Chinese cooking techniques

Some of which may be handed down from one generation to another... tips that you don't normally find in cookbooks.

Some of these steps may seem insignificant, but they can make the difference between a mediocre dish and an extra-ordinary dish.

1. Black bean sauce: smash the garlic and fermented black beans before cooking.

2. Stir-frying with black bean sauce is a very common dish. Be it beef, chicken, shrimp with black bean sauce, the recipe typically calls for using garlic and fermented black beans. I often see people cook the garlic and black beans separately on this dish.

3. Here is a tip for you: black beans do not release their "soy" taste when you cook them whole. When you are doing your preparation work, mince the garlic (or just use the side of a cleaver to whack them flat), rinse the fermented black beans, drain, then use a big table spoon to smash the black beans, then mix them with the minced garlic in a bowl to form a paste. This technique is similar to South-Asian cooking where they grind the ginger and other spices to form a paste before cooking.

4. When you are ready to cook the dish, heat up the wok/pan and add in cooking oil. Cook the garlic/black-bean paste first until fragrant, about 10 seconds, then add a few slices of chili pepper (or jalapeno), a bit of salt, a dash of vinegar/cooking wine, then add 1 diced onion to sautee for a minute, then add sliced green or red bell peppers. Sautee for a few more minutes. Add chicken broth or water. Bring it to a boil. Add the par-cooked (velveted) meat. Add sugar (if you like) and corn starch slurry to thicken the sauce. To enhance the "soy" flavor, I often add some light or dark soy sauce as well.

5. After soaking dried mushrooms to rehydrate them (prior to adding them to a chicken stir-fry), the recipe called for the mushroom-soaking liquid to be strained, added to the wok full of chicken and vegetables, and boiled down hard to a syrup before the sauce-elements were added at the end. This kicked up the mushroom flavor by more than a notch.

6. Stir your sauces before adding to the wok. If there is cornstarch in the sauce, it will have settled, but so will other heavier flavorings like hoisin, brown bean sauce, etc. Also, don't dump the whole sauce on top of the things in the wok. You have them nice and hot, so don't cool them off with the sauce ----- rather pour the sauce around the sides of the wok so that it will warm up as it flows down ----then mix in.

7. When steaming fish or meat, adding a little brandy to the dish for the last five minutes of steaming can only improve the dish

8. When peeling ginger, there's no need for a peeler - just slice off the skin. For less waste, simply run a sharp knife over the skin and the skin comes right off. Or the easiest way - just slice off the amount you want, smash it, and cook away! No need for peeling. Another easy way to peel ginger is by scraping it with a spoon. (Although I must admit to cutting off the skin with a knife myself usually, as I cannot be bothered to grab a spoon out of the drawer.)

9. The square -sided-end of a wooden chopstick aso peels ginger very well. Just hold firmly and 'peel' down with a sharp edge. I had read somewhere that the best flavor in ginger is directly under the skin.

10. She said that for guotie (pot sticklers) dough, you have to mix the flour (just plain non-self raising flour) with boiling water and for jiaozi (boiled ones) dough you mix the flour with cold water.The boiling water helps to release the gluten and stops the pot sticklers from being too dry and brittle.

11. When doing your mise en place prep, do the scallions last. If you cut them and let them sit around for a while, they can exude that sticky substance.

12. There is nothing that replaces wok. Establishing a good relationship to a wok is easier than you think, and just requires a quick brushing with water and swipe with oil for maintenance.

13. Hunting down fresh ingredients to replace stuff you get canned (bamboo shoots, say, or -- especially -- water chestnuts) is really, really, really worth it.

14. There are very few things that a dash of good chicken stock, schmaltz, or shaoxing don't improve.

15. Peanut oil is worth keeping on hand at all times.

16. When steaming fish, once it is done make sure to heat up the oil you used to cook the garlic/ginger in your wok to almost smoking and then pour it over top the fish. This gives a satisfying sizzle and makes the meat tender and infuses some of the flavours already present in the oil. Of course it also adds a bit of that shine.

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