Chinese Cooking: Sauces & Spices
Sauces and spices are the key in any cooking. No dishes would taste good without them. The only exception is that some sea animals can be simply steamed or boiled before serve. Well, that is because they are salty already in their body. Imagine eating steamed river shrimp? I wouldn’t bother!
I’d like to introduce some of the most popular sauces and spices that we use everyday. You may already know some of them, but I bet you haven’t heard of others.
Sauces
Bean Curd Sauce (Dou Fu Ru): Fermented bean curd, rich in proteins. May be kept for fairly long time. Comes in two types – red and white. Red is typically used to cook Braised Pork. White tastes spicy and is normally used as a side dish along with noodles, buns, or congee. Some like to serve with soy sauce and vinegar for meat dumplings, hot pot dishes, and others. Favored by north and west of China.
Oyster Sauce: Oil from oyster. Heavily salted. Use sparingly for sauted dishes. Popular in Hong Kong, Cantoon (Guang Dong, to be exact), and some areas in south of China while not used at all in north and west of China except for hotels and some restaurants.
Shrimp Sauce: Oil from salted baby shrimp dried and fermented. Use sparingly for sauted dishes. Used heavily for dishes from south of China.
Sesame Sauce (Zhi Ma Jiang): Ground sesame seed with strong flavor. Used for cold dishes.
Hot Pepper &… Continue reading
Pickle Recipes
A pickle is such a dish that is famous all around the world. It is made from a variety of ingredients such as different fruits or vegetables. The spices also change accordingly. The pickle recipes are numerous but the basic recipe remains the same. Primarily, cucumbers, raw mangoes, onions, carrot, limes etc are used for making pickles. In India it is eaten as a side dish whereas in America it is an appetizer. Pickles are mainly prepared to reserve food stuffs. Pickling helps them to last longer even up to 1 or 2 years.
There are a number of pickle recipes. Out of which the most famous ones are described below. The cucumber pickle is made with the following ingredients;
1. 2 cups medium sized cucumbers2. 1 cup onions3. 1 cup vinegar4. ¼ cup kosher salta5. 1 cup water6. ¾ cup sugar7. ½ teaspoon mustard seeds8. 1/2 teaspoon turmeric9. ½ teaspoon ginger10. ½ teaspoon celery seeds
Wash the cucumbers well. Cut thin slices and jeep aside. Mix well the onions, salt and cucumbers. Keep aside the mixture for about 1 to 2 hours. Drain off the liquid. Cook the remaining ingredients in a large cooking pot properly. Add cucumbers, salt and onions to the pot. Boil them for about 7 to 10 minutes until they are crisp and tender. Store the pickle in sterilized jars for about a month. After a month the pickle is ready to eat.
Instead of cucumbers, onions, cauliflowers, green tomatoes can also be used.… Continue reading
Appetizer Party Recipes
Food, which is served in the party for any occasion, is the main reason for making the party memorable. In parties, appetizers play important role in the menu card of that party. So the appetizer party recipes certainly makes the party dinner very attractive & delicious and enjoyable.
In night parties, appetizers are a small kind of food that helps to maintain your hunger until dinner. There are several flavors of appetizers like finger food to all kinds of soups, which are serves as opening to your delicious party meal.
There are some traditional & old menus of appetizers like cheese & crackers, which are served in the party. However, there are some latest choices in the appetizer section of your party food menu. These appetizer menus are Cheese Fondue from Mexico, Mushrooms that are crab stuffed, pizza from chicken & artichoke and layer dip. There are additional categories in the appetizer party recipes like Spicy Pecan Nibbles, Watermelon Champagne Punch.
Caviar recipes are a part of the appetizer party recipes. The famous recipes are caviar cover pizza, soup, dips and spreads. Another appetizer party recipe is Coconut Shrimp.
For making this recipe, the following food material should be used in proper amount.
It requires 48 shrimp, which are medium in size & should be peeled & deviated. The spicy items like salt, pepper, garlic powder should be according to the taste. It contains flour of 1 and 1/2 cups, 2 eggs that is beaten and shredded coconut of 3/4… Continue reading
Cooking for a Holiday Crowd Made Easy (Peasy)
ARA) – The holidays. A time for loads of family, gifts and good cheer. Unfortunately, the holidays also can be a huge headache when it comes to cooking a holiday dinner for a house filled with people. Plus, you’re probably sick to death of turkey and wish you could serve something a little different to your holiday guests. Here’s the thing: you can!
They call me the Naked Chef because I like to prepare easy, no-fuss meals. I reckon the same should go for holiday meals. The perfect holiday dinner can be prepared pretty easily, without a whole lot of extra steps — especially when you have the right range to work with. Lucky for me, Amana has given me one of their new ranges, and it works just great. You should see it — this range is the largest one for its size on the market, with 5.22 cubic feet of capacity — which is large enough to let me prepare an entire holiday meal at once. It’s the size of Royal Albert Hall! On the outside, though, it’s a standard 30-inch range so it fits perfectly in your kitchen with no problem. It’s also easy to use, which is terrific when your kitchen is crazy and overflowing with holiday guests. The U-shaped EasyRack oven rack keeps you from getting burned when taking out a pizza pan or cookie sheet, while the self-cleaning oven makes clean-up a piece of cake. There’s also a warming drawer where I can… Continue reading








