Similar to Salad, Chinese also have seasoned vegetable and meat as cold appetizers served as first dishes. Generally, the cold dishes are divided in to two categories: vegetarian and meat or seafood. Cold dishes are common during summer for appetizing and cooling. A few dishes are easy to cook at home, and many dishes are commonly be ordered or bought for banquet. Depend on different type of vegetables, it can be served as seasoned raw vegetable appetizer or seasoned scalded vegetable appetizer. The cucumber and tomato are the two most common and easiest vegetable cold dishes. The tomatoes are served as slices and sprinkled with sugar. The cucumber can be cut into slices, strips or chunks and then seasoned with salt, sugar, minced garlic, soy sauce, vinegar, sesame oil, and if you like, chili can be added. These are the two typical vegetables that need to be scalded first and then seasoned with salt, soy sauce, vinegar, garlic, sesame oil, and chili. The century egg (mentioned at the breakfast post: century egg and pork congee) and soft tofu can be served separately or as one dish, seasoned with soy sauce, black rice vinegar, and sesame oil. Eating the starch jelly with savory sauce makes you cool and feel comfortable in hot summer. There is another kind of thinner cold noodle seasoned with sliced cucumber, gluten, and bean sprouts, could be a dish on table but more commonly as a street food. The marinated chicken and duck wings and feet are already seasoned during pot stewing and served as cold dish. The mixed animal offals also are pre-marinated, commonly including pig ears, beef shank, and gizzard. The Fuqi Fei Pian also is a famous cold dish. Saliva? You must be curious about the weird name. There are two explanations, one is that the deliciousness makes your mouth water, and another one is that the chili makes your mouth water. Thus, it is a metaphor of its deliciousness. The saliva chicken is short poaching cooked first and cool down in cold water, finally soaked in chili oil. Similarly there is one dish called Slat Brined Duck, cooked duck and served as cold dish, while no additional sauce to eat with since it already been flavored during cooking.
The Jellyfish, while I know many of you haven't heard about it and you may think is that edible? Yes, some jellyfish is edible and can be found at Chinese mart. Even though jellyfish is tasteless, it can be soaked in savory sauce and with its crunchy texture, it is a good choice of cold dish in hot days. If you have chance must try it. Thank you for your reading! See you next time!
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In China, it is common to have one soup for a meal. Zhu Yuanzhang, the first emperor of Ming Dynasty stipulated that courtiers must economize on food and gradually people have a rule of "four dishes and one soup" for a meal. Nowadays this rule has changed a lot, but for a normal family meal of 3 to 5 people we normally keep four dishes and one soup on table. Vegetarian Soup The vegetarian soup is very easy to make. Egg is common ingredient in Chinese soup recipes. Putting vegetable into boiling water first and then pouring in egg mixture is the common method for making Chinese homemade soup. The tomato and egg soup, seaweed and egg soup, and spinach with egg are typical home cooking soup. Also, we have bok choy (Chinese cabbage) as one of the common vegetables to cook, sometimes meat and zha cai are added. Miso soup is a famous soup from Japan, contains seaweed and tofu boiling with miso. And Kimchi is one of the typical Korean food used a lot in Korean cuisines. The kimchi tofu soup sometimes with pork, is flavored as sour and spicy because of the kimchi. Broth As I mentioned last week we have various types of broth, fish soup (sometimes with tofu), ribs (other ingredients can be added), and chicken (medicinal crops can be added for more nutritious, such as ginseng, angelica sinensis, goji, cordyceps flower, and red dates). Korea also has the famous ginseng chicken broth. These nutrient broth need to be cooked for relatively long time so the soup will be tasty. Another simple soup made with bok choy and meatball also is popular in Chinese households. Thank you for your reading for this week! You may want to start cooking Asian soup with the vegetarian ones because they are easier. The broths are delicious but take a lot of time, thus my mom usually make broth once a week. And we usually use the leftover broth as the soup for noodles. Miss my mom's cooking! Share your asian dishes with me! See you next week.
Today's topic is the main Chinese cooking ways. If you really want to cook Chinese food, the first thing is to understand the several main Chinese cooking methods. Stir-frying Stir-frying is the most basic and common home cooking method. Normally, stir-fried dishes are for cooking vegetables or vegetables with meat or seafood. The vegetables and meat need to be cut into slices or strips. With small amount of oil heated in the pot, quick and keep stir-frying meat first until half-cooked, then add all the other ingredients, add seasonings adjust to your taste, keep stir-frying and turning ingredients until they are done. There are numerous combinations of stir-fried food, while I find some common dishes that have ingredients easy to find here. Since I live on campus, I have no choice to eat at Cafeteria. I am not saying I don't like food there (sometimes). I find many food that can be cooked better and delicious in Chinese way. For example, the I saw celery is served as salad or chopped in soup, while in China we stir-fry it with meat, which is very delicious. Besides, I love squash, while it tastes really different that served in Cafeteria. I prefer the dish we cook in China. I don't know whether it is because the squash is different than the squash from China. I will cook it in Chinese way once I have my own kitchen. Stew or Red Braised This method is common for cooking meat and fish, also for some vegetables like eggplant and tofu. Compared to stir-frying, this is a much slower and time consuming cooking methods, so that we can get strong flavored food. We call it red braised because we use soy sauce or red sugar for this cooking method, which will make food become red or dark red. With water, seasonings like ginger, star anise, five spice powder, and so on, usually braise the ingredients for at least one hour (shorter for cooking vegetables) over low heat in order to get tasty and tender. Stewing also been used to cook broth, such chicken, fish, pork ribs or others that cook meat with amount of water for couple of hours to get delicious meat broth. Steaming Steaming uses a lot for making buns and dim sum, but also for many other ingredients. It is a time consuming method too, but this method can remain most of the nutrient and taste of food. Actually you just need to get the food seasoned and put it into steam machine, and then just wait for it to be done. In China, we have a special cooking utensil made of bamboos, thus the steamed food will have the bamboo fragrance. These three are the main Chinese cooking methods. Check the videos I collected on my Youtube playlist so you can get clear idea how they are made and follow the steps to make Chinese food by your own. Feel free to leave your comments or questions, as well as share your cooking Chinese food experience with me! Thank you for your reading!
Let me take a break ^_^
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April 2017
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