Chicken and Green Bean Stir-Fry

[Big Bunny]

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....

I don't think you digressed. Menu planning is just another phase of "cooking."

I love beer with almost any food, but love wine too. Don't be afraid to match wines with Chinese food. I think that the shyness about matching "Western" wine with Chinese food is a hangover from the days when America was "discovering" wine and (often-too-hot) Sichuan cuisine at the same time.

Chinese cuisine, and our current selection of wines, are each essentially infinite. Use the same seat-of-you-pants logic that you are now developing in your cookin to match wines with the dishes, too.

When I serve Chinese food to friends, I generally serve two dishes at a time - usually one "meat" and one "vegetable." If the dishes are not outrageously spicy, in some sense or another, they will usually go quite nicely with wine.

In fact, the unusual combinations of flavors and textures often allow you to break the usual "rules" about what goes with what. Taste the food, then open the wine that it "asks for."

BB

[sequim]

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"   .

Or the result of a happy accident.

Big Bunny - regarding wines, I'm not that adept at choosing wines to what the food asks for! I need suggestions. Especially with reds which seem much more difficult.

Maybe that's a different thread though. Also, I was thinking wines aren't served much with Chinese food so I wouldn't get much response if I did post a thread like that.

[hzrt8w]

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.

Another small tip for you about fried rice and eggs. Don't pour the beaten eggs onto the rice itself. This will cause the rice to soak up moisture from the eggs and thus make it very soggy. You may cook the eggs separately and throw back in to the rice (cutting in strips or just scramble the eggs as you cook them). Or, if you are an expert or just being lazy (I am the latter kind ) , you may create a "hole" (empty space) in your pan/wok of fried rice then you pour in the beaten eggs in the middle. Keep scrambling. After the eggs are hardened, you simply use the spatular to mix them with the rice. This way there is no need to cook the eggs in a separate process.

[Big Bunny]

Watch!

These people are GOOD!

BB

[Laksa]

Big Bunny - regarding wines, I'm not that adept at choosing wines to what the food asks for! I need suggestions. Especially with reds which seem much more difficult.

I generally find that a semi-dry wine works best with Chinese food. I tend to like spicy Chinese, so I avoid tannic wines or acidic wines.

I've enjoyed Chinese food with Riesling (not the dry ones), and sometimes a lighter style red like Pinot Noir might work.

Chinese tea is probably the most common drink to have with Chinese food. Traditionally, when alcohol is called for, the drink of choice would be the 150 proof Mao-Tai Jiu. Nowadays, it's more common to see whisky or brandy at Chinese banquets.

[sequim]

Watch!

These people are GOOD!

BB

No kidding!

I know I took the soggy rice and egg route before, so thought I'd try the sliced egg and that wasn't totally aesthetic looking.

[hzrt8w]

I know I took the soggy rice and egg route before, so thought I'd try the sliced egg and that wasn't totally aesthetic looking.

Failure is the mother of all sucesses. Not be afraid to try new things and learn from your mistakes is my motto.

[herbacidal]

Big Bunny - regarding wines, I'm not that adept at choosing wines to what the food asks for! I need suggestions. Especially with reds which seem much more difficult.

Maybe that's a different thread though. Also, I was thinking wines aren't served much with Chinese food so I wouldn't get much response if I did post a thread like that.

True. My default recommendations when people ask me are gewurtztraminer or riesling. No clue on reds though.

[trillium]

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.

Another small tip for you about fried rice and eggs. Don't pour the beaten eggs onto the rice itself. This will cause the rice to soak up moisture from the eggs and thus make it very soggy. You may cook the eggs separately and throw back in to the rice (cutting in strips or just scramble the eggs as you cook them). Or, if you are an expert or just being lazy (I am the latter kind ) , you may create a "hole" (empty space) in your pan/wok of fried rice then you pour in the beaten eggs in the middle. Keep scrambling. After the eggs are hardened, you simply use the spatular to mix them with the rice. This way there is no need to cook the eggs in a separate process.

I don't think there is one right way to add eggs to stir-fried rice, it depends on the dish and the cook. Yang chow fan (Yang style fried rice) for instance, I think traditionally has the cut-up omlette, whereas the Hokkien-Singapore style stuff the partner makes never does. This is actually a bone of contention in our house, I prefer the omlette bits, he prefers to coat each rice grain with egg (and the way he does it doesn't make it soggy! ... the rice is hard and dry enough to take it) so it depends on who does the cooking. We had a very fortuitous discovery that scrambled duck eggs make a much fluffier and delicious salted-fish fried rice then chicken eggs. Using them made it taste like the hawker dishes of his childhood.

sequim, I'm guessing you might have got the idea of letting the garlic get browned from the eGullet cooking class I did. There the garlic was in whole crushed cloves, and is just used to scent the oil for a high temp vegetable stir-fry. When (and if) you have chopped garlic you want to be a little more careful because it can get bitter very easily at high temperatures. Also, the ethnic Chinese in residence has a SE Asian sensibility when it comes to garlic, onions, and shallots, and believes they all taste better a little browned, which influenced the dishes we did for the class (I think I mentioned this influence in the intro). As you can see, this preference is not true for all cooks of Chinese food. It's a vast country with a huge diaspora.

I earn my living by my ability to be accurate, precise, and able to repeat experiments resulting in the same outcome each time. I was surprised that I found it insanely frustrating to write the recipes with actual amounts and times for the eG cooking lesson I did, because there can only really be guidelines. Take for instance garlic... in the spring it is milder and wetter, so you might add more of it and cook it differently then how you would cook with winter garlic (which is dryer and much stronger). I think the best teachers impart this kind of wisdom, not just a list of ingredients and cooking times. I admire them for it, because it's much harder to do via the written word then it looks!

regards,

trillium

[trillium]

Big Bunny - regarding wines, I'm not that adept at choosing wines to what the food asks for!  I need suggestions.  Especially with reds which seem much more difficult. 

Maybe that's a different thread though.  Also, I was thinking wines aren't served much with Chinese food so I wouldn't get much response if I did post a thread like that.

True. My default recommendations when people ask me are gewurtztraminer or riesling. No clue on reds though.

It depends on the food and your tastes! I like a nice dry minerally white with something delicate (Viogner, Pinot Gris, Semillion is great with seafood, the St. Suprey Sauvignon Blanc is nice with things with herbs like green onion and cilantro), a fruity, non-oaky red with things with a little more garlic and spice. I think some southern Italian reds go very nicely with the heartier dishes because they don't have so much oak. For something like char siu (the bbqed pork) a chilled rosato or rose can work well too (Saintsbury vin gris would be a good place to start).

regards,

trillium

[Jason Perlow]

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

We should have some announcements about rectifying this situation within a few weeks.

[sequim]

sequim, I'm guessing you might have got the idea of letting the garlic get browned from the eGullet cooking class I did.  There the garlic was in whole crushed cloves, and is just used to scent the oil for a high temp vegetable stir-fry.  When (and if) you have chopped garlic you want to be a little more careful because it can get bitter very easily at high temperatures.  Also, the ethnic Chinese in residence has a SE Asian sensibility when it comes to garlic, onions, and shallots, and believes they all taste better a little browned, which influenced the dishes we did for the class (I think I mentioned this influence in the intro).  As you can see, this preference is not true for all cooks of Chinese food.  It's a vast country with a huge diaspora. 

Thanks Trillium, yes, you're correct, it was the cooking class. I just wanted to get bolder than I had been and see what happened. I'm always hearing of people putting the big flame/heat on and having great results.

You mentioned bitter as something to be avoided, but isn't bitter a flavor in its own right and sometimes it is appropriate?

I like the emphasis of not sticking to exact measurements but to see how the dish evolves and work with it. I have tended to not taste enough in the past with my cooking but just blindly follow a recipe and I've paid the price. Finally, I'm starting to change my tune.

[Ben Hong]

Trillium says"Yang Chow Fan", or Yang style fried rice. I believe he meant "Yangchow chow fan", or Yangchow style fried rice.

I know Yang and he is a friend of mine, but he has never had a fried rice dish named after him.

[trillium]

Trillium says"Yang Chow Fan", or Yang style fried rice. I believe he meant "Yangchow chow fan", or Yangchow style fried rice.

I know Yang and he is a friend of mine, but he has never had a fried rice dish named after him.

She (uh-hum...my namesake is a flower!) indeed did mean Yangchow chow fan! Thanks for the clarification!

regards,

trillium

[trillium]

Thanks Trillium, yes, you're correct, it was the cooking class. I just wanted to get bolder than I had been and see what happened. I'm always hearing of people putting the big flame/heat on and having great results.

You mentioned bitter as something to be avoided, but isn't bitter a flavor in its own right and sometimes it is appropriate?

I like the emphasis of not sticking to exact measurements but to see how the dish evolves and work with it. I have tended to not taste enough in the past with my cooking but just blindly follow a recipe and I've paid the price. Finally, I'm starting to change my tune.

Big flame is good... just not burned garlic!

Bitter is indeed a flavor in its own right, and used in Chinese cookery, but the bitter you get from burnt garlic has this awful acrid flavor you tend to want to avoid. You want fresh bitter not burnt bitter...does that make sense?

regards,

trillium

[sequim]

Bitter is indeed a flavor in its own right, and used in Chinese cookery, but the bitter you get from burnt garlic has this awful acrid flavor you tend to want to avoid.  You want fresh bitter not burnt bitter...does that make sense?

I think so. You want natural bitter from maybe greens, versus an induced bitterness. Although perhaps there are condiments which are considered bitter.