At Home with Chinese Cuisine (34 page)
Read At Home with Chinese Cuisine Online
Authors: T P Hong
Aubergine
茄子
, Aubergine with Garlic Dressing
茄拌蒜泥
,
and Aubergine with Fish Fragrance
魚香茄子
Aubergine
Aubergines come in different colours, shapes and sizes. In southern China, we tend to see more of the lighter purple variety with a cylindrical shape that is suited for growing in a hotter climate. It has a softer but less spongy texture than what we have in the UK. And it does not taste bitter at all.
What we have in the UK is more in common with those available up in northern China. I was also attracted by a dark purple variety I saw in Beijing. It looks like a ball about the size of a melon. It has a firm texture and stays in shape when cooked. That is why the locals peel it and shred it for stir-frying.
The skin of the aubergine has attracted much interest from the scientific community. It has to do with a chemical compound found in its skin called nasunin. Nasunin is a potent antioxidant and free radical scavenger that is thought to help our body fight cancer and heart diseases and protect our brain cells and nervous system. Even though we still await conclusive scientific observation whether this chemical compound can withstand the heat in cooking, its discovery might encourage people to keep the skin on when preparing the aubergine.
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Leaving the skin on also has the benefit of holding the flesh together and preventing it from turning mushy when cooked.
The aubergine has a cool food property. Therefore, garlic, ginger, and spring onion with a warm food property are often used in its preparation to provide a neutralizing effect. These herbs also have such an affinity with aubergine flavour wise.
Aubergine with Garlic Dressing
This dish can be served warm in the winter and chilled in the summer. Choose the long, lighter purple variety if it is available. It should be plump with glossy colour. The dark purple ones with an elongated oval shape, common in the UK and the United States, should be firm to touch and heavy to heft.
If you choose to purée the garlic using pestle and mortar, consider adding a small pinch of salt to it. The addition of salt gives the garlic a more rounded and mellower taste.
650 g or so aubergine 1 t white sesame seeds, roasted For the garlic dressing: 6 plump garlic cloves, puréed 1 spring onion, finely chopped 1 fresh red (hot) chilli, de-seeded and finely chopped 1/2 t (or more) sugar 1 t light soy sauce 1 t rice vinegar 1 t sesame seed oil salt and pepper 15–30 ml grapeseed oil 2-3 T drinking water, cold | Split aubergines lengthwise into two and cut each half into chunks 4-5 cm in length across the fibre. Arrange them in a hot steamer over a high heat, cut-side down. Steam for 8-10 minutes until they are cooked. Insert a knife to test; it will be spongy and soft to the touch. Leave them in a colander with the cut-side down to drain. When they are cool enough to handle, cut them along the fibre into 4 pieces. Leave them in a colander with the cut-side down to drain. Put the garlic, spring onion, and chilli in a bowl. Use the back of a spoon to apply pressure on them to facilitate blending of tastes. Season with the sugar, salt, and pepper. Heat the oil to around 210°C and pour it over the dressing mixture. You should hear the sizzling sounds and capture the aroma. Add cold water and stir to mix, followed by the soy sauce, vinegar, and sesame seed oil. Taste to adjust the seasoning. Add a little bit more sugar if desired; sugar smoothens the hotness of the chilli and the acidity of the vinegar. When the dressing is ready, cut the aubergines along the fibre into strips, arrange them on a plate, and sprinkle the roasted sesame seeds on top. It is optional to remove the purple skin of the aubergines; they can be peeled off easily. Serve the dressing in a bowl for people to help themselves, or drizzle the dressing on the aubergines to serve. |
Aubergine with Fish Fragrance
Fish fragrance (YuXiang in Chinese) is a blend of tastes created by a SiChuan chef at the turn of the twentieth century. By its namesake, the dish is cooked with herbs and condiments used for preparing fish dishes. Spring onions, ginger, garlic, wine, vinegar, sugar, and salt are the usual ingredients in many Chinese fish recipes. In SiChuan Province, vegetable and meat dishes with fish fragrance include these basic ingredients, with the addition of pickled red chilli and a broad bean paste as an option. In JiangSu or ZheJiang Province, pickled chilli is not popular. Fish fragrance dishes have the same usual ingredients, the fresh red chilli is optional, and coriander is often used as a garnish. Fermented black beans and oyster sauce are options to give more weight to the dish in provinces further down south, such as in GuangDong Province.
Fish fragrance is suitable for preparing vegetables that take up the flavour of accompanying ingredients. With its spongy texture, aubergine is an ideal choice. When heated, the beautiful, glossy colour of the skin could turn dull brown quickly. Deep-frying the aubergine in very hot oil can minimise the impact to a certain extent. For this dish, I opt to steam and pan-fry the aubergine instead of deep-frying. With its spongy texture, it is prone to absorb more oil than I care for when deep-fried.
With this recipe, 100 grammes of pork shredded or minced can be added if you fancy some meat in the dish. Soft-textured ingredients such as silken bean curd, shiitake mushrooms, and sliced meat or fish can all be used to provide different nutritional sources to the dish.
600–650 g aubergine 4 garlic cloves, finely chopped 10 g ginger, finely chopped 2 spring onion, separate the white from the green, and finely chopped 1 or 2 fresh red hot chilli, de-seeded and finely chopped 1 T broad bean paste or black bean sauce (optional) 1 t cornflour mixed with 7 ml water (optional) 1 t sesame seed oil 45 ml cooking oil | Split the aubergine along the middle and cut each half into chunks 4-5 cm in length across the fibre. Arrange them in a hot steamer over a high heat, cut-side down. Steam for 8-10 minutes until they are soft. Insert a knife to test; it will be spongy and soft to the touch. When they are cool enough to handle, cut them across the fibre once and along the fibre into 4 pieces. Leave them in a colander with the cut-side down to drain. Heat a pan over a medium heat. Pour 15 ml of the cooking oil into the pan and pan-fry the aubergine until the flesh sides pick up a golden colour. Put them on kitchen towels to absorb excess oil. |
For the sauce: 1 t sugar 1 T light soy sauce 1 T rice vinegar salt and pepper 70 ml chicken broth or water, heated | Heat a |
Chinese Leaf in Clear Soup
開水白菜
Garnished with a wolfberry
This is an unusual SiChuan dish in that it is neither spicy nor rustic, as most SiChuan dishes are. It is delicate and refined. My first encounter of this dish was in Beijing, and consommé came straight to mind. During my stay in China, I did not come across this dish often, not even in up-market restaurants. It might be because of its laborious and time-consuming preparation that is not cost-effective for the acutely competitive restaurant market, or else it has fallen out of fashion with the populist taste. When it is on the menu, the expectation is high. People expect this delicate Qing Dynasty court dish to stay truthful to the natural flavour of its ingredients. It will cause an uproar if it turns out to be an artificial MSG quick fix.
The literal translation of the Chinese name of this dish is “Chinese leaf in clear water”. The clear soup is the equivalent of French consommé. The method I learned in Paris to prepare consommé was to add mirepois (2 mm cubes) of carrots, celery, leeks, tomatoes, ground beef, and tomato puree to cold beef stock, with egg whites added to form a crust. Sea salt and peppercorns are placed on the crust. Break a hole in the middle of the crust for ladling the stock to pour on the crust to season. Drain and sieve with two china cups and a kitchen towel in between, and it is ready to use. Consommé can be served hot or cold. For this dish, it is served hot.
In this recipe, the clear soup is often prepared using the basic stock from chicken and pork bones. Rice wine, ginger, spring onion, and white pepper are added when the cooking liquid comes to the first boil. Mirepois of vegetables are not used. Finely minced chicken breasts (with other meat ingredients such as Chinese hams) mixed with the equal amount of water are subsequently stirred in to enrich the basic stock and to clarify it at the same time. Salt is used to season the soup just before serving to avoid the salt interacting with the fat and the protein in the stock at an earlier stage of the cooking process; adding the salt too early it could affect the colour of the soup.
To prepare Chinese leaf for this dish, only the heart of the young Chinese leaf is used. It has 4–5 layers of the compact, yellowish, tender stalks with leaves in the centre.
Prepare a pot of lightly salted boiling water for blanching the vegetable. Bring it out to cool down in cold water after the water returns to a boil. When it is cold, drain it in a colander, pat it dry, and set aside.
Arrange the vegetable in a heatproof deep dish with a lid and ladle sufficient quantity of boiling clear soup into the dish to cover the vegetable. Put the lid on tightly and steam over a high heat for 3-5 minutes. Bring the vegetable out and arrange it in an individual serving bowl. Ladle fresh hot clear soup, now seasoned with salt, into the serving bowl. It is then ready for the table.
Stir-fried Rice with Eggs
碎金飯
and Rice Wrapped in Gold
金裹銀
Our plumber, Mr. Panitz, showed up one day to repair our kitchen tap. He saw the jar of sprouting mung beans on top of the AGA. “I love Chinese food,” he said, “but the price in the Chinese takeaways is going up and up.” I asked what dish he likes most. “Stir-fried rice,” he replied. “Is it difficult to prepare?” he asked. I told him it is usually the first dish the Chinese prepare when they are learning to cook.
Stir-fried Rice with Eggs, also known as Rice with Gold Nuggets, is a basic stir-fried rice dish. The folklore has it that Rice with Gold Nuggets was initially one of a series of rice dishes that the seventh-century imperial chefs prepared for Emperor Yang of Sui Dynasty when he sought something simple and hearty. He and his father, Emperor Wen, were the ones who started the construction of the Grand Canal of China with a network of waterways that eventually linked Beijing in the north with the city of HangZhou in ZheJiang Province, down in the south. YangZhou was an important economic and cultural centre at that time. The emperor’s visits to the city and his two years of stay in YangZhou prior to his death provided ample opportunities for the dish he enjoyed to become popular and spread with travellers along the waterways to many corners in China.
One main reason of its popularity is its versatility. Stir-fried rice could be a simple affair following the basic recipe that uses cold steamed rice, eggs, chopped spring onions, salt, and pepper as ingredients. Building on the basic recipe can turn it into a feast with the additions of sea cucumber, prawns, slices or shreds of meat, ham, fresh peas or beans, bamboo shoots, carrots, corns, mushrooms, bell peppers, leafy vegetables, and more.
To start with, the most important thing in preparing stir-fried rice is to make sure that the steamed rice is cold. Chinese families usually use leftover steamed rice from the day before for this dish as a way to reheat the rice. The variety of rice makes a difference to the flavour of the dish. Short-grain rice, which is rounder in shape, is preferred. Short-grain rice for paella and risotto are good alternatives to those from China, Japan and the US. Long grain rice, basmati rice, and fragrance rice do not have the right texture to produce the best result.
Rice cookers are becoming quite popular in the West these days, and customers are spoilt for choices. It is worthwhile to get hold of one if you enjoy stir-fried rice dishes.
Stir-fry rice requires a nonstop stirring motion to ensure thorough mixing of ingredients and even distribution of heat. Because rice sticks to the wok surface easily, apart from nonstop stirring, it is important to make sure that the wok is hot enough that drops of water skitter on the surface before they boil off. You then need to coat the interior of the wok with a thin layer of oil all the way up to the rim, to reduce the chance of rice sticking to the wok.
People who enjoy the flavour of soy sauce often add a dash of naturally fermented soy sauce to stir-fry rice; it gives the food a taste of savouriness that salt cannot offer, as well as an appetising light red-brown hue. It also gives aroma and an extra layer of the taste of umami to the dish as the result of the Maillard Reactions. It is advisable to taste the soy sauce before using it. Different brands vary in their saltiness, which in turn will affect the quantity of salt one adds to the dish.