Introduction To Chinese Cooking

Good cooking had bee an integral part of the brilliant and ancient Chinese culture from the beginning, and now it has been acknowledged out side China as one of the great ' original' cuisines of the world.

There are few people today, for instance, who have not tasted or at least heard of Sweet and Sour Pork, Fried Rice, Barbecued Spareribs, Crispy Spring Rolls, Won Tons.........There are quite a few too, who know how to make these delicacies at home, for a lot of Chinese cooking is, once one knows how it should look and taste, not at all difficult. Once one has mastered the basic discipline of preparing the food for cooking, it is simplicity itself to do. But of course, there are the rarer gourmet items which could possibly prove more expensive and more difficult to assemble --- shark's fin, fish lips, turtle's skirt, bear's paw, sea slugs..... not to mention the very acquired taste one would need to eat some of them!

Everything edible (whether from land, fresh water or ocean, or from any part of any animal conventionally despised or ignored) was eaten and combined in several computations with a myriad of other ingredients. Many 'flavors' and textures were created by inventing many different techniques of cooking; the cuisine boasts some 80 old different ways in all. A few shreds of meat, some diced fresh or dried prawns or shrimps, a handful or cheap chopped vegetables, a tough of garlic, soy or black bean sauce and several minor masterpieces well within the reach of even a poor man were born.

Flavor, texture, quality.....the Chinese savours each mouthful and is a great connoisseur of his own food. Indeed it is the only way to approach this cuisine oneself: to become swiftly aware of how a dish should look and taste at its best. It is a vitally alive art: adapting, changing sometimes even from its classic origins, to give way to some marvelous new version. Very few taboos operate here, but there are, for course, some basic guidelines; knowledge of the intrinsic qualities of the ingredients being used and of what would best combine with what is still essential.