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Dear Rachel To my mind learning to cook proper Chinese is food is akin to learning a craft. Once you have mastered the techniques you can move ahead and apply your knowledge to create a series of basic preparations and their variations. Unfortunately I don’t think there are just two or three supreme tips. I have a philosophy about how to approach and think about this way of cooking and hope that it will be helpful in guiding you as well as others. 1) Learn how to select the correct cuts of meat and vegetables and how to prepare, cut, and flavor (marinate) them for cooking. 2) Learn how to cook these meats and vegetables so that they are properly cooked through and exactly the right texture. 3) Learn how to season the food you’re preparing. Time after time my cooking seems to reinforce this approach. For example when you’re making beef and broccoli, you start by purchasing the right cut of meat and learning to slice it to the desired shape. Different cuts lend themselves to different shapes. Of course you’ll need some really fresh broccoli. Make sure it isn’t too old and tough. When we start to cook this dish we fry the meat so that it is just cooked through and quite tender, and cook the vegetables so that they aren’t raw, but bright green and crisp/tender. Finally we create a sauce and then toss the whole thing together, for just 20-30 seconds, so that the meat and vegetables are properly seasoned. We quickly dribble in a touch of sesame oil, to create a great smell, and then remove the food from the wok and plate it. Should you toss the meat in the sauce for more than a few seconds it will toughen and your dish will lose some quality. This 3-step technique of preparing the food, then cooking it to the right texture, and then flavoring it, recurs in recipe after recipe. Most importantly, when you start to think about stir-frying this way, it provides an approach for dealing with all sorts of Chinese and Asian recipes. Beyond this here are some other basic pieces of advice: For home cooking I suggest cooking in a 14” flat-bottomed wok. Get a wok strainer Use a Chinese spatula and a Chinese stir-fry spoon Get good recipes Use really fresh food Use good homemade chicken stock As a practical example I have included a fairly detailed recipe for your perusal. Ed Sliced Beef with Broccoli Ingredients: 1 lb. flank steak, trimmed and partially frozen NOTE:you could also use other cuts among them boneless sirloin or filet mignon or my favorite poor man's cut: chicken steak (also know as beef blade chuck steak - it first needs to be trimmed of exterior silver skin and interior gristle) for the beef marinade: 1 egg white 1 T dry sherry or Shaoshing wine 1/4 t salt 2 T cornstarch 1/2 head broccoli, washed and cut into 2”pieces 2 scallions, cleaned and cut in 1/3” pieces 1 t minced garlic 1 t thin sliced ginger, cut in 1/2” pieces for the seasoning sauce: 1 1/2 T Kikkoman soy sauce 2 t oyster sauce 1 t dark soy 1 T dry sherry or Shaoshing rice wine 1/2 t sugar 1/4 t MSG (opt) dash white pepper 1 T cornstarch dissolved with 1 1/2 T water 3 cups vegetable oil add at the last moment: 1/2 t sesame oil Prepare Ahead: 1. To slice the beef: Holding your cleaver at a 45-degree angle to the cutting surface and cutting across the grain, slice the partially frozen flank steak into 1/3” thick pieces, each 2”- 3” long and 1/2” wide. 2. To marinate the beef: Put the beef slices in a mixing bowl and add the egg white, wine and salt. Using your fingers briskly mix for about 30 seconds until the beef is evenly coated. Next add the cornstarch and continue mixing until it is just dissolved. Transfer the beef to a clean mixing bowl, discarding any extra marinade clinging to the first bowl. Cover and refrigerate until ready to cook. The beef may be cooked immediately though its texture is best after 12 hours. If well refrigerated it will stay fresh for at least 48 hours. To Cook: 3. To cook the beef: Heat 3 cups of oil in a wok until it is moderately hot: 280-300 degrees F. With the heat turned to it’s highest level, add the sliced beef to the hot oil, and using a pair of chopsticks or a slotted spoon, gently swirl the beef in the oil so that the slices separate from one another. Cook, stirring gently, until no trace of pink remains and the beef starts to bubble vigorously in the oil: about 60 seconds. Using a slotted spoon transfer the beef slices to a strainer suspended over a pot to catch the dripping oil. After removing the beef from the oil continue to leave your wok full of oil over high heat. 4. Cook the broccoli: With the flame still at its highest level, reheat the oil for about 2 minutes: until it is 325-350 degrees. Now add the broccoli to the oil and cook stirring gently for 30 seconds. Immediately stop the cooking by draining the contents of the wok over the beef and into the same strainer that’s suspended over a pot to catch the oil. If any of the beef marinade has stock to the wok scrape it out and discard it. Wipe out your wok and return it top the heat. Note: If a great deal of marinade has stuck to the pan you may have to wash out the wok and reheat it. 5. To sauce the food: With the heat turned to its highest level add 1 T vegetable oil to the wok followed by the garlic, ginger, and scallion. Cook, stirring for 10 seconds, then add the seasoning sauce that has first been briefly mixed to redistribute the cornstarch. Stir constantly until the sauce comes to a boil and thickens. Working quickly add the beef and broccoli to the wok and continue stirring until the food until it is completely coated with the sauce, about 30 seconds. Don’t stir the meat in the sauce any longer than necessary: boiling it in the liquid will toughen it. Immediately sprinkle with the 1/2 t of sesame oil and serve.

Hey Ed and Welcome to Egullet!! I can't come close to you expertise in Chinese cuisine but I would love to ask a few questions and pick your brain so to speak... First question. Peking Duck. The best you ever had and where? I had someone ask me to make it.. Living in Florida it isn't easy to get fresh duck. But I did. 5.5 lbs. Funny. I grew up on Long Island.. Anyway, I went to Walmarts and bought an air compressor. Blew him up well.. Massaged his body first. I love this chit. Meanwhile I had checked out about 10 recipes for this and decided on one... Dried him out for a bit. Then dipped him in the proper base I hope Ed? (WOK) He blew up great! Hung him out to dry again, fan and all. All I know is when I cooked that bird the next day I got rave reviews.....As good as my friend that has it in China. Maybe better. Homemade pancakes and scallion brushes. The "Best" Hoison sauce I know of.. Koon? Made it 3 times since and only gets better. Will be going to China this coming year and can't wait. Just not to eat but buying some pearls. May I ask if you have ever had Lobster in China that moves while you eat it? Still alive and did you enjoy it? Thanking you in advance, Pat

Ed -- I appreciate that cornstarch is a critical item in the Chinese kitchen. However, in French cuisine, as you know, using cornstarch as a thickening or binding agent would be severely frowned upon. I wonder whether there is an argument that reliance on cornstarch to attract flavors is a flaw of the stir fry technique, and therefore whether the overall benefits of the stir fry technique outweigh its costs (which include the need for cornstarch, if one sees cornstarch as a negative). What are your views on the benefits of stir frying, and other detriments of the technique? Also, as you know, for stir frying, the traditional method did not use electricity, and relied on other forms of fuel. Do you sense that the the effects of the wok as deployed by a given cuisinier, can vary markedly depending on the fuel source, assuming other considerations are held constant?

TESTING A RESTAURANT - WHAT DO I LOOK FOR? The first and prime thing that I want from a restaurant is delicious food: I want fresh, clean, beautifully tailored flavors and textures. If I get that I can put up with almost anything. Presentation, and the order in which dishes are served, especially at a banquet, are particularly important. Yinging and yanging the items so that you get a nicely blanced progression of tastes, colors, and smells is what's critical. When I go to a (new) Chinese restaurant before I order I typically: 1) Walk around the dining room and see what others are eating. 2) Check out the fish tanks (if they have them) - see what they have and how they're taking care of them. 3) Read the menu and ask if there are any ancillary menus - chef's specialties, set dinners, and in particular banquet menus. Very often the banquet menus are a good clue to what the restaurant itself thinks is special - and frequently these items are available a la carte. 4) Check out the local veg and fish markets and see what's fresh and then ask the restaurant if they're serving those items. 5) If these menus are in Chinese only, I am often aggressive about trying to get a waiter who is willing to translate for me. There are dishes that are good tests of a chef's skill. One of the best is sauteed sliced fish. Fish filet is resillient and hard to pull apart when it's raw. When cooked, however, it falls apart very easily. It is very difficult to toss and sauce fish filet in a wok without it breaking into smaller pieces. This is a classical test. But don't forget, there may be 10 different stir fry chefs in a kitchen, and only one of them has cooked your dish and it probably wasn't the head chef. He might be great (or terrible), but don't forget about the other 9 chefs whose cooking you haven't tried. This helps account for the variability of a particular restaurant. On a Chinese hot saute line it is frequently known which chef cooks which particular dish best. In restaurants where they really care, they may assign a particular chef to cook a particular dish because they know how well he executes it. Additionally, one might look to see the volume of sauce vs. the volume of the food. Sometimes we want just enough sauce to coat the food and still have it be quite flavorful, whereas with other dishes we might want a large amount of gravy or a completely dry dish. Our industry is all about the details. Chances are good that if there are a lot of beautifully thought out and maintained details, the restaurant will be a good one. Though obviously the small and perhaps funky places can be terrific. It just takes one really good cook!

Most retaurants have just one or two really good wok chefs. You wnat them to mbe concentrating on YOUR dinner. If there lots of people best to have different banquets on different days.

A bizarre meal - one to test my skills and not to conform to anyone's idea of what one ought to have for dinner - Kung Pao Chicken and Crepes Suzette - just because I wanted to see what I could do with both dishes - no company - just me and hubby and up to a point he's very much supportive of my efforts. I got to use my new kitchen "island" which he built for me - a tile-topped worked surface with a shelving unit above that is custom-fitted into an alcove in our tiny apartment kitchen. No wok - I used a big cast iron fry pan - but I had read, listened and learned a few things about stir-frying and this was my best effort yet - far from perfect - not spicy enough for me - what the heck are "long red dried chilies" - I had dried chilies but who knows what "long" means - relative to what? Anyway, next time I'll know to spice it up some more. The crepes were OK but nothing to write home about - I have had better - not sure of the problem - but thought they might be really interesting made with blood oranges.

Went back to "Dumpling Restaurant next to Han Ah Reum" with some other people and it held up. New items tried include -Kimchee Dumplings, Stir Fry style. -Donkatsu (they seem to spell it with a D instead of a T) The Kimchee Dumplings were pretty much a mix of how Rachel describes the Beef Dumpling Stir Fry above and the Kimchee Dumpling Soup, minus the soup. Large dumplings--about two and a half times the size of the small ones--with a mixture of Beef and Kimchee inside. Tossed into a wok and fried in a spicy sauce with some simple vegetables. The Donkatsu was an excellent version. The pork was pounded VERY flat before being breaded and fried, and was presented very artfully on a large platter with fancy cut fruit and a large salad. Excellent place. I had a bit more of a language problem this time (since the guy there with the best English was fairly busy), but we muddled through.

I made latkes last night for the 2nd time in my life. Last year's were, if not quite disastrous, not quite edible either: lumpen, leaden and greasy. This year, I invited people over and then remembered I didn't know what the hell I was doing, so I called my sister for a latke consultation. She said the secret was frying in...Crisco. Yep. Per her instructions, I peeled seven large russets, grated them in the food processor, and grated a large onion by hand. They were mixed up in the wok (excellent mixing vessel) with three eggs, 3/4 cup matzoh meal, ample salt and pepper. I heated 2 large skillets (one cast iron) and added a generous amount of Crisco to each. Picked up globs of batter, squeezed out the excess liquid, and dropped them into the hot fat. After about 8 minutes, flipping midway, they were golden brown and crispy. At some point I transferred the batter to a strainer to get rid of some of the excess liquid. Once fried, the latkes were drained on paper towel and left to cool, then reheated briefly before serving. Accompaniments were sour cream, homemade applesauce and a romaine/endive/radicchio salad. Every latke was devoured. As a bonus, the cast iron skillet is much better seasoned than it was before this exercise. Was it the Crisco? I don't know, but I'm definitely buying a can of it for Chanukah next year.

THE QUALITY OF CHINESE FOOD IN NYC: 2002 VS. THE 1970'S Over the 35 years that I have been compulsively tracking the American Chinese restaurant scene there have been many changes. The late 60's and early 70's brought about a Chinese cooking authenticity revolution in this country that was exciting and extraordinary. Chinese regional ethnic cuisines from Szechuan, Hunan, Shanghai, Fukien, Hakka, Yunnan, Beijing and other areas could all be found here in one variation/adaptation or another. Since so many dishes are prepared a la minute in a wok, the quality of a dish was/is often a function of the skill of the particular stir fry chef cooking it. In a small restaurant, let's say a family run business, where there were only 2 or 3 wok stoves and a chef at each, it would be easy to control quality: have 3 really good chefs and all your food would be good. If you had 2 good ones and 1 pretty good one, your food would be a reflection of that: 2/3's good and 1/3 so so. That's why small family run Asian restaurants can be so good. If just a couple of people can cook well, then the kitchen is set up for success. I am always on the lookout for these sorts of places, and throughout my life they have consistently been around for discovering - and sometimes they're found in the most unexpected places. We recently had great fresh squid in a little family run Chinese restaurant in Alassio, Italy on the Italian Riviera, and again wonderful cooking at a small but highly rated family run restaurant in Victoria, BC. In the late 70's and the 80's the American Chinese restaurant industry expanded so that there was suddenly a take-out joint on every block, but unfortunately as a result, the number of good cooks available was spread thinner. Young stir-fry studs, stir-fry cooks who could work two woks at once and be highly productive, after cooking for just a couple of years, would leave their jobs and open small places of their own. It became very difficult to find kitchen staff members with the many years of experience required to cook really first rate food. For instance in 1973, when we opend Uncle Tai's resturant in NYC, we had about 15 chefs in the kitchen. Our number 5 chef had 20 years expericience, and our top stir fry cooks had all previously been head chefs. A decade later a number 3 cook might only have a couple of years of experience. The industry was spread thin and the result of this dilution was a lack of sophistication and quality. Many of the local take-outs ended up with almost exactly the same menus. Worse yet, they used the same B-minus/C-plus recipes. The traditions passed on from master to student were not the best ones, and unless you were learning to cook in Hong Kong or Taipei, it might have been difficult to find a master to learn from. During these same years in mainland China, fine cooking and luxury goods were distinctly out of favor and anti-revolutionary so many of the finest culinary traditions died or were at best clandestinely practiced. This had great effect. Nevertheless when we entered the nineties and immigration laws changed, we suddenly had an influx of Chinese, and many members of this newly arriving community were more sophisticated and closer to the source when it came to culinary traditions. This signaled a new authenticity revolution: but rather than being oriented towards bringing good quality Chinese cooking to the American community, the new authenticity was geared to the greatly expanded 'overseas' community. Simply put this meant the most exciting new Chinese restaurants were geared toweards the Chinese community not the American one. There were repercussions. In NYC. for example. the foodies who in the past may have flocked to high end midtown eateries such as the Shun Lee Restaurants were now more excited about other Asian ethnic cuisines: Japanese, Thai, Korean, Vietnamese. In order to find cutting edge Chinese places one now had to venture into the city's expanding Asian enclaves: Flushing, 8th Ave in Brooklyn, and Manhattan Chinatown became the areas where all the action was. And this was echoed all over North America.The quest for exciting Chinese cooking would bring you to a surburban Asian mall outside of Toronto, or to Monterey Park in LA. So to answer the question, when was the food better, one must know about this history. In 1975 you could go into a number of midtown restaurants and find world class Chinese cooking. Now you need to go to a small family run place, or perhaps a large HK style glossy restaurant, but one where there is a head chef who can cook really well. You must remember one critical thing: Chinese restaurants can be setup to do two types of cooking: regular a la carte dishes and banquets. Very often the chef who can organize and operate a large restaurant feeding hundreds or thousands of customers in a day, has a totally different set of skills from the chef who can cook a wonderful banquet for a table of 10. Plus there is lot of skill involved in simply getting that head chef to put out the really good stuff for you. For example if I want a terrific meal in NYC I might head for Pings. But, only if I order in advance, and insist that Ping cooks it himself. He is a wonderful chef. When I go there to eat off the a la carte menu the quality varies greatly, and I cope with that by ordering items that I know they do well most of the time or that don't require such great skill and /or concentration. The same holds true at Shun Lee. The food off the regular menu is usually quite good, though it can be somewhat Americanized. But if you put out an effort (and some big bucks) and arrange a banquet with Michael Tong the owner, they can really blow you away. It's been my experience that chefs of all persuasions are most likely to strut their stuff when they realize their client truly appreciates their craft/art. As to which of the restaurants you listed has the best Salt Baked Squid, I don't know, we would have to progressively try each restaurant. Even then it would depend on 1) the quality of the squid they were starting with 2) and which chef cooked it. In fact if you were to sample each restaurant's version I don't think you could really make a good judgement until you had done this same exercise 3 or 4 times. And even then it might be different a few months later after a couple of stir fry chefs had moved around. By the way, the correct (Chinese) name of this dish is: Pepper (as in hot pepper) & Salt Squid. I find the use of the word 'baked' to be silly. It is obviously (and always in my experience) fried!

I doubt I'll be making it very soon, but when you do make it out to the house I will definitely take you up on the cooking lesson offer. I deep fry occasionally, usually using a wok as the cooking vessel. Some things I have down pat - I make great corn (and zucchini and apple) fritters, a technique which would translate well into various chaat. But mostly straight veggie preparation is harder for me for some reason. Those following our remodel will realize that I probably do have adequate ventilation at this point, so the lesson would be welcome.

I made fried rice last night. It's been a while. Hot oil in the wok, cracked in two eggs. My wok is well-seasoned, so no sticking, no burning. Added some cut up prawns that I bought on the way home. Then chopped carrot and left-over rice. Pretty simple. when the rice heated through I added about a teaspoon on soy (I don't like it too dark) some salt, chopped onion, garlic, lots of sliced scallion, cilantro, a few small chillis and a hand-full of frozen peas at the end. Alas, I had no fish sauce -- a few squirts would have helped. The prawns were good, but not enough to flavor the whole batch. Should have picked up some chorizo (I'm in the Spanish market part of town, no Chinese sausage available) or ham.

This is how I learned to make Thai curries, when I was about 10 and living in Thailand. All of the Thai cooks I know make it like this: Assuming you are using canned coconut milk (and not fresh coconut cream and coconut milk), make sure that you do not shake the can before using. Open the top of the can and carefully spoon the thick cream on the top into a pan. Cook the coconut cream until it is bubbling and starts to separate, and then add your curry paste. Once this is aromatic, stir in the coconut milk. Once this is hot, add your meat, and when this is cooked, add your veggies. Taste and add some fish sauce and a bit of sugar (but not too much). I think the most common curry I ate in Thailand was green curry with chicken. We tended to eat at "local" restaurants (frequented by very few farangs), so the chicken was not the boneless breast pieces that are most common in the U. S. Rather, they would "dice" an entire chicken -- skin, bones and fat -- into about a 1-2" dice. The most common vegetables in this were either bamboo shoots (cut into matchsticks) or those golf-ball sized green and white speckled/striped eggplants, halved or quartered, depending on size. Lots of Thai basil at the end. Especially in small towns, we rarely ate curry with pork or beef -- these seemed to be more commonly used in stir fries. Fish was, however, was common, especially in southern Thailand. Masaman curry (same basic preparation, just using masaman curry paste) was always made with beef or lamb, and had potatos and peanuts in it. Another favorite "curry" preparation was made with ground pork and long beans. Heat a little oil in a wok or skillet, add some curry paste, and when fragrant, add ground pork. When cooked, add longbeans cut into 1-2" lengths. In Thai homes, and in little "holes" in the wall, it was not uncommon for these dishes for these dishes to be served at room temperature; the "hot" (temperature-wise) dishes tended to be the soups, stir-fries, fried fish dishes. And, at least in Bangkok, most home cooks did not make their own curry paste -- you purchased hand-made curry paste at the market. They had huge bowls of the stuff. The vendor would scoop out however much you wanted and wrap it in a banana leaf. About the time I left Thailand (late 70's), canned curry paste was becoming more popular, and the first widely available brand was Maesri.

Any suggestions on temperature and time? A low temperature longer cooking time or quick and hot? Would a longer cooking time kill the flavor of the curry or improve it? Or would a wok style high temperature flash stir-fry be better?

I want to try a recipe from Martin Yan's new Chinatown book, Wok-Braised Lobster in Creamy Rum Sauce, for a dinner Saturday night. I have a chance to buy lobsters at a great price if I get them by Friday. But 24 hours seems a long time to keep lobsters alive in my refrigerator. Should I kill the lobsters on Friday and keep their tails on ice? Or kill them and partially steam the meat on Friday? Does anyone have advice? Also, I've never used any method of dispatching a lobster besides dropping it into steaming water. (I've been a coward). Any advice on the method I've seen illustrated, of sticking a skewer into the lobster behind the head? Is that from the back of the neck (so to speak) or from the underside?

Rumor has it Dan and Mike are doing "Stuffed Pain Perdu" with roasted local apples and gingerbread ice cream, Suvir said he's considering his special version of apple halwa made in a wok and Meredith is planning on "Quince 3 ways" with a concord grape sauce made with saba [aged grape must.] Some of the dishes I've heard about for Monday's demo are pretty interesting--I'll let the pastry chefs involved reveal the final versions ahead of time if they so choose. You know how chefs are--things can change right up until the last moment. Suffice it to say Chefette has had me taste versions of a white corn flan/creme brulee, caramelized popcorn and a corn cob foam this week; Patrice was planning a goat yogurt and nutmeg panna cotta with butternut squash pulp, sweetened with maple syrup finished with a green apple foam and some apple julienne, served with a pistachio/butternut squash macaron.

SWEET PEPPER BIRIYANI WITH BLACK MUSTARD SEEDS AND FENNEL Serves 6 to 8 I came up with this recipe one night when I had a houseful of vegetarian friends who love to eat. Although Indian cuisine is known for it’s vegetarian food, before that night, I didn’t have a recipe for a really delicious vegetable biriyani. Vegetable biryani that was not just based on the recipe for a meat one. I had just made a batch of tomato chutney that day so I used some to flavor the bell pepper mixture. You can either use the chutney recipe in this book on page 000 or buy a commercial tomato chutney. SPICE POWDER 1 tablespoon coriander seeds 1 teaspoon cumin seeds 1 teaspoon black mustard seeds 1 teaspoon fennel seeds 1 whole, dried red chili 2 cups basmati rice 1/4 cup canola oil 1 teaspoon cumin seeds 3 whole, dried red chilies 1 large onion, cut into 1-inch dice 1 1/2 teaspoons salt, or to taste 2 garlic cloves, minced 5 bell peppers of various colors (i.e., 2 red, 1 green, 1 yellow and 1 orange) stemmed, seeded and cut into 1-inch cubes 1 tomato, chopped 2 tablespoons Tomato Chutney (page 000) 3/4 cup chopped, fresh cilantro 1/2 cup water 1. Bring 10 cups water to a boil over high heat in a large saucepan. Add the rice and stir gently so that it doesn't stick to the bottom of the pan. Return to a boil, turn the heat down and simmer vigorously, partially covered, 6 minutes. Drain, return the rice to the pan and set aside until ready to use. 2. For the spice powder, combine all of the spices in a spice grinder and grind to a powder. Set aside. 3. Combine the oil, cumin and chilies in a large frying pan, wok or kadai over medium-high heat. Cook, stirring, until the cumin seeds darken slightly, 1 to 2 minutes. 4. Add the onion and salt and cook, stirring, until the onion is softened, about 5 minutes. 5. Add the garlic and cook, stirring, 30 seconds. 6. Add the spice powder and cook, stirring, 30 seconds. 7. Add the peppers and cook, stirring and scraping the bottom of the pan to pick up any spices that stick, about 1 minute. 8. Add 1/4 cup water and continue cooking, stirring, until the peppers are softened and beginning to stick to the sides of the pan, 6 to 7 minutes. 9. Add the fresh tomato and tomato chutney and stir to blend. Scrape the bottom and sides of the pan well to pick up any spices that stick. Then cook, stirring, 5 more minutes. Taste for salt. 10. Preheat the oven to 350?. 11. Spread about 2 cups of cooked rice over the bottom of a large, oven-proof casserole, preferably one with a lid. Spoon about half of the pepper mixture over the rice and sprinkle with 1/4 cup of the cilantro. Cover that with about 1 1/2 cups more rice, spreading the rice evenly. Layer the remaining pepper mixture over the rice and sprinkle with another 1/4 cup cilantro. Spread the remaining rice over the top. Drizzle the water in a thin stream around the edges of the casserole and then over the rice. Cover the dish tightly with foil and then with the lid, if there is one. Bake 35 minutes. Remove from the oven and let stand 10 minutes at room temperature. Sprinkle with the remaining 1/4 cup cilantro and serve hot.

SWEET PEPPER BIRIYANI WITH BLACK MUSTARD SEEDS AND FENNEL Serves 6 to 8 I came up with this recipe one night when I had a houseful of vegetarian friends who love to eat. Although Indian cuisine is known for it’s vegetarian food, before that night, I didn’t have a recipe for a really delicious vegetable biriyani. Vegetable biryani that was not just based on the recipe for a meat one. I had just made a batch of tomato chutney that day so I used some to flavor the bell pepper mixture. You can either use the chutney recipe in this book on page 000 or buy a commercial tomato chutney. SPICE POWDER 1 tablespoon coriander seeds 1 teaspoon cumin seeds 1 teaspoon black mustard seeds 1 teaspoon fennel seeds 1 whole, dried red chili 2 cups basmati rice 1/4 cup canola oil 1 teaspoon cumin seeds 3 whole, dried red chilies 1 large onion, cut into 1-inch dice 1 1/2 teaspoons salt, or to taste 2 garlic cloves, minced 5 bell peppers of various colors (i.e., 2 red, 1 green, 1 yellow and 1 orange) stemmed, seeded and cut into 1-inch cubes 1 tomato, chopped 2 tablespoons Tomato Chutney (page 000) 3/4 cup chopped, fresh cilantro 1/2 cup water 1. Bring 10 cups water to a boil over high heat in a large saucepan. Add the rice and stir gently so that it doesn't stick to the bottom of the pan. Return to a boil, turn the heat down and simmer vigorously, partially covered, 6 minutes. Drain, return the rice to the pan and set aside until ready to use. 2. For the spice powder, combine all of the spices in a spice grinder and grind to a powder. Set aside. 3. Combine the oil, cumin and chilies in a large frying pan, wok or kadai over medium-high heat. Cook, stirring, until the cumin seeds darken slightly, 1 to 2 minutes. 4. Add the onion and salt and cook, stirring, until the onion is softened, about 5 minutes. 5. Add the garlic and cook, stirring, 30 seconds. 6. Add the spice powder and cook, stirring, 30 seconds. 7. Add the peppers and cook, stirring and scraping the bottom of the pan to pick up any spices that stick, about 1 minute. 8. Add 1/4 cup water and continue cooking, stirring, until the peppers are softened and beginning to stick to the sides of the pan, 6 to 7 minutes. 9. Add the fresh tomato and tomato chutney and stir to blend. Scrape the bottom and sides of the pan well to pick up any spices that stick. Then cook, stirring, 5 more minutes. Taste for salt. 10. Preheat the oven to 350?. 11. Spread about 2 cups of cooked rice over the bottom of a large, oven-proof casserole, preferably one with a lid. Spoon about half of the pepper mixture over the rice and sprinkle with 1/4 cup of the cilantro. Cover that with about 1 1/2 cups more rice, spreading the rice evenly. Layer the remaining pepper mixture over the rice and sprinkle with another 1/4 cup cilantro. Spread the remaining rice over the top. Drizzle the water in a thin stream around the edges of the casserole and then over the rice. Cover the dish tightly with foil and then with the lid, if there is one. Bake 35 minutes. Remove from the oven and let stand 10 minutes at room temperature. Sprinkle with the remaining 1/4 cup cilantro and serve hot.

Why are British/Austrailian accents so prominent in these infomercials? I guess they are better than those American Testostorone Screamers that hawk edged weapons/sporting memoriabilia. LOL I have to admit, I'm a real sucker for that Wok infomercial. And I already own one!! LOL Mike {Proud owner of the worthless Titanium-coated Ginzu chef knife }

For those of you that like to shop at the mammorth Palisades Center on the weekends, which is conveniently close to both NYC and Northern NJ, you may want to consider one of these two mongolian BBQ restaurants as lunch and dinner choices: Stir Crazy http://www.stircrazy.com (in the Palisades Center Mall itself. Read epinions.com review of this chain) Khan's, on route 303 in Blauvelt (about 2 minutes down the road from the mall) *** Being that we were in the mall, we decided to try Stir Crazy for lunch. The place bills itself as "fresh asian cuisine" and is a chain restaurant that has been around for quite a few years now, although it is new to the Tri-State area. Conceptually, its similar to mongolian barbeque, which is essentially that you have a raw bar of various ingredients (veggies and meats and sauces and seasonings) that you throw in a bowl and the cook throws onto a large circular shaped griddle and stirs up for you -- except in this case, the meat portion is controlled by the restaurant and instead of a griddle they throw it in a high heated wok for you to watch behind a plexiglass splatter screen. Being an expensive mall-type gimmick restaurant, the decoration has all the bells and whistles of similar type asian joints for the masses like Ruby Foo's, with giant chopsticks being suspended from the ceiling, orange and black decor, knicknacks hanging from the walls, you know the deal. The menu consists of the aforementioned stir frys, which range from $12-$16 depending upon which meat you pick to go with your other ingredients. You also at order time chose whether or not you want noodles to be thrown in (there are 3 to chose from, lo mein, chow fun and shanghai) or rice to be served on the side. In addition to various appetizers, there are also stand alone dishes you can order, most of which come from the same pool of ingredients in the "market" that you could otherwise throw together yourself in the stir frys, although they go for a few dollars less. If you get a stir fry, you're issued a small metal wok about the size of a soup bowl which you are told to throw all the vegetables you want into. Indeed, the raw "market", which is laid out like a salad bar, contains an array of very fresh sliced and julienned vegetables. After you've shoved as many veggies you want into the wok, you go to the sauce bar, and are instructed to put two ladles of one of the dozen pre-mixed sauce combos into the small sauce cup attached to the wok. You're advised not to mix the sauces. For our trial, we used strictly "szechuan" sauce which was a soy and chili base. We further spiced this up by adding a ton of fresh minced garlic and minced ginger, as well as some whole dried sichuan chile peppers that we crushed up into the mix. Other sauces: Classic Chinese Thai Barbecue Thai Curry Garlic Ginger Kung Pao Black Bean Szechwan Spicy Basil Teriyaki Szechwan Black Bean Sweet & Sour Peanut The stir fry came out pretty damn good, although a bit watery, as they add water when doing the stir fry as well as a slurry of cornstarch as they see fit, and we used a decent amount of spinach which probably contributed to the wateryness -- upon seeing our choice of veggies, the cook should have compensated with less water accordingly, but he did not. This particlular stir fry we chose flank steak, which the chef added from a little baggie from his mise-en-place as the whole thing was thrown into the wok. The steak was of good quality albeit of miniscule quantity. We also tried two of the off-the-shelf dishes, kung pao chicken, and a basil chicken with noodles. Suffice to say, the kung pao, which was billed as a "double flame" dish indicating its level of spicyness, was pretty wimpy. The portion of meat itself was a bit lame for a $9 dish, although the chicken and veggies were of good quality. The same could be said of the basil chicken noodles, which needed some additional chile oomph. I suggest that if you are going to bother to eat at this place, you go the do it yourself route. Overall, I'd say if you are in the mall, are tired and hungry, the place is worth a visit, and a good alternative to the food court, but keep in mind we think its a bit of a rip off considering its mongolian restaurant roots, which are much more affordable. *** As a comparison, for dinner we tried Khan's, a traditional mongolian restaurant, a few minutes down route 303. The beat-up looking chinese restaurant has been there since the late 80's, so no gimmicks here. You are charged $15 per person and its all you can eat -- you shove as much meat and veggies as you want into a bowl and you go up as many times as you want. This place is totally no nonsense and the food is great. The service is attentive and they start feeding you the second you sit down. For appetizers, we were given a healthy complimentary dish of peel and eat shrimp with cocktail sauce, a lettuce vinagrette with chopped peanuts, a order of steamed pork siu mai dim sum (tasty), and your choice of soup -- wonton, seafood or hot and sour. Jon and I had the hot and sour, which I thought was a pretty good specimen but I opted not to fill up on it. Rachel had the seafood, I didn't try it. The meat bar consists of troughs of frozen thinly sliced ribeye steak, chicken, lamb, pork and small peeled shrimp. Everything tasted pretty fresh, including the shrimp, so I presume it all goes pretty quickly because the restaurant was really busy. The veggie bar was pretty standard fare, consisting of carrots, scallions, mushrooms, mini corn cobs, carrots, onions, broccoli, cabbage, sliced bell peppers, bokchoy, lomein noodle, chowfun noodle, medium firm tofu cubes, green chile pepper slices, and a few other things that escape me, I'd say about 16 items in all. Then theres the liquid bar, which allows you to tweak the seasonings -- rice wine, sugar water, soy sauce, oyster sauce, fresh ginger, fresh garlic, sesame oil. Once you toss all of this into a bowl, you tell the chef which choice of sauces you want -- teriyaki, sweet and sour, bbq, black bean, chef special (the last two being the spicer options) and he throws it all on the circular griddle. Not to be missed are the taiwan-style sesame "buns" which are brought to table to be used to stuff your stirfry into. These are chewy, with a toasty sesame flavor albeit a bit doughy, so you might want to pull out some of the interior before stuffing them. For dessert, theres sliced fresh fruit (watermelon and honeydew and an assortment of other stuff) and also ice cream. They serve a killer coconut ice cream, with real coconut peices in it, and a very good orange sherbet, which tastes like orange creamsicle. They also had the green pistachio and chocolate flavors, which we didnt try. All in all I would say this place is a definite go, we'll be coming back to this one for sure. If you walk out of this joint still hungry, there's something wrong with you.

About the potato/cauliflower dish: There's no need to boil your potatoes first (according to Madhur Jaffrey). Cut them in thirds (like big french fries) and throw them in the hot oil, using your wok; set aside then proceed the same way with your cauliflower; I also like my cauliflower a little crunchy, certainly not mushy. My motivation for cooking Indian food was very similar to yours and I've been enjoying it for quite a few years now. Keep learning and experimenting as they have been doing it for at least 6000 years!

Interest has been kindled in me about my relative ignorance of Indian cuisine by various posts in this forum. After countless dinners out, I grew tired of the limited variety and lack of adventure in the local Indian restaurants and promptly bought an Indian cookbook and borrowed two others. We had a few friends over (mostly to critique) and I decided to relate my virgin cooking experiament. I decided to start with basic dishes as when I make my mistakes I would like to be able to identify where they took place and know...somewhat...what the dish SHOULD look and taste like. I prepared Lamb braised in yoghurt with clove fennel cumin and tumeric. Eggplant roasted with onion and tomato. caulifower potato. and Naan. Eggplant: This dish was definately the best executed of all the dishes. It was lightly spiced and relayed the inherant goodness of its ingredients. Cauliflower and potato. The spicing was successful. I believe the recipe was from a Madhur Jaffrey cookbook. The potatoes were boiled and were firm. A quick dish, the easiest of all to prepare. Criticism: I cooked this dish in a wok because of 1)lack of room on the crowed range and 2) lack of enough pans large enough to contain this double-recipe quantity of ingredients. The caulifower was sufficiently crisp and tasty, but I did not achieve the carmalization on the outside that I was seeking. Next time I need to use much higher heat and if I am cooking in the same quantity probably cook in two batches. Naan: I got this recipe from the Food Network. It was a disaster for various reasons. Luckily I saw this coming and bought some pre-made naan (read pita bread ) that sufficed. There were several problems with the recipe and myself. The dough called for only one cup of flour to, I believe, 3/4 cup water and ghee. I realize that with flatbreads in general (I make various flatbreads all the time) you will usually uptick the flour by as much as 1/4 a cup, but this recipe needed at least 1/2 a cup more flour to make the dough even managable. The recipe also called for a 400 degree oven to be baked for 12 minutes . I thought it sounded a little off for my desired consistency and, with a dough this wet, it was. My first batch ended up like a cracker or wafer. The rest of the evening I used the same temperature for six minutes and achieved the desired chewiness but little to no color. The next time (tonight? I've got lots of leftovers) I will use a 500 + degree oven and vary the time until correct. Posibly further modify the recipe as well. Lamb and yoghurt: In my mind this was the most successful dish. The braising sauce consisting mostly of yoghurt and a little water was perfectly seasoned and divine. The lamb was the problem, but I knew it would be; my local (it really wasn't even THAT local) Indian grocer only had leg of lamb in his store, I of course wanted shoulder, doubly so after tasting the dry, somewhat crunchy meat. Nevertheless, I will definitely cook this dish again with a more suitable cut. Lessons learned. 1. Make Naan every night this week till I get it right. 2. Always use appropriate cuts of meat for various cooking techniques. 3. Not enough can be said for hot pans. 4. Use sufficient trepadation when tasting unknown ingredients. I had never had pure Asafoetida before and before adding it, surely I must taste it. About 1 1/2 teaspoons later, you can imagine my reaction. Any comments or suggestions are definately welcome as I am about as ignorant as they come. If anybody is interested in specific recipes, I can post them tonight or possibly tomorrow. Suvir: you had mentioned your sister lived in Dallas; Where does she shop for her indian staples? I had no problem with the location I went to, but one storefront is hardly a sufficient sample.

Dave the Cook: More on the recipe: In Chinese stir-fry, supposed to plan the shapes of the ingredients. Okay, the theme I am using is flat rectangular pieces for the pork, onions, and carrots. The broccoli or green beans are in 'contrast'. To get roughly flat rectangular pieces of yellow globe onion, I start with a large onion, call the root end the south pole, cut through the Arctic circle and the Antarctic circle, discard the two pole pieces, cut the through the equator, and, for each resulting half, make a shallow cut along a line of longitude and peel the half. Then I cut a few layers deep along lines of longitude and separate the pieces between the layers. The main tool used is just an old Veritable Breswick Sabatier Paris - France Chef au Ritz carbon steel chef's knife with a blade about 10" long and a plastic cutting board. For the carrots, I start with relatively large carrots, peel them, and slice them with, for each carrot, the plane of the knife perpendicular to the long axis of the carrot to form truncated cones with altitude about 1.5". Then I get out two small wooden boards (redwood, hope it's not toxic) and, for each carrot piece, hold it between the two boards and make several parallel equally spaced cuts with the plane of the chef's knife parallel to the long axis of the carrot. The result is flat rectangular pieces maybe 1/8" thick and about 1.5" long. For large quantities, a mandolin cutter would work better for the last cutting operation, the one exploiting the two boards. To cut the pork into pieces something like the onions and carrots, I start with a 2 pound piece of pork loin as described in post above. The piece will be about 6" long and have roughly oval cross section. I make cuts with the chef's knife parallel to the long axis of the backbone of the hog so that the resulting pieces have cross section about what I want for rectangular pork slices. From each of these pieces, I trim and discard the thin layer of fat. The result is some pieces, each piece about 6" long and with cross section about like the carrot or onion pieces, say, 1" by 1.5". Some of these pieces have some separate muscles joined with connective tissue; for those, I separate at the connective tissue, trim it, and discard it. The only step left is to slice the pieces with the plane of the knife perpendicular to the long axis of the hog. The dish is supposed to be 'meaty' so I don't try to make the slices as thin as most lunch meat or cheese slices. Maybe the slices are 1/8" thick. I try to work quickly, and I find the results okay. In some Chinese cooking, the meat is so thoroughly cut and looks so much like the vegetables that it is difficult to find in the final dish. With my dish, the pieces of meat are shaped about like the onion and carrot pieces but still are obviously meat. Nearly everything in the dish is very common in China, US, France, and Italy, etc., except for sesame oil, ginger, and soy sauce which are widely available but more common in China. While I doubt that this dish is in the 'style' of any 'school' of cooking in China, they have all the ingredients, generally are awash in creativity in cooking, in principle could cook this dish, but I doubt that they would! However, sometimes I wonder about hogs in China: Looking at books on Chinese cooking, it is obvious that the hogs there have skin, bellies, ribs, feet, cheeks, and front shoulders, but I begin to wonder if they have loins and hams? Hmm? In Sam's Club, ribs with bone in them and a lot of fat sell for much more per pound than loins with no bones and very little fat. Hmm. I'm leaving the ribs to those other guys and going for the whole boneless well trimmed loins! I started the cooking trials using a Chinese round bottomed steel wok 14" in diameter with one steel handle, outdoors, over a propane burner with 170,000 BTU/hour of power. Now I am partial to just my old 5 quart Farberware pot, indoors, on the larger burner of my electric stove. I started out doing a 'stir-fry' using light cooking oil. Soon enough I noticed that I used a lot of oil, over 1 C per trial although not all of it ended up in the final dish and a lot ended up on my glasses, in my hair, up in smoke, etc. So, I worked to reduce the amount of oil used, and this is the reason for poaching the pork slices. I retain some oil for cooking the onions and carrots because I noticed that the oil gets a LOT of flavor from the onions and carrots, and also I want some frying in hot oil of the garlic and hot pepper flakes (assuming that this frying helps the flavor, but have no very good evidence so far). There is more below: Notes This dish looks like a 'stir-fry', but there is very little 'frying' here. If use the green beans mentioned above, then cutting them in half would make the dish easier to eat. At times, e.g., when cooking this dish in a wok over high heat, have thought that getting some of the sauce, after the corn starch was in, hot enough to burn, 'caramelize', a little added some nice flavor. The sticky stuff left on the cooking spoon is plenty good! There is a lot of sauce; counting the oil and corn starch solution, etc., there is nearly 3 C. But this is a big dish, about 1 3/4 quarts, nearly twice the usual 1 quart Chinese carry-out volume. With the rice to soak up some of the sauce, the final dish is not like soup or stew but has sauce proportion comparable with many Chinese carry-out dishes. The measurements given were carefully made. The volume measurements, e.g., 3 T of corn starch, are all level using standard measuring cups and spoons. The measurements in ounces. e.g., 8 ounces of onion pieces, are weights using scales. The measurements that are sensitive are (1) for the stir-fry sauce and (2) for the corn starch mixture. E.g., 2 T of corn starch instead of 3 T will yield a thin sauce; 4 T of corn starch instead of 3 T will yield goo (spicy orange glue). Here the ginger is just grated frozen -- freezing is one way to preserve fresh ginger. One alternative might be to mince unfrozen ginger and heat it in the oil with the garlic and hot pepper flakes. For the ginger, the measurement is with the grated ginger packed firmly into the measuring spoon. Starting with frozen pork loin works fine; given gentle defrosting, tough to tell didn't use fresh pork. Calories The pork is beautiful lean pink meat. Raw it may be under 30 C per ounce -- assume 30. So, estimates of the calories are: 720 pork 625 oil 256 sugar 160 soy sauce 150 corn starch 116 garlic 86 onions 80 sherry 72 orange juice 60 carrots 13 ginger ------- 2338 total Eating To eat with this, I make rice: In an old 2 quart Farberware pot, place 1 C long grain white rice and 1 3/4 C water. Over high heat, bring to gentle boil, reduce heat to very low, cover, leave for 20 minutes, remove from heat. "No, daughter, I know you are 'perfect' as your mother says, but you don't make 'perfect' rice by 'simmering and stirring' it." In a 1 1/2 quart Corning glass bowl, place on one side 1/2 the rice and on the other side 1/2 the pork dish. Eat. Refrigerate the rest of the rice and pork dish. To eat later, combine in the glass bowl, add about 3 T of water, cover, heat for 10 minutes at 100% power in microwave. The rice is about 772 Calories. So, the total is 3110 Calories, and half the total is 1555 Calories. Variations If somewhat less sauce is wanted for rice, then there is enough sauce here for at least a few more ounces of meat and/or vegetables. Even if the total weight of meat and vegetables is left the same, the proportions could be changed. Might move to a dish with less emphasis on vegetables. So, could cut the pork into match sticks -- proceed as above except stack the slices and cut once more. Use more pork, maybe 3 pounds. Then could marinate the pork and coat with a light breading as is common in Chinese cooking. Get some oil that has cooked sliced onions, carrots, ginger, minced garlic, and hot pepper flakes and has been strained and use that oil to stir-fry the pork. Drain the pork then continue with the stir-fry sauce but including some of the oil. Top with shredded fresh scallions. Once added 1 t of five spice powder, and it dominated the dish. But, 1/4 t might do some good. Questions Q. 1. Got the orange peel from Valencia oranges. Did rinse the oranges and used only the dark orange and light orange parts and none of the white parts, but the peel is quite bitter. Partly I mixed the sugar with the orange peel because grating the peel from 4 pounds of oranges took a while and I wanted to preserve the peel from all that work. Does the sugar help counteract the bitterness? Do other orange varieties have less bitterness or more or better orange flavor in their peel? Q. 2. Is there any hope for five spice powder helping this dish? That is, perhaps for some reason, five spice powder is just incompatible with the rest of this dish. Q. 3. Curiously this dish has no stock or broth. Would a good well made fancy Chinese stock from chicken and pork with scallions and ginger, etc., instead of the orange juice provide a better 'base' or 'foundation' for these flavors? Or would such a stock just confuse the flavors? Q. 4. Also curiously this dish has no fungus, no mushrooms, no wood ears, certainly no truffles. Is there a way to have fungus help this dish? My guess is "No", but I am not sure. Q. 5. How could molasses be used to help this dish? Yes, the 'dark' soy sauce may already have some molasses.

“Put those two on the table, will you?” Kabir said, gesturing towards a dish of potatoes swimming in a thin tomato sauce, and another that held stir-fried butternut squash speckled with black mustard seeds. Then he picked up a saucepan of something that looked like small doughnuts sailing in a white yogurt sauce and began plopping the “doughnuts” into a round serving dish. He poured the sauce over them, covering them completely. “Don’t put those out yet”, he said, rummaging around in the cabinet to the left of the stove. The cabinet was crammed with jars of spices. He pulled out several jars and unscrewed the lids. “What are they?” “They’re lentil dumplings. Now watch this.” He took a spoonful of a tan colored powder out of one of the jars and used the spoon to draw parallel lines of the powder over the yogurt. When he couldn’t add any more lines to the direction in which he was working, he picked up a jar of orange-red chili powder and began making parallel lines of it to cross the cumin. I sat down to watch him. He had a lot more patience than I did for this kind of tedious work. He spent the next five minutes covering the whole of the yogurt with colored geometric designs made from the cumin and chili powders, a dark brown powder that he said was garam masala, chopped cilantro, a brown tamarind-date chutney and a green mint chutney. The decoration reminded me of sand paintings of mandalas I’d seen made by Tibetan monks. “It’s not just for looks,” Kabir said, standing back to appraise the finished work. “The spices and herbs and chutneys add flavor to the dish, too.” He dumped a saucepan of chickpeas with their thick tomato sauce into another serving dish and gave it to me. “You remember these chickpeas? You like them.” I did like them. But what I remember most about the chickpeas is that that was the day that I found out that Kabir uses ketchup in his cooking. He loves ketchup and eats it like a chutney: that is he slathers it on some foods, or dips other foods into it. I hadn’t said anything to him about it but I had been horrified by the ketchup. I don’t know what’s worse, having my arrogant French cooking sensibility offended or finding out that I had romantically attributed a level of aesthetic purity to Indian cooking that didn’t exist. Geoff appeared at the doorway of the kitchen. He had changed his clothes. He took in the scene and faced Kabir. “How much time do I have before we eat?” he asked. “ Can I make a phone call? I’ve got a client who needs a call back; I could make him wait but I’d love to get it over with.” Kabir looked up from the oil he was heating in a two-handled metal pot. The pot was shaped like an Asian wok but there was something about it, maybe just the simple design etched around the edge, that clearly identified it as Indian. I saw Kabir’s mouth tighten at the corners. “I was about to start cooking the pooris and they must be eaten hot…,” Kabir said. The two men stood and looked at one another. It was a long moment. “But no, go ahead,” Kabir acceded, all at once. “We’re in no rush, we’ve got all evening. Go ahead and make your call.” They continued to look at one other as if some question still remained between them. Then Geoff gave Kabir a small but distinct smile. “Thanks,” he said, and left the room. Kabir turned the fire off under the pot of oil. He sat down at the table, took a deep breath and let it out. It was as if a tension he’d been living with all evening, one that had defined him so completely that he’d almost forgotten about it, had drained out of him. And suddenly there was nothing left for him to do.

I'm going to go eat some kung pao chicken at Grand Sichuan International Midtown (probably the best-known of Ducasse's signature dishes, widely imitated in Asia minus the induction wok), read your post again later, and respond late tonight if I disagree with anything in it. Actually, I'll respond even if I agree, which I think I might, but I have to go.

A famous saying in China goes: "A perfect life is possible if one is born in Suzhou (home of the most beautiful women), dressed in Hangzhou (finest silks), dies in Luzhou (best willow wood for coffins), but eats in Guangzhou (Canton, capital city of Guangdong province and home of classical Cantonese cuisine)." Cantonese food was considered the most delicious by the Chinese themselves. Non-Chinese diners in the U.S., familiar with Cantonese-style restaurants, might disagree with this assertion. Typical Cantonese food in the U.S. has been altered, sometimes beyond recognition, by circumstances; it's Cantonese in concept but not execution. Chinese workers from the districts of Toi San And Sun Tak (near Canton) were among the first Chinese immigrants to the West in the 19th century. U.S. immigration policy at that time seriously limited the number of Chinese women allowed in -- the idea was that when the railroads were built, the Chinese would go home. The laborers cooked for themselves, as best they could, and when the railroads were built, they settled in American cities and some opened restaurants. They cooked the food they knew -- village-style, home cooking -- and were further limited by climate, available ingredients, and distance from tradition, as well as their practical need to please Western palates. And so we got yucky Chinese food -- cloying sweet and sour pork with canned pineapple, awful chow mein and chop suey, eggy sticky shrimp with lobster sauce, tasteless brown sauces thickened with cornstarch, msg headaches. The 1970s was a golden age for Cantonese cuisine in the U.S. because of changes in immigration policies that allowed many more Chinese from Hong Kong into the U.S. Huge dim sum restaurants opened, and many chefs from Hong Kong arrived. I was lucky to be studying Chinese in New York at the time, and got invited to many Chinese banquets, as well as wonderful family restaurant meals where I ate food much closer to the classic Cantonese repertoire. My best friend's mother often took me on day-long eating and food shopping expeditions in Chinatown. At that time, the meat, seafood and produce were exceptionally fresh, because people demanded it. I was amazed at how so many of the Cantonese people I met were obsessed with food (on an eGullet level). I watched people order what they wanted without even consulting the Chinese menu. They simply wrote down the dishes they wanted on a piece of paper and handed it to the waiter. Everyone seemed to know the best places to go to as soon as they appeared. Guangdong province is in the south, with a long coastline and several large rivers down which produce can be shipped from the interior. The climate is semi-tropical; two rice crops are harvested a year. More than in many areas of China, there was usually enough food, and a great variety of ingredients. These factors shaped a delicious cuisine whose underlying philosophy is absolute freshness and a concurrent desire to preserve the essential nature and sweet flavor of each ingredient. Various techniques are employed to achieve this. One method is to cook food for short periods of time, or to use very mild forms of cooking. Food is poached in boiling water and then removed from the fire to finish cooking in the slowly cooling liquid. White cut chicken is an example of this method, as is soy sauce chicken (both are the chickens you see hanging in restaurant windows). For these dishes to work, the chicken has to be absolutely fresh. (The Cantonese prefer chicken slightly undercooked to Western tastes, leaving a little blood near the bone.) The delicate flavor of the white cut chicken is set off by a dipping sauce of soy sauce, chicken broth, ginger, scallions and sesame oil. Shrimp are also cooked with this method -- boiling water is poured over very fresh shrimp in their shells, left to stand for a few minutes and then drained. More boiling water is poured over, drained again, and the shrimp are then eaten with a dip of tangerine juice, minced scallion, soy sauce and shredded ginger root in vinegar. Brief steaming is another method that preserves the fresh, sweet taste. Whole fish such as sea bass, bream or carp are steamed until just cooked and served with a thin sauce of soy, chicken stock, ginger, scallions and wine. A little oil can be heated just before serving and poured over the fish. Greens of all kinds are blanched to preserve the natural flavor. The Cantonese even have a dish similar to sashimi -- a live carp is pulled from the water, knocked on the head and stunned, split, gutted, scaled and filleted and eaten immediately with a dipping sauce of ginger, soy, boiled peanut oil, scallion and white pepper. Stir-frying also is designed to retain the pure flavors of ingredients. Only a small amount of oil is used and the food is quickly whisked through the oil under very high heat in a manner described as "flame and air." The savory quality of Cantonese food is often achieved by combining seafood flavors with meat. Oyster sauce, shrimp sauce and shrimp paste are widely used (similar to the use of fermented fish in Southeast Asian cooking). Shrimp shells and heads are boiled in meat or chicken stock to add depth of flavor to soups and sauces. Sometimes meat is added to seafood dishes to enhance the savoriness. An example is the classic Lobster Cantonese, in which minced or shredded pork is stir-fried with onions, garlic, ginger and soaked, mashed salted black beans together with lobster (or crab). Chicken stock and wine are added at the last minute, creating a little explosion in the wok, and then again in your mouth. The Cantonese specialize in crispy foods, where the skin of pork and poultry is crisp and crackling, such as Crispy Skin Roast Pork (belly pork). Here the crunchiness of the skin is set off by the plain white rice served with it. Chicken is prepared as Crispy Deep-Fried Steamed Stuffed Chicken or Twice-Marinated Crispy Skin Splash-Fried Chicken. Pigeon is also deep-fried. A Cantonese specialty comparable to Peking Duck is Suckling Pig, served with the deep brown, crisp skin (that's brushed with a marinade before roasting) peeled off, cut into squares and served, with the tender meat, with small steamed Lotus Leaf Buns, scallions and hoisin sauce. Cantonese- (or Hong Kong) style Chow Mein is cooked using more frying oil than in other regions. The noodles are pressed down into the pan to make them crisper, and then turned and fried on the other side, to create a sandwich of crisp outer noodles with tender noodles inside. Home cooking features slow-cooked dishes in earthenware casseroles, among them beef stew braised with daikon radish and star anise (the beef cut is similar to flanken), fish head in casserole, and red braised pork knuckle or belly. Congee is also a common snack food in Canton. For spiciness, fermented black beans and small amounts of chiles are used. Subtle scents and flavors are introduced by adding drops of sesame oil or by wrapping food in lotus or bamboo leaves, such as lotus leaf sticky rice with duck, roast pork, dried mushrooms and chestnuts, and aromatics. I've always been fascinated by the array of dried foods and preserved meats in Chinese stores -- pork sausage, duck liver sausage, bacon, dried fish maw (air bladder), dried scallops and squid and shrimp, all the different dried mushrooms, deep-fried and then dried squares of bean curd which are stuffed with savory meat or seafood minces and then steamed, and the salted preserved vegetables in earthenware jugs, and fermented bean curd (the latter often added to quickly wilted greens such as watercress). Textural foods, such as bird's nest, tree fungus, beche-de-mer, fish maw, and shark's fin, are Cantonese in origin, and are mostly found in banquet cooking. Great Assembly of Chicken, Abalone and Shark's Fin is an extravagant banquet dish, in which the shark's fins are cooked separately for over 7 hours and then gently cooked together with lean pork meat, pig's feet, ham, onions and a hen for another 4 hours. The pork, feet, ham, onion and chicken are then removed and put aside for other uses. A young chicken is then quartered, parboiled and left to simmer with the shark fins for another half hour. Abalone and soy sauce are briefly added. The chicken and abalone are cut into thin slices and arranged at the bottom of a deep, ceramic cooking dish. The liquid in the pot is strained and returned to simmer with the fins for another 30 minutes. The fin pieces are then arranged on top of the chicken and abalone. Some of the sauce, now thickened, is poured over to moisten and the pot is steamed for 5 minutes and then served. The shark fins are there primarily for their texture, but that's the point of the whole time-consuming process. My friend's mother used to make a medicinal soup using the double pot method of cooking. She put blanched squabs inside a pot with chicken stock, ginger, scallions, ginseng root, and rice wine. The pot was then covered and placed inside a bigger pot filled with water, which was then covered and cooked for a long time. And then there's dim sum, which epitomizes all of the savory deliciousness and love of eating found in Cantonese cooking and among Cantonese people.