Chinese Cooking
Class Online
Every dish in this
website can be prepared and cooked with the equipment
found in the normal home kitchen with, perhaps, a
few smallish additions.
An ordinary frying-pan
(a good wide one) can take the place of the Chinese
'wog'. This is a semi-sphere which requires a
special application of heat.
The Chinese cook can
first fry fish or meat or poultry or vegetables in
his 'wog', then push it upwards and aside while
preparing additional ingredients in the base of the
vessel, keeping both apart. We, with our flat
flying-pans, will fry the fish or other food and
transfer it to a heated dish while carrying out the
second preparation, or use another frying-pan.
A large frying-pan is
much better than a small one because food can be
tossed or turned, or both, in it without fear of
spilling.
One of the best
all-round cutting and chopping implements is a meat
cleaver. Suggest buying two of them. The
ones have in mind are something like a butcher's
chopper, but much smaller. The blade will be about 3
inches wide and 7-8 inches long. At the sharp point,
less than !
inch at its
widest, it is razor-sharp.
Chinese Cooking
Class Online
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These cleavers are
very versatile. With one of them you can scrape the
scales off fish or disjoint a raw chicken, cutting
cleanly through the bones to make the mouth-sized pieces
of chicken so much served in Chinese dishes. With
two cleavers, one in each hand, you can cut meat or
vegetables into wafer-thin pieces, doubly quick, of
course, without losing any of their juices as you
would do in a mincingmachine.
A wooden chopping
block in the kitchen would be more than useful but a
good thick meat-cutting board can stand in very well
for it.
When it comes to
deep-fat frying, a deep oval pot with a wire basket
would be better than a round one, especially for
those occasions when you want to deep-fat fry a
good-sized fish or a whole duck, such as Cantonese
duck.
When
it comes to noodle nests (see page 116), do try to
find a small frying-basket just wide enough in which to shape the noodles before deep-frying them.
Such a basket will help you to make the 'nests' as
professionally as do the Chinese cooks. For steaming
foods, an ordinary steamer will do very well. Use
a so-called 'waterless' cooker with a little water
in it and a trivet on which to stand anything to be
cooked this way. Cantonese duck, is an
example of this method of steaming.
Free Chinese Cooking Class
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