Chinese
Ken Hom wrote 'My mother put together three-and four- course meals every night in a tiny
kitchen..In my eyes, she did this quickly and smoothly. I never heard her complain….
Our dinner was on the table within an hour of her coming home from work.' Ken Hom's
Hot Wok, BBC books, 1996.
If you take nothing else away from this book, it’s worth the price (*) if you only
learn to do a simple two pot Chinese style meal. In one pot (a regular saucepan
with a lid) is your rice or noodle, in the other (the wok) is your stir fry.
(*) Even better value since I've now put in on the web for free!. But please remember I wrote this as a charity fund raiser
and if you get anything worthwhile from it, give a pound or dollar to a disaster relief/development charity of your choice.
Chinese cookery, like Indian, is done using mainly the same sort of meat and vegetable ingredients,
relying mainly on different methods and above all SPICES to achieve distinctive results. Like the rest of
this book, I am BY NO MEANS trying to be comprehensive or to 'do justice' to or 'be authentic', merely to
give men like myself some basic and flexible tools to put decent food on the table.
Stir fry is easy. It is quick, healthy, tasty, economical food, and if you learn to do one stir fry, you can
produce a dozen variations by substituting meats, vegetables and sauces while using the same basic
method.
Make an effort to find your nearest Chinese or Asian cash and carry (I use Yau Brothers, sited off
Britannia Street between Northam bridge and the Saints stadium). I recommend you buy the following
(you can get basics in regular stores).
The wok. Get a plain carbon steel wok and a curved metal spatula for stirring and turning food. Ideally
have 2 woks, one with a lid and steamer. Cooking over gas is best, you can cook Chinese style with
electric hob but you'll need a heavy flat bottomed wok and it’s not so easy. The wok’s curved shape
allows more food to be in direct contact with the hot steel surface for quick cooking, also the high curved
sides stop food overflowing the sides as you stir. Don't overfill the wok.
Soy sauce adds flavour, colour and salt. Light and dark varieties exist, dark soy can overpower if
used to excess. I recently discovered a really sticky sweet soy sauce at our local Chinese cash and
carry, very nice as a dipping sauce. Its called Kecap Manis, but I'm not sure if that's a brand name or a
style. Nice though.
Chinese 5 spice is made from cloves, fennel, Sechuan pepper, cinnamon and star anise. Schwarz®
make a nice one, you can grind your own from whole spices. Great with pork and duck to add flavours
prior to cooking.
Teriyaki marinade is a tasty blend of soy, wine, spices and garlic which is great for marinading meats
and fish. It's Japanese, but I include it here as I'm not doing a section on Japanese food.
Root ginger Indispensable for most Asian cookery and improves almost any stew. I rarely use
powdered ginger.
Garlic goes well in almost everything Chinese, I try to cook without it sometimes for variety’s sake!
Shrimp paste a teaspoonful of this can be added to fish cake mix or meat stews where it adds a
savoury taste.
Sechuan pepper has an astringent, aromatic, smoky taste. It is good in meat marinades, and ground
with black pepper and salt to season beef, lamb or venison prior to stir frying.
Noodles The Chinese invented these before the Italians, there are many varieties-try several until you
find your favourites. I like the straight wheat noodles for most purposes, the very thin ones that come in
bundles are good added to soups 5 minutes before serving.
Rice Basmati is best in my opinion, regardless of authenticity. Try different sorts and see which you
prefer. Buy large bags for economy. Remember the VITAL ratio of 1 cup of rice to 2 cups of water.
Hoi Sin sauce is a fruity, spicy, exotic brown sauce, great in stir fries, essential for crispy duck
pancakes or general purpose fruity brown sauce. Refrigerate once open.
Sesame oil (toasted) gives a wonderful warm, rich, aromatic flavour to all meat, fish or vegetable
dishes.
Rice wine is recommended for wok cookery to unstick the pan and add a certain something to the
sauce. Good with sesame oil and light soy sauce as a marinade.
Chopsticks The trick is to lock the lower chopstick between your thumb and middle finger, then hold
the upper chopstick between the thumb and index finger, you use the index finger tip to move the upper
stick up and down to grip food while the lower one stays still.
Stir Fry
Stir fry relies on careful planning and preparation followed by quick cooking. Thinly sliced meat and
vegetables cook faster so less fuel is used and more vitamins preserved. Good for you, good for the
planet. Typical preparation time is 20 minutes, cooking time 10 minutes. Julia often stir fried when I was a
full time GP and with late running surgeries and home visits got home unpredictably late any time from 7
to 9.30pm. She prepared the ingredients before I got home, turned the wok and noodle pan on as I
came in the door and had a freshly cooked, healthy hot meal on the table almost before I had changed
my clothes and poured a drink….I’m so glad those days are over.
The basic principles of stir fry are as follows.
1) Slice and marinade some raw meat
2) Slice the onions and peppers etc, about 2-3 mm thick.
3) Get spices and sauces ready according to the recipe
4) Heat a little sunflower or peanut oil in the wok, add some chopped ginger and garlic, then
the vegetables. Stir as required, as Ken Hom says, ‘keep your wok hot’.
5) Remove the cooked vegetables from the wok (maybe into another wok, its good to have 2),
add a little more oil and fry the meat before returning the vegetables, then add your
flavouring e.g. Hoi Sin or yellow bean sauce.
6) Serve with rice or noodles.
Here's a couple of recipes to play with.
Chicken and vegetable stir fry
2 chicken breast fillets (to serve 4)
Marinade (10ml each of light soy sauce, rice wine and sesame oil mixed in a bowl with 2 tsps
of cornflour)
1 large onion, 2 medium carrots, both sliced thinly
2 cloves garlic, 2cm lump of root ginger
250g noodles
Sunflower oil
Slice the chicken into bite sized pieces and stir into the marinade, leave for 10-15 minutes. To prepare
the garlic, press a big knife down hard over the clove of garlic on the chopping block, a satisfying crunch
will be heard and the bursting clove of garlic will split the shuck. Cut off the root end, peel off the shuck
with your fingernails, chop the garlic fine. With the ginger, cut or snap off a piece the size of your thumb,
slice off and discard the skin, then chop sideways and across is until it is shredded finely.
When all the ingredients are to hand and ready to go, you may put the heat under the wok. Stir frying,
once begun, won’t wait while you search for ingredients. Like Kung Fu fighting, as the song says, it ‘calls
for expert timing’!
Fry the garlic and ginger in 10-15ml of oil, stir, add the carrots and onions after half a minute, keep
stirring. Add the vegetables, fry for about 4 minutes. If they stick, add a little water, cider or rice wine, not
oil. The thinly sliced vegetables cook quickly. Remove the cooked vegetables to another vessel then add
a dash of sesame oil and fry the chicken pieces quickly. Stir every minute or so-not too often. Once the
meat is cooked, about 5 minutes, replace the vegetables, stir through and serve with the noodles.
Noodles take about 10 minutes to cook. If they unduly stick together, boil in a bigger volume of water
or add a dash of vegetable oil to the water.
Stir fried lamb with sherry and cumin
300g lamb, sliced thinly (For 2 persons)
Large onion, sliced thin
250g noodles
Tsp each cumin and coriander
2 tsps of Teriyaki sauce
Small glass of sherry
I used some lean meat cut from a leg of lamb, the rest of which I used for tagine. Any lean lamb meat will
do.
Fry the onion with oil and half of the spices. When done, add the salted and peppered sliced lamb, rest
of the spice and Teriyaki sauce. Meanwhile cook the noodles. When the meat is cooked, add the sherry,
cook for another minute then serve. Variations use fillet beef instead of lamb, oyster or hoi sin sauce as
alternative flavouring.
Once you have cooked a few stir fries, you can use the technique for many different versions. Consult
Ken Hom or Delia Smith’s web sites, or put ‘stir fry’ into Google®.
Rice
..is just as easy to do well as badly. Boil 2 mugs of water with a pinch of salt, add 1 mug of rice.
Stir once and put the lid on. Stir again when it comes back to the boil and then turn the heat right down
and cover again. In 10 minutes, turn the heat off, don't open or stir again. The rice will be perfect in
another 5 minutes. It will stay fine for an hour, so you can do this in advance. If you cook more than you
need, you can use it for special fried rice a day or two later.
Special fried rice
This is as flexible as pizza, salad or casserole. You can use leftover cooked pork, bacon, ham, shrimps,
peas and sweetcorn, probably all sorts of other stuff as well. We think one of our local take aways uses
chopped Spam. Try the special fried rice from your local Chinese take away and see what you like. The
quantities below are a rough guide.
500g cooked rice, it must be cold
Small tin of peeled shrimps
3 or 4 rashers of bacon, sliced thin (alternatively ham)
Cup of mixed peas and sweetcorn
Ginger, garlic, onions chopped fine
20mls vegetable oil
1 or 2 beaten eggs
Fry the onions, ginger and garlic, add the bacon or ham, then shrimp, peas etc and fry for 3 or 4
minutes. Then add the cold rice and stir in, then the egg, stir until cooked, about 3 minutes. A dash of
sesame oil is nice, avoid soy sauce. Serve on its own or as part of a Chinese banquet.
Crispy fried duck with Chinese pancakes
Advance planning is essential for this impressive dish. It should be served with Chinese pancakes, Hoi
Sin sauce, matchstick sliced cucumbers and spring onions.
1 oven ready duck
50g root ginger
4 tsps Chinese five spice powder
3 tsps dark soy sauce
Rub the duck inside and out with the five spice and soy sauce, and put the sliced ginger inside. Put the
spiced duck in a polythene bag in the fridge and leave for 24 hours, then steam it for 2 hours. If you don’
t have a steamer, stand the duck on a cake stand in a big covered saucepan with 5 cm of water. Allow to
cool.
Final cooking is by deep frying in very hot oil. Cut into quarters, it should take about 10 minutes to crisp
the skin.
For Chinese pancakes add hot water to 250g white flour and knead until is makes a stiff dough. Knead
until there are no lumps, then leave for half an hour. Put 20ml of sesame oil in a saucer, then divide the
dough into 2.5cm diameter balls. You work with 2 of these at a time, pick one dough ball up, dip it in the
sesame oil, push it down on to another ball, then flatten the 2 together and roll them into round flat
shapes about 13cm diameter. Cook these doubled raw pancakes on a flat iron frying pan with a little
sesame oil. Turn after about half a minute and do the other side. When cooked, carefully peel the 2
pancakes apart, doing it this way makes them much thinner. If they are not served immediately they can
be rewarmed by steaming. Variation put some sesame seeds in the dough if you like.
Its easier to buy your Chinese pancakes ready made and frozen, they freeze well. They have packs of
25 and 100 at Yau's
The duck meat and delicious crispy skin is shredded by pulling it apart with 2 forks, it looks impressive if
you do this at the table, but probably better to do it in the kitchen as its a bit untidy unless done really
well. Each diner puts a bit of meat and crispy skin in a pancake with some matchstick cut cucumber,
spring onion and hoi sin sauce and rolls it up. One crispy duck with trimmings should satisfy 8 people as
a middle course in a Chinese banquet.
Chinese style baked beans
To serve 2 as a side dish, perhaps to accompany a grilled pork chop or steak and kidney pie.
1 tin beans (420g)
Medium onion
Sunflower oil
Garlic and ginger
1 tsp Chinese 5 spice powder
2 dollops of hoi sin sauce
Fry the garlic, ginger and onion in the oil with the five spice, then add the beans and stir until warm. Stir
in the hoi sin a minute before serving. Blame me for this one.
Deep fried pork with sweet and sour sauce
Chop pork into 2cm cubes, season or marinade to taste (five spice and light soy, for example), dip in
batter and deep fry in hot oil for 5 minutes. Do not overfill the deep frying pan, fry the pork balls in
batches if necessary. Keep the first batch warm in a low oven.
Sweet and sour sauce
30mls cider vinegar
3 tsps sugar
2cm cube root ginger, shredded very fine
2 tsps cornflour stirred well into 60mls water
3 tsps tomato ketchup
1 tsp sweet chilli sauce
Pinch of salt
Mix the lot up and simmer for 5 minutes stirring constantly. You can make it sweeter, hotter or thicker by
varying the ingredients, or add finely chopped spring onions. Serve the pork with noodles and the sweet
and sour sauce.
There is of course much, much more to Chinese cookery that the above, and that's before we start on
Thai or other far eastern styles. Like I said, this is aimed to kick-start men who don't cook, and who are
put off by over-complicated, female-oriented books with too many steps and ingredients.
Drink: Take my advice and don’t serve fine wine with Chinese or Indian food, the flavour will
overwhelm it. Wine box or vin de table is OK. Good bottled cider like Weston’s, Sheppey’s or Normandy
suits the food better and is a more economical choice. Jilly Goolden says Gewürztraminer is good with
Chinese food: we agreed when we tried it, but this wine is hard to find and always expensive, save it for
special occasions. On the other hand, you’re not answerable to me on matters of taste or cost and if you
want to drink Chateuneuf du Pape or Veuve Cliquot with Chinese 5 spice pork and Hoi Sin chicken, go
ahead, it’s your money!
Return to Botley Men's Cook Book main menu page