Chicken and Green Bean Stir-Fry

[Samhill]

"You may notice that in my steps, I cooked the aromatics, added the sauce, boiled, added the green beans, boiled, etc. So, I did 'blanch' the green beans in 'water' but, also, did keep the 'blanching water' in the final dish! So, this blanching of the green beans in the sauce may have hurt the final flavor of the dish -- may have been the cause of much of the "uninteresting" flavor I'm concerned about."

This leads me to believe your wok is not nearly hot enough. When I stir fry, the heat is such that liquid is reduced very quickly. No boiling.

[project]

Ben Hong:

Yes, of course, your post of

Mar 27 2004, 06:04 AM

was most for cooking on kitchen stoves. My outdoor propane burner is a bit unusual.

We seem to be taking different views of weights and volumes: In the US, one 'quart' is two pints, and one 'pint' is 16 fluid ounces or 2 cups. For something based largely on water, 1 pint weighs about 1 pound and one quart, about 2 pounds. One of my goals in this dish is to fill a 2 quart Pyrex glass casserole dish, and, thus, I would have about 4 pounds of food. I my area, New York State in the US, the local Chinese carry-out restaurants most commonly sell their dishes in 1 quart -- two pound -- portions.

Thanks for the description of harmony in Chinese cooking and 'Wok Hei'.

Some people can look at a list of ingredients and imagine accurately what the result will taste like; so far I cannot do this.

Instead, I keep getting very different flavors just by changing proportions of a fixed list of ingredients. For me, an analogy would be how the three additive primary colors red, green, and blue can, just by changing proportions, combine to form, within the limits of the human color vision system, all the subtle colors and shades in nature, art galleries, etc.

For "Project, you must keep on experimenting and eating", I'm trying.

Big Bunny:

Thanks for the suggestion. I hope eventually my results are good enough to deserve your suggestion of "cold beer"!

I agree that cold beer usually goes well with Chinese food; for why, I don't have a clue.

chengb02:

Thanks for the suggestion of freezing green onions. While the texture may suffer, I can believe that the flavor mostly will not. As long as I am mincing the aromatics, the flavor should be enough.

Samhill:

Thanks for confirming the suggestions of oyster sauce.

As part of trying to 'envision' flavors, I took most of my bottled Chinese sauces and for each took 1 T, dissolved in 1 C of water with 1 T of vinegar and 1 T of sugar, boiled, and tasted. I concluded that I can't envision what the effects would be. Or, I am sure that in Chinese carry-out I must have eaten oyster sauce at least dozens of times, but I cannot guess which dishes had it. So, as part of keeping the experiments simple and keeping down the number of changes between trials, so far I have not tried oyster sauce in this dish.

Thanks for the suggestion of a cast iron wok. Yes, cast iron would hold heat much better than my wok of sheet steel.

For "This leads me to believe your wok is not nearly hot enough. When I stir fry, the heat is such that liquid is reduced very quickly. No boiling.", it looks like I was not very clear: In the trials I described, I was using 2 C of sauce mixture -- soy sauce, vinegar, sugar, sherry, water, etc. I am not trying to reduce (evaporate, boil away) any significant fraction of this volume, just apply heat enough to cook, sterilize, and thicken with a corn starch slurry.

For my wok being hot enough, I should be more clear: The manufacturer of my propane burner says that the thing can put out 170,000 BTUs per hour. It's easy to make the thing roar like a jet engine and send flames 2 feet high without the wok present or 6 inches over the top of the wok with the wok present. It can be scary. Before I put chicken pieces in, the wok is smoking strongly. I leave the chicken pieces in the oil just long enough for the surfaces to become white; then the whole wok contents get dumped into a colander set in a bowl. I'm using enough oil that the pieces cook very quickly and nearly uniformly. Then the oil goes back into the wok; heating the wok boils away any water left from the last batch of chicken; I get the oil smoking again, and do another batch.

Once all the chicken has been in wok and is draining a colander, I put about 2 T of oil in the wok, add the aromatics, spread them around, and put the wok on the burner. In just a few seconds the aromatics are very fragrant and I dump in the nearly 3 C of sauce mixture. So, at that point I am essentially 'deglazing' the wok.

I intend to try a more traditional 'stir-fry' technique with the chicken. Then I will use less oil, and water from the chicken may evaporate on contact with the wok.

In my most recent trial, I did try the onion suggestion -- I included 2 T of minced shallots and believe that I like the effect.

I increased the chicken breast meat to 8 pieces, about 41 ounces as frozen. Still, 16 ounces of green beans is a lot for the chicken; if the green beans are to be only incidental, then 8 ounces would be more appropriate.

I did the brining more effectively: Put the 1 gallon Ziploc bag with the frozen chicken and brine, sealed, in a dishpan of room temperature tap water until the chicken was defrosted (about 2 hours) and then put the bag in a bowl and set in the refrigerator overnight. I concluded that this more effective brining did do more to help the chicken be juicy in the end dish.

Since my top priority is to make some progress on the flavor for minimum effort otherwise, 'velveting' the chicken is still in the queue of things to try.

My latest, and best, effort at the sauce has 1/2 C of each of Pearl River Bridge Dark Soy Sauce, distilled cider vinegar, and sugar and, then, French style chicken stock to make 3 C. I use about 1/3 C of this mixture to make a slurry with the corn starch. Since I have 3 C of sauce liquid, I have stayed with 1/4 C of corn starch, but 3 T might be a little better.

During the cooking, the sauce smells a little like some BBQ sauces.

With the leftovers in the refrigerator, opening the door quickly convinces one that there's Chinese food in there.

But, the flavor still has a long way to go.

[hzrt8w]

Did a stir-fry with chicken and string beans with a sauce of garlic, ginger, crushed red pepper, soy sauce, vinegar, dry sherry, and sugar. .....Flavor is not very interesting and seek critique of what I did and ideas for improvements.

project: (hopefully you are still reading this)

Reading your posting on cooking stir-fry with chicken and string beans is like reading a PhD dissertation. Cooking doesn't have to be so complicated and so technical. The essence is that you should stick to a particular style (or sauce) each time you cook. Beginners in cooking often make the mistake of throwing all the sauces/seasoning they could think of and end up with a strange-tasting dish.

Velveting the chicken meat (marinated with egg white, or a bit of salt and white pepper too) in oil is the basic. No need to use too much oil.

Then as for seasoning the dish, you can simply cook the string beans with a bit of salt and it will taste good. If you want to jazz things up, here is what I do regularly. I don't use any soy or wine or sugar or pepper flakes or hoisin cooking string beans. Do you have a jar of "sa cha" sauce? These are grounded dried shrimps basically. Very flavorful. They go exceptionally well with string beans. A lot of restaurants use it to flavor string beans.

(Portion for 1 lb of chicken)

Use a pan, high heat, 1 T of cooking oil, add garlic (2 cloves, finely chopped), 1/2 tsp salt, onion (1 small one, wedged), jarapeno (1/2, thinly sliced), 2-3 tsp Sa Cha sauce, stir-fry for a minute or 2. Then add on string beans (fresh ones are the best), and some water or (better) 1/4 cup chicken broth. Cook for 10 minutes with lid on, or until string beans turn soft. Add back velveted chicken meat and stir for 2 minutes more and you are done.

I like my string beans dry and typically don't use extra liquid or corn starch.

Your 8 oz string beans to 3 to 4 lb of chicken ratio is far too extreme. Chinese stir-fry uses more vegetables than meats. Typically something like 1/2 lb of meat to 1 lb of vege. Your way of making it seems more western style, where meat is the feature and vege are complimentary.

Chinese dishes are typically not over saucey. I suspect that your attempts to make some very saucey dish with string beans and kept adding soy sauce, hoisin or other ingredients just worsen the dish. Soy sauce is very salty by its nature. When you used them by the "cup" measurements in stir-fry dishes, I kept thinking "ouch"!

[Gary Soup]

Reading your posting on cooking stir-fry with chicken and string beans is like reading a PhD dissertation.    Cooking doesn't have to be so complicated and so technical.

You should also read Project's thread on making dumplings.

I believe he's called "Project" because he develops his recipes using Microsoft Project.

[project]

hzrt8w:

Thanks for your comments.

Yes, the books I have on Chinese cooking call for comparatively small amounts of sauce -- 1 T here, 2 T there.

But, it seems to me that the common Chinese carry out places in my area commonly include much more sauce, and I have been trying for more. Generally it seems to me that what is in the Chinese restaurants and what is in the Chinese cookbooks are quite different.

That chicken and green bean dish ended up with two quarts (four pounds) of food, twice the common 1 quart Chinese carryout portion. The sauce volume started out at 3 C with 1/2 C of soy sauce. So, while that is a LOT of liquid, the soy sauce proportion was not as high as might be guessed.

Yes, a common mistake is to include too many ingredients, and I did make that mistake. In some earlier efforts, I had in orange rind, Chinese black mushrooms, and more. It was a disaster. So, I worked back to something simpler to get something easier to analyze and hopefully passable and possibly a base from which to add more flavors cautiously.

Yes, on the proportion of meat to vegetable, I was looking for a meat dish with vegetables as a 'garnish'.

That dish was edible, but I'm not thrilled with it and have not returned to it.

The clear fact is, I don't get Chinese food.

For American, French, Italian, or German food, I'm MUCH happier with my efforts. E.g., tonight I stirred up an improvised salad with an improvised Caesar 'plus' dressing, and the results made my notes as a keeper. Either the dressing or the salad are better than anything I ever did with Chinese food. I described what I did in

http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showto...30entry658076

I'm sure I can reproduce the results reliably.

That salad dressing has a LOT of ingredients and a LOT of strong flavors, yet it worked (for me anyway) -- right away, first time. The last time I combined oil and vinegar for a vinaigrette was years ago, but this trial worked fine.

That salad dressing is near the boundary of the most strongly flavored salad dressing at all common; it's pushing the envelope; yet it worked.

The salad itself had more ingredients and more strong flavors and it worked, too (for me anyway).

Times I have tried to combine so many ingredients and such strong ones in Chinese style cooking, the result has always been a disaster.

To me, what might work in the salad dressing was clear but what might work in Chinese food remains a mystery. Again, on Chinese cooking, I don't get it -- I don't see how it's done.

[Ben Hong]

Project, I would suggest getting yourself into a "good" Chinese cooking class, not just one of those once a week sessions that you see being given by well meaning blue haired ladies of the YWCA. But first you must cleanse your mind of the idea that Chinese cooking is complicated. One can create all sorts of great tasting dishes with 2-3 ingredients and 1-2 flavouring agents(aromatics), the combinations and permutations are endless.

[herbacidal]

Ben's right.

Also, you should be aware that there is a world of difference between the stuff you see from your local Chinese takeout and Chinese cooking at home for Chinese.

I don't know of any Chinese person that orders from the local Chinese takeout.

They are meant to serve up what others want, or what their perception of the kind of Chinese food that others want.

[hzrt8w]

Generally it seems to me that what is in the Chinese restaurants and what is in the Chinese cookbooks are quite different.

The clear fact is, I don't get Chinese food.

Generally cookbooks are closer to the authenticity of Chinese dishes. As for restaurants... If you are eating at restaurants in China, then you would find what they do is fairly close to the cookbooks. But if you are eating at Chinese restaurants outside of China (and it sounds like you are in Aussie), then everything is a fair game. The local cooks would gear towards what's acceptable in local tastes.

Watching some TV cooking programs on Chinese food is also a good start. "Yan Can Cook" is dedicated to Chinese cooking. A few others like "Ming's Quest", "East Meets West" and occassionally in "Emeril", "Food 911" and others.

I think when you said "I don't get Chinese food", you may have a strong preconception of what Chinese food is from your neighborhood Chinese restaurants. When you tried to follow recipes from cookbooks or advices from this board you couldn't attain what you expected to see, and thus just get frustrated.

If you have a China Town close by (again, didn't know where you live, hard to tell)... Go there and find a restaurant that is crowded with Chinese eaters. Order something from them and see how they come out. Those would be more likely authentic Chinese cooking.

[project]

hzrt8w:

Thanks for your comments.

The Chinese food I know is only from restaurants, all in the US, and I've been eating in the restaurants for over 30 years. I started near Washington, DC, continued in the US Midwest, and now am in New York State out in the country 70 miles north of the southern tip of Manhattan island.

Of these restaurants, two stand out: One was the Peking in DC on the west side of Connecticut Avenue just south of the Maryland line. They opened in 1947 and served staggering food unlike anything I have seen anywhere else. Except for Peking Duck, the only dish of theirs I have seen elsewhere was a shrimp dish similar to Love Bird's Shrimp in

Jason Lowe, Deh-Ta Hsiung, and Nina Simonds, 'The Food of China', ISBN 1-55285-227, Whitecap Books, Vancouver, 2001.

At the price of shrimp now, that dish I ate so often while in graduate school would be over $100!

My guess is that their food was 'authentic' Chinese from one or several regions of China of a relatively high order.

Once I went to a Chinese restaurant in Chinatown in Manhattan. There I got a steamed fish. I believe that the style was Cantonese. Here I would guess that the secret was a very good raw fish, good skills with some delicate flavorings, and a good steamer.

Except for these two restaurants, all the Chinese restaurants I have eaten in -- in DC, Midwest, NY -- have food that is surprisingly similar and, I believe, mostly not in the Chinese cookbooks. And I don't believe that it is what is done on 'Yan Can Cook' or any of the common TV cooking shows in the US (K. Hom's shows for the BBC may be an exception).

It would be easier to work from the books and TV shows if I could eat samples in restaurants, and it would be easier for me to reproduce what is in the restaurants if the same was in the cookbooks.

I will mention some exceptions, that is, where the cookbooks and common restaurants do similar things. For the books, we can see

Joyce Chen, 'Joyce Chen Cook Book', J. B. Lippincott, Philadelphia, 1962.

Rose Cheng and Michele Morris, 'Chinese Cookery', ISBN 0-89586-088-0, Berkley Publishing, New York, 1981.

Ken Hom, 'Chinese Cooking', ISBN 1-55366-270-9, Stewart House Publishing, Etobicoke, Ontario, Canada, 2001.

Ken Hom, 'Foolproof Chinese Cooking', ISBN 0-7894-7145-0, Dorling Kindersley, London, 2000.

For the similar things, there is the Moo Shi Pork from Chen, dumplings from Cheng, and Hot Sour Soup from Hom.

Where I live, Chinese carryout restaurants are common, larger in number than the total of the usual fast food franchises McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, Dominos, and Pizza Hut. Amazing.

Generally their sauces are better in flavor and in greater proportion than what seems to be in the cookbooks I have. While I agree with you that these restaurants are drifting from what is 'authentic' in China, here I believe that the restaurants are making sound business decisions because (1) the sauces are an inexpensive path to a lot of good flavor, (2) the sauces, boiled, may help keep down food poisoning, and (3) the sauces are good for flavoring rice.

So, what I have done in my trials so far is to read from the books, eat from the restaurants, and try to improvise sauces as good in flavor and as large in proportion as those in my local restaurants.

For the soy sauce proportion, I am not far from a general purpose stir fry sauce recipe in

Martin Yan, 'Chinese Cooking for Dummies: A Reference for the Rest of Us!', ISBN 0-7245-5247-3, Hungry Minds, New York, 2000.

I keep trial notes, and sometimes find something a little better than just edible. For anything as good as in my local restaurants or anything as I can easily do with American, French, Italian, or German cooking -- no.

For someone with a background in American culture, engineering, and Western cooking, I make three surprising observations about Chinese cooking: (1) The flavor balances are commonly astoundingly delicate. Small changes in the balances can yield wildly different impressions in the final dish. (2) Chinese cooking is far behind on a tradition of clear written documentation to achieve accurate reproduction of results a continent and a decade away. (3) For high end Chinese cooking, the range of flavors available from combinations of really strange or novel ingredients and small variations in techniques is staggering, nearly beyond documentation.

I conclude that in the end, being even passably good at Chinese cooking means understanding the ingredients, combinations, and techniques well enough essentially to improvise well. In this, competing with a talented restaurant chef that has stood there cooking for maybe 10 hours a day for six days a week for 10 years -- getting repeat business while he does it -- won't be easy.

[Big Bunny]

For the soy sauce proportion, I am not far from a general purpose stir fry sauce recipe in

Martin Yan, 'Chinese Cooking for Dummies:  A Reference for the Rest of Us!', ISBN 0-7245-5247-3, Hungry Minds, New York, 2000.

There is no "general purpose stir fry sauce."

You gotta relax!

There is a classic Nitty Gritty book by Gary Lee, I think it is just called "Wok."

Basically, he tells what is common sense about cooking, introduces you to "Chinese sensibilities" on the subject of cuisine, and encourages you to experiment. Chinese cooking is not "rocket science." Rocket science stops at perfection.

The best cooking is more random, and exceeds "perfection" routinely.

BB

[Ben Hong]

Project: May I humbly suggest that you abate your obsession with "sauces" in Chinese cooking. There are very few instances in Chinese cooking (especially stirfrying) where a dish reqires a "sauce" in the orthodox French or European manner a la Bearnaise, veloute', etc. to be poured on top of a finished dish. What you call "sauces" in a Chinese dish is most usually part of the dish, ie: an intrinsic liquid result of the food cooking process. Yes, a cook may choose to thicken it with a little starch of some kind, but not always. Most would not ever purposely make a separate sauce to be poured over the finished dish.

Your statement about lack of precise documentation of techniques and ingredient proportions indicate precisely why Chinese cooking is an art, not a science. Please stop thinking like an engineer . In an earlier post, I mentioned the words harmony, balance, yin and yang, heating and cooling humours, even fung shui. You can learn all the techniques and procedures and use of ingredients and become a good cook. Understanding and paying heed to the terms just listed would make you a great sifu.

Seek it and you can't see it, reach for it and it can't be grasped, meet it and it has no head, follow it and it has no rear. "IT" is ephemeral, it "IS"

[project]

Ben Hong:

"Most would not ever purposely make a separate sauce to be poured over the finished dish."

What I have seen and have been attempting is consistent with what you are saying.

Commonly I have seen steps (1) put stock in a wok, boil, blanch vegetables, drain, set aside, empty wok, (2) put quite a lot of oil in wok, heat, quickly cook the other solids, possibly breaded, drain, set aside, empty wok, (3) with a little oil in the wok, say 2 T, heat, add some flavorings, possibly some of garlic, ginger, scallions, crushed pepper flakes, mushrooms, black beans, Szechuan pepper corns, cook a few seconds until 'fragrant', add liquids, possibly some of stock, soy sauce, oyster sauce, chili sauce, Hoisin sauce, vinegar, rice wine, sugar and then heat, (4) add corn starch slurry, heat and thicken, (5) add drained solids, toss, serve.

The result is solids coated with a sauce thickened with starch.

For "Your statement about lack of precise documentation of techniques and ingredient proportions indicate precisely why Chinese cooking is an art, not a science. Please stop thinking like an engineer", thinking like an engineer is common in the West, goes back to airplanes, electric power, railroads, steam, steel, and Roman stone work.

For

"In an earlier post, I mentioned the words harmony, balance, yin and yang, heating and cooling humours, even fung shui. You can learn all the techniques and procedures and use of ingredients and become a good cook. Understanding and paying heed to the terms just listed would make you a great sifu.

Seek it and you can't see it, reach for it and it can't be grasped, meet it and it has no head, follow it and it has no rear. 'IT' is ephemeral, it 'IS'"

I don't have a weak little hollow hint of a tiny clue what you mean. First, there is a language problem: While I know a little German and enough French to read restaurant menus and wine bottle labels, mostly I just know English and there, except for specialized topics in engineering, mostly based just on words in a dictionary. Likely I do not really understand even a single word of Chinese. Second, even given a good translation to English, I have weak abilities getting useful meaning from poetic, paradoxical, or puzzling explanations.

Last, I notice that 'reductionism' and 'rationalism' with mathematics and physical science have done well explaining, with accurate powers of prediction, from the interior of atoms to the first second of the big bang 14 billion years ago and do believe that dishes in Chinese cooking can be formulated and documented so that they can be reproduced reliably a continent and a decade away. In particular, in my own notes, for what little I have that does work and is edible, my notes are reliable for me months later.

Sounds like there is a terrific business opportunity developing a series of DVDs on teaching clueless Americans how to cook dishes, reliably with high quality, in Chinese cooking, as in the inexpensive Chinese restaurants in America, as in inexpensive street stands and restaurants in China and fully authentic, and possibly as in high end restaurants in China.

If rationalism conquered the atom and the big bang, bacterial infections and space flight, computers and the Internet, then it's little enough to ask that it conquer Chinese cooking. That I have yet to master some field of knowledge is poor evidence that it cannot be mastered with rationalism, measurements of weights, volumes, times, and temperatures, and clear documentation.

[sequim]

This guy must have skipped out on taking humanities classes in school.

Not all of us are engineer-type Americans. Some of us like the metaphor and poetic ways of speaking that touch on truth and can't be pinned down to exact formulas.

I think Ben is referring to Zen and the Art of Chinese Cooking...

[hzrt8w]

Project: here are my comments:

New York has a high population of first-generation Chinese immigrants. Chinese food in New York should be fine compared to many other cities in the U.S. Just wondering: to get a more balanced view of what Chinese cooking is all about - do you have any Chinese friend who cooks? Perhaps a visit to your friend and see how he/she prepares a regular meal would give you some insight into what Chinese cooking is rather than only observing from restaurant cooking or on TV programs.

I think one reason why you see the food cooked in Chinese restaurants is different from that you find in cookbooks is because Chinese food has many varieties of dishes. No one book can cover so many entries. Besides, everybody has his/her “style” of cooking.

I think your approach to cooking Chinese food is too scientific. You are looking for an instruction manual to tell you in scientific measurements exactly what the ingredients are, and the precise steps of the cooking process down to the seconds, so you can reproduce the same dish with the same taste every time. But the problem is: you have found too many instruction manuals. Not only that, you don’t even know what the end product is supposed to look like (or taste like).

Well, cooking is not that scientific. Like Ben said, it’s more like an art. Besides the ingredients, what’s very important in Chinese cooking, or heck in any cooking, is timing and sequences. If your timing or sequence is off, the result can be very different.

I think you shouldn’t see cooking at home is a competition against the neighborhood chefs. In that view, you may never want to cook at home. Cooking should be seen as more than a survival skill. It should be something one actually enjoys in the process, more than just the outcome.

If you try to apply the American/French/Italian/German cooking techniques (all considered “western” by the way) and force them on Chinese food, I think the result is doomed to fail. Every style of cooking should be taken at its own merits in its own realm. It is rather like hearing Waltz music and try to dance Tango. You can never achieve “harmony” that way.

[hzrt8w]

Last, I notice that 'reductionism' and 'rationalism' with mathematics and physical science have done well explaining, with accurate powers of prediction, from the interior of atoms to the first second of the big bang 14 billion years ago and do believe that dishes in Chinese cooking can be formulated and documented so that they can be reproduced reliably a continent and a decade away. In particular, in my own notes, for what little I have that does work and is edible, my notes are reliable for me months later.

Chinese cooking can be, and has been, documented by many different authors and the results can be reproduced very reliably tomorrow, next week, 10 years from now or even hundreds of years from now.

I think the issue is you kept comparing what's documented in cookbooks (and per what you said you followed trying to make some dishes) to what you experienced in neighborhood restaurants and found discrepancies. Because you don't even find any remote similarities, you concluded that Chinese food cannot be reproduced in a reliable way. That's a very problematic logic.

I am an engineer myself and I appreciate the value of scientific approaches. If you want to follow something by the book, you can. You just cannot pick your target sample randomly and try to match it with your instruction documents.

[project]

sequim:

"This guy must have skipped out on taking humanities classes in school."

Took them? Yes. Liked them? No!

My view is that there really was a good writer in England in the 17th Century: I. Newton.

hzrt8w:

We are in essentially full agreement. Positions you are disputing are not mine.

I want to reproduce what's in the local restaurants simply because I can taste it and it's pretty good -- generally better than US fast food.

[Ben Hong]

Not all things should (could) undergo scientific scrutiny. It would be anathema for a lot of people if Chinese cuisine were to be standardized by exact scientific strictures so that the first dish is the same as the ten thousandth. To do so would strangle creativity and intuitive thinking, creating McChinese food. An engineer may find it acceptable, but not me. If Martin Yan and Ming Tsai were to be asked to cook say, West Lake Fish, in separate kitchens I can absolutely guarantee that the result would be more or less different as each man would use slightly different measurements, proportions, sequences, heats and techniques. Therein lies the charm of Chinese food. Just like no two pianists can play Beethoven's Emperor Concerto exactly the same way, no two dishes are exactly the same.

Tell me Project, how did an engineer or a scientist explain accupuncture when he first encountered it? Words like chi, inner strength, yin yang, meridians, life points were completely foreign to him and worst of all, it could not be subjected to scientific scrutiny. As a result that art and practice was ridiculed by the scientific community when it was revealed during the Nixon visits to China. Most of us owe our lives to science, but there are things which science cannot explain, much less solve. There should be a place in this world and in your mind for non-scientific art/craft.

[project]

Ben Hong:

For your post of

Jul 14 2004, 02:29 AM

I have few differences. Nearly all the points you are disputing there are not mine.

I do like much of the food in the Chinese carryout restaurants in the US and would like a book that would tell me how to replicate those dishes. Indeed, I find it curious how similar the dishes are.

[Big Bunny]

Maybe you would like this approach:

Joie Warner: "Taste of Chinatown: America's Native Chinese Cuisine"

It's out of print, but shouldn't be hard to find.

She doesn't get deep into traditional methods. She went from restaurant to restaurant, tried the food, and figured out how to reduplicate it at home.

She did a decent job of it. Recipes from this book are more "restauranty" the those of most other authors.

By the way, I am a software developer (35 years), with a background in physical sciences, math, and music. I use OOP/OOD, and deal with a wide range of abstract and concrete concepts daily.

The simple truth is that science, no matter how abstruse, is simple compared to the "magic" of art. Do what you can to learn techniques - and I DO follow recipes by the way - but until you can just "fly" you won't "get it."

In the mean time, Ms Warner's recipes are quite yummy, and may be for you.

Do have fun,

BB

[trillium]

I think our MIA moderator for this forum, Ed Schoenfeld is coming out with a recipe book for recreating your favorite take-out recipes at home. Of course, you'll run into trouble there because he is New York based, and the Chinese-American take-out style food is different there then on the west coast. But it might be worth a gander once it's out.

Off-topic for this thread, but did I miss when he stepped down as moderator? With all these fine Chinese cooks as potential candidates it seems a shame we are moderator-less...although we are doing quite nicely without one, aren't we?

regards,

trillium

[sequim]

Why don't you become Moderator, Trillium! You are so active, after all.

I am loving this thread. I love Chinese food but I have had similar experiences with Project in that when I've attempted to make a dish, the flavors are just blah or nasty even though I have all the special condiments. Last night, however, I concentrated on the Less Is More dictim and to taste as I go rather than put in quantified amounts.

I used the Chicken and Green Bean recipe only as a guide because what I actually had was some killer BBQ pork, some rice leftover from lunch and some green beans. I made pork fried rice and slowly added flavorings like a lightly fried egg (I'm never sure if I should swirl the beaten egg into the fried rice or first lightly cook a pancake and cut it into strips. Last night I did the strips), scallions and lacking peas, put in some of the green beans I did as mentioned below. I also made sure to pick up some light soya as I know the dark soy I have has tended to overwhelm dishes in the past or I've made them too salty with too liberal a hand. Letting this mellow overnight, the flavors were great this morning when I had a bowl for breakfast. Not overspiced but not bland.

With the green beans, I took the advice of getting the wok really hot and even letting the garlic brown, almost blacken up, although in the past I felt the garlic had been ruined when it reached this point. Then I threw in my blanched green beans and browned them up with a couple mushrooms and a jalapeno (deviating from traditional chinese I guess), adding the seasonings at the end, first adding light soya, then half the amount of dark soya and after tasting, some oyster sauce. It was delicious and I felt I'd crossed some magic threshold.

[hzrt8w]

With the green beans, I took the advice of getting the wok really hot and even letting the garlic brown, almost blacken up,

Then I threw in my blanched green beans and browned them up with a couple mushrooms and a jalapeno (deviating from traditional chinese I guess),

Bravo again! Looks like you get the essence of Chinese cooking.

Garlic: Browning slightly is okay, but letting garlic turn dark brown should be avoided. Garlic turns bitter when over carmelized. When it turns black, all you would taste is the bitter taste of carbon. The best is let garlic bath in hot oil only for a few seconds, then you need to add the vege or meat or whatever. This way you will catch the garlic flavor which is being evaporated by burning hot oil.

Jalapeno: non-traditional Chinese? Not quite. We do use red chili peppers in many dishes (just small amount) to stimulate the tast buds. In the U.S., small red chili peppers are not as common as jalapeno or serano peppers (well, at least in Southern CA). But they would do the job just the same. I miss the little red color though.

[sequim]

Bravo again! Looks like you get the essence of Chinese cooking.

Garlic:  Browning slightly is okay, but letting garlic turn dark brown should be avoided.  Garlic turns bitter when over carmelized.  When it turns black, all you would taste is the bitter taste of carbon.    The best is let garlic bath in hot oil only for a few seconds, then you need to add the vege or meat or whatever.  This way you will catch the garlic flavor which is being evaporated by burning hot oil.

Jalapeno:  non-traditional Chinese?  Not quite.  We do use red chili peppers in many dishes (just small amount) to stimulate the tast buds.  In the U.S., small red chili peppers are not as common as jalapeno or serano peppers (well, at least in Southern CA).  But they would do the job just the same.  I miss the little red color though.

Thanks for your kind words.

I guess it must have been on a different thread, but someone mentioned getting the wok hot enough to smoke and indicated that getting the garlic really brown imparted a smoky flavor they liked, so that's what I wanted to achieve. Maybe that's a matter of personal taste. I had originally thought burned garlic would be bitter, though.

I do know, though, that when I stir fry kale, I like to get the pan really hot and slightly burn the leaves as I like the crunchy smoke taste it gets. Perhaps it's a fine line between carbonized nasty and pleasantly smoky.

An aside: At the chinese market yesterday I saw baskets of peppers (habeneros, jalapeno and anaheim) - the funny thing is they were all labeled jalapenos!

Now as I continue to cook chinese I do hope that I can start to successfully pair wine with chinese foods as I think that is very difficult. Yet, I love wine and don't care to drink beer which many have suggested. Last night, however, I did have a pinot grigio which went very well with what I made. It was neither too sweet or too dry and the food didn't adversely affect its taste. Oops, I digressed from the main topic....

[hzrt8w]

I guess it must have been on a different thread, but someone mentioned getting the wok hot enough to smoke and indicated that getting the garlic really brown imparted a smoky flavor they liked, so that's what I wanted to achieve. Maybe that's a matter of personal taste. I had originally thought burned garlic would be bitter, though.

In most Chinese restaurants' stir-fry dishes with garlic, the garlic is only bathed in hot oil for just a few seconds. I supposed if you like the smokey taste you can certainly brown it more. But turning it black is dangerously close to eating carbon... not good for health.

In some Vietnamness dishes, they like to brown shallots. That tastes very good as shallots are much sweeter.

[Ben Hong]

Sequim, I echo what hrzt8w said. That you are willing to improvise (create) to achieve the palatable, and be successful at it, means that you are "getting it" .