Deh-Ta Hsiung - Chinese Cookery Secrets

CHINESE COOKERY SECRETS

Deh-Ta Hsiung was born in Beijing and travelled widely throughout China as a teenager. Coming from a family of gourmets and scholars, his interest in food and wine developed as he grew up in a traditional classical Chinese upbringing. Deh-Ta came to England in 1950 to complete his education at Oxford and London. He is an acknowledged expert on Chinese food and cookery, besides being the author of several bestselling books and a food and wine consultant for Chinese restaurants and food manufacturers. He is also a tutor of international renown he was a regular teacher at the late Ken Los Chinese Cookery School in London between 1981 and 1996, and he taught in many other institutes all over the UK and at the Ballymaloe Cookery School in County Cork, Ireland on several occasions, as well as in France, Italy, Finland and as far away as India, where he was sent by the UN to conduct several courses in the countrys leading catering institutes.

Several of Deh-Tas books have been translated into all the major European languages and the German edition of The Chinese Kitchen (Die Chinesische Kche) was awarded a silver medal by the Gastronomische Akademie Deutschlands in 2001.

How To Cook Chinese Restaurant Food At Home

Deh-Ta Hsiung

Constable & Robinson Ltd

5556 Russell Square

London WC1B 4HP

www.constablerobinson.com

First published in the UK 1993

This new edition published by Right Way,

an imprint of Constable & Robinson, 2009

Copyright Deh-Ta Hsiung, 1993, 2009

The right of Deh-Ta Hsiung to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act, 1988.

All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-0-7160-2224-4

eISBN: 978-0-7160-2367-8

Printed and bound in the EU

Cover photographs: Photolibrary.com , iStockPhoto;
Cover design: Simon Levy

To Thelma, Kai-Lu, Anna and Benjamin

If you have always wanted to try cooking Chinese food at home, but have been put off by the daunting thought of following recipes with intricate preparations and complicated cooking techniques; or your attempts have somehow never quite managed to achieve that subtle flavour and delicate texture which are the hallmarks of authentic Chinese cooking, then this book will, for the first time, reveal to you the simple secrets of the Chinese kitchen.

First of all, not everyone realises that there is a world of difference between food produced by the commercial establishments and that of the ordinary homes in China. This is not just because of a difference in skills between the professional chefs and the home cooks, but more a matter of a difference in the style of cooking based on resources and facilities which are strikingly varied between a restaurant and a home kitchen.

Secondly, almost all the Chinese cookbooks in English have been written by people who have little or no knowledge of a Chinese restaurant kitchen; they usually contain recipes drastically modified in order to accommodate the average home cook in the West, and often with misleading instructions for the various cooking techniques, or inaccurate explanations of the use of special ingredients and seasonings. No wonder so many would-be Chinese cooks have been disappointed and frustrated by their attempts to produce their favourite restaurant dishes at home.

I have been involved with Chinese cookery since early childhood, as I first learnt cooking from my mother and the family cook in China. Later on, I took lessons from some of the leading Chinese chefs in England and Hong Kong, and have since spent a great deal of time in many restaurants in different parts of the world. I have also over twelve years worldwide teaching experience of Chinese cookery to home cooks as well as to professionals and so I have a deep understanding of the obstacles that prevent anyone from producing Chinese dishes of restaurant quality at home.

Fortunately, very few of the obstacles are insurmountable, and with the help of this book, it is my sincere hope that you will be able to achieve that subtle flavour and delicate texture that have been eluding you up until now.

In the early days of inter-change between the East and the West, very few linguists were specialists in all the different fields (least of all on food and cooking). So once an English definition of a Chinese food or cooking method was struck upon, it was passed down in common usage and became established as fact, however inaccurate the original translation might have been. I have therefore inserted Chinese names for all the recipe names given in this book.

The recipes are arranged in groups according to the various cooking methods rather than the main ingredients, unlike the normal practice in a restaurant menu and in Western cookbooks. My main reason for breaking this convention is to avoid the tedium of too much unnecessary repetition of step-by-step cooking instructions for each individual recipe.

I have also allocated to each group of recipes a percentage mark for the feasibility of attaining a superb restaurant quality. Given the skills of the cook and the facilities available, one could expect, say, a 95%100% success rate for certain dishes, but only 85%90% for others.

Obviously different restaurants produce different food, and each chef has his specialties it would be very boring to eat dishes tasting identical time after time, however good they are. So forget that particular delicious dish you had in the Green Dragon last week, and aim to achieve your own individual mark. If it tastes good to you, and other people enjoy it as well, then you have succeeded and you can give yourself a 99%, if not a 100%, mark!

There are a great number of Chinese provision stores throughout the British Isles. In the larger cities they usually centre around a district known as Chinatown. They do warrant a special visit if you happen to be living near one of them: it is quite an experience as you feel as if you are entering a different world with all the exotic smells and packagings. Most of these stores are open seven days a week, sometimes well into late evenings. You can also buy online from established stores such as Wing Yip ( www.wingyipstore.co.uk ) and Hoo Hing ( www.hoohing.com ).

The following is a selected list of Chinese provision stores.

Birmingham

Wing Yip, 375 Nechells Park Road, Nechells, Birmingham, B7 5NT.

Edinburgh

Pats Chung Ying, 199 Leith Walk, Edinburgh, EH6 8NX ( www.patschungying.co.uk ).

Leeds

Wing Lee Hong ( www.wingleehong.co.uk ).

London

Loon Fung, 4 stores ( www.loonfung.com ).

Loon Moon, 9 Gerrard Street, London, WID 5PN.

Wing Yip, 395 Edgware Road, Cricklewood, London, NW2 6LN.

Wing Yip, 544 Purley Way, Croydon, CRO 4NZ.

Manchester

Wing Fat, 49 Faulkner Street, Manchester, MI 4EE ( www.wingfat.co.uk ).