pcbilly
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KungPao Chicken, the most ordered Chinese dish in America, is an adaptation of an adaptation.
It was originally from Guizhou province then made famous in Sichuan and then became a milder and sweeter dish in Canton and finally evolved into the familiar American version with bell pepper and onion.
Today’s New York Times has an interesting article about what makes an authentic Kung Pao /GongBao chicken.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/23/dining/23gong.html.
Here is a summery: The original version, in contrast to the Sichuan version, uses dark meat instead of white meat, fresh zi ba pepper instead of dry one, sweet sauce instead of bean sauce and no peanuts.
Keep in mind that these are just changes from Guizhou to its neighbor Sichuan.
The cook in Guizhou probably will have a hard time recognizes the version in American Chinese restaurant.
Overall, it is an informative article except one mistake; it describes another famous Guizhou product mao-tai as “rice liquor”, which is wrong. (It is made of sorghum).
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I just made a Cantonese clay pot dish with roast pork, fried tofu and oyster. Used some whole garlic and Brown Bean Sauce to start. Dashedin ShaoHsing wine. Then added the roast pork, ginger slices and green onion. Added the tofu, and oyster (coated and fried first), chicken broth and water, plus oyster sauce and soy sauce and sugar to braise for 10-15 minutes. The result was excellent. Just a teaspoon of Brown Bean Sauce does make a difference.
Do I smell a future pictorial?
sand pot dishes are great for cold weather.
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Many Chinese families go out for Chinese food on Thanksgiving day (Peking duck is a popular choice).
But for some of us with American relatives/spouses, this is not an option.
So, how do you incorporate your Chinese heritage into this most traditional American holiday dinner? (Or Canadian Thanksgiving in Oct?)
My sister used to serve a turkey Peking duck style; but beside this, I can’t think of anything else.
What does your family do?
William
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I think the key to appreciate Chnese rice wine is drink it warm with food; it doesn’t work well as cold sipping wine.
For the Chinese white liquors: 茅台/Maotai is, of course, everyone’s favor but it can be too fragrant if you drink in lager quantity
For me, 五粮液/WuLianGye with 醬汁牛肉 makes a good combination for sipping in a cold night such as we have in the East Coast of US.
This is the kind of weather the Northern Chinese endure in their winter and why these White Liquors are their drink of choices.
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I wanted to experiment with some of the "drunken chicken" recipes, which call for Hua Diao [Mandarin] wine.
Questions: Is this what the previous posts were talking about? Adding a little bit of salt and classifying it as cooking wine, they sell it at a much lower price?
Are these 2 wines the same other than the salt content?
Can I make "drunken chicken" with regular ShaoHsing cooking wine eventhough the recipes call for "Hua Diao" wine?
I am just puzzled over the terminology of Hua Diao wine (紹興花雕酒) versus ShaoHsing cooking wine (紹興酒). Are all ShaoHsing wine basically Hua Diao?
ShaoHsing is the broader term that describes the yellow wine(黃酒) from ShaoHsing, ZheJiang.
Hua Diao (花雕酒) is a blend of aged premium ShaoHsing (绍兴酒) that has higher content of glutinous rice.
It is analogous to French XO vs. regular brandy.
In that part of China, people used to follow the custom of storing a few urns of good yellow rice wine on the birth of a daughter for her wedding.
This wine is know as Nu Er Hong/Daughter Red (女兒红) and the urns is highly curved and decorated.
Thus the term “花雕” (flower carved).
I will argue that Hua Diao is too good for cooking but I know there are a few recipes call for it.
Your $6.0 ShaoHsing should be good enough for Drunken Chicken; I personally will save the HuaDiao for drinking.
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Picture:
Chinese name: 蟹肉干燒伊麵
English name: Yi Fu Noodles with Crab Meat
Category: Cantonese Rice/Noodle plates
Description: Yi Fu noodles stir-fried with crab meat, yellow chive and straw mushrooms in premium broth and dark soy sauce.
quote=hzrt8w,Nov 16 2005, 01:21 PM]
Picture:
Chinese name: 豉油王鸡丝抄麺
English name: Soy Sauce Chicken Chow Mein
Category: Cantonese Rice/Noodle plates
Description: Soft egg noodles stir-fried with chicken, dark soy sauce, bean sprouts, onions and green onions.
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The classic Dan Dan Noodle(擔擔面) should be serve warm with ya cai(芽采), pork sauce and wheat noodle.
In Land of Plenty, Fuchsia Dunlop did a good job emphasizing this by naming her receipt “Traditional Dan Dan Noodle” and explains it this way “The name Dan Dan noodle didn’t originally refer to a particular style of noodles, but is firmly associated with the following recipe…...” (Notice she use TRADITIONAL and FIRMLY)
She has done a lot of research in Sichuan for her book and her takes on this is once again right on the money.
Her recipe substitute Tianjin preserved vegetable for yu cai because the lack of availability in the U.S.,
It also use scallions but no garlic.
The name Dan Dan Noodle/擔擔面 came from the carrying shoulder pole(扁擔) that the Chengdu street vendors used to carry the pots of noodle and sauce in the old days.
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hzrt8w:
Some of the names for 髮菜/發菜:
Hair Vegetable, Hair Moss, Black Moss and Hair Seaweed (not correct since it is land based).
Latin name: Nostoi commune v. flageliforme
髮菜 - hair vegetable (Fa Cai in Mandarin) in Northern China.
發菜 -"prosperous" vegetable (Fat Choy in Cantonese).
The Northern Chinese use Facai in braised meat dishes; it absorbs the flavor and provide a crunchy, slippery texture.
It also supposedly has medicinal quality; something like "eat hair grows hair" kind of logic.
This also makes a great vegetarian dish without the conpoy.
Isn’t this fairly similar to the vegetarian dish “Lohan Delight” (Lohan Tsai)?
Good job, a very interesting dish.
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For those people that are interested in seeing a picture of the noodle, there is a great one in the National Geography Link, it is about 50cm long.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/20...12_noodles.html
The following BBC site talks about the Lajia site as the Pompeii of China, some real interesting stuffs here.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4335160.stm
The Chinese archeologist had published their paper in the prestigious science journal Nature.
It should make a good read.
Maybe I can get my kid to do a science project on it.
Everyone, have a nice weekend.
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According to my newsource for this, the noodles where made of different kinds of grass and not millet... I doubt that it will be good posting a link to it, here. Hence it is in Swedish...
Hector:
The two varieties are foxtail millet (Setaria italica) and broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum). Check the links in the next post.
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touaregsand:
No apology is necessary; I am not suggesting that is the end of the debate and the Chinese won.
I think it is reasonability to assume that many peoples at different time came to this idea of putting starchy grain mash into boiling water for food and learn to dry it for long-term storage.
It is interesting to observer how human histories are intertwined by observing how ingredients changes from one place to another.
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Laksa:
This is truly clever and funny.
Just to show you that my Chinese language part of the brain still process before my English language part even after all these years.
I never even suspected that it was a pun in English.
Don't worry; no offense taken.
We all need a good laugh on a Friday afternoon.
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Laksa:
It must be hard for someone named after a noodles dish to resist a good noodles discussion?
Does si mian 丝面 sound the same in Cantonese as 失面?
If it is, I guess then the joke is on me.
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hzrt8w:
I didn't say I could count.
I didn't say I could ssppeellll.
I didn’t'say I know anything.
I only said that I could eat.
Now with all the eatable Chinese restaurants closing around here, my desperation has driven me into this forum and I have found myself drooling over virtual noodles dish.
I only have spaghetti left in my brain.
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Clifford Wright's posts in particularHopefully this discovery will settle the debate of the origin of noodles.
What do you think ?
Things can be developed independently of eachother. The Berbers when they were rolling couscous into little pasta grains, then rolled them into semolina balls or rolled them between their fingers into little noodles were not taught this by the Chinese. The Sicilians were introduced to Pasta (durum wheat Pasta) by the Saracens from the Maghreb. Of course the Sicilians and Italians took it to entirely different levels than Maghrebi pasta dishes.
The scholarship is there on the origins of durum wheat semolina pasta. Finding millet noodles in China does not dispute them.
Who did what first is of minor and passing interest to me. I'm more interested in how ingredients traveled and morphed in different locations.
touaregsand:
Like I said before, this may not be new to some of you but I didn’t realize that there was a big discussion on eGullet about the origin of pasta already.
But it seems to me, after quickly reading some of the posts that the original discussion were more about whether or not Marco Polo brought noodles back to Italy from China (He probable didn’t) and also the bulk of the discussion occurred before this news came out.
Furthermore, that discussion was not about noodles as an innovative food technology for preserving and storing grains in 2000 B.C. China.
The article you mentioned by Clifford Wright ( http://www.cliffordawright.com/history/cou...s_history.html) made a narrow definition of noodles as Macaroni – a hard wheat based pasta and therefore eliminated the Etruscans, Roman and the Chinese by definition and credited the Arabs as its original source. Since wheat did not arrive in China until about second millennium B.C. from Near East and not wildly cultivated until Tang Dynasty, (A.D. 618 to 907), I guess I would not be able to disagree with this definition.
But we do need to recognize that he was talking about the spread of a specific type of hard wheat noodle - Macaroni from East Africa to medieval Italy and NOT about the innovation of preserving grains into dry noodle forms. The dry noodles of Lajia DID survival for four thousand years.
By his own account, the first written account “might be” (quoting him) macaroni did not happen until 1188 in Italy, by then the Chinese would had been making fairly sophisticated long noodle for about Three thousand years.
With the link of Silk Road from China to Near East to the West as far back ago as Roman times, the significance of this find should not be just a passing interests to anyone who is interested in how ingredients traveled and changed in different places at different time.
Disclaimer: this stuff of ancient history, East or West, is definitely outside my realm of knowledge or intellectual interests.
So please, someone wiser, join in!
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Yeah, I've heard about it too.
The only question I have is: Are those noodles still edible? (don't let them go to waste)
I see future episode of "Good Eat with Ah Leung" featuring "4000 Thoudand Noodle with Thousand Years old Egg"
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This may be old news to some of you but since we have all these noodles dishes made by hzrt8w, I though I will bring it up here.
First, NO, this is not the cousin of thound years old Eggs.
Chinese archeologist had discovered some 4000 years old late Neolithic noodles made of millet on the Lajjia Yellow River archaeological site.
Millet is one of the "five grains" of ancient China.
A Prof. Lu explains that prior to this discovery the earliest written record were from the East Han Dynasty around 25-220 AD.
This noodles is similar to the modern “La Mian” hand pull noodle which is made by repeatedly pulling and folding the dough by hands.
Hopefully this discovery will settle the debate of the origin of noodles.
What do you think ?
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It's funny that you like the looks of the sapo dish, I think that is the only one I didn't get any feedback on at all, and it was my favorite. I was proud of it because I had to reverse engineer it ....
My favorite part about talking about Chinese food is learning how much variation there is from region to region.....
regards,
trillium
Trillium:
Reverse engineer the dish! There must have been many interesting failures alone the way.
Agree, as we see it here on the variation of bean pastes that although all Chinese cooks share similar ingredients; different regions use and make them in many different ways.
This diversity is what makes life interesting.
William
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Beef Shank Braised with Five Spice and Soy Sauce (五香牛腱)
..............Drizzle about 2 tsp of sesame oil on top. Read to serve.
Note: You may save the braising liquid - filter and discard all the fat, spices and residue. Store the braising liquid in a plastic container in the freezer. You may start with this braising liquid next time. Just replenish with a small amount of Chinese Marinade, dark soy sauce, and water. Use the same amount of rock sugar, ginger and other spices.............
hzrt8w:
The beef looks delicious, and the drizzling of the sesame oil at the end always brings the cold beef alive.
My father, being the northerner he was, also put some scallion on top.
This dish is great with warm Chinese liquor or cold beer and now I am having this craving for that combination and it is not noon yet.
A question for you, is Lo Shui/滷水 the same as "Master Sauce" or are they different ?
Thank you for another great dish.
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I'm really interested in food research (last year I even helped with a conference on Food and Religion in Ancient China ... ) But, boy! I wouldn't want to eat most of the really traditional things (like for this month, according to the LiJi ...........
Fengyi:
LiJi - The Book of Rites.
Now, that is tracing Chinese food back to its origin!
Enjoy.
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trillium:
I am glad someone actually cooks agree with this approach.
I read some of your old class on Southern home-style dishes and the dishes look delicious , particular the one with chicken and salt fish in the sand pot.
William
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hzrt8w:
There is actually a Chinese Beer Shrimp recipe in the eGullet recipes:
http://recipes.egullet.org/recipes/r1272.h...0f550113f6c3b5c
Beer Shrimp
Submitted by: Ellen Shapiro
Keywords: Main Dish, Chinese, Seafood, Shrimp, Easy
While in China during my Seven Weeks in Tibet, one day on bikes ended at the cooking school. It was an optional activity, and I was tired, but I knew I had to do it for my fellow eGullet Society members.
200 g fish (firm white fish with skin on)
3 T peanut oil
1 tomato, chopped
1 red pepper, sliced
1 green pepper, sliced
2 T of sliced garlic tops or spring onion
25 g ginger, sliced
4 cloves garlic, crushed
2 T soy sauce
1 tsp salt
1 c beer
Heat wok. Add oil and heat. Put fish into wok, skin side down. Put salt on top of fish and fry on each side for about 3 minutes or until skin is brown. Put all vegetables, garlic and ginger on top of fish. Add soy sauce and beer. Cover and cook for 5 minutes. Remove lid to reduce liquid (approximately 2-3 minutes).
For cooking crab, the people in Maryland where the famous blue crabs come from use "Old Bay" spices (mostly salt, red pepper...) and beer. It is delicious.
Not Chinese though. Maybe we can adapt the shrimp recipe for crab.
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Seitch:
I just want to add that Tian Mian Jiang is the proper sauce to serve with Peking Duck, most of restaurant serving their version of the Peking Duck in this county using hoisin sauce or even wortst - plum sauce.
What makes an authentic KungPao Chicken ?
in China: Cooking & Baking
Posted
The recipe from Guizhou as listed in New York Times has no Sichuan Peppercorn: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?act=Po...29&qpid=1065984
The Sichuan version obviously does use it.