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…