Tag: Focus on Dalian

Now that you have the right cookbooks and the right utensils to cook Chinese food let’s examine what ingredients you should stock up on if you are novice. Finding bottled or canned ingredients can be a struggle especially if you can’t read Chinese characters so that is why I am concentrating on these. Don’t be afraid to bring a list and show to the shop or market assistants.

• Sesame paste: used in Dan Dan Mian and in countless other recipes.
• Sesame oil: use to finish off fish and stir-fries.
• Sweet bean sauce: goes by many names including Hoisin. It is made from soybeans and it is sweetened.
• Sichuanese chili bean sauce: made from soybeans and chili
• Cooking oil: rapeseed, peanut or sunflower
• Potato flour: key ingredient to thicken sauces
• Dried shiitake mushrooms: umami flavoring in many recipes.
• Smoked tofu, silken tofu, firm tofu: versatile and cheap. They absorb all the flavors.
• Chili oil: drizzle over dishes
• Sichuanese peppers: unexpected numbing and tingly lemony flavor.
• Star anise: one of the most used spices in the Chinese kitchen.
• Chinese wind dried sausage: the key to amazing fried rice
• Chinese wheat noodles: different texture (chewy) to other wheat noodles.
• Dried shrimp: Used in vegetable stir-fries to provide flavor.
• Fermented black beans: earthy and salty ingredient. Provides a lot of flavor.

If you are new to cooking Chinese food these are dishes I would recommend to start off with, scrambled eggs with tomatoes, zhajiang noodles, sesame noodles, stir fried mushrooms, ma po tofu, dan dan noodles, egg fried rice, chicken with black bean sauce and cabbage with dried shrimp.

Zhajiang Mian is one of our staple family meals these days. My daughters, whom are two and four years old, eat it miraculously in silence; one wolfs it down with little chopsticks.

Zhajiang Mian
Serves 4

• 2 tbsp. of peanut oil
• 300 grs of minced pork
• 1 tbsp. ginger, chopped
• 1 green onion, sliced
• a splash of Shaoxing wine
• ½ cup hoisin sauce
• salt
• 400 grs. wheat noodles
• various vegetables: cucumber, cabbage, carrots, peas

Put the oil in a wok and heat up. Add the pork and sauté. Add the ginger, green onion and the wine. Add salt, hoisin sauce and water to cover the meat. Cook for 20 minutes at low heat until the liquid is reduced. Sauce should be seasoned with salt generously. Julienne the vegetables. Blanch the carrot, cabbage and peas. Cook the noodles. Serve noodles with meat sauce and vegetables on top.

*special thanks to Karen Brown our prop stylist.

Cooking like the Chinese can be extremely rewarding, fast and easy on the pocket; even if only a couple of times a week! Armed with a cleaver, a chopping block and a wok you are ready to go. But where do you learn to cook Chinese food in Dalian? Unfortunately there are no schools or catering colleges for foreigners.

This is where getting your hands on a few good Chinese cookbooks comes in handy, but with over 2,400 on Amazon which ones are good?

Food writer Ken Hom’s books are a wonderful introduction to Chinese food, the recipes veer slightly towards restaurant food, but his step-by-step pictures compensate.

Yan-kit So’s “Classic Chinese Cookbook” is timeless with great photography and both sophisticated and simple recipes. This book introduced Chinese food as haute cuisine to the West. Use it to impress your friends.

If you are a visual person with an interest in food history the tv series “A Bite of China” on CCTV is simply breathtaking.

My most used Chinese cookbook “Chinese Cooking Made Easy” by Shyh-Pwu Tien, was given to me by a friend from Singapore. It was written for Taiwanese and Chinese students struggling to cook Chinese food in the US in the late 90’s. This book has made many a trip to Chinese grocery stores. There is nothing in this book that you can’t cook.

But if I had to choose only one book it would be Fuschia Dunlop’s “Every Grain of Rice”. She has previously written well-researched books on Hunanese and Sichuanese cuisine and is probably the West’s foremost expert on Chinese food. She really shines in her latest book, which fills a gap on the shelves of Chinese cookbooks by dealing exclusively with home-cooked food (like scrambled eggs with tomatoes). The recipes are easy, well written and her sections on ingredients are instructive and inspiring.

This recipe is inspired by her book.

Smoked tofu, red pepper and crunchy soybean stir-fry

• 3 tbsp of peanut oil
• 2 garlic cloves, crushed
• a dash of soy sauce
• 1 red or green peppers, sliced
• 1 bunch of Chinese chives, trimmed and cut into bite size pieces
• 1 packet of smoked tofu, sliced
• ¼ tsp five spice powder
• 1 handful of toasted soybeans

Add the oil to the wok and heat. Add the garlic, stir-fry briefly and add the soy sauce. Add the peppers and chives and stir-fry. Add the tofu and five spice powder. Serve in a bowl and sprinkle toasted soybeans.