metonyms, or metaphorical substitutions, you’ll find on many Chinese restaurant menus. “Phoenix claw” is a synonym for chicken feet, and “jade tree” is used for gailan, or Chinese broccoli. To most Chinese diners, this is familiar terminology, and I grew up learning it naturally at daily meals. But for many Westerners, authentic Chinese cuisine remains just out of reach linguistically and geographically. Yet with so many ingredients readily available and a wok just one click away online, it’s time to extend these thrilling and transportive flavors to eager home cooks everywhere.
In this book I demystify Chinese cooking by taking a unique approach. I believe that the cuisine is easiest to learn by technique. A dry stir-fry is no more difficult to prepare than a moist one; the key is to know which technique to use for which ingredient and for which final result. Armed with this knowledge, you can not only re-create dishes from all over China and many East Asian countries, but you can cook almost any ingredient in any fashion you’d like. If you discover you love dry stir-fry with leeks and you are wild about duck, you can combine the two to make a successful Chinese dish all your own.
As China opens up to the world, her emigrants bring many regional cooking traditions to their adopted countries. They introduce new ingredients and open restaurants to satisfy their longing for food from home. At the same time, Western expatriates flock to China as companies from all over the world scramble to do business there. After short stints in China they return home, yearning to re-create the incredible array of food they experienced abroad.
This confluence of immigration and business travel creates new demands and sets higher standards for authentic Chinese food outside China. No longer are we satisfied with Beef with Broccoli and General Tso’s Chicken. We now demand Xinjiang Lamb Burgers and Lan Zhou Pulled Noodles. From New York to Melbourne, people are curious about authentic Chinese food.
My own experience of cooking Chinese food in America parallels the narrative of these new Chinese immigrants. Arriving in America from Singapore in the 1970s to attend university in Boston, I longed for the abundance of wonderful food from home. At that time most restaurants in town were still serving up chop suey and other substandard Cantonese fare. My only defense against bad Chinese food was to cook at home. Unable to find a good Chinese cookbook, I resorted to writing home to my aunts and other relatives for instructions and recipes.
Over the years I mastered techniques and developed recipes that helped me in my kitchen. I found that by taking one technique and switching up the ingredients, I could make an entirely new dish typical of a different region. Once I had the many methods under my belt, I could make almost anything. I hope this book will help illuminate fundamental Chinese cooking methods for the Western cook and make this fascinating cuisine practical to prepare at home.
Thus, the chapters here are organized according to cooking methods rather than the usual division by ingredients or region. Some techniques are defined by heat sources. Cooking with oil, for example, is divided into five techniques: light frying, deep-frying, oil steeping, yin-yang frying, and panfrying. The procedures are different but all use oil as the heat medium. This approach can greatly facilitate the learning of a cuisine by identifying similarities and differences among related techniques.
Although the preparation methods outlined in this book are based on a comprehensive set of Chinese cooking techniques, I have kept the home cook in mind and have thus omitted some seldom-used ones. Many of these omitted techniques simply put too fine a point on a general method. For example, pan-frying in Chinese can be minutely defined in three ways: jian, tie, and ta, depending on whether the ingredient is fried whole, cut into pieces, or covered in batter. Since the technique is fundamentally the same, I combine them into pan-frying.
The recipes include many classic home-style and restaurant dishes, appropriate for everyday family meals as well as elaborate banquets. They illustrate the cooking techniques rather than a specific regional cuisine, though the region where each recipe originated is identified when appropriate.
A fundamental Chinese cookbook would not be complete without references to history and culture. You’ll find a discussion of regional flavors as well as sections on dining customs, pantry ingredients, and kitchen tools. I also include common ingredient preparation and knife techniques. If you are already familiar with Chinese food, you may choose to skip these sections. They can, however, be entertaining reading while you wait for your braised chicken to cook.
Be adventurous with the techniques and ingredients you’ll find in these pages. Don’t be daunted by the technical details. They are there to help you to understand the theory and allow you to be creative. Above all, have fun learning the world of classic Chinese cooking.
Simple Stir-Fry
At just about every meal in a Chinese household, there’s a stir-fry of a single leafy vegetable, more often than not seasoned only with salt and white pepper—no thickener, no soy sauce. Sliced ginger or garlic is just about all one would add to give it a little extra kick. This is what is known as simple stir-fry because it uses only a single main ingredient.
This emphasis on simplicity doesn’t mean that you cannot add other, stronger-flavored ingredients to enhance a simple stir-fry. Fermented black beans, shrimp paste, and fermented tofu are often added at the end of the cooking process as part of the seasoning step. Perhaps the reason that Americans are not familiar with this technique is because Chinese restaurants rarely list simple stir-fries on their menus. A Chinese patron would normally ask the waiter or waitress what kind of green vegetables are in season and available in the kitchen, then order one for simple stir-fry. A few tips are in order to help you with simple stir-fry. When cooking leafy vegetables it is almost always sufficient to just let them cook in their own moisture, without covering the wok. However, when cooking vegetables that contain less moisture, such as legumes or gourds, you can add a few splashes of water or stock during cooking and cover the wok with a lid; repeat this a few times, stirring the vegetable each time, until cooked.
Garlic Stir-Fried Greens
This recipe can be used for cooking any leafy greens, such as spinach, bok choy, or chrysanthemum greens. I chose to use pea shoots here because they are my favorite. Pea shoots are the young leaves and tendrils of sweet peas. You can buy them very young as sprout-like greens, or most commonly as more mature but still tender leaves and tendrils. When buying pea shoots, be sure to select those with young tender leaves. Pea shoots are full of vitamins A and C and are an excellent source of fiber.
serves 2 or more, as a side dish
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
12 ounces pea shoots, cut into 2-inch pieces
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground white pepper
1. Heat a wok over high heat until a droplet of water sizzles and evaporates immediately upon contact. Swirl the vegetable oil around the bottom and sides of the wok to coat it evenly. Add the garlic slices to the wok and stir-fry until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add the pea shoots and mix them in with the garlic. Cover the wok and let the vegetable steam for about 1 minute.
2. Uncover the wok and add the salt and pepper. Stir-fry for about 1 minute more. The vegetable is ready when the leaves are just wilted.
Stir-Frying Leafy Vegetables Evenly
Special steps should be taken when stir-frying leafy vegetables. In order to cook them evenly, cut the leaves from the stems and place them in separate containers. First cook the stems until they begin to sweat; then add the leaves and cook until completely done. Remember not to overcook vegetables—this process may take just a few seconds.
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