Chinese Zongzi:
Zongzi is a traditional Chinese food, made of tasty glutinous rice stuffed with different fillings and wrapped in bamboo or reed leaves. They are cooked either by steaming or boiling. Zongzi is a popular specialty consumed during the Dragon Boat Festival, which falls on the fifth day of the fifth month of the lunar calendar, commemorating the death of Qu Yuan, a pioneering poet and patriotic official in ancient China during the Warring States period (475-221 B.C.), served as a minister to the Chu State. Known for his patriotism, seeing his country being destroyed Qu Yuan’s grief was so intense that he drowned himself in the Miluo river. According to legend, as he was deeply loved by the people, the local folk did what they could to search for him in the river. They rushed out in long boats, beating drums to scare the fish away, meanwhile packets of rice were thrown into the river to prevent fish from eating the poet’s body. Another version states that zongzi were given to placate a dragon that lived in the river.
Since then, it has been a customary on this day to enjoy zongzi as a memorial to the patriotic poet. In commemoration of the initial attempts to find Qu Yuan’s body, boat races are also held, and the day is also known as the Dragon Boat Festival.

Different kinds of fillings:

The fillings used for zongzi vary from region to region, but the rice used is always glutinous rice (also called sticky or sweet rice). According to the region, the rice may be lightly precooked by stir-frying or soaked before using. Today’s Zongzi is made similarly, with a serving of rice wrapped in leaves and tied together with string. There are lots of different kinds of zongzi, each with its own particular flavor, shape, and type of leaf for wrapping. The glutinous rice mixture is wrapped in leaves of wild rice, palm or bamboo. Bamboo-leaf zongzi is a specialty of South China. As for flavor, the Beijing style is the sweetest, with coarse bean paste. Guangdong zongzi is either sweet-tasting, with walnut, date or bean, or salty with filling ham, egg, meat, roast chicken. Zongzi need to be steamed or boiled for several hours depending on how the rice is made prior to adding the fillings. Once cooked, the zongzi can easily be frozen for later consumption. Frozen zongzi are available for sale in Chinese markets.
Various shapes:
The shape of zongzi ranges from relatively tetrahedral to cylindrical. Zongzi is usually four-sided with pointed, rounded ends, or pyramid shapes. Sometimes it is in the shape of a cone or cylinder. Wrapping a zongzi neatly is a skill which is passed down through families, as are the recipes. Making zongzi was traditionally a family event with everyone helping out, but that is less common now.
While traditional Chinese zongzi are wrapped in bamboo leaves, the leaves of lotus, maize, banana, canna, shell ginger or pandan leaves are sometimes used as substitutes in other cultures. Each kind of leaf imparts its own unique smell and flavor to the rice.

Firstly, to help digest well, you can drink tea while enjoying zongzi. If eat accompanied by fruits and vegetables that would be helpful to help digest. For those whose stomach can not digest well, too much sticky rice will probably do harm to your stomach. So please pay attention not to eat too much at a time. Secondly, mainly zongzi is made of sticky rice which contains fat, salt and sugar, for instance, a normal meat zongzi will have 400-500 calorie which is approximately half bowl of rice, therefore the maximum per day for ladies is 3 and for gentlemen is 5. For those who have diabetes, please be careful as zongzi contains lots of sugar in it. We’d suggest you not to eat zongzi before sleep. For the left zongzi, you can put them into refrigerator and eat them as soon as possible to keep them fresh while enjoying the good taste.

Chinese food has a bad reputation in the UK. The rice-heavy meals and fatty meat dishes are thought to lead straight to obesity and heart disease. But properly prepared, says Chinese food expert Lorraine Clissold, the very opposite is true: the Chinese way of eating is healthy and fulfilling, fights illness and prolongs life. She also insists, in her book Why the Chinese Don’t Count Calories, that a real Chinese diet won’t make you fat, and that the rising levels of obesity observable in China are in fact caused by sugary, overprocessed Western food. Here are some of her Chinese dietary secrets – and the verdict of two Western nutrition experts, Patrick Holford and Ian Marber.

1. Stop counting calories

The Chinese don’t have a word for “calories”. They view food as nourishment, not potential weight gain. A 1990 survey found that Chinese people consumed 30 per cent more calories than Americans, but were not necessarily more active. Clissold says their secret is avoiding the empty calories of sugary, nutrient-free foods.

Holford says: “The latest research into weight loss shows that calorie-controlled, low-fat diets are less effective than low glycemic load diets, which is exactly what a traditional Chinese diet is.”

Marber says: “There is one calorie in a Diet Coke, and 340 calories in an avocado. Which one is actually good for you? It’s a no-brainer. The avocado supplies you with monounsaturated fats and omega-6, which actually help increase metabolic rate.”

2. Think of vegetables as dishes

Rather than an uninspiring accompaniment to meat or fish, the Chinese treat vegetables as meals in their own right, rather than add-ons, as in the West.

Marber says: “I’m a great believer in combining protein and carbohydrate. There aren’t many complex carbohydrates in vegetables, but they should count as a dish. If the majority of your meal is vegetables, and you add some protein, you’ll always have a perfect meal.”

Holford says: “Vegetables should make up half of what’s on your plate in any given meal, so this fits perfectly with the Chinese diet.”

3. Fill up on staple foods

Without rice, which is low in fat and high in nutrients and fibre, claims Clissold, it is impossible to eat until you are full. Low-carb diets promise to burn fat, but Clissold says that replacing carbs with food that is higher in fat and lower in nutrients is not a long-term answer to weight loss.

Marber says: “I don’t agree. That Chinese person shovelling rice down is slightly pudgy because they eat too much rice. But from a financial point of view it’s very useful, because Atkins-style diets are very expensive.”

4. Eat until you are full

The Chinese eat until they are full, and then stop. Westerners often take a feast-and-famine approach to eating that is ridden with guilt – purging during the week and binging over the weekend, or skipping lunch to make room for cake, The Chinese tend to eat three good meals every day.

Holford says: “Provided that a meal has a high intake of fibre-rich vegetables and a balance of protein and carbohydrate, which a typical Chinese meal would, then you should eat until you are full. But the combination of high sugar, refined carbs (the white stuff) and high fat allows for more food to be eaten in a short space of time before the body’s ‘appestat’ kicks in and tells you to stop.”

Marber says: “What does ‘full’ mean? I think so much of that message is lost in the conspicuous consumption of the Western world. But be careful: it takes a while for the brain to recognise CCK, the hormone released when you are full, so you’re actually full quite a lot earlier than you realise.”

5. Take liquid food

Soup, or a soup-based dish, is present at every Chinese meal, often in the form of a watery porridge, zhou. Western diets can be very dry, and nutritionists compensate by urging us to drink more water, which the Chinese would never do with a meal. Instead, they make a nourishing liquid food part of the meal. And it’s a great way of using up leftovers.

Holford says: “Thirst is often confused with hunger. Also, drinking does tend to fill you up. So soups help you control your appetite.”

Marber says: “I’m a great believer in soups before food. Miso soup, for instance, or anything fermented – these are probiotics, which help release nutrients from the food you are about to eat.”

6. Bring yin and yang into your kitchen

A good Chinese diet balances yin (wet and moist) and yang (dry and crisp) ingredients. Yin foods cool the body down, while yang foods – meat, spicy dishes, wine, coffee – heat it up. The sharing, multi-dish approach to eating in China means most meals contain yin and yang in equilibrium.

Marber says: “You should have complex carbs, a protein and a grain together for many different reasons, one of which is the experience of eating. The typical English bastardisation of Chinese food, chicken and cashew nuts, is a good example: you’ve got the softness of the chicken, the crunch of the nut and the satisfying rice.”

Holford says: “Most protein foods are seen as yang, carbohydrates as yin. The combination of these two helps stabilise blood sugar, which is the key to good energy and minimising weight gain.”

7. Raw power? not necessarily

Chinese people don’t eat raw salad. While raw food has a higher concentration of vitamins than cooked food, Clissold says the research ignores that lightly cooking food makes its nutrients easier for the body to take on. This way, it can conserve energy for other tasks. The stomach is unable to digest too much raw food; this can lead to bloating and weight gain.

Holford says: “The rawer the better. In almost all cases, raw food has more nutrients, though lightly cooking some vegetables can make those nutrients more bio-available.”

Marber says: “I don’t hold with this one. Eating a big salad with lots of different raw vegetables in it is very satisfying, and I can’t believe your average Brit is going to blanch salad.”

8. Use food to keep fit

Chinese medicine prescribes various foods as medical treatments: chillies to promote digestion and dispel cold; garlic to counteract toxins. The ultimate purpose is to ensure all the organs are working correctly to allow energy, or chi, to circulate smoothly around the body.

Holford says: “Two thousand years ago, Hippocrates said, ‘Let food be your medicine.’ But we in the West forgot. Peasant communities tend to have more respect for the cycle of food and how it supports life.”

9. Drink green tea

Green tea eliminates toxins, aids digestion and allays hunger. Scientists have found that it also fights free radicals, which cause cancer and heart disease.

Marber says: “I’m a great believer in green and herbal teas. Green tea is an important antioxidant, but it will only help you lose weight if you drink 40 cups a day. I’m also a great believer in a skinny latte once in a while – or every morning, in my case.”

Holford says: “Traditionally, when the Chinese want another cup of tea, they’ll keep the same leaves and add water to the pot. That’s like only using one teabag a day – which means much less caffeine.”

10. Take restorative exercise

Try regular, gentle exercise such as tai chi. A sweaty workout might shed fat, but it is stressful for your body. Energetic, aerobic workouts are yang – they heat us up – while breathing exercises are yin.

holford says: “Exercise after a meal promotes an active metabolism and helps control appetite. Although no one has worked out how to measure chi, the vital energy that these exercises promote, it’s a real thing that can easily be experienced. Many trials now show benefits to energy levels and immunity from these chi-generating exercises.”

Marber says: “Tai chi gives you a sense of balance, calm and peacefulness. Sweating it out at the gym is the precise opposite, but I can’t help it – I’m vain, shallow and modern. I think we’ve got a really messed-up view of how the body should look, and that it’s how we look, rather than how we feel, that matters.”

Pork is the favorite meat and some of the most sought after Chinese dishes in the Western world are made of pork. Such dishes, for instance, as sweet and sour pork, pork meat balls, barbecued spare ribs of pork, Chinese roast pork, and roast belly of pork, to mention only a few, have become so well known as almost to be considered Western ones. Pork is succulent meat. In Chinese, when they say meat (’rou’ in mandarin or ‘yuk’ in Cantonese), they mean pork unless some other kind of meat is specified because pork is the most common kind of meat. Different dishes will need different kinds of cuts, as we shall see in below. Cuts have different textures once they have been cooked. Cuts of the same meat may be tough or tender, coarse or fine.

Red-Cooked Meat is very popular in China. The name is such because the soy sauce used in them gives them a reddish-brown color. You can use fresh shoulder of pork, fresh ham, or fresh bacon. Keep the skin on. To many Chinese, that is the best part of the meat. Fresh shoulder or ham is usually cooked whole. Fresh bacon is usually cut into one- or two-inch cubes, with some skin on each cube to go around for everybody. The reason that Chinese do not use much pork chop in Red-Cooked Meat is that the tissues of pork chop are longer and not loose enough for this kind of cooking. In the cubed forms of Red-Cooked Meat, other ingredients are often added: fresh vegetables and salted or dried sea food.

“The way you cut your meat reflects the way you live.”- Confucius

Meat slices are often used in stir-fry dishes and soup. For these, Chinese do not use such fat meat as before. The usual cuts used are pork chop, tenderloin, or the lean part of shoulder or fresh ham. The tough tendons are not suitable for slicing. Meat is sliced into flimsy slices about 1 inch square and 1/16 inch thick, or thicker if you can’t. This needs a lot of patience and skill. Meat slices is very easily cooked, therefore the time for cooking is more critical.

Tips : Slightly frozen meat is easier to slice

Meat shreds are obtained simply by cutting your slices into sizes of about 1 X 1/16 x 1/16 inch. Shreds are like slices in being quick-cooking material. Shreds are never used alone and almost always stir-fried. Meat shreds are also a favorite form of presenting food, since with the same amount they make a much greater show of meat among the vegetables. The selection of cut and the basic method of cooking meat shreds are the same as for meat slices. They should be steeped in seasoning and fried separately before thrown in together with the ingredients.

Minced meat - What Chinese usually do is to use two of those Chinese cleavers and chop up pieces of pork to a lively rhythm until fine enough. Of course, you can use a meat grinder or have your butcher mince the pork. For Chinese dishes, it is better to use medium mince instead of fine. Minced meat is rarely used in the loose state. It is almost always made into balls or cakes. The best cuts for meat balls are those with a little fat in them, such as pork chop. You don’t use any skin or tendon. If too lean, the cake will be too dry and stiff. Meat balls can form a dish alone or in company with other things.

Cuts of Pork:

Fresh ham, which comes from the thigh, is very tender and lean. It is one of the most frequently used cuts of meat in Chinese cooking, often thinly sliced or cut into strips for stir-frying. Unlike many cuts of meat, fresh ham should be sliced along (not against) the grain.

Pork shoulder (shoulder butt and picnic shoulder) has more fat than fresh ham. It is also a very tender cut.

Pork plate is also called belly pork or fresh, uncured bacon. It is a cut very much favored in Chinese cooking and has a distinctive flavor in boiled and steaming dishes. Pork plate consists of alternating layers of meat and fat. Its fat content is high, ranging from 45% to 68%. (Pork shoulder, in contrast, sometimes contains as little as 18% fat). People on low-fat diet should avoid this cut, but do not ignore recipes that call for it; simple substitute other leaner cuts of pork.

Choose fresh meat that has light color, firm fat and a certain thickness. Pork spoils more quickly than beef, so unless you plan to freeze it, do not buy more than you can use right away.

The entrails of pork are usually prized more than simple lean meat. Liver was considered a food in China long before people talked about vitamins. Kidneys, lungs, intestines, tripe, when rightly prepared, are very good indeed. Skin of pork can be cooked very tender and then it is food. Chinese cooks have a few simple ways to sweeten the entrails of pork further. Before cooking liver and heart, they place them in a bowl and pour running water over them for about 2 hours. They slice kidney thinly, dip in boiling water and then soak them in cold water for a little while.

If you’re invited to a Chinese home for a meal and you sit down at the dinner table and find yourself eyeball to eyeball with a fish you should be pleased! If a whole fish, a Chinese sign of prosperity, is served at a banquet, it’s customary to point it at the guest of honour. You may then be expected to help yourself the Chinese way, using your chopsticks to pull off pieces of fish, or, if you’re more fortunate, someone may serve it to you, using two spoons to dish it up.

Steamed Fish

• 4 fillets of fish (plaice, sea bass, sole)
• 2 tablespoons sherry
• Pinch sugar
• Pinch salt
• Few drops sesame oil
• 2 spring onions

Mix together the sherry, sugar, salt and sesame oil. Finely chop the onions. Get your wok ready for steaming. Place the fillets on a heatproof dish that will fit inside your steamer and pour the sherry mixture over the fish. Sprinkle the chopped onion on top. Steam for about 10 - 15 minutes or until the fish flakes easily. Serve garnished with chopped coriander and lemon wedges.

Prawn Egg Foo Yung

• 8 eggs
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 3 tablespoons finely chopped celery
• ½ cup finely sliced mushrooms
• ½ cup small prawns
• 1 cup bean sprouts
• 3 tablespoons finely sliced water chestnuts
• Oil for frying
• Beat the eggs with the salt until frothy.

Fry the celery and mushrooms lightly for 2 -3 minutes then remove from the pan and mix in with eggs, prawns, bean sprouts and water chestnuts.Using a small frying pan pour in about ¼ of the mixture and tilt the pan so it covers the bottom. Cook over medium heat until the underside is golden-brown. Turn over and brown the other side. Repeat this procedure for the remaining 3 omelettes.

Egg Foo Yung Sauce

• ¼ pint chicken stock
• 1 tablespoon light soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon sherry
• Few drops sesame oil
• Pepper to taste
• 1 teaspoon cornflour
• Using a small saucepan bring the chicken stock to the boil. Add the soy sauce, sherry, oil and pepper. Mix well. Make a paste from the cornflour and water and add, stirring, to the sauce. Continue until the sauce thickens and clears. Serve warm with the omelettes.

Garlicky Fish

• Oil for deep frying
• 3 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed very slightly
• 4 fish cutlets (e.g. hake, sea bass, mullet)
• 1 teaspoon grated root ginger
• 1 red chilli, cored and de-seeded
• ¾ pint fish or chicken stock
• 1 tablespoon dark soy sauce
• 2½ tablespoons sherry
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 2 teaspoon vinegar
• 4 spring onions, finely chopped
• 1 teaspoon cornflour made into a paste with a little water
• Sesame oil

Heat the oil (you’ll need about 1 litre for deep frying) in your wok or a deep fryer to 350oF (175oC). Add the garlic and allow to cook briefly - but don’t let it burn - then remove from the pan. Add the fish cutlets and

deep fry until brown. Remove and drain. If you’ve used a wok for deep frying, now remove most of the oil, leaving just enough to fry the ginger, chilli and garlic until softened. Return the fish to the pan along with the stock, soy sauce, sherry and sugar. Simmer over a low heat for about 15 minutes or until the fish is cooked through.

Remove the fish and keep warm. Add the vinegar, spring onions, a few drops of sesame oil and the cornflour paste to the liquid left in the wok. Bring to the boil and simmer, stirring, until the sauce thickens and clears. Serve poured over the fish. You can, of course, oven-bake your fish cutlets for a healthier version of this dish.

Stir-frying is the most characteristic method of cooking in Chinese. It is a common feature throughout the various regional cooking styles of China. To define stir-frying in one breath would be big-fire-shallow-oil-continual-stirring-quick-frying of cut-up ingredients with wet seasoning. Because of the quickness of the process, stir frying is particularly good for preserving the vitamins of foods, especially of green vegetables, a method that appeals to the health conscious.

Chinese restaurant chefs like to show off their skill in stir fried dishes, and are often judged by them. Done well, stir frying produces meats that are juicy and flavorful, vegetables - crunchy and tender, fresh and ‘bursting’ in vivid colors; it is undeniably one of the most appetizing ways of Chinese cooking!

Tips : For better flavor, always stir-fry seasoning ingredients such as garlic and ginger before you add other ingredients.

In stir-frying, the food is cooked over high heat in a wok with little oil, just enough to lightly coat all of them. The oil is added when the wok is hot enough and the ingredients only ‘go down into the wok’ (as Chinese would say it) when the oil is sufficiently heated (smoking from the edges). Because you stir fry at high heat, you must use a cooking oil with a high smoke point, that is, one that will not burn and become smoky at high temperatures. Butter is unsuitable. The best choices are bland-flavored vegetables oils such as peanut, soybean, corn, canola, safflower, and sunflower. To evenly and quickly cook and coat the food with oil, which is essential to seal in as much natural juices in the vegetables or meat as possible, they are spread up the walls of the wok, then toss it together again in the center using a Chinese spatula. This process is repeated throughout the whole cooking. Often, a Chinese chef would lift the wok with one hand (padded of course) from the stove and shake it such that the food toss and turn in the wok. You can try this if you have a strong wrist and arm but be careful or you will end up with food all over the place and not on the dining table.

While the stir-frying itself usually takes but two or three minutes, the preparation of the material often takes a lot of trouble. As stir frying is a very quick process, it just does not allow time to turn around and scramble amid a chaos of half prepared ingredients. So, prepare and cut the right ingredients into small pieces, slices, shreds, or cubes, etc. If different ingredients take different lengths of time to cook, each has to be put in at the right time, so as to come out done together. So separate them in different bowls as in the order they are to be cooked.