Why fight it? When in China learn to cook Chinese food instead of beating your head against the grocery store wall trying to hunt down cheese (terribly expensive and horribly rubbery once you do find it).
Instead, I'm enlisting the help of my friend Ying and the excellent Nancy Simonds cookbook my mom gave me. Between the two, I feel like I'm getting somewhere. Almost every dish involves copious amounts of fresh ginger (which has the most amazing fragrance- I'd love to wear it as perfume. Its so clean and crisp smelling. Very invigorating) garlic, soy sauce and chili peppers. So its not subtle, but it is really delicious. And these recipes make going grocery shopping a lot more fun.
Here are some pictures of a dinner Ying cooked for us. I mainly just stood there watching. I attempted to help by starting the rice. (Simple enough, just dump in 1 part rice to two parts water in the rice cooker and push the button, right? Wrong! Apparently you need to wash it quite thoroughly first. Don't tell Ying, but I don't do that when she's not around...)The other funny thing about Chinese cooking is that the actual cooking takes only a few minutes. But the chopping and dicing takes a lot longer. All told we chopped for 45 minutes and cooked for 5. Recipes to follow soon.
1 comment:
Hey:) Have you heard of Martin Yan? He is a pretty famous chinese cook, more so here than in the US, but in the US was on tv for many years. Well, he opened up a restaurant in the bar street near Window of the World and on top of it is a cooking school. I believe he focuses on fusion of East and West cuisine. I'm thinking of checking it out soon. Interested? : )
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