Introduction to cooking
Chinese cooking has been somewhat of a mystery to me since I arrived in Shantou, a mystery I have dearly wanted to crack, but just couldn’t get my head around. My friend’s parents, and my friends with kids, their food is so delicious yet so cheap, how on earth do they do it? Do I have to give birth first before I can know how?
Lately I’ve been making progress on this issue, fuelled by the willingness of a family I’ve come to know to invite me to their house and let me watch whoever’s cooking and ask small but annoying-in-large-quantity questions like ‘what’s that sauce?’ ’so you put them in together then?’ ‘what’s that? where do I buy it? how do I ask them to prepare it?’ (Market sellers often prepare meat seafood and veg to your whim, no wonder cooking’s so quick, everything’s already gutted, skinned, sliced, shelled, peeled and had the ends chopped off).
Then I thought, I should share this wisdom with English speakers who aren’t blessed with Chinese parents. So…
Maggie Ad posted on July 4th, 2006 under: Living in ST, Eating in ST | Tag: culture, food |
Haha, I remeber u did that when you had dinner in my house, you even brought a notepad and wrote down what my mum told you. Any luck with the recipe yet?
Sauce is important, indeed! It’s hard for me to find the right sauce here in England. There are some Chinese stores but they are expensive. So most of the time I just got something like “Chicken Tonight” in Tesco. Gradually getting into the british life now.
Yeah your mum’s recipies were great, my most used ones are the bbq chicken wings, the steamed fish (what a genius putting it in the microwave) and the ham (never got ill yet). She also taught me about 儿童酱油ertong soy sauce, mogu蘑菇 dried mushrooms, and top n tailing 荷兰豆helan beans. Many thanks. Especially about the soy sauce, sounds like I actually know about Chinese cooking when I know it’s a good one.
Another family taught me the most delicious fried rice - I’ll make it for you over Christmas.
Supermarket sauces are not good! Don’t adopt British eating habits! We die early!