Tips on Chinese Cooking
1. When cooking Chinese food at home, the secret lies in using absolutely fresh vegetables in abundance and finely sliced.
2. As for he vegetables, French beans are almost always cut diagonally, onions chopped or sliced fine and ginger and garlic crushed. Cabbage, spinach and lettuce are shredded into fairly large pieces unless specified otherwise.
3. Make sure that the meat, fish and poultry are also finely sliced besides being fresh and tender.
4. Gingerly oil may be used where no specific instructions have been given.
5. The use of corn flour in many Chinese dishes helps in three ways
I. Coating: It gives meat a light coating which not only makes the meat tender but retains its flavor.
ii. Thickening: The thickness of the gravy or soup depends on the amount of corn flour used: these vary in different dishes, as a sweet and sour chicken dish should be fairly thick and tomato hot and sour soup should be thinner.
iii. Holding: Corn flour holds minced meat together and also keeps the moisture in. It is used in meat ball dishes.
1. Home made egg noodles: Beat 6 eggs lightly. Add a pinch of salt and sift in enough flour to make a soft dough. Roll the dough very thinly (much thinner than pie pastry) sprinkle flour on the surface to prevent it from sticking. Let it remain on the table to dry for 30 minutes, then slice it into very fine strips. You can use these egg noodles soup (soup with a few noodles) or fried noodles.
2. In the recipes given in this revised, new edition, the use of monosodium glutamate has been completely dropped, as the commercially prepared, synthetic variety has proven to be excessively harmful for health.
3. Most of he recipes given in this book serve 4-5 persons and completely Chinese meal normally consists of 5 to 6 dishes.
How to use Chopsticks
1. Tuck one chopstick under your thumb and hold it firmly.
2. Now, take the second chopstick and hold it as you would a pencil.
3. Keep the first chopstick in original position, move the second one up and down. You will find that you can pick up anything.
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