A well known cooking authority in Britain, where he teaches at Ken Lo’s Chinese Cookery School in London, Deh-Ta Hsiung has put together over 100 recipes to help you reproduce your favorite Chinese restaurant recipes at home. Once you’ve read the review, try the sample recipes below for Stir-fried Beef With Oyster Sauce and American Chicken Chop Suey.

Can You Make Chinese Restaurant Food at Home?

One question I am frequently asked is “Why doesn’t the Chinese food I prepare at home taste like restaurant food?” It’s a challenge - restaurant kitchens have specially built gas stoves that can reach the very high temperatures needed for stir-frying, not to mention several cooks! Fortunately, Deh-Ta Hsiung believes none of these difficulties are insurmountable. A well-known personality in Britain, where he teaches at London’s Ken Lo Chinese Cookery School, Hsiung has compiled a cookbook demonstrating that it is possible for home cooked Chinese dishes to come extremely close to reproducing the taste and flavor of Chinese restaurant food.

Set Realistic Goals

“Chinese Cookery Secrets” contains over 100 recipes, organized by cooking style. The introduction to each section includes a “Restaurant Quality Rating.” For example, using the recipes in the book, readers should have a 98 - 100 percent success rate in creating restaurant quality soups, while the deep-fried dishes have a slightly lower rate of 90 - 100 percent.  Hsiung provides several cooking tips to help you achieve success, including instructions on pre-seasoning vegetable oil, and when to use a thick or thin cornstarch paste.

What About MSG?

It’s impossible to review a book on Chinese restaurant cooking without mentioning monosodium glutamate (MSG). Nowadays the unique savory taste of MSG is found in everything from sauces to prepackaged mixes, making it difficult for restaurants to prepare food that is entirely MSG-free. Inevitably this will affect the taste of the dish. Hsiung doesn’t rule out using MSG - for best results he recommends adding it to soup stock. Several other recipes list it as optional. But this doesn’t mean you must use it as well. Just realize that the results may differ slightly from your local Chinese restaurant. Then again, does it really matter as long as the dish tastes great?

Other Features

An added plus, rarely found in Chinese cookbooks, is that Hsiung includes the Chinese characters for both the recipe names and the ingredients (see glossary). This is extremely useful for anyone who wants to order from the Chinese menu for a change, or who has trouble identifying Asian ingredients at the supermarket. I also appreciated the section on “Iron Plate Dishes.” A variation on Japanese Teriyaki or Sukiyaki, Iron Plate dishes are grilled and served sizzling at the customer’s table. A restaurant specialty, you won’t find them in most Chinese cookbooks, but they are easy to prepare and could easily be the star of your next dinner party.

When you think of Chinese food you think of rice, and ricewas the first grain that was farmed in China. There is archaeological evidence of rice farming along the Yang-tse River as early as about 5000 BC. People cooked rice by boiling it in water, the way they do today. Or they made it into wine. Rice wine has been popular in China since prehistory.

But rice doesn’t grow in northern China, which is much drier and colder. People in northern China gathered wildmillet and sorghum instead. By 4500 BC, people in northern China were farming millet. They ate it boiled into a kind of porridge.

Another food people associate with China is tea. Tea grows wild in China. By about 3000 BC (or it could be much earlier), people in China had begun to drink tea. Soon everybody drank tea.

Wheat was not native to China, so it took much longer to reach China. People in northern China first began to eat wheat in the Shang Dynasty, about 1500 BC. Wheat was not native to China, but people brought it to China from West Asia. People in China boiled it like millet, to make something like Cream of Wheat.

These were the main foods of China - rice, millet, sorghum, and wheat. In northern China, people mostly ate millet, wheat, and sorghum. In southern China, people mostly ate rice. Poor people ate almost nothing but these foods.

When people could afford it, they bought or grew vegetables to put on their rice. Soybeans, for instance, are native to China. So are cucumbers. For fruits, the Chinese had oranges and lemons, peaches and apricots. The native flavorings are ginger and anise (Americans use anise to make licorice).

On special occasions, people also put little pieces of meat on their rice. By 5500 BC, the Chinese were eating domesticated chicken, which came originally from Thailand. By 4000 or 3000 BC, they were eating pork, which was native to China. Sheep and cattle, which were not native, reached China from West Asia also around 4000 BC.

Since meat was so expensive, and because Buddhists didn’t eat meat, starting around the Sung Dynasty (about 1000 AD) people also put tofu, or bean curd, in their food as a source of protein.

Because China doesn’t have big forests, it was always hard to find fuel to cook with. Chinese people learned to cut up their food very small, so it would cook quickly on a very small fire.

During the Han Dynasty, millet wine became very popular and was even more popular to drink than tea. Also beginning in the Han Dynasty, about 100 AD, Chinese people began to make their wheat and rice into long noodles.

Marco Polo, a visitor to China from Venice, wrote that by the time of Kublai Khan, about 1200 AD, Chinese people ate millet boiled in milk to make porridge. Even as late as 1200 AD, Chinese people did not bake bread.

The art of Chinese cooking is not, contrary to popular belief, complicated and difficult. Most Chinese dishes do not require a complex processing and equipment in the kitchen as does one of China’s most famous dishes, Peking duck. Simplicity is the key to Chinese cuisine as evidently shown in their various cooking methods. When you have the ingredients, seasonings and marinades ready, you can use one of the following methods to cook in Chinese.

Roasting - Roasting is not family cooking in China, since few Chinese kitchens have facilities for roasting. Only restaurants go much into roasts and Cantonese restaurants excel especially in these. In roasting, raw ingredients are marinated in seasonings before being roasted in an oven or barbecued over direct heat from charcoal fire, with the roast turning slowly round and round. Marinades is added inside and out from time to time so that the skin remains smooth and shiny, instead of rough and flaky, and the meat remains juicy instead of powdery. The Peking duck is one of China’s most famous dishes cooked this way. Families can go to food shops to buy roast meat or poultry and eat it cold. But for the crisp juicy hot roast duck, one has to go to a restaurant.

Boiling - Strictly speaking, this means cooking food in boiling water (A liquid is boiling when the surface is continually agitated by large bubbles). Violent boiling should be avoided. It wastes fuel; it does not cook the food any faster, it tends to make the food break up and so spoils the appearance; the liquid is evaporated too quickly with the consequent danger of the food burning. There are one or two exceptions to this rule; for example, when one wants to drive off water quickly from syrup or a sauce to make it thicker, then violent boiling with the lid off hastens the process.

In Chinese cooking, there is very little big-fire boiling, as a complete process. Chinese would not consider eating boiled potatoes. After a thing is boiled, the natural question is - Now what of it? Quick plain boiling is often only a preparatory process for other ways of cooking - where the term parboil comes into place. There are some exceptions, such as plain boiled celery cabbage with salt and a little lard, or boiled yam, to eat with sugar. But celery cabbage and yam are such cook-proof things that they are good in any method prepared. It’s not necessary to use continued big fire after water has started to boil, because water cannot be hotter than 100° C or 212°F.
Turn the fire to medium if you want but to make sure that it is at least hot in all parts, especially in a large tall boiling or steaming pot, the fire must be big enough for you to see the steam come out.
Shallow frying - shallow frying uses a small amount of oil in a frying pan or wok at a temperature lower than stir-frying. Ingredients are usually cut into slices or flat pieces, and are used as they are, slightly coated with batter or rubbed with seasonings. Fish is ideal for this cooking method. The presentation side of the food should be fried first as this side will have the better appearance because the oil is clean, then turned so that both sides are cooked and browned. Sauces, if called for, are then added. Food cooked this way is tender inside with some crispness outside. This method is quite similar to sautéing in the West.

There’s an old Chinese saying, “to win a man’s heart, a woman must first learn how to cook a good pot of soup.”You’ll probably gather from that that soup is an important part of a Chinese meal! It is usually served in place of water or tea as an accompanying drink that is supped during the meal. In some Chinese homes, it will still be served in a communal bowl, into which people can dip their spoons as they wish.

Soup served in this manner would be of the thin variety as opposed to the thick soups that are especially common in Cantonese cookery. Two of the most famous of these slow-cooked soups are Shark’s Fin and Bird’s Nest, which both demonstrate the Chinese determination to waste nothing that can be eaten!

Monosodium glutamate (MSG) is frequently used in Chinese cooking to bring out flavours but we prefer to avoid using it. What is needed for a good thin soup is a well-flavoured stock.

Easy Home-Made Stock

After your roast chicken dinner, break up the leftover carcass and place in a large saucepan with the giblets, 2 chopped onions, 2 chopped sticks of celery, a bay leaf, a sprig of parsley and a few peppercorns. Cover with water and bring to the boil. Allow to simmer gently for about 2 hours. Season with salt, strain and cool. It will keep for about 3 days in the fridge.

Chicken noodle soup

• 3 skinless, boneless chicken fillets
• 3 tablespoons dark soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons sherry
• 2 tablespoons sesame oil
• 3 cups green cabbage, finely chopped
• 4 spring onions, chopped
• 3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 2 tablespoons root ginger, grated
• 1 red chilli, cored, de-seeded and finely chopped
• 3 tablespoons tahini (sesame seed paste available from Asian grocers and delicatessens)
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 3 pints chicken stock (fresh or made with stock cubes)
• 8 oz Chinese noodles
• Handful chopped coriander

Slice the chicken into stir-fry type strands. Place in a bowl with the soy sauce, sherry and 1 tablespoon sesame oil. Mix well and leave to marinate for 30 minutes. Heat remaining oil in a wok. Add the cabbage and spring onions and stir fry for 3 minutes. Add the garlic, ginger and chilli and continue to stir fry for another 2 minutes or until the cabbage is tender.

Add stock and bring to the boil. Add tahini, sugar, chicken and marinade. Simmer until chicken is cooked through (about 5 minutes). Cook the noodles according to the instructions on the packet. Add to the soup and season to taste. Serve sprinkled with coriander.

Hot and Sour Soup (vegetarian)

• 10 Chinese dried mushrooms
• 2 pints water
• 3 leeks, washed and cut into strips
• 1 lb tofu, cubed
• 1 tablespoon root ginger, grated
• 2 cups bean sprouts
• ½ teaspoon Tabasco sauce
• 2 tablespoons cider vinegar
• ¼ teaspoon black pepper
• 2 tablespoons cornflour
• 2 tablespoons dark soy sauce
• 2 spring onions, finely chopped

Place mushrooms in a bowl and cover with boiling water. Leave to stand for 30 minutes. Drain the mushrooms, reserving the liquid, and cut into strips. Pour water and mushroom marinade into a wok. Add the leeks, tofu, ginger, bean sprouts, Tabasco, vinegar and pepper. Bring to a boil.

Mix the cornflour with the soy sauce and a little water to make a paste. Stir into the soup and return to the boil. Simmer until soup thickens Serve sprinkled with spring onions.

This can be prepared ahead and frozen but don’t freeze the tofu. Add it when you’re ready to use. Bring to the boil and heat through.

Looking for a Chinese restaurant with delicious food and great service? These are three of the finest Chinese restaurants in Springfield to satisfy your craving. This guide provides information on menu choices, prices, hours of operation, and location. Enjoy!

1. Ocean Zen Pacific Rim is a great choice for Chinese food. They offer outstanding cuisine, great ambience, and reasonable prices. They have an extensive lunch and dinner menu with great appetizer choices such as Crispy Chinatown BBQ Chicken Spring Rolls with a Mango Orange Chile syrup (my personal favorite), Blue Crab and Cream Cheese Stuffed Crispy Wontons with a pineapple salsa, and Island Style Crispy Coconut Sesame Crusted Shrimp, to name a few. For dinner, try their Garlic and Herb Grilled Portobello Napoleon with Farfelle Pasta and Balsamic Cream Sauce, Pineapple Citrus Glazed Crispy Wok Chicken with Asian Vegetables, or the Island Style Slow Roasted BBQ Pork Tenderloin with a spicy sweet potato side dish. With 20 dinner menu items and combination plates, there’s something for everyone. If it’s seafood you’re hungry for, they offer Sesame Nori Crusted Seared Rare Ahi Tuna, Pan Roasted Blue Crab Crusted Chilean Sea Bass, and Herb Crusted Pan Seared Alaskan Halibut. Dinner dining hours are 4:30 pm to 10 pm. Dinner menu prices range from $9.95 to 26.95. Check out their website for a complete menu. Ocean Zen is located at 600 E. Battlefield. Lunch is served between 11 am and 3 pm, Monday through Sunday. Dinner hours are 4:30 pm to 10 pm, Sunday through Thursday, and 4:30 pm to 11 pm on Fridays and Saturdays. Contact them by phone at (417) 889-9596.

The history of Chinese cooking goes back a long way. Experts agree that China has had its own identifiable cuisine for something like 5000 years, and that today’s style of cooking probably has its roots in the time of the Ming Dynasty (approximately 14th to 17th century).

Cooking and food are certainly important parts of life for the Chinese, and still today usually involve a trip to the market for fresh produce: no frozen or ready meals here! A tradition of hospitality and a love of good food, combined with experimentation and philosophy, have led to the feast that is Chinese cooking.

Philosophy

To a Chinese cook it’s the texture, colour, flavour and aroma of a dish that make it just right; it should appeal to all the senses rather than just taste. And that it should be fresh goes without saying.

The philosopher, Confucius (who lived around 500 BC), taught that food should be prepared and eaten with harmony. He also taught that to wield a knife at the dinner table was very bad manners! Authentic Chinese food should be served in bite-sized pieces to avoid the need for a knife.

The other dominant philosophy in China is Taoism. Taoists focus slightly less on presentation and more on the properties of the food: will it increase longevity or have a healing action?

Yin and Yang

In Chinese culture (and elsewhere) it’s believed that the universe is held together by the balancing of positive (yang) and negative (yin) energy. This philosophy of balancing positive and negative forces in order to create a harmonious state is found throughout all aspects of Chinese life from politics to cookery.

Some foods are yin or ‘cold’ food e.g. bean sprout, bananas, coconut, water chestnut, while others are yang or ‘hot’ food e.g. garlic, aubergine, pineapple, turkey, pizza. Deficiencies in or excess of these positive or negative foods can lead to illness and it’s a cook’s responsibility to create a balanced meal.

Yi xing Bu xing

Skip this paragraph if you have a weak stomach! The Chinese rarely waste potential food, meaning there is no part of the animal that they won’t eat. In addition, they believe that ‘Yi xing bu xing’. In other words, by using a particular part of an animal’s body, the human equivalent will be strengthened. So eat monkey brains for wisdom and tiger testicle for stamina for men. However, these are considered delicacies and only served at banquets and special occasions.

More Than All the Rice in China

A typical meal for a Chinese would consist of rice, soup, and three or four side dishes. Almost every meal in China includes rice of one sort or another; it’s the equivalent of potato in a western meal.

In the past only wealthy people could afford white rice that had undergone long and complex processing, and, just like parents in the west used to tell their children to eat up all their dinner and think of the poor starving orphans elsewhere, Chinese parents tell their children to eat every grain of rice else, ‘you will marry a pimply person!’

Tea

By 400 AD tea was China’s most popular drink. Not native to the country, it’s believed to have been taken into China by Buddhist monks, probably for its medicinal purposes. Now there are over a thousand varieties of tea grown there.

Called cha all over China, it’s also played a number of roles including state currency and cash. Today tea is exported all over the world from China.

NUTRITION PROFILE:
Rice flour is the “secret ingredient” in this dish and is used to make the flavorful coating for the shrimp. But if you can’t find it, cornstarch makes a fine substitute. Serve with rice noodles or brown rice and a sprinkle of chopped scallions.

Makes 2 servings

ACTIVE TIME: 30 minutes

TOTAL TIME: 30 minutes

EASE OF PREPARATION: Easy

2 tablespoons lime juice
2 teaspoons reduced-sodium soy sauce
2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil
1/2 teaspoon sugar
3 cups thinly sliced cabbage, preferably napa (about 1/4 head; see Tips for Two)
1 small red or orange bell pepper, very thinly sliced
2 tablespoons rice flour (see Note) or cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1/2 teaspoon five-spice powder (see Note)
10 ounces raw shrimp (21-25 per pound), peeled and deveined
1 tablespoon canola oil
1 jalapeno or serrano pepper, seeded and minced

1. Whisk lime juice, soy sauce, sesame oil and sugar in a large bowl until the sugar is dissolved. Add cabbage and bell pepper; toss to combine.
2. Combine rice flour (or cornstarch), salt, pepper and five-spice powder in a medium bowl. Add shrimp and toss to coat. Heat oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add the shrimp and cook, stirring often, until they are pink and curled, 3 to 4 minutes. Add jalapeno and cook until the shrimp are cooked through, about 1 minute more. Serve the slaw topped with the shrimp.

NUTRITION INFORMATION:Per serving: 347 calories; 15 g fat (2 g sat, 7 g mono); 230 mg cholesterol; 20 g carbohydrate; 34 g protein; 3 g fiber; 558 mg sodium; 408 mg potassium.

Nutrition Bonus: Vitamin C (190% daily value), Selenium (83% dv), Vitamin A (60% dv), Iron (25% dv).

Exchanges: 2 vegetable, 1/2 other carbohydrates, 4 very lean meat, 3 fat

1 Carbohydrate Serving

TIP:Tips for Two: Refrigerate cabbage for up to 1 week. Add to salads or soups.

Note: Rice flour is made from finely milled white rice. It is often used in Asian cooking for desserts and to thicken sauces. Look for it in Asian markets or the natural-foods section of your supermarket.

Often a blend of cinnamon, cloves, fennel seed, star anise and Szechuan peppercorns, five-spice powder was originally considered a cure-all miracle blend encompassing the five elements (sour, bitter, sweet, pungent, salty). Look for it in the supermarket spice section.

China is a country where the preparation and appreciation of food has been developed to the highest level. Chinese culture considers cooking an art. All other philosophies consider the preparation of food a craft.The art of Chinese cooking has been developed and refined over many centuries. Emperor Fu taught people to fish, hunt, grow crops and cook twenty centuries before Christ. However cooking could not be considered an art until the great classical age of China, the Chou Dynasty 1122-249 B.C.

The two dominant philosophies of the Chinese culture are Confucianism and Taoism. Each influenced the course of Chinese history and the development of the culinary arts. Confucianism concerned itself with the art of cooking and placed great emphasis on the enjoyment of life. To the Chinese, food and friends are inseparable. A gathering without food is considered incomplete and improper.

Confucius loved and respected the art of cooking. He established culinary standards and proper table etiquette. Most of these are still considered to be the standards of today. The tradition of cutting foods into bite size pieces during preparation and not at the table is unique to the Chinese culture. The use of knives at a Chinese dinner is considered “poor taste.”

Confucius taught that good cooking depends on the blending of various ingredients and condiments rather than the taste of the individual elements. He believed that in order to become a good cook one must first be a good matchmaker. The flavors of the ingredients must be blended with harmony. Without this harmony there is no taste. He also stressed the use of color and texture in the presentation of the dish. Most certainly Confucianism helped elevate cooking from a menial task to the status of an art, “the art of Chinese cooking.”

Taoism was responsible for the development of the hygienic aspects of foods and cooking. The principle objects of this philosophy were the nourishment of the body and the search for longevity. In contrast to Confucianists who were interested in the taste, texture and appearance, Taoists were concerned with the life-giving attributes of various foods.

Over the centuries the Chinese have explored the world of plants, roots, herbs, fungus and seeds to find life-giving elements. They discovered the nutritional value of vegetables could be destroyed by improper cooking and that many items had medicinal value. For example, ginger, a favorite condiment, is also used to soothe an upset stomach and as a cold remedy.

Unlike the majority of eastern cuisines most Chinese dishes are low-calorie and low-fat. Food is cooked using poly-unsaturated oils, and milk, cream, butter and cheese are not a. part of the daily diet. Animal fats are kept to a minimum due to the small portions of meats used. Please note however that some dishes served in Chinese restaurants may be considerably higher in calories and fats than those in this cookbook that you prepare at home.

The Chinese following the philosophy of Taoism may have found the answers in 500 B.C. to today’s diet and health problems. The Chinese cooking style certainly affords you the opportunity to cook healthy.

Hunan Smoked Pork and Fresh Bamboo Shoots