It has taken me a long time to understand tofu.
For a long time, I thought of tofu as a sort of health food, eaten by those whose healthy eating obsession loomed larger in their lives than their ignored, despised, insensate palates. That didn’t interest me, so I didn’t get around to tasting any […]
It does tend to freak out the Westerners, at least those who haven’t dipped their toe very far into the pool of Chinese cuisine. There it is, a whole fish, sitting on a plate, its eye glaring up at you, and you’re supposed to eat it. Why should you?
Well, how’s this for starters: if there’s […]
I confess that I don’t put much thought into presentation, but I think this is a pretty attractive dish:
Still, I wouldn’t make it if it weren’t delicious, and I’ve made it over and over, because I love it, and it’s one of my wife’s favorites. Moist, resilient, oily chunks of chicken breast, livened up with […]
I’m willing to go to great lengths to try to cook awesome Chinese food. Sometimes you have to, to make wonderful things like Peking Duck. I don’t really have much of an interest in recipes that have been streamlined, to make things easy on the cook, at the cost of losing some of the […]
I’m really making an exception here. It’s the wonderful, authentic Chinese food I go for, and that I’ve studied earnestly for years. And yet, this recipe, which its author, Joyce Chen, points out as completely inauthentic, is so delicious, despite its dubious-sounding ingredients, that I just have to share it. These are the first spring […]
This recipe comes from Yan Kit’s Classic Chinese Cookbook, and is called “Special Spring Rolls.” That’s a clue that these rolls are absolutely loaded with the good stuff. There are two separate components, stir-fried separately.
The Veggies
1 pound carrots
6 oz bean thread noodles
8 oz sugar peas (I think she means snow peas, but maybe not)
I […]
As I’ve gotten more and more into real Chinese food, I’ve lost track of spring rolls. Before I discovered good Chinese food, I knew all about bad Chinese food. Ordered from a local takeout, it featured things like butterfly shrimp, Bok choy in a thick, bland sauce containing way too much cornstarch, and spring rolls. […]
Maybe you could tell I was leading up to something special in this series of chicken wing posts. Well, I was. To my taste, Chinese food is the most amazing cuisine in the world. And among the Chinese regional cuisines, Cantonese reigns supreme, something I have to admit despite a strong sentimental fondness for Sichuan. […]