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#18, Hong Kong Style Chicken Pan-Fried Noodles (港式雞肉煎麵)

Hong Kong Style Chicken Pan-Fried Noodles (港式雞肉煎麵) Michael (pan): This set of pictorial is for you. It illustrates a different style of Chow Mein. In Hong Kong, this is known as the "wet style" because the dish is made with a sauce (based on broth and oyster sauce and soy sauce) covering the noodles that are first pan-fried. This is in contrast to the Soy Sauce Chow Mein where soft noodles are fried with the meat and soy sauce. Serving suggestion: 1 to 2 Basic ingredients: Use about 8 oz of fresh, thin, soft egg noodles. You can usually find these in the refrigerator section in an Asian grocery store. If the noodles are curled up into ball shapes, use 3 of them. 1 piece of boneless chicken breast, about 1/2 lb to 3/4 lb. 3 cloves of garlic. 2 stalks of Chinese vegetables (e.g. bok choy or Taiwanese greens). Basic ingredients to make the sauce include chicken broth, oyster sauce, dark soy sauce and Shao Hsing cooking wine. Take the chicken breast, trim and discard all fats and cut into 1/4 inch thick slices. Lay the noodles on a plate. Uncurl them using your fingers. Try to make them as fluffy as you can. Marinate the chicken: Use a small mixing bowl, add chicken slices. To marinate, add 1 tsp of sesame oil, 1 tsp of ground white pepper, 1 tsp of Shao Hsing cooking wine, 1 tsp of corn starch, 1 tsp of light soy sauce, and 1 tsp of oyster sauce. Mix all the marinade ingredients well. Set aside for 20 minutes or 1 hour in the refrigerator. Mince 2 to 3 cloves of garlic. Use 2 stalks of Chinese greens. Cross cut twice along the stem to cut each stalk of vegetable into 4 quarters. Wash and drain. Use a pan/wok, set stove to high setting, add 2 tblsp of cooking oil. Wait until the oil gets hot, velvet the marinated chicken slices on the pan. Cook until the meat turns white from pink, about 3 minutes. Remove from pan. Use a small pot, fill it with shallow water and set to boil. Lightly blanch the vegetables and drain. This will save some time when preparing the final dish. Start with a clean pan/wok. Set stove to high setting. Add a generous amount of cooking oil, about 3 to 4 tblsp. Wait until the oil starts fuming. All the noodles on to the pan. The noodles should brown very quickly. Use a pair of chopsticks or the spatula to make sure the noodles are getting browned evenly. If you need to, use the spatula to press the noodles agains the pan or add some more cooking oil to make sure at least you brown most of the noodles. Or else the noodles may taste "raw". Flip the noodles and pan-fry the other side. Make sure the noodles are getting browned evenly. Remove the noodles and set them on the serving plate. Prepare 1 tsp of Shao Hsing cooking wine in the bottle cap. After removing the noodles, add 2 tblsp of cooking oil in the pan. Maintain stove setting at high. Wait until oil starts fuming. Quickly add minced garlic, a pinch of salt (e.g. 1/4 tsp), and dash in the capful of cooking wine. This action will probably induce a flame for a quick half a second. Stir well and add 1/4 cup of chicken broth and 1/4 to 1/2 cup of water. Add 2 tsp of oyster sauce, 1 tsp of dark soy sauce, and 1 tsp of sugar. Stir well. Continue stirring until the mixture starts boiling. Use some corn starch slurry (e.g. 1 tsp corn starch dissolved in 1/8 cup of water) to thicken the sauce until you obtain the right consistency. Not too thick, not too runny. Re-add the chicken and vegetables into the pan. Cook for 2 to 3 minutes. Keep stirring. When finished, pour the resulting mixture onto the noodles. The essence of this dish is to let the boiling hot sauce moisten and soften up the dry pan-fried noodles when served. The finished dish. Note: If you prefer other types of meat, this dish is great with beef, shrimp, BBQ pork, and pork slices.

This is makig me very curious. I think I will try it next time. I have never seen a Chinese dish using beer as an ingredient. I will post some pics and my impression of that offer.

Thanks for the links to the 2 educational articles, Tepee! If I am tight on cash, you think I can pay my landlord with a few bottles of white peppercorns?

Thank you Russell! It is my goal to cook Chinese food as "authentic" as possible. While that term may be debatable in many situations, I would say perhaps as close to "what I had grown up eating in Hong Kong" as possible.

May be I was misled by the packaging labels? All the bottled ground white pepper that I have bought is in Chinese and looks like produced in Chinese. I assumed that such ground white pepper was produced in China. Unless they import the peppercorns from India and process them in China. I don't know.

Thanks again, jo-mel. When I first started, I read many cookbooks too. Unfortunately (20 some years ago) the illustrated Chinese cookbooks were very few and quite expensive. The ones that I could afford or borrow didn't have any picture. I had to use my imagination combined with my past experience to guide me to figure out how something is done. But those times have passed. In this day and age, cookbooks without illustrations would hardly be picked up. And thanks to the Internet and digital imaging technologies, electronic publishing is so easy and costs so much less!

What is "basa"? Is this Spanish? Or did you mean "bass"? Got back at ya! Oh... that may entirely change the equation. Do these 2 guests like authentic Chinese food? Or else better stay with the more popular ones... go do the Sweet and Sour Pork and Chicken Fried Rice and Egg Drop Soup just to be safe.

Michael: I think perhaps white pepper is favored by the Chinese. All the cookbooks I've read, TV shows I've see all call for white pepper. Very rarely is black pepper used in Chinese cooking. Examples of such exceptions are Cantonese style beef strips with black pepper sauce, bell peppers and onions, and crab stir-fried with black pepper and fermented black beans. Perhaps the reason is we grow only white pepper in China? It is also my personal preference too. Black pepper tastes "wilder", and white pepper is more tame I think. White pepper seems to go better with Chinese food, especially to a Cantonese who doesn't favor things being too "spicy".

jo-mel: sorry to hear that. Can your DH eat other nuts like peanuts or almonds? This dish can be made with peanuts or almonds, may be even pistachios, pine nuts or chestnuts - all shelled of course - and the sauce would go well with those nuts. I use peanuts sometimes when I am out of cashews.

project: Thank you! Long time no see! All good questions. This is great feedback. Now I know how I could have written the recipes better! Yes the cashews are raw, whole, unsalted, shelled cashew nuts. If one doesn't have the raw cashews, using roasted cashews is okay too. But not salted ones because it would make the dish too salty (all the sauces (except hoisin sauce) are salty, and so is the chicken broth). It is not very scientific. I usually just eye-ball everything. By gut feel I just suggest 10 oz of cashews to 2 lb of chicken meat. (The whole cashew package is labelled as 12 oz and I suggested to use only 3/4 of it. I know it's 9 oz mathematically but I just rounded it up to 10 oz.) For those who love cashew nuts, of course you may use as much cashews as you want. You may want to adjust and use more sauces and chicken broth though. I typically see white meat used in this dish. May be it's because I observed it mostly in the restaurants in the USA where white meat is used more often. You may certainly use thigh meat. But no bones, no skin. Bones and skin won't mix too well with cashew nuts.

Yeah, tell me about it! Wouldn't that be nice? But who would be the "authority" to pick and choose? So far it's all dependent on the sauce manufacturers. And that's why we have so many preserved "turnip" because some marketing departments don't do their due diligence to translate the names properly. I don't think this is unique to the Chinese though. Are there something called differently by Americans in the North versus South, East versus West?

Do you have a wok and a 24000 BTU stove? Hmmm... both northern cities. (Well... anything north of Canton is north to us. ) Maybe make just one southern (Cantonese dish). I would suggest: 3 entrees and 1 vegetable dish and 1 soup 1 entree: steamed dish - this is best for southern cooking. Suggestions: - Steamed pork with salted fish (your favorite) - Steamed pork/bison with preserved vegetables - Steamed fish with black beans/ginger - Steamed salted chicken 1 entree: braised. Suggestions: - Soy sauce chicken (see pictorial) - Pork braised with mui choy and soy sauce, rock sugar - beef shank (bison shank?) braised with soy sauce, five spice and rock sugar 1 entree: stir-fried. Suggestions: - "imperial shrimp" (shrimp with tomato/garlic/chili sauce) - tomato bison! (bison meat with tomatoes and eggs) - shrimp with (water-down) eggs (waht dan ha) - kung pao chicken/shrimp/scallop - beef/chicken with black bean sauce 1 vegetable. Suggestions: - Snow peas with bamboo shoots and black mushroom (see pictorial) - Hairy melon with dry shrimp and mung bean threads/oyster sauce - Eggplants with Sa Cha sauce and mung bean threads - Eggplants with garlic sauce (yu hern style) - Blanched bok choy with garlic (see pictorial) 1 soup. Suggestions: - Tofu with fish filet and mustard green soup - Pork neck bone and lotus root soup - Pork neck bone and winter melon soup This is with consideration to how many dishes you need to juggle simultaneously. Braising can be set in motion early. Steaming doesn't need much attention once in the steamer. Soup can be started early. So you just need to pay closer attention to the stir-fried dish and the sauteed vegetables closer to meal time. What do you think? Can you handle that? Want more suggestions?

Some more thoughts: I understand how intimidating it would be for someone to follow a recipe strictly by the text if one is not familiar with Chinese cooking: the special ingredients, the sauces, the processes. That's why I decided if I were ever going to write a cookbook, I will make it all illustrated. That's the motive behind these pictorials. Basically: let me show you how I do it. Just follow me... If I can do it, so can you. (Hey, isn't that the motto of Yang??? I hope he didn't have it trademarked. )

Of course. You will have the first autographed copy. Heck I may just fly out to Brandon to personally deliver it! The visitors: are they from the Canton areas or from Northern China? The 2 groups don't usually agree on their diets.

Brown bean sauce is also called Ground Bean Sauce, or maybe just Bean Sauce. It is ground fermented soy beans.

Found 2 of these sauces on Lee Kum Kee's website: Brown Bean Sauce: 磨原豉 Hoisin Sauce: 海鮮醬

Sure, be glad to: Chili Bean Sauce: 豆板醬 Brown Bean Sauce: 磨原豉 Sweet Flour Sauce: 甜麵醬 Hoisin Sauce: 海鮮醬

Wow! What a testimonial, Irwin! Thank you! I am so pleased to hear others enjoying these recipes and getting some decent meals, as I very much enjoy sharing what I know. I understand that most may not have "sweet flour sauce" (甜麵醬) teem mein jiang [Cantonese] at home. You may skip this one and still have some wonderful flavor. Sweet flour sauce is not used often in Cantonese cooking, only in some braised dishes mostly.

Yes it is. That's what I use.

#17, Chicken with Cashew Nuts in Bean/Hoisin Sauce (醬爆鸡)

Chicken with Cashew Nuts in Bean/Hoisin Sauce (醬爆鸡) (a.k.a. "Cashew Chicken" in some Szechuan/Beijing style restaurants) jo-mel: I know you like Northern style Chinese cooking. This recipe is for you. I learned this recipe from a respectable top chef in a Chinese restaurant ("Mandarin" style) in San Diego. It is one of the best sellers. It is fairly easy to make. If you have some chili bean sauce, brown bean sauce and hoisin sauce and other basic seasoning ingredients, you are all set. Serving suggestion: 3 to 4 Basic ingredients. Use 3 boneless chicken breasts (about 2 lbs). 3/4 bag of cashew nuts (about 10 oz). Back row from left to right: corn starch, brown bean sauce, chili bean sauce, sweet flour sauce (this is similar to hoisin sauce but sharper and salty), and chicken broth. (Not shown in picture: hoisin sauce) Trim fat from chicken breasts. Dice into 1 inch cubes. Marinate the chicken in a mixing bowl. Use 3 tsp of sesame oil, 2 tsp of ground white pepper, 3 tsp of light soy sauce, 2 tsp of Shao Hsing cooking wine, 2 tsp of corn starch (not shown). Mix chicken and seasoning well. Set aside for about 20 minutes in room temperature, or 1 hour in the refrigerator before cooking. Use a pan/wok, first dry-roast over medium heat about 3/4 bag of cashew nuts (about 10 oz) for a few minutes until slightly caramelized. You may also add 1 tblsp of cooking oil. Be cautious that the oil will brown the cashnuts very quickly. Remove from pan. Add 2 tblsp of cooking oil in the pan, set stove for high heat. Velvet the chicken meat until pink color has just disappeared. (Note: don't overcook it.) Remove from pan. Deglazing and making the sauce: Use the same pan, add 2 tblsp of cooking oil. Maintain stove setting at high. Wait until oil starts fuming. Add about 3-4 cloves of minced garlic, 2 tsp of chili bean sauce, 2 tsp of brown bean sauce, 2 tsp of sweet flour sauce, 4-5 tsp of hoisin sauce. Dash in 2 tsp of white vinegar. Stir well. (Note: No extra salt is needed because most of these sauces are quite salty.) Continue to cook the mixture for about 30 seconds to a minute. Add 1/4 cup of chicken broth and 1/4 to 1/2 cup of water. Bring to a boil. Keep stirring. Add some corn starch slurry (e.g. 1 to 2 tsp of corn starch and 1/8 cup of water) to thicken the sauce. Keep adding until the sauce is at the right consistency - not too runny and yet not too thick. Re-add both the chicken and cashew nuts into the pan. Stir well. Keep stirring until the chicken and cashew nuts are heated up. Make sure the sauce is evenly spreaded. Finished. The finished dish. Portion shown is less than half of the quantity made in this recipe.

Excellent! In both English and Chinese. Very authentic Hong Kong style cooking. I love it!

mudbug: Here is an English version of the beef shank recipe from another site. Looks almost identical to the one cited earlier. Don't know who is copying whom. http://www.hkcg.com/tgweb/eng/cooking/reci...tent.asp?con=28

William: I have not made this dish before. But if I were to make it, I would keep the chili slices and garlic but skip the ginger and green onions. I would also add a pinch of salt (because not using shrimp sauce), and more sugar (e.g. 3 teaspoons) to balance the sourness of pickled mustard greens. Should be a delicious entree too!