MARINADE
1 tablespoon oyster sauce
1½ teaspoons light soy sauce
1 tablespoon Chinese white rice wine, or gin
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 teaspoon sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
Pinch white pepper
2 teaspoons cornstarch
½ pound chicken cutlets, cut into 2½-inch julienne
4 cups Chicken Stock (page 13)
1 slice ginger, ½ inch thick, lightly smashed
1½ pounds bok choy, washed, dried well, cut into ½-inch pieces on the
diagonal, stalks and leaves separated
2½ tablespoons Onion Oil (page 16)
Mix all ingredients for marinade in a bowl. Add chicken, toss and allow to rest 20 minutes.
Place chicken stock and ginger in a large pot, cover, bring to a boil over high heat. Add bok choy stalks, return to a boil. Lower heat to medium, cook for 5 to 7 minutes until stalks are tender. Raise heat back to high, add leaves, immerse thoroughly, stir and return to a boil. Add onion oil, stir, lower heat to medium. Cook 3 to 5 minutes, or until leaves are tender. Raise heat to high, add chicken and marinade, stir to mix thoroughly and allow to return to a boil. Boil soup for 1 minute. Taste for seasoning. Turn off heat, transfer to a heated tureen and serve immediately.
SERVES 4 TO 6
Broccoli Stir-Fried with Lop Cheung
(YOK FAR BUN LOP CHEUNG)
This is a dish we usually ate during the month of the Lunar New Year. Though lop cheung (pork sausages) and yun cheung (pork liver sausages) are now available in Asian markets year-round, in my grandmother’s time they were available only in the colder months. To eat them with broccoli (either the kind most familiar to Americans or Chinese broccoli; see page 41) was considered to be eating jade. In my kitchen I make this recipe with either one, though I often prefer to make it with the latter.
6 links Chinese sausage
1 2-pound bunch broccoli, florets cut off about 1½ inches from the top,
washed and drained thoroughly for 45 minutes
2½ tablespoons peanut oil
1 slice ginger, ½ inch thick, lightly smashed
¾ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon Chinese white rice wine, or gin
Steam sausages 20 minutes (see steaming directions, page 30). While sausages steam, cook the broccoli: Heat wok over high heat for 45 seconds. Add peanut oil and coat wok with spatula. When a wisp of white smoke appears, add ginger and salt, stir for 15 seconds, add broccoli, stir-fry 2 minutes. Drizzle wine into wok along its edges, cook for 2 minutes. This will create steam and broccoli will turn bright green.
When sausages are done, remove from steamer, cut into ⅛-inch diagonal slices. Place in a heated dish, surround with broccoli florets and serve immediately.
SERVES 4
Lantern Peppers Stir-Fried with Pork
(DONG LOON JIU CHAU YUK SEE)
In Ah Paw’s garden both red and green “lantern” peppers grew. These dong loon jiu were what are called bell peppers, but those in her garden were smaller and shaped quite like cylindrical lanterns. We steamed them, used them in stews, stuffed them, used them as garnishes for many dishes—but mostly we stir-fried them.
MARINADE
1½ tablespoons oyster sauce
1½ teaspoons sesame oil
2 teaspoons light soy sauce
¾ teaspoon ginger juice, mixed with 2 teaspoons Chinese white rice
wine, or gin
2 teaspoons cornstarch
Pinch white pepper
1 teaspoon sugar
⅛ teaspoon salt
¾ pound fresh, lean pork loin, cut in half lengthwise, each half cut into
slices ½-inch across
SAUCE
1½ tablespoons oyster sauce
1½ teaspoons light soy sauce
1 teaspoon sesame oil
⅛ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
Pinch white pepper
1 tablespoon cornstarch
2 teaspoons Chinese white rice wine, or gin
½ cup Chicken Stock (page 13)
3½ tablespoons peanut oil
1 tablespoon minced ginger
¼ teaspoon salt
½ cup scallions, white portions only, julienned
¾ cup carrots (1 medium carrot), julienned
¼ cup water chestnuts, julienned
1¼ cups green bell peppers, julienned
2 teaspoons minced garlic
1 tablespoon Chinese white rice wine, or gin
Mix all ingredients for marinade. Add pork to it and allow to rest at least 20 minutes.
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 ginger and salt and stir 20 seconds. Add scallions, stir, mix. Add carrots, stir and cook 20 seconds. Add water chestnuts, stir and cook 30 seconds. Add green peppers, stir. When peppers turn light green, 1 to 1½ minutes, turn off heat. Remove contents of wok to a dish and reserve.
Wipe off wok and spatula. Heat wok over high heat for 30 seconds. Add remaining 2 tablespoons peanut oil, coat wok. When a wisp of white smoke appears, add garlic and stir. When garlic releases its fragrance, about 20 seconds, add pork and marinade. Spread in a thin layer and tip wok side to side to ensure uniform cooking, until edges of slices turn white. Turn pork over, mix, add wine and cook until slices turn white. Add reserved vegetables, mix well and cook for 1½ minutes. Make a well in the mixture, stir sauce, pour in and mix thoroughly. When sauce thickens and bubbles, turn off heat, transfer to a heated dish and serve immediately with cooked rice.
SERVES 4 TO 6
WISDOM IN A BATCH OF BAD RICE
Even as I continued to learn to cook in my grandmother’s kitchen, with the foods of garden and market, my education in other matters deepened. Aspects of life were transmitted to me by Ah Paw in stories, adages and morality tales. Some of these I had heard from my mother, of course, but after all it was my grandmother who had taught her daughter first, so why not tell them to her grand daughter. too? A favorite of hers had to do with a new bride who, despite the fact that she did not know how to cook well, was nevertheless required to cook rice for her new mother-in-law. What emerged from her earnest effort was a pot of rice, half of which was not cooked completely, the other half burned. When she presented her effort to her mother-in-law, her husband quickly leaped to her defense. Before his mother could comment on his new wife’s efforts, he remarked on how nicely crisped the uncooked rice was, how perfectly fragrant was that which had burned.
Ah Paw would tell me that a bride surely should not have to depend upon her husband to lie for her, but on the other hand the new bride’s poor cooking effort had been a good test of faith for her new husband. Listen to what I have said, Ah Paw would tell me. I listened.
FOUR
FROM POND AND RIVER
FISH WAS OF THE UTMOST IMPORTANCE in my grandmother’s house, both as food and as philosophy. She preferred to eat fish as often as possible for she deemed it easily digestible, and because it symbolized peace and serenity to her. In her salon there hung on one wall a red cloth with black calligraphy that read, Man Shi Yue Ee, or “A million things are peaceful and agreeable.” The word yue, in the middle of the saying, is the word for fish. This wall hanging in the name of peace was on display year after year, put up just before the New Year and left there until it was replaced with an identical cloth at the same time the year following.
As part of her holdings, Ah Paw had a series of large freshwater ponds, in which fish were raised by the Chan family, who also saw to her gardens and orchards. From
these ponds came all manner of carp, a sweet fish, as well as dace and catfish. The fish were well-fed with cut soft field grasses and sugarcane leaves, as well as the mash that remained after peanuts had been crushed for their oil.
Some fish was cooked virtually every day in my gra
ndmother’s kitchen, either steamed, in congees or soups or occasionally lightly fried, with Ah Paw ordering them by age, weight and size.
One day it might be a wan yue, the big-scaled golden-orange grass carp. On another day Ah Paw might fancy soh yue, the silver carp with its glittering shiny scales and small head, or its big-headed cousin, dai tau yue. Her ponds also held dace, lang yue, a smaller sweet fish usually used to mince into fish balls, and catfish, called bak fu yue, or “grand uncle fish” because of its long whiskers.
Dace lent itself to special dishes, one in particular that my grandmother’s older servant, Sau Lin, cooked expertly. She would take a whole fish, cut along its stomach, remove its intestines, then carefully remove all its meat and bones, leaving the skin intact. The meat would be finely minced into a paste with dried shrimp, scallions, crushed peanuts, soy sauce, egg and coriander, then stuffed back into the skin so it resembled a whole fish. Then the fish would be pan-fried. It was a marvelous dish.
My grandmother preferred her fish steamed because it was so natural, but she was pleased with fish of any sort. She would say repeatedly, “Yue ho ho sik,” or “Fish tastes so very good,” and, “Ho yeung yee siu far,” or “It is so easy to digest.”
Most afternoons I would go out to the ponds, which sat amid the sugarcane fields and mulberry bushes of my grandmother’s, and feed the fish. Often in the spring, in the time of heaviest rains, the ponds would overflow and the fish that had been raised would flow away, usually into the river, several branches of which flowed through Sah Gau, and quite often we would find pond-raised fish swimming in our river, mixing in with a porgielike flat fish, jik yue hau, distinguished by its rather delicate mouth. In fact, if a young woman had a beautiful mouth, she was said to have a jik yue choi. I say this of my granddaughter, Siu Siu, who has an exceptionally small and pretty mouth.
The river also yielded shrimp, which we would catch in small woven bamboo baskets. We would eat them in a variety of ways, feed them to Ah Paw’s mynah or use them as bait. Our river also was home to a fish we called snakehead, a dense-fleshed fish very much like a striped bass, as well as live water snakes.
To be sure, fish of many varieties, including those that swam in saltwater, were available in the Sah Gau market, where we also bought clams, oysters and mussels. The flat fish of the sea, lung lei, or “dragon tongue,” that was so highly prized in our market came from the waters off Jung Shan Yuen, a large rural district quite like Sun Tak Yuen, that was famed for being the birthplace of Sun Yat Sen, generally regarded as China’s first revolutionary, who led his country out of Imperial rule into the modern world. It seemed only right that a great fish should come from the same place. That fish would occasionally find its way to the Sah Gau market, where it was sometimes sold live and was always snapped up fast.
So there was no lack of seafood in my grandmother’s kitchen. As I noted earlier, one of the first dishes she taught me to make was steaming a piece of grass carp. Preparing more dishes with fish and other foods of the water followed. To this day, not a week goes by that I do not cook fish several times for my family and, when she is with me, for my granddaughter.
Baked Grass Carp
(GUK WAN YUE)
The grass carp was my grandmother’s fish of choice. When young and small, it has many bones, but as it grows it becomes large and fleshy. It often grew so large that what was cooked was usually a fat, meaty center section of the fish, with the head reserved for casseroles and soups. Many people, myself included, prefer the tail portion, because there is less fat in its meat. To this day that is my preference. We ate grass carp most often cooked in a wok atop Ah Paw’s stove, covered, so that in effect it was baked, even though she had no oven. It was delicious cooked this way, though we ate it also in soups, steamed it, braised it and pan-fried it.
Farm-raised grass carp can be found live in Asian markets. The best size is from 6 to 8 pounds, and should be asked for by its name. The fishmonger will have cut the fish in half, lengthwise, cleaned it, and will present it in its two pieces. As recommended, a meaty wedge of the center of the fish can be bought, skin on one side, flesh and bone on the other. I prefer a piece with the bone in, 1½ to 2 pounds. The fishmonger will already have scaled the fish and removed the intestines.
This recipe, a descendant from my grandmother’s kitchen, is modified only by the fact that I truly bake it in an oven. Other than that, it is identical, including the use of ketchup, which serves the same coloring purpose as the traditional Chinese keh chap.
1½ pounds grass carp, middle portion
MARINADE
1 teaspoon Chinese white rice vinegar, or distilled white vinegar
1 tablespoon Chinese white rice wine, or gin
1 tablespoon light soy sauce
1 tablespoon peanut oil
½ teaspoon salt
⅛ teaspoon white pepper
SAUCE
1 tablespoon minced Chinese bacon or uncooked American-style bacon
2 tablespoons egg whites, beaten
4½ tablespoons ketchup
2 teaspoons minced garlic
1 tablespoon minced ginger
2 tablespoons scallions, finely sliced
3 tablespoons onions, minced
1 teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoons Chicken Stock (page 13)
Heat oven to 400 degrees F.
Wash fish thoroughly. Cut 3 slits in skin, side of fish to the backbone; do not cut through. Place in an ovenproof glass dish. Mix marinade, pour over the fish and rub well into the flesh on both sides. Allow to rest for 10 minutes. Mix sauce, pour over fish and rub into flesh and into the slits by hand, until well coated.
Place fish, slit side up, in oven and bake for 25 minutes, until fish flesh turns white. Test by gently pushing a chopstick into flesh. If it goes in easily, the fish is done. Remove from oven and serve in the baking dish, spooning sauce over each portion. The fish is best served with cooked rice, to enjoy the sauce.
SERVES 4 TO 6
Grass Carp with Fresh Tomatoes
(FON KEH JU WAN YUE)
What made this recipe so special was that we cooked it with the wild tomatoes that grew around the perimeter of Ah Paw’s walled garden.
MARINADE
2 teaspoons Chinese white rice vinegar, or distilled white vinegar
1 tablespoon Chinese white rice wine, or gin
½ teaspoon salt
Pinch white pepper
SAUCE
1½ tablespoons oyster sauce
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
1½ teaspoons sesame oil
2 tablespoons Chinese white rice wine, or gin
Pinch white pepper
2 teaspoons dark soy sauce
1½ tablespoons cornstarch
6 tablespoons Chicken Stock (page 13)
1½ grass carp, middle portion
5 tablespoons peanut oil
2 slices fresh ginger, each ½ inch thick
2 teaspoons minced ginger
2 teaspoons minced garlic
1½ pounds fresh tomatoes, washed, dried, cut into ½-inch cubes
2 scallions, trimmed, finely sliced
Mix marinade, reserve. Mix sauce, reserve.
Wash fish. Clean thoroughly and dry. Make two cuts into the center of the skin side of the fish to the bone; do not cut through. Place fish in a dish, add marinade, rub into the fish. Allow to rest 10 minutes.
Dry fish with paper towels. Heat wok over high heat for 40 seconds. Add 3 tablespoons peanut oil and 1 slice of ginger and coat wok with spatula. When a wisp of white smoke appears, place fish in wok. Lower heat, pan-fry for 3 minutes. Turn fish over, add second slice of ginger, fry for 5 minutes more, until fish begins to turn white. Remove fish from wok and set aside. Turn off heat. Discard ginger slices.
Empty oil from wok. Wipe off wok and spatula. Heat wok over high heat 40 seconds. Add remaining 2 tablespoons peanut oil. When a wisp of white smoke appears, add minced ginger and garlic, stir. Wh
en garlic turns light brown, add tomatoes. Stir for 1 minute, lower heat and cook for 5 minutes until tomatoes soften. Add sauce, stir together, bring to a boil. Return fish to the wok. Lower heat to medium. Spoon tomato mixture over fish, allow to simmer for 3 minutes. Turn off heat, add scallions and mix gently. Transfer fish to a heated dish, served immediately with cooked rice.
SERVES 4 TO 6
Fish and Lettuce Soup
(SAHNG CHOI YUE PIN TONG)
My Grandmother's Chinese Kitchen Page 7
