Introduction: This is a typical dish of fish soup cooked with weever and sour vegetables. The creamy soup is very appetizing.  Ingredients: (1) Fresh weever (600g) (2) Sichuan sour vegetables (200g) (3) ginger sliced, 2 dried red chilies and 1 bar of cucumber Â

  Directions:     (1) Bleed the weever, clean the scale, extract the bones, slice up the cleaned fish into butterfly shape, clean up the Sichuan sour vegetables. (2) Fry the bones into golden, then pour 700ml water to cook for 2-3 minutes, separate the bones and dish up the soup. (3) Boil the sour vegetables for 1 min and saute until get dry, pour the soup to boil for 3-4 minutes, dish up the sour vegetables and preserve the soup. Boil the filet for 1 min and dish up above the sour vegetables, pour the preserved soup to the plate and serve. Â

  Taste:     Perfect combination of delicate creamy, smooth filet and lightly sour soup that makes it not only delicious but also nutritional. Â

        The Hotel Iron Chef: Ken Shao - Golden Eternal Member of La Commanderie des Cordons bleus de France - Master of Chinese Cooking  Present:  Executive Chef of Chinese Kitchen of Radisson Hotel Pudong Century Park Radisson Hotel Pudong Century Park 1199 Ying Chun Road, Pudong, Shanghai 200135, China Tel: (8621) 5130 0000 Fax: (8621) 5130 0111 Email: info.pudong@radisson.com

Chinese dumpling is a traditional Chinese Food, which is essential during holidays in China. Chinese dumpling becomes one of the most widely loved foods in China. 
Chinese dumpling is one of the most important foods in Spring Festvial. Since the shape of Chinese dumplings is similar to ancient Chinese gold or silver ingots, they symbolize wealth. Traditionally, the members of a family get together to make dumplings during the New Year’s Eve. They may hide a coin in one of the dumplings. The person who finds the coin will likely have a good fortune in the New Year. Chinese dumpling is also popular in other Chinese holidays or festivals, so it is part of the Chinese culture or tradition. 

Chinese dumpling is a delicious food. You can make a variety of Chinese dumplings using different fillings based on your taste and how various ingredients mixed together by you.
Making dumplings is really teamwork. Usually all family members will join the work. Some people started to make dumplings when they were kids in the family, so most Chinese know how to make dumplings.

 (purse like dumplings)

  (triangle dumplings)

from:http://www.china-fun.net/topics/120070126/1184916.shtml

by Jacqueline M. Newman

Historians agree that two thousand two hundred to three thousand eight hundred years ago, China had a fully developed cuisine. They do not agree nor do they even mention what the cuisine was or what specific foods were in use.
 

In the 11th century B.C., The Middle Kingdom, as China is known, was no more than one-sixth the size it is today. In small separated communities, Beijing and the Yellow River delta were where people lived. By the fifth to third centuries B.C., the population had both concentrated and expanded. More food was grown in central areas, more animal husbandry practiced in the west and north, and more fisheries developed in the east. The country was one-quarter the size it is today, the west was near the midpoint of the country or just above where Xian is today. Sichuan and Hunan were not part of China and the piquancy of foods associated with those provinces had no part in the country’s early food history.

 

In these centuries, many grains were used, the literature inconsistent as to what they were. Historians simply call this “the period of five grains” and in all probability mean two kinds of millet, soybeans, wheat, and rice.

 

We think of rice as a quintessential Chinese food, yet early in their food history little was known and very little consumed. It did not come into common use until the first century B.C., perhaps because the area around the Yellow River produced very little of it. About two hundred years later, rice moved south and gained popularity; climate and geography enhanced availability and use. Climate and concentration of people affects foods grown and consumed. People eat what is locally grown along with foods they can hunt, fish, or forage for.

 

Until 500 B.C., there was no reports of organized system of how the Chinese cooked their foods. The sage Confucius, who lived between 551-479 B.C., gets credit for developing protocols of cutting, cooking, and eating. His rules remain intact because there was limited contact to impact them.

 

Foods and related foodways changed when communities make choices among possible foods and cooking techniques in a given geographic environment. Increased population and need for additional land expands communities and contribute to food migrations. As travellers move from place to place, they talk about foods seen, they even serve them when they return home. Thus foods of different areas slip into and become localized fare.

 

In China, from the time of the building of the Grand Canal, ingredients and preparation variations moved. Emperor, Chin Shih Huang Ti, build this first contour canal, called the Grand or Magic Canal, to connect waterways of nearly 1,100 miles (the equivalent of New York to Florida) to supply his troops on the move. On the canal’s connected pair of rivers, each flowing in the opposite direction, he ordered the shipping of grain supplies and other foods for the troops. This movement of foods, brought rice to the north, and wheat, millet, and sorghum to the south. This interchange was regional food co-mingling of the grandest proportion.

 

China’s early trade with the Philippines and Indonesia, and in 260 A.D. Syria and beyond, brought items from outside the country to the countryside infiltrating areas around seacoasts first. Broken Chinese porcelain on the beaches of Tanzania and Mozambique attest to things moving in the other direction in exchange for fruits and other foods.

Tea is a good illustration of a food on the move. Before the time of the Three Kingdoms and during the reign of Sun Hao in 264 A.D., tea was reasonably unknown. By the 4th century A.D., some say it became China’s universal drink. Others believe that in the late Tang period, 618-970 A.D., tea was still new and exotic, probably brought by Buddhist monks from the Burma-India border-country. In either case, tea was originally imported and it became the national drink. Today, it is common throughout China though not always considered the number one beverage.

 

Mongolian influences, circa 1125 A.D., moved northern ideas, northern foods, and northern food preparation techniques southward. Specific illustrations include grilling and hot pot cookery. Hot Pot is now considered both a northern and southern delicacy. This period of Mongol influence was unidirectional, north to south.

 

From 1386 to 1398 A.D., Tai Tsu also known as Ming Emperor Hung Mu, moved thousands upon thousands of people westward to resettle unpopulated areas. His reign and that of others in the Ming dynasty, 1368-1644 A.D., limited movement of foods westward. Some years later, Manchu rulers and their subjects adopt, adapt, and incorporate foreign foods and cooking techniques moved northward. These new foods and preparation techniques, acquired from trade with the Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, English, and French. One example is a food not indigenous to China, the sweet potato; it migrated all over the country. This tuber entered southern ports, became popular near the end of the 15th century, and made its way to every region of China as a common winter food. It can be found in Beijing, Xian, Chengdu, and Shanghai roasted and sold as a street food.

 

Cuisine, culture, and people are not static. The movement of people and food make for continual culinary melting pots. The one billion Chinese, just over one-quarter of the world’s population, still use grain as the basis and majority component of their diet and they supplement it with old or new foods that look, smell, and taste like Chinese food. Their changing foodways are expressions of cultural continuity over time.

Introduction
Chinese name: 水煮鱼
Though the history is short than twenty years, it has a wide spread in Chinese restaurants, no matter they are famous or not. Actually, A cook, whose father and grandfather were also cook, invented these style in Yubei District of Chongqing. As a symbol of Sichuan dishes, the flavour is directly determined by the quality of the chilli and pepper.

Ingredients:
800-1000 g Fish fillets (preferably river or lake fish)

Condiments:
250-300 g Cooking oil
3 tbsp Hot bean sauce
1 chunk Ginger root, sliced
8 clove Garlic, sliced
3 stalk Scallion
2 handful Sichuan peppercorns
1 rice bowl Sichuan dried chilli
2/3 tbsp Chilli flakes
2 tbsp Jiafan rice wine
2/3 tbsp Light soya sauce
700-800 ml Stock
1/3 tsp Pepper powder
½ tsp Salt
1 tsp Sugar
Chicken powder to taste
Marinade:
1 Egg white
2/3 tsp Salt

1 tbsp Jiafan rice wine
2 tbsp Cornstarch
Salad Base:
½ head Iceberg
1 rice bowl Black fungus, soaked in water
150 g Cucumber, sliced

Method:
Rinse the fish fillets and cut each into 3 pieces. Dry the fish well with a clean kitchen cloth. Combine the fish with the marinade in a large bowl and set aside for about 30 minutes. Prepare the salad base in a bowl.
Heat up some oil in a wok or heavy skillet and slowly stir in the marinated fish. Cook until fish just starts to turn white, about 2 minutes. Transfer to a paper towel-lined plate to drain.
Pour off the frying oil, leaving about 2 tablespoons in the pan. Add in hot bean sauce and stir until fragrant. Stir in ginger, garlic, half scallion sections, chilli flakes, half of each Sichuan peppercorns and dried chilli. Stir over the medium heat until their fragrance is fully released. Drizzle in rice wine and light soya sauce. Continue stirring. Pour in stock, adjusting the heat to high, and bring to a boil. Season it with pepper, salt, chicken powder and white sugar. Return fish to the skillet and cook for about 3 minutes. Turn off the heat and pour the fish stew into the prepared bowl with salad.
Heat up 200 grams of oil in another pan. Add in another half peppercorns and dried chilli. Stir till fragrant over the slow heat. Pour over the fish and garnish with the curled, drained spring onions or coriander leaves.