You don't have to take lessons from a professional teacher to learn the art of Chinese cooking if all you want to do is to entertain your friends or cook for your family. Almost without exception, Chinese women learn this skill by watching and working together with their mothers or grandmothers. After they become wives or mothers themselves, the most diligent among them will try to improve their techniques by consulting cook books and exchanging experiences with their neighbors. In this way they eventually become as skilled as the best chefs in established restaurants. It should be noted, of course, that most of the well-known chefs in famous restaurants are men because many men in Chinese homes are just as good at the art of cooking as their wives.
Books in the Learn to Cook Chinese Dishes series have been compiled by master chefs. They have used simple explanations to introduce the ingredients, the ways of cutting, and the cooking procedures for each Chinese recipe. Readers who follow the directions will before long become skilled in the art of Chinese cooking. The entire set consists of ten volumes, covering freshwater and seafood dishes, meat dishes, vegetable dishes, courses made from soy beans, soups, cold dishes, pastries, dishes of eggs and poultry, food carving techniques, and recipes for special feasts. This particular volume presents more than forty different foods made with wheat and rice flour.
Food made of flour and rice is indispensable for a Chinese meal. Such food, when nicely combined with other dishes, not only makes more variety for a meal but also conforms to the rules of a balanced diet. A piece of dough made either of wheat or rice flour, together with vegetable dishes, can create food in countless varieties of tastes and shapes.
When wheat or rice flour is mixed with water, you have the basis for a pastry food. Flour mixed with cold water is usually hard, has a strong elastic texture and is slippery in the mouth. Such dough is suitable for boiled dumpling and wonton wrappings. Flour mixed with hot water is soft and very doughy, which is good for making steamed and fried dumplings. Flour mixed with lukewarm water is neither too hard nor too soft but easy to shape and therefore suitable for making dumplings with varied patterns where the wrappings are sealed. Floury paste, made of flour and a lot of water, is suitable for making wrappings for spring rolls or other foods to be deepfried.
Risen dough, because it is soft and has many holes, is good for making steamed stuffed buns with various kinds of fillings, or for making rolls as well as deep-fried pancakes. Adding some fermented glutinous rice when making the dough rise gives the food the aroma of liquor.
Flour can also be mixed with water and oil which, though not risen, becomes puffy and when cooked, the dough produces many layers and has a fluffy and fragrant taste, as in the case of pancakes with scallions and multi-layer cakes.
Rice can be ground into flour and then mixed with water. Usually there are two varieties of rice flour: the sticky type made from glutinous rice and the dry type made from common rice. The grinding process also varies from that with water and that without. The result is different degrees of softness, fluffy nature and stickiness. And each type, in turn, produces several varieties of foods, but chiefly there are three categories: sticky cake, sticky ball and noodles.
Rice flour is known for being slippery and soft to the bite. It can be used to make pastries, sweet porridge, eight-treasure rice and sticky cakes. The fillings inside the wheat or rice flour wrappings can be salty as in the case of meat, fish and poultry, or sweet. The latter type is usually made from beans, sugar, fresh or dried fruits.
Whether to have salty or sweet fillings is left to the choice of the cook...
All pages of the book are spiral bound and double coated for easy clean-up of any spill
