tiptoe, watching silently and curiously as she proceeded with her daily kitchen chores. The motions and sequences danced in front of my eyes—I was mesmerized.
The first round of cooking would always start just after 11 a.m., when my mother would fire up her dark, well-seasoned Chinese wok on the propane stovetop. As soon as a swirl of white smoke began to appear from the edges of the wok, she would pour in some peanut oil. Then the nutty aroma of peanut oil started wafting out of the wok. Chopped garlic or ginger (depending on the dish she was making) and the main ingredient would be added into the wok, and that was when the loud and lively sizzling sound of the wok started to sound like a seductive song. Then the unforgettable fragrance of Chinese cooking permeated our home.
This is how I learned to love Chinese food.
Learning to Cook Chinese
While I was an ardent observer of my mother’s cooking, I never had a chance to actually practice the cooking part because my mother wouldn’t allow it.
“You don’t know how to cook. You would just spoil everything,” she would say in a disapproving tone.
I was allowed to help her with the prepping of the ingredients, such as the mundane chore of removing roots from heaps of fresh bean sprouts, but my opportunity to create these dishes wouldn’t come until later. In fact, it was not until I left home to attend college in Kuala Lumpur—the capital of Malaysia—that I had my first real opportunity to cook: a potluck party hosted by me. The menu I planned was a classic array of Chinese dishes: stir-fry vegetables, soup, shrimp, and chicken—guaranteed to impress…so I thought.
After years of observation, I was convinced that Chinese cooking was easy. Instead, my stir-fried vegetables turned a horrid purple due to over-cooking; the soup was bland and dull; the shrimp didn’t taste good; and the chicken was salty and rubbery. Still, dinner had to be served and so everyone sat around the table silently eating, and then someone sighed (in relief, I think), “I am so glad that dinner’s over!”
I was thoroughly embarrassed, but it was true, I was a TERRIBLE cook. I thought I had “training” while growing up, but my lack of experience was obvious. Watching my mother cook hadn’t created cooking skills, I learned that good cooking needs to be cultivated and earned—a cook’s journey that I had to undertake for myself.
Soon after that I got a hold of my first Chinese “cookbook,” a recipe booklet, distributed with the purchase of a bottle of oyster sauce. This booklet covered the fundamentals of Chinese cooking and some of the different cooking methods involved in Chinese cooking. I studied the recipes earnestly, and for the first time, I started grasping the basics: how to cook meat to velvety tenderness, how to ensure that vegetables are crisp, and how the seasonings need to complement and balance the natural flavors of the ingredients. I followed the booklet’s recipes, went through my share of trials and errors, and soon after that I started cooking Chinese food successfully. I produced aromatic and mouthwatering ginger and scallion chicken— one of the classic Chinese stir-fry dishes. I made restaurant-style sweet-and-sour shrimp with the robust flavors that intermingled with the succulence and texture of the shrimp. I served glossy green vegetables with oyster sauce that were crisp and crunchy.
As I started to master the art of fundamental Chinese cooking, my creations started to get unanimous nods and praises from my family and friends, marking the defining moment in which I had blossomed into a good cook. It was also then that I became a die-hard aficionado of Chinese cuisine, a cuisine that I have resolved to continue learning about, experimenting with, and, of course, eating!
Over the ensuing years, I was fortunate to have had many opportunities to travel all over Asia, especially to China and Hong Kong. With each journey, I discovered and experienced something new about Chinese cuisine. In the small alleys of Beijing’s hutong, I sampled brightly flavorful jiaozi and dumplings, and reveled in freshly made noodles and soups. In a 1930’s era mansion in Shanghai’s French Concession, I savored impeccable and refined Shanghainese cuisine. At a roadside stall in Chengdu, Sichuan, my taste buds were treated to the explosively flavorful, tongue-numbing, lip-tingling spicy mala Sichuan concoctions. In a fine Cantonese restaurant in Hong Kong, I was immersed in a gastronomical ecstasy after a 10-course Cantonese banquet dinner of supreme delicacies. On the island of Xiamen, in the Fujian province, I was treated to an array of delectable seafood dishes that were remarkably succulent and tasty. This amazing cuisine is a culinary celebration of gastronomical variety in both texture and taste making it my favorite cuisine in the world.
Basic Cooking Techniques and Tips
Chinese cooks place a heavy emphasis on basic cooking techniques and tips. In fact, they are as important as the recipes—a great recipe might turn into a complete failure without proper execution during the preparation and cooking process. This chapter covers some basic Chinese cooking techniques and kitchen tips that I have learned from professional chefs, my late mother, and other experienced home cooks. These are my golden rules for making scrumptious Chinese food at home.
How to Tenderize Meat
This technique is best used for chicken breast, which is usually dry, coarse, and chewy. For the illustration here I use chicken breast, but this technique also works for beef and pork. If you already have a tender cut of beef, this technique is not necessary unless you want the texture to be silky smooth like the ones served at Chinese restaurants. If you like the natural meaty taste of beef, please also take note that this technique will result in losing that beefy flavor.
8 oz (250 g) chicken breast
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 Cut or slice the chicken breast per the recipe instruction. Make sure it’s cut or sliced into uniform pieces.
2 Mix the baking soda with the chicken. Make sure the chicken breast is evenly coated with the baking soda. Set aside for 15 minutes.
3 Place the chicken in a colander and rinse thoroughly with cold running water. Rinse a few times if desired. Pat dry with paper towels. The chicken is now ready for the marinade or whatever preparation is called for in the recipe.
TENDERIZING MEAT Texture is a highly prized component in Chinese cooking, especially when it comes to proteins. Meat—especially chicken, pork, or beef— is always cooked so that the result is a silky-smooth mouthfeel that is succulent and tender, with a glossy sheen. Traditionally, velveting is a technique used in professional and home kitchens for tenderizing meat. Meats are cut into uniform pieces, coated with an egg white and starch mixture, and then cooked to the desired satiny consistency. A few years ago, I learned a quick tip from a Chinese chef, who uses baking soda as the secret ingredient in his restaurant. He taught me the following technique, and I have been producing the most amazing, tender, and juicy stir-fried meats at home ever since. Baking soda, or sodium bicarbonate, is an alkaline agent at pH8.2. As such, it neutralizes the acids and breaks down the proteins in the meat and therefore makes a superb tenderizer. Another plus, it also acts as a deodorizer to rid the meat of any potential foul smell it might have. If you are skeptical about using baking soda in home cooking, please don’t be because it’s an essential ingredient in baking. My technique calls for baking soda as a “dry rub,” it’s rinsed off thoroughly before cooking. Of course, this meat tenderizing process is optional, so it’s up to you. However, if you want to impress your family or guests with perfectly tender, smooth, and succulent meat, here is how you can do it.
