Simple Chinese Cooking

Mastering the art of Chinese cooking

It's not as complicated as you think, writes Justine Drake.

I collect cookbooks. I read them like novels. I salivate over the glossy pictures. Who am I kidding, I even write them (my fifth will be out in September). But do I actually follow the recipes? Well no, almost never.

 

This rule tends to be broken when it comes to things I personally deem foreign. My travels to India and Thailand and the courses I have attended in these countries have demystified their cuisines so they don't fall into that category. Baking, on the other hand, is probably as foreign as it gets for me. It starts with the fact that I don't have much of a sweet tooth. Added to that my lack of confidence in this arena is so that I slavishly follow each cake or cookie recipe and inevitably the whole exercise becomes a chore rather than a happy cathartic experience.

Another foreign area is Chinese food. Or at least it was, until the happy occasion when I discovered the ever-fabulous Kylie Kwong and her Simple Chinese Cooking book (Tuttle Publishing, 2010). Her food is inspired, achievable and fantastically delicious. But it's a way of cooking that isn't the norm in the Western kitchen, and a change of mindset and bit of practice are what you need if you ever hope to become proficient. Let me assure you that this is not the run-of-the-mill oily chow mein or sloppy egg foo yong from the corner Chinese takeaway. (Why is it that we presume that because the person behind the wok is Chinese the food is going to be good or authentic? There are bad Chinese cooks too!)

But back to Kylie. Let me assure you that your life will be entirely changed once you have mastered the art of home-style fried eggs with oyster and chilli - possibly the best hangover cure to hit the New World. It is a somewhat daunting and rather alarming procedure of pouring eggs into boiling hot oil and watching a riot of mini explosions take place before, working at the speed of light, tossing away the oil and frying the bottom to a lacy crisp. Chopped chilli, oyster sauce and spring onions complete the affair and you are left with plate of perfect eggs - crispy whites with softly oozing yolks. Master this and you are on your way to breakfast nirvana.

Of course, there are also dinner-party extravaganzas like her white cooked chicken with soy and ginger dressing - simple and sexy - or her stir-fried mussels with black-bean and chilli sauce - a veritable memory bank of flavours.

In fact, once you master her Chinese style stocks - which are dead simple, but require a fair amount of time to cook, as well as an expensive, but hugely rewarding, foray into the Chinese supermarket arena - you are set for a brave new world of flavours, techniques and extraordinarily appreciative family and friends.

One of my most favourite recipes, Mongolian beef, has become a weekday standard. It's a sort of Asian-style bolognaise sauce, that involves marinating beef mince in sherry, ginger, garlic, sesame oil and soy sauce (I add chilli) and then frying it in batches with shredded cabbage and a shake or three of things like oyster sauce, hoisin sauce and dry sherry. Big on flavour, low on fuss and cheap as chips, just what you need for a family dinner.

So I encourage you to take my lead and leap head first into the world of Simple Chinese Cooking - with a little effort you too will be able to divide and Kwonger!

Justine Drake is the editor of Pick n Pay's Fresh Living magazine.