Remove flap and layer of fat from the rack of ribs, then with a sharp knife, score the rack all over. Line roasting pan with heavy-duty foil, arrange rack of ribs inside. Mix marinade ingredients together. Using your hands rub marinade thoroughly into spareribs. Allow to marinate at least 4 hours, or covered, refrigerated overnight. Bring to room temperature before roasting.
Preheat oven to broil, 500 to 550 degrees F. Broil ribs for approximately 40 minutes, adding boiling water to pan if sauce dries out. During cooking, baste ribs several times, and turn over rack several times until done. To test, slice into thick, meaty portion of rack. Meat is cooked through when no redness shows. Turn off heat, cut ribs between bones and meat, and serve.
MAKES 12 RIBS
Pork Ribs Siu Mai
(PAI GUAT SIU MAI)
These spareribs were eaten often in Ah Paw’s house simply because they were easily steamed after being butchered. The butcher would trim the flap, cut each rib and its meat individually, then chop each rib into 1-inch sections, giving us a pile of small pieces of ribs.
MARINADE
1 teaspoon sesame oil
2 teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon Chinese white rice wine, or gin
2 tablespoons oyster sauce
1 tablespoon minced garlic
3 tablespoons fermented black beans, washed
¾ teaspoon baking soda
4 tablespoons tapioca flour
Pinch white pepper
½ teaspoon hot pepper flakes
1 rack pork ribs, to yield after butchering: 3 cups of ribs, or 2½ pounds
2 tablespoons fresh bell peppers, diced
Mix marinade well in a large bowl. Place sparerib pieces in a steamproof dish. Pour in marinade, mix to coat well. Allow to marinate for 8 hours or overnight, in the refrigerator. Before steaming, allow to come to room temperature.
Place steamproof dish in a steamer, cover and steam for 30 minutes, or until done. (See steaming directions, page 30.) Remove dish from steamer, sprinkle with red peppers and serve immediately.
SERVES 4 TO 6
Chicken Braised with Black Beans
(DAU SEE MUN GAI)
This dish is special because the chicken is cooked three times. It is a recipe that takes a bit of work, but as my grandmother said, it is worth the effort, both in the kitchen and at the table.
6 garlic cloves, lightly smashed, peeled and mashed
5 tablespoons fermented black beans, washed several times to remove
salt, drained well
SAUCE
3 tablespoons oyster sauce
2 teaspoons sugar
½ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons dark soy sauce
13½-pound chicken washed well with salt, fat and membranes
removed, drained and dried thoroughly
3½ to 4 tablespoons water chestnut powder
6 cups plus 3 tablespoons peanut oil
3 tablespoons Chinese white rice wine, or gin
1 cup Chicken Stock (page 13)
Sprigs of coriander, for garnish
Make a paste of the mashed garlic and black beans, reserve. Mix sauce, reserve.
Cut chicken into bite-size pieces, coat with water chestnut powder. Heat wok over high heat for 1 minute. Add 6 cups peanut oil and heat to 375 degrees F, until oil smokes. Deep-fry the chicken pieces by lowering them into the oil with a Chinese strainer. Fry 1 minute, or until redness is gone from the skin. Remove chicken, drain, reserve. Drain oil from wok, wipe dry with paper towels.
Place remaining 3 tablespoons peanut oil in wok over high heat and when a wisp of white smoke appears, add the garlic-black bean paste. Break up with spatula. When garlic turns light brown, add chicken pieces and mix well. Drizzle white wine into wok from edges, stir and mix well. Stir sauce, pour into wok, mix until chicken is well-coated. Turn off heat.
Transfer chicken to a pot. Pour ¾ cup chicken stock into wok to help collect juices and sauce, then pour into pot over chicken. Cover pot and cook over low heat until chicken is tender, 30 to 40 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes. If sauce becomes too thick, add a bit more stock, 1 to 2 tablespoons at a time.
Turn off heat, remove chicken and sauce from pot and transfer to a heated dish. Garnish with coriander and serve with cooked rice.
SERVES 4 TO 6
Chicken with Hot Bean Sauce
(DAU BANG JEUNG CHAU GAI SEE)
According to Ah Paw, the moderate spiciness of this dish reduced the body’s dampness, particularly in the March rainy season. Often she would reject chiles as being too hot, but this sauce gave heat without discomfort to the tongue, she said, and therefore was what she termed lot lot dei, or pleasing hot.
MARINADE
2 tablespoons egg whites, lightly beaten
½ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons tapioca starch
1 pound chicken cutlets, cut into 2½-by-⅓-inch strips
SAUCE
2½ tablespoons hot bean sauce
2½ tablespoons oyster sauce
1 tablespoon light soy sauce
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon Shao-Hsing wine, or sherry
1 tablespoon Chinkiang vinegar
1 teaspoon sesame oil
Pinch white pepper
1 tablespoon tapioca starch
⅓ cup Chicken Stock (page 13)
5 cups peanut oil, for blanching
2 teaspoons minced ginger
2 teaspoons minced garlic
¼ cup scallions, white portions only, cut diagonally into ¼-inch slices
½ pound red bell peppers, cut into 2-inch by ¼-inch strips
1 tablespoon Shao-Hsing wine, or sherry
Combine all marinade ingredients; place chicken strips in marinade, mix well to coat and allow to rest 15 minutes. Reserve.
While chicken marinates, combine all sauce ingredients in a bowl. Set aside.
Heat wok over high heat for 1 minute. Add 5 cups peanut oil and bring to a temperature of 300 degrees F. Add chicken and marinade. Turn off heat immediately, loosen chicken strips to separate them. When chicken is loosened, turn heat on to medium. When chicken turns white (about 45 seconds), turn off heat, remove with strainer, and drain over a bowl.
Empty wok of oil, leaving about 2 tablespoons in well. Turn heat to high and heat for 20 seconds. Add ginger and garlic, stir. Add scallions and cook for 45 seconds. Add peppers, stir together, cook 2 minutes. Add chicken, mix together. Drizzle wine into wok from the edges. Make a well, stir sauce, pour into wok, and stir thoroughly. When sauce thickens and bubbles, turn off heat. Transfer to a heated dish and serve with cooked rice.
SERVES 4
Roast Duck Ding
(SIU OP DING)
SAUCE
2½ tablespoons oyster sauce
2 teaspoons light soy sauce
1½ teaspoons sesame oil
1½ teaspoons Chinkiang vinegar
1 tablespoon Chinese white rice wine, or gin
4½ teaspoons sugar
Pinch white pepper 3½ teaspoons cornstarch ¼ cup Chicken Stock (page 13)
2½ cups peanut oil, for deep-frying
¾ cup raw cashew nuts
1 tablespoon minced ginger
⅛ teaspoon salt
1 cup (¼ pound) long beans or stringbeans, cut into ½-inch pieces
½ cup celery, cut into ⅓-inch dice
⅓ cup bamboo shoots, cut into ⅓-inch dice
⅓ cup water chestnuts, cut into ⅓-inch dice
¾ cup red bell pepper, cut into ½-inch dice
2½ teaspoons minced garlic
1½ cups roast duck meat (Cut whole duck in half, lengthwise. Reserve
half for subsequent dish. Remove skin, fat and bones, cut meat into ½-
inch dice.)
1½ tablespoons Chinese white rice wine, or gin
In a small bowl, mix all ingredients for sauce; reserve.
Prepare cashews: Heat wok over high heat for 1 mi
nute. Add peanut oil and heat to 340-350 degrees F. Add cashews, stir and fry for 1 to 1½ minutes until golden. Remove with strainer, drain, reserve. Empty oil from wok.
Heat wok over high heat and return 1½ tablespoons of oil to wok. Add ginger and salt, stir 30 seconds. Add beans, stir and cook for 1 minute. Add celery, stir and cook for 30 seconds. Add bamboo shoots, stir and cook for 1 minute. Add water chestnuts, stir and cook 30 seconds. Add peppers, stir and cook for 1 minute. Turn off heat and remove to a dish, reserve.
Wipe off wok and spatula. Heat wok over high heat, add 2 tablespoons of reserved oil and coat wok. When a wisp of white smoke appears, add garlic, stir for 30 seconds, until garlic releases its fragrance. Add duck meat and stir, 1 minute. Drizzle wine into wok along its edges and cook for 1 minute. Add reserved vegetables, stir and cook for 1½ minutes. Make a well in the mixture, stir sauce, pour in and mix thoroughly until sauce bubbles and all ingredients are well-coated. Turn off heat. Add reserved cashews, mix well. Transfer to a heated dish and serve with cooked rice.
SERVES 4 TO 6
NOTE The cashews may be fried in advance. Drain, cool and place in closed container. They will keep 2 days.
Roast Duck with Snow Peas
(SIU OP CHAU SEUT DAU)
SAUCE
2½ tablespoons oyster sauce
2 teaspoons light soy sauce
1½ teaspoons sesame oil
3½ teaspoons sugar
1 tablespoon Chinese white rice wine, or gin
Pinch white pepper
3 teaspoons cornstarch
¼ cup Chicken Stock (page 13)
3½ tablespoons peanut oil
⅛ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon minced ginger
¾ cup scallions, white portions, cut into 2-inch sections, julienned
1¾ cups (6 ounces) snow peas, julienned
1 cup jicama, cut into 2-inch matchstick julienne
2½ teaspoons minced garlic
1 tablespoon Shao-Hsing wine, or sherry
1½ cups duck meat (from Roast Duck Ding, page 51, skinned, boned,
meat shredded)
In a small bowl mix all ingredients for sauce; reserve.
Heat wok over high heat for 40 seconds. Add 1½ tablespoons peanut oil, coat wok with spatula. When a wisp of white smoke appears, add salt and ginger, stir for 30 seconds. Add scallions, stir and cook 10 seconds. Add snow peas, stir and cook for 1½ minutes, or until snow peas become bright green. Add jicama, stir and cook for 1½ minutes. Turn off heat, remove wok contents to a dish and reserve.
Wipe off wok and spatula. Add remaining 2 tablespoons of peanut oil. Heat wok over high heat 30 seconds. When a wisp of white smoke appears, add garlic and stir until garlic releases its fragrance, about 20-30 seconds. Add duck meat, stir and cook 1 minute. Drizzle wine into wok along its edges, stir and cook 1 minute. Add reserved vegetables, mix well and cook 1½ minutes. Make a well, stir sauce and pour in to wok. Stir, to coat all ingredients well and cook, about 1½ minutes. Turn off heat, transfer to a heated dish and serve with cooked rice.
SERVES 4
A SWALLOW LEARNS TO FLY
After a year of school holidays, weekends and summer days spent in my grandmother’s house, I found that I was able to cook with a measure of confidence, even though I was then just about nine years old. I could tell that what I was learning and doing pleased Ah Paw and one night, as I was sitting with her on her bed, she told me, “I am not surprised. Sun tak yan ho lah sau ho sik jiu yeh,” which translates literally as “The people of Sun Tak are highly skilled in their knowledge of food,” but is widely understood to mean that if one is born in Sun Tak, she is born to cook. I was, of course, from Sun Tak, as was Ah Paw, and she added that I would not have any trouble at all finding a husband since I cooked so well already, and that as I grew older I would only become more expert.
“You know,” Ah Paw said, “that your name, Yin-Fei, means Flying Swallow. It means you will fly. You are smart and you are pretty.” I would work in her kitchen, learning, for as long as she wished, I thought, just to have her say things like that to me, and to sleep next to her at night.
THIS PHOTO WAS TAKEN JUST BEFORE I LEFT FOR HONG KONG, AT AGE 12.
THREE
IN THE GARDEN
AH PAW’S GARDEN WAS UNDER THE care of the Chan family. They were farmers: a man, his wife and their three sons, and after tending to their own small farm, they would come as a family to plant, weed and harvest Ah Paw’s garden, for which they were paid. The Chans were also charged with seeing to Ah Paw’s fish ponds in which carp were raised, as well as her large fields of sugarcane and mulberry bushes, which surrounded the ponds. To perhaps call that vast planted area a garden fails to do it justice. It was about the size of a modern-day football field, completely enclosed by a high brick wall, and could be entered only through the rear door of one of the houses Ah Paw owned, a short distance down the road on which her home rested.
Planted in its acres were individual patches of the vegetables we ate every day: bok choy, choy sum, cabbages and kale, Chinese broccoli and eggplant, long beans, scallions, taro root, turnips, white radishes, cucumbers, silk squash, watercress, carrots, peppers, celery and peanuts. Wild tomatoes grew along the edges of its walls. Because of the generally warm climate in the south of China, there were often two crops of most of these vegetables each year. A grove of fruit trees occupied one corner of the garden: guavas, pomegranates, pomelos, chestnuts and peaches. I loved the garden, but mostly I loved the trees, which I climbed constantly.
Whenever I was able, I would run down the road, through the empty house that served as the gateway to the walled garden just to climb those trees. This, despite cautions from Ah Guk, my grandmother’s servant who would shake a finger at me and say, “M’ho hawk lam jai seung shu,” or “Don’t be like a boy and climb trees,” or “Siu sum ah, nei hai loi jai,” “Be careful, you’re a girl.” These warnings, she would tell me, came straight from my grandmother, which I doubted, for when Ah Paw said much the same to me, it was with a little smile.
It was my grandmother who had me go into the fields with the Chans each October and learn to cut sugarcane, and I would share in the sweet red congee her servants cooked for the Chans and the other harvesters.
As was her practice with everything else, Ah Paw would tell the servants which vegetables were ripe to pick and to cook. No gingerroot, onions, garlic or potatoes were grown in her garden simply because they were deemed plentiful and quite inexpensive. And she refused to grow chives, leeks and shallots, because they were unholy.
When I first asked her why that was so, she said it was her belief, rooted in Buddhist folklore, and sat me down on her divan to tell me the story. Once there was in the land a corrupt official, a jealous man, who tried to turn the people away from one of their favorite generals. Unable to do so, the official and his wife falsely accused the general of high crimes. The general was tried by the official, found guilty and executed. However, the people could not be convinced and rose up and captured the official and his wife. They accused him of being the traitor, of killing a general who was patriotic, then paraded him and his wife through the crowds, stoned them, then fried them in a giant wok until they were nothing but ashes. When a wind arose, the ashes flew into a garden area and settled up the stalks of shallots, leeks and chives. The three vegetables were subsequently declared to be forbidden to Buddhist monks and nuns. Since that time, Ah Paw would say to me, “Yun jung yau sam yeung jop,” which translates as “In the garden three vegetables are unholy.”
Today there is a continuing observance of this tale. To observe the death of the hated official and his wife, two lengths of dough were pressed together and deep-fried into a cruller, which was usually eaten with congee. To this day, these crullers are called yau jah guai, or “deep-fried devil.” To eat these with one’s congee, Ah Paw told me, was to remind oneself to be honest and straightforward, to be kind and never harm another.
A FAMILY PORTRAIT TAKEN IN THE G
ARDEN OF MY HOME IN SUN TAK IN THE EARLY
1980S. MY FATHER IS SEATED IN THE CENTER, SURROUNDED BY MY COUSIN,
HIS WIFE, AND THEIR CHILDREN.
In the years I went to Ah Paw’s house, listened to her, followed her dicta, it always seemed that she would illustrate life’s lessons and proper behavior with food as the common denominator. I remember complaining to her once how tedious a task it was to snap off the tiny hard ends of bean sprouts to get them ready for spring rolls. Her reply? “If you wish to learn to make spring rolls well, you must learn the beginning of the spring roll.”
My Grandmother's Chinese Kitchen Page 5
