cooking @ home

Archive for the ‘Chinese’ Category

If I say I’m making some homemade Chinese food tonight and I’m using yellow onion and button mushrooms, is your first thought “that’s not authentic Chinese food”?

Good chance you might think that. Sometimes I stop and think that myself. Which gets me to even more thinking. Namely: what is Chinese food as compared to what is Chinese-American food?

Let’s go back to the original question. If I substitute slices of yellow onion instead of scallions, is that less authentic? Then why have I gotten many a Chicken and Brocolli from delivered that’s come that wa? Let’s take another, how about when I substitute button mushrooms because my local market didn’t have shitake this week? Again, I’ve had many a Moo Goo Guy Pan come this way. I’m not even sure the more I think about it, how often delivered Chinese food has had shitake mushrooms? It’s either nether or exteremely rarely. I vagulely think once or twice it may have happened I had sliced shitake in my delivered dish.

So our first thought is: this isn’t authentic, but upon further reflection, it apparently must be. What’s the answer then? Maybe that difference is a Chinese-American difference of using cheaper and plentiful items on hand to replace more expensive or harded to get ingredients. That wouldn’t be the first time in recorded “food’ history that has happened. As a matter of fact that is exactly the way regional foods begin. And, pun intended, that’s just some food for thought.

Here’s some more thoughts. First, I love making Chinese food at home because baby I can control the portions and the quality … quality means I know I am using chicken breast … portions means both the small picture and the large picture as in, not only am I not giving myself shavings of chicken, I am making big meaty chunks, and I’m giving my dish plenty of those, at least a good four times more than the same if I picked up the phone.

Yet another thing I have to mention. Wow do I love the products that can be purchased in supermarkets of today. When it comes to this dish. Heck yeah I got lazy. When I can have a choice between several different versions of frozen stir-fry vegetables? Love it. In this case, the one pound bag I got contained baby peas, baby carrots, baby corn and snap peas. The rest I augmented with some fresh. Why purchase four or six more fresh ingredients or even six different cans or whatever when one bag will do? As my grandfather used to say “You youngsters out there have no idea how easy you got it today.”

Finally, one thing I feel really needs to be driven home to you here: what makes this dish really taste the way it should comes down to the spices and seasonings. If you don’t have these, it will taste very much like an Amercian-version-of. With these spieces, it will taste (and smell) amazingly authentic, and it will be what it’s meant to be: a home-made Chinese dinner that has a ton more chicken and just as much flavor and punch as the take-out variety.

Chinese Chicken with Veggies Stir-Fry
©2007 Harry Kenney

ingredients:

2 large chicken breasts (1.5 lbs), diced into chunks
yellow one, medium, long slices
sliced mushrooms, your choice
one bag frozen stir-fry vegetables of your choice
 (mine contained baby corn, baby peas, baby carrots snow pea pods)
white rice, make enough for to produce a final of 3 cups
peanut oil, for frying (vegetable oil if that’s what you have)

seasonings to taste:

soy sauce
garlic, two or three cloves, sliced thinnly
ginger, about a half inch shredded if fresh (powdered otherwise)
Chinese five spice
dry sherry
salt
pepper

Make three cups of white rice before or concurrent with this recipe. Get our your wok or your stir-fry pan (preferrably), turn the burner on to high and keep it there the entire time.

Liberally put in some peanut oil, wait until hot, dump in the chicken. Liberally add spices to taste, but hold back on the liquids (soy sauce and dry sherry) a while, as that will stop hot cooking. Brown thoroughly. Now add the liquid seasonings. Brown some more. Remember this is “stir-fry”, a dish that you are constantly mixing throughout the entire cooking process.

Scoop out chicken and place in bowl. Leave the small amount of juice in pan and put in onion, about a minute later add in mushrooms. Reseason these with the dry seasonings. After a few minutes of browning, put in the entire bag of frozen vegetables. Mix. Again, season everything. This time liquid as well as dry. (Every time you add something new you season it.) This will take anywhere from five to eight minutes. You may even cover it at this point to promote thorough cooking.

Taste occasionally, taking the hardest vegetable out (in my case it was baby carrots) and when that is done enough for you, then put the chicken back into the wok and mix everything thoroughly. You may add more seasoning (one last time) at this point, or opt not to if it tastes well-seasoned enough to you. Cook together another two or three minutes.

Plate atop a foundation of white rice. Makes roughly four servings.

Note: Just because I purposely made this recipe as a heartier, more chicken than one normally gets from take-out dish doesn’t mean it has to be that way. Obviously these types of dishes were originally concieved to be food stretchers: to use a little meat, a lot of veggies and rice to fill the stomach. So you could easily cut back on the chicken and increase the rice, this could be a super-budget meal that could serve eight.