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To be (Chinese), or Not to be (Chinese)


hzrt8w

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I just browsed Ken Hom's latest cookbook:

Ken Hom's Quick Wok: The Fastest Food in the East

Some of these recipes... quick they may be, but I found them very unconventional, or deviated quite far from the classical recipes.

When I read these recipes and viewed the pictures, I had the image of Charlie Sheen's character Bud Fox in the movie Wall Street, living in the Penthouse apartment in New York making sushi from a machine in his kitchen.

I cook mostly classical Chinese recipes. I do try more modern approaches from time to time. But it doesn't mean I would blanch some vegetables, then drizzle some soy sauce and sesame oil on top (or insult it more with sprinkling some sesames seeds on top) and call it a Chinese dish.

One of the recipes is named something like "beef noodles with oyster sauce". He boiled some noodles (which looked like spaghetti) to al dente, laid them on a plate. He marinated a piece of what looked like London Broil steak with soy sauce, then seared it whole, and then sliced it up. (You can see that the steak is done medium rare.) He laid the steak slices on top of the noodles. Then he took a spoonful of oyster sauce right from the bottle and spreaded it on top of each slice of steak. Wow! That defies all my training and knowledge of Chinese cooking (or Asian cooking as his book title implied).

So where do you draw the line? Where/when do you consider a Chinese dish as a Chinese dish? Just because I use oyster sauce for flavoring instead of A1 sauce on a medium rare London Broil slices on top of some al dente spaghetti, would that make my dish a Chinese dish?

Edited by hzrt8w (log)
W.K. Leung ("Ah Leung") aka "hzrt8w"
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Hmmm. Interesting question.

If I were cooking a meal that was to be consumed by mostly older Chinese folk, I would try to stay as "authentic" as possible. Another scenario is cooking "real" Toyshan dishes.

But if my party is younger and mostly non-Chinese, I will adapt, change, improvise, "improve", and generally ad lib, in the Chinese style, of course. :biggrin: Good food well prepared is good food, whatever the appellation or "style" or category. Otherwise, how is cuisine or any other art form going to evolve? For example, most people would not associate cold salads with Chinese food, but has anyone ever tasted a salad made of bean sprouts, green onions, some celery topped off with some leftover chicken? Top it off with a dressing of light soy sauce, a bit of sugar and rice vinegar, red chili flakes, sesame oil and you have a lunch that really, really is tasty. It's Chinese because it's made by Chinese hands. :cool:

Early in my impoverished youth living in a northern Quebec mining town, there were not many veggies to be had. To be sure, there were cabbage, carrots, turnips, onions, celery, iceberg lettuce, potatoes, and parsnips, not what one would call "Chinese" or exotic, but the family had "Chinese" food, nonetheless. Lo foh soups of carrots, a few pork bones and a piece of chin pei; substitute turnips for lobok in gnow nam lo bok, potato soup with pork bones and jah choy, black bean potato (or squash) and spare ribs, etc. Foods that I still make and consider as authentic as any.

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My favorite flavoring on steak is oyster sauce, (right from the bottle) but I don't call it a Chinese dish. It is simply a great way to use oyster sauce.

I was reading the 'editorial reviews' that was on the link. It does say that Hom's book is cooking 'with an Asian flair', not really Chinese cooking, but if that dish is what you described -- steak with noodles, then it will be a bust. First of all it is not fast when you have to cook the noodles and marinate and grill a flank steak. Also, if the cooked noodles (spaghetti) is just plunked on a plate without a sauce, then in just a few minutes it will just be a mass of spaghetti. It will stick to itself and the steak on top won't help.

Hom should have stuck to his Quick and Easy Chinese Cooking. In that book, he has a grilled and sliced steak with an oyster/oil/scallion/ginger topping that goes well with rice.

To me, fusion cooking (as with Hugh Carpenter) may taste great, but it is not authentic Chinese. But then, when the Hong Kong chefs start using mayonaise as in Shrimp and Walnuts, then what do we call it?

The use of basil is starting to show in Chinese dishes. Even tho it has been in China for centuries, it is rarely mentioned (if it even is) in Chinese cookbooks. I understand that it was used as a perfume in gardens to offset the odor of fertilizer. So where does basil stand in present day Chinese cooking? Classical or eclectic?

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Heh. This topic is very apropos, as I just came back from picking up some Chinese takeout for my household and me.

Now Fearless Housemate's idea of good Chinese food is P.F. Chang's. :rolleyes: He insists that most "traditional" Chinese restaurant food tastes too heavy and greasy to him. :rolleyes::rolleyes: Me, I much prefer the more "authentic" Chinese restaurants in the nearby enclave of Asian restaurants about a mile from our house on Convoy Street. But I know that a lot of local Chinese food fans, both of Chinese and of European background, point out that some of those restaurants are more authentic than others, and that virtually all of them have made at least some adaptations to Western tastes and ingredients. No surprises there; we've discussed the ins and outs of Chinese restaurants in the US before in other topics. But while I do tease Fearless Housemate about his P.F. Chang's fetish, I also remember not to tease him too fiercely, given that my preferred places are not necessarily the "real deal" either.

Still, as a Caucasian fan of Chinese food, I know that when I'm wanting said food, I am most certainly *not* looking for a steak with some oyster sauce smeared on it! On the other hand, people like my housemate might find that just his cup of tea (so to speak).

I guess in my mind there's a difference between deliberately dumbing down the food in a way that breaks drastically with the continuity of the cuisine's tradition; vs. evolving the tradition to incorporate new ingredients, tastes, and environments, in a way that maintains some kind of organic continuity with said tradition. Guess which approach I prefer? :smile:

P.S. We wound up getting takeout *not* from P.F. Chang's, thenkyewverrymuch, but instead from a local Szechuan joint that IMO represents a reasonable compromise between Americanized Chinese and, well, less Americanized Chinese. :biggrin:

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I think it's all relative. It really depends on what perspective a person's coming from when interpreting what Chinese (or for that matter any other cuisine - Japanese, Thai, French, Italian etc.) food is. Someone who doesn't have a background in Chinese cooking, or has little knowledge of what the techniques should be wouldn't necessarily see it as 'non-chinese'. As long as the ingredients used are those that are commonly associated with Chinese food (oyster sauce, sesame oil, soy sauce), then that person would probably think of it as Chinese food because it sure as heck ain't French or Italian or whatever.

It's like how back when I was a kid in Malaysia, Italian, French, American food were all categorized under 'Western'. Steak or pasta is still Western food even if the gravy for the steak is thickened with cornstarch or the pasta is boiled and then stir-fried with oyster sauce & other ingredients.

As someone who's eaten traditional home-cooked Chinese meals all my life but only learned to cook using Western techniques & ingredients as a student in a foreign country, I can certainly see how the book's approach can be seen as bastardizing Chinese food. But at the same time, it also makes Chinese food more accessible to people who may not know enough about Chinese food to consider it as the "fastest food in the East" that can be prepared in a "quick wok" manner like the title suggests.

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[...]It's like how back when I was a kid in Malaysia, Italian, French, American food were all categorized under 'Western'. Steak or pasta is still Western food even if the gravy for the steak is  thickened with cornstarch or the pasta is boiled and then stir-fried with oyster sauce & other ingredients. [...]

Right. In Malay, makanan Orang Putih (white people's food). Just like Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, and various other styles of food from East and Southeast Asia are lumped together as "Asian" in the US. In a real sense, I don't know what "Asian food" is.

Michael aka "Pan"

 

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I think it's all relative. It really depends on what perspective a person's coming from when interpreting what Chinese (or for that matter any other cuisine - Japanese, Thai, French, Italian etc.) food is. Someone who doesn't have a background in Chinese cooking, or has little knowledge of what the techniques should be wouldn't necessarily see it as 'non-chinese'. As long as the ingredients used are those that are commonly associated with Chinese food (oyster sauce, sesame oil, soy sauce), then that person would probably think of it as Chinese food because it sure as heck ain't French or Italian or whatever.

It's like how back when I was a kid in Malaysia, Italian, French, American food were all categorized under 'Western'. Steak or pasta is still Western food even if the gravy for the steak is  thickened with cornstarch or the pasta is boiled and then stir-fried with oyster sauce & other ingredients.

As someone who's eaten traditional home-cooked Chinese meals all my life but only learned to cook using Western techniques & ingredients as a student in a foreign country, I can certainly see how the book's approach can be seen as bastardizing Chinese food. But at the same time, it also makes Chinese food more accessible to people who may not know enough about Chinese food to consider it as the "fastest food in the East" that can be prepared in a "quick wok" manner like the title suggests.

Yup agree.

Also, a person from/ with origins from one part of China may find the food from another part of China rather un-Chinese from their perspective. For example, many Malaysian Chinese (mainly with origins from Southern China) visitng Northern China find the food of Northern China (for example, lamb with cumin) quite "un-Chinese" to their Southern Chinese (adulterated with Malaysian influences of course :raz:) attuned palates.

IMHO, this improvisation of Chinese food is something that's been happening for a long time. Otherwise, we wouldn't have Nyonya food today :laugh:. A lot of Chinese influences can also be seen in the other cuisines of South East Asia. The difference between these and say Ken Hom's Quick Wok recipes is that the adaptations happened several centuries earlier.

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I just browsed Ken Hom's latest cookbook:

Ken Hom's Quick Wok: The Fastest Food in the East

Some of these recipes... quick they may be, but I found them very unconventional, or deviated quite far from the classical recipes.

When I read these recipes and viewed the pictures, I had the image of Charlie Sheen's character Bud Fox in the movie Wall Street, living in the Penthouse apartment in New York making sushi from a machine in his kitchen.

I cook mostly classical Chinese recipes.  I do try more modern approaches from time to time.  But it doesn't mean I would blanch some vegetables, then drizzle some soy sauce and sesame oil on top (or insult it more with sprinkling some sesames seeds on top) and call it a Chinese dish.

One of the recipes is named something like "beef noodles with oyster sauce".  He boiled some noodles (which looked like spaghetti) to al dente, laid them on a plate.  He marinated a piece of what looked like London Boil steak with soy sauce, then seared it whole, and then sliced it up.  (You can see that the steak is done medium rare.)  He laid the steak slices on top of the noodles.  Then he took a spoonful of oyster sauce right from the bottle and spreaded it on top of each slice of steak.  Wow!  That defies all my training and knowledge of Chinese cooking (or Asian cooking as his book title implied).

So where do you draw the line?  Where/when do you consider a Chinese dish as a Chinese dish?  Just because I use oyster sauce for flavoring instead of A1 sauce on a medium rare London Boil slices on top of some al dente spaghetti, would that make my dish a Chinese dish?

Ah Leung:

My interpretation of the evolution of Chinese Food and ingredients into December 2005 has been non better documented, especially comparing to so called make do [bLAH] Cookbooks like "Ken Hom's " pathetic approach.

It's done much better thru your series of Pictorial Recipes where you take the trouble to photograph ingredients and walk us all through your adaptations of many traditional home style favorites without and pretension other then making everything taste darn good, step by step.

At this point most eGulleters following your guidelines can serve and prepare better Chinese entree's quickly then any shown in cookbooks that taste good, look good and are really special.

We are all very fortunate to share this together with you.

Irwin

I don't say that I do. But don't let it get around that I don't.

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According to the review I’ve read, I don’t think this books claims to contain authentic Chinese recipes. It sounds like this book is also geared towards using Asian condiments for other than Asian food, and for people who live where Asian ingredients aren’t readily available.

Most groceries sell some sort of soy sauce, oyster sauce, etc., but may not carry other condiments or ingredients such as fermented tofu or hoisin sauce that may make a dish authentic. If you can’t find lo mein noodles, I suppose spaghetti is the next closest thing—and is carried in just about every grocery store. Like jo-mel, I love oyster sauce with my steak, and I always add some soy sauce and oyster sauce when I make meatloaf because it adds a nice flavor. That doesn’t make it Chinese by any means, but it’s there and it makes my meatloaf taste good.

But your question is a tough one, Ah Leung. It’s like asking who makes the best jook? But what was cooking like 4000 years ago? 400? 40? But as others have said, as the world gets smaller and a whole variety of food is a lot easier to get, the line of authenticity may get more and more unclear. Shrimp with mayonnaise was certainly not there 400 years ago, but it’s become a mainstay of many banquets. To me, I suppose that I’d draw the line with what I’m familiar—the dishes that I ate growing up (which is very much like what you post in your pictorials), and as I’m sure are the dishes that are posted on the walls of Chinese restaurants (that are not on the menu).

Karen C.

"Oh, suddenly life’s fun, suddenly there’s a reason to get up in the morning – it’s called bacon!" - Sookie St. James

Travelogue: Ten days in Tuscany

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The Ken Hom book sounds like stuff that Ming Tsai would make--more of a fusion style than actually Chinese. I've looked through Susanna Foo's cookbook and those dishes seem a lot more Chinese to me even though she uses some traditionally western ingredients.

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[...] Someone who doesn't have a background in Chinese cooking, or has little knowledge of what the techniques should be wouldn't necessarily see it as 'non-chinese'. As long as the ingredients used are those that are commonly associated with Chinese food (oyster sauce, sesame oil, soy sauce), then that person would probably think of it as Chinese food because it sure as heck ain't French or Italian or whatever. [...]

I think it takes more than ingredients alone. Cooking style is the whole process, plus ingredients. And to some: even the way a meal is presented and consumed.

For example, many different countries in Europe, France, Italy, Germany, Demark, etc.. have access to and use about the same ingredients. Butter, olive oil, cheese, wine, carrots/onions/celery, etc.. Does it mean using olive oil to cook automatically makes it an Italian dish? Using kalamata olives makes it Greek? Or using butter and flour makes it French? Of course not. Then why would using oyster sauce, sesame oil and soy sauce automatically makes it Chinese?

Back to the oyster sauce beef noodle example: if the process presented was to cut the London Broil steak in slices, marinate it with soy sauce, first velvet it in oil and later toss and stir-fry with el dente spaghetti with some oyster sauce added, then I think it is at least an attempt to cook in Chinese style - however it tastes. Yet I have trouble accepting if someone just bakes some meatloaf and drop a few teaspoons of soy sauce on top and call it Chinese, or even "Chinese inspired".

I agree with what Ben, Gul_Dekar and Shiewie said about adapting (and substituting) foreign ingredients and evolving and branching off. Fusion I would accept. Or a title like "this is what you can do with your wok and some soy sauce in your own kitchen, quick and easy", I will accept peacefully.

But the title of "The Fastest Food in the East", be "East" refers to China or elsewhere in Asia (which I am darn sure East doesn't mean New York versus California), implies that's how Chinese/Asians cook if they don't have much time to prepare the "normal" meal the classical way. That, I think, is misleading.

Edited by hzrt8w (log)
W.K. Leung ("Ah Leung") aka "hzrt8w"
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[Yet I have trouble accepting if someone just bakes some meatloaf and drop a few teaspoons of soy sauce on top and call it Chinese, or even "Chinese inspired".

I remember a show with Ming Tsai where he did exactly this!

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I beleive if you are using Chinese cooking techniques and methods, and using condiments and ingredients used in Chinese cooking it is Chinese food, even if you are combining it with other unorthodox, new world ingredients or combining natively Chinese ingredients in different ways. You can't call them -traditional- preparations, but they are definitely valid. The tradition of Chinese cooking outside of China has always been about making do with and putting the best face on ingredients that are not native to China, and even adding Chinese twists to dishes from other nations, and vice versa. Hong Kong has been on the forefont of this kind of amalgamation and creation of "new" dishes for a long time.

Jason Perlow, Co-Founder eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters

Foodies who Review South Florida (Facebook) | offthebroiler.com - Food Blog (archived) | View my food photos on Instagram

Twittter: @jperlow | Mastodon @jperlow@journa.host

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I just browsed Ken Hom's latest cookbook:

Ken Hom's Quick Wok: The Fastest Food in the East

Some of these recipes... quick they may be, but I found them very unconventional, or deviated quite far from the classical recipes.

When I read these recipes and viewed the pictures, I had the image of Charlie Sheen's character Bud Fox in the movie Wall Street, living in the Penthouse apartment in New York making sushi from a machine in his kitchen.

I cook mostly classical Chinese recipes.  I do try more modern approaches from time to time.  But it doesn't mean I would blanch some vegetables, then drizzle some soy sauce and sesame oil on top (or insult it more with sprinkling some sesames seeds on top) and call it a Chinese dish.

One of the recipes is named something like "beef noodles with oyster sauce".  He boiled some noodles (which looked like spaghetti) to al dente, laid them on a plate.  He marinated a piece of what looked like London Boil steak with soy sauce, then seared it whole, and then sliced it up.  (You can see that the steak is done medium rare.)  He laid the steak slices on top of the noodles.  Then he took a spoonful of oyster sauce right from the bottle and spreaded it on top of each slice of steak.   Wow!  That defies all my training and knowledge of Chinese cooking (or Asian cooking as his book title implied).

So where do you draw the line?  Where/when do you consider a Chinese dish as a Chinese dish?  Just because I use oyster sauce for flavoring instead of A1 sauce on a medium rare London Boil slices on top of some al dente spaghetti, would that make my dish a Chinese dish?

Ah Leung:

My interpretation of the evolution of Chinese Food and ingredients into December 2005 has been non better documented, especially comparing to so called make do [bLAH] Cookbooks like "Ken Hom's " pathetic approach.

It's done much better thru your series of Pictorial Recipes where you take the trouble to photograph ingredients and walk us all through your adaptations of many traditional home style favorites without and pretension other then making everything taste darn good, step by step.

At this point most eGulleters following your guidelines can serve and prepare better Chinese entree's quickly then any shown in cookbooks that taste good, look good and are really special.

We are all very fortunate to share this together with you.

Irwin

I think it's time for a reality check! "READ" the atrocious recipe for the "Beef Noodle Dish" I doubt anyone could actually manage to eat and enjoy this dish.

Oyster Sauce dumped over Noodles, with Pink medium rare soy washed Beef Slices is a alien tasting dish that would taste salty, redundant with the strong flavor of the Oyster Sauce together with the bland noodles. Salty, Gloppy definitely not anything Chinese.

If you think different, try it and tell us what it tasted like. If he used a so called London Broil Cut of Meat in place of Flank Steak it would look pretty, but be tough and chewy.

By the way has anyone ever seen a Chinese Sliced Beef Dish that was prepared Medium Rare, sliced and plopped on top of anything ? The Beef is first sliced, Marinated then cooked to order as Ah Leung explained. Between the Cooking and serving in most Chinese Beef Dishes there may only remain a slight pinkness on the interior of the beef slices, not the exterior.

Oyster Sauce on it's own is almost never used. It effect is to always compliment whatever it's being added to or served with, such as strong flavored vegetables where it compliments the superior broth, oil and garlic, ginger and enhances the flavors in the dish being served.

After reflection ! Your thoughts and opinions please.

I admit to being some what of a traditionalist about most ethnic foods, but welcome enhancing or updating methods of preparation, such as "Crisping the Skin on Ginger Chicken" or modifying ingredients as long as it actually tastes good and compliments the original or customizes it into your way of making it special.

But I always feel it's important to respect everyone thats going to actually eat a meal based upon your recommendations. Especially when taken from a Cookbook.

Yes, I'm so old fashioned that I prefer the "Original Cesear Salad" recipe.

Irwin

I don't say that I do. But don't let it get around that I don't.

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[...]Oyster Sauce on it's own is almost never used. It effect is to always compliment whatever it's being added to or served with, such as strong flavored vegetables where it compliments the superior broth, oil and garlic, ginger and enhances the flavors in the dish being served.[...]

You mean the "Chinese Vegetable (bok choy) with Oyster Sauce" that typically comes as a small side dish in a Cantonese/Hong Kong style place like Greater New York Noodletown isn't really pretty much steamed bok choy and oyster sauce? I believe it is.

Michael aka "Pan"

 

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OK, I'm not Chinese but developed a taste for Chinese food at a young age.

I first started cooking it from a magazine article in Life Magazine in the early 50's and from the recipe for Chow Mein on the package of mixed vegetables (mostly bean sprouts).

I feel that I've come a long way since then so I would never make something like that weird recipe.

On the other hand I had a friend who had been a career man in the Navy and had been all over the world.

I made a negative comment on his favorite "Chinese" restaurant. He became indignant and said that it was better than anything he had eaten in Hong Kong. :sad::unsure:

Obviously he wasn't interested in authenticity. He wanted the usual westernized version.

I guess what I'm trying to say is many people don't really want authenticity and would probably try this and think it was "Chinese".

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[...]Oyster Sauce on it's own is almost never used. It effect is to always compliment whatever it's being added to or served with, such as strong flavored vegetables where it compliments the superior broth, oil and garlic, ginger and enhances the flavors in the dish being served.[...]

You mean the "Chinese Vegetable (bok choy) with Oyster Sauce" that typically comes as a small side dish in a Cantonese/Hong Kong style place like Greater New York Noodletown isn't really pretty much steamed bok choy and oyster sauce? I believe it is.

Its totally used over steamed Gai Lan/Yu Choy in just about every Dim Sum place I can think of in New York/NJ and SF as well.

Jason Perlow, Co-Founder eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters

Foodies who Review South Florida (Facebook) | offthebroiler.com - Food Blog (archived) | View my food photos on Instagram

Twittter: @jperlow | Mastodon @jperlow@journa.host

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One's preference is just that: one's preference. For those of us who grew up in Hong Kong, we may preferred the Hong Kong style spaghetti and meat sauce (which I heard was made with ketchup and soy sauce) rather than "authentic" Italian spaghetti and meat sauce - the same way that someone prefers "chop suey" Chinese than Chinese in China

Regarding the oyster sauce issue: yes, oyster sauce is used alone to flavor blanched vegetables (the most popular one is gai lan). We do that in Hong Kong too. But that would be just about one of the very few instances that oyster sauce is used alone. Mostly it is used as a flavoring agent in producing many dishes in the kitchen.

Regarding Ken Hom's book, here is an excerpt from an editorial review:

From Publishers Weekly

For times when speed is a key concern, Hom's latest cookbook offers recipes that are easy to prepare and boast an Asian flair appealing to the American palate. An authority on Chinese cooking, Hom opens his cookbook with a section on ingredients and techniques designed to instruct even the most amateur cook.

He was crowned as an "authority on Chinese cooking". Personally, I think when one advocates and educates the food of a certain ethnicity, he/she should pay respect to that culture and be truthful to it. To me, if I want to make Mexican food I would like to read a cookbook on how Mexicans would prepare Chile Verde or Taco, but not the Taco Bell version. Most of Hom's recipes in the books are just that: "prepare and boast an Asian flair appealing to the American palate". But I think this particular "oyster beef noodle" dish has gone a bit too far. Just placing a pair of chopsticks when serving does not make a dish any more Asian.

W.K. Leung ("Ah Leung") aka "hzrt8w"
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Regarding the use of "Oyster Sauce" with various blanched Vegetables such as "Gai Lan, Yui Choy, Bok Choi, Broccoli, or other Cabbage variations. I actually went to 4 different restaurants in Seattle's International District and ordered the dish. All are strong flavored vegetables on their own and the blanching, oil and Oyster Sauce are very traditional.

They all blanched the vegetables in a "Superior Broth" then added the Oyster Sauce followed by a light Oil bath.

The Oyster Sauce used was from the large tinned version, not nearly the quality used in Hong Kong from Pearl River Oysters as it's base, but the blanching in broth, together with the oil mellows the taste or some may say enhances it of the Oyster Sauce.

I still feel that Ken Hom just dumping Oyster Sauce over "a La Dente" Noodles with sliced medium rare "Chewy Beef" coated with Soy Sauce into something most people could eat and actually enjoy, unless they are Salt Freaks into emasculating their meat for long periods.

On another post it was mentioned about the impressions of a older Navy veterans impressions of Chinese food in Hong Kong, there were about 12/18 Restaurants that catered to visiting American Sailors for many years that were the places they went to eat at most often, none were very good, but all were reasonable with large fulling portions that were meant to be scarfed.

During the last 10/15 years the caliber of American seamen together with their real interest and knowledge of foods has increased their expectations and they make sure to visit the better Restaurants regularly in Hong Kong.

Whatever you label the dish, if it's in a cook book at least it should taste good as your readers require some respect. I never have allowed any dish to be served to a customer that whoever prepared it would eat themselves. I would really like to see "Ken Hom" eat a dish of his "Beef Noodles" prepared according to his recipe.

Irwin

I don't say that I do. But don't let it get around that I don't.

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I beleive if you are using Chinese cooking techniques and methods, and using condiments and ingredients used in Chinese cooking it is Chinese food, even if you are combining it with other unorthodox, new world ingredients or combining natively Chinese ingredients in different ways. You can't call them -traditional- preparations, but they are definitely valid. The tradition of Chinese cooking outside of China has always been about making do with and putting the best face on ingredients that are not native to China, and even adding Chinese twists to dishes from other nations, and vice versa. Hong Kong has been on the forefont of this kind of amalgamation and creation of "new" dishes for a long time.

(I love threads like this!)

Jason -- your comment on Chinese cooking techniques and methods --------etc. brought to mind what I would say to the people in my cooking classes when we were discussing just what is meant by "Chinese cooking".

I would give them the scene of a Chinese and a non-Chinese in a kitchen with the usual condiments you would find in a household. The refrigerator has chicken, carrots, celery. The non-Chinese would poach the chicken, add chunked carrots and celery and when it is almost finished she would add some Bisquick dumplings on top and have a Fricasse with Dumplings. The Chinese lady (or lord) would slice and marinate the chicken, slice the celery and make a simple Chicken Vegetable Stir/Fry. With the Bisquick, she would make an accompanying Ox-Tongue Steamed Bread.

Style and technique can be the difference.

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I would give them the scene of a Chinese and a non-Chinese in a kitchen with the usual condiments you would find in a household. The refrigerator has chicken, carrots, celery. The non-Chinese would poach the chicken, add chunked carrots and celery and  when it is almost finished she would add some Bisquick dumplings on top and have a Fricasse with Dumplings. The Chinese lady (or lord) would slice and marinate the chicken, slice the celery and make a simple Chicken Vegetable Stir/Fry. With the Bisquick, she would make an accompanying Ox-Tongue Steamed Bread.

....unless the Chinese cook is expecting American guests for dinner, in which case she would deep fry the chicken in a bisquick batter and toss it together with the celery and carrots in a bright red sweet and sour sauce made with ketchup.

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I just happened to pass by a discounted book shop and saw the book there. A lot of the recipes inside are more Western-style dishes but using Chinese/Asian ingredients, in other words - fusion! Some of the recipes aren't Chinese at all, like the Thai curry or Vietnamese pho. I guess the book's not supposed to be a Chinese cookbook then? More like fusion + some Chinese + some Thai...basically an Asian cookbook for people who watch a lot of Rachel Ray. :raz:

Edited by Gul_Dekar (log)
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All the Ken Hom books I have seen are a disgrace. The recipes simply don't work, because they are wrong.

I really think you are being rather hard on Ken Hom. You ,may not like his cooking; but I don't think he has done any classic Chinese dishes for many years. Nor do I think that that is where his interest lies. Maybe, he started out there. He had a very good show on PBS in the seventys that ran rings around Martin Yan.

But, about 25 years ago he wrote a book called East meets West, probably the first fusion cookbook way before Hugh Carpenter, Ming Tsai, and the China Moon Cookbook. That is where his true passion is and you can find undercurrents of that in all his books; additionally rather than Chinese he focuses on Pan Asian ingredients. I've yet to see one of his books where he does not stray off into Thai, Malaysian, or Vietnamese dishes (except for his Easy Family Recipes From a Chinese-American Childhood)

To compare him to Rachael Ray who does not pretend to be a Professional cook does him a disservice. He has a great background and has done

traditional Chinese cooking for years before many were even born. He has paid his dues.

He should not be penalized for following his own personal vision. You or I may not like the direction that vision takes. But that is personal taste. Is it not?

Knowing where his sensibilities lay, if I were looking for traditional Chinese recipes-- that is not the place I'd look.

Its like comparing apples and oranges. His is a whole different category.

I'm accepting it for what it is. Sometimes it works, sometimes not ;but again that is personal taste.

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