Chinese Food

Chinese Food - Chinese Cooking

There is an essential difference between eating in Chinese Style and eating in the West.  In western meals the dishes are eaten consecutively; a soup following on hors d’oeuvre, then the main dish, followed by a dessert, or a selection of cheeses, winding up with coffee.  This is a pattern, which does not very very much for a party meal at home or a mayoral banquet

A Chinese family meal is essentially a spread, with all the dishes, whether fish, fowl, meat, egg, vegetables or soup, brought to the table at the same time, Since all the recipes are highly savoury, rice is eaten throughout the meal to cushion and absorb this savouriness, as well as to provide bulk.

At parties and banquets in China, the food is served in a western manner, one dish after another. On these occasions people for pleasure more than for sustenance, and so rice or steamed buns (the staple food from the North) are not served- except perhaps toward the end, to help settle the stomach.  As such feasts, there may be anything from an essential 10 or 12 to 20 or more dishes.  Traditionally should be 300 (three hundred) dishes served at a high ‘Manchu-All-China Banquet’, so the choice and sequence of dishes for a Chinese banquet often require higher thought and arrangement than a corresponding western meal. 

For daily meals, there is no significant difference between the dishes served at lunchtime and at dinner. 
Assuming that the family does not exist at subsistence level, but can eat reasonably well, Chinese lunch or dinner would consist of 4 or 5 dishes with one or two soups.
(Based:  Chinese Food by Kenneth Lo). 

Thanks to Kerry Worland for this book, I have been using it since 1975.  It’s been a great learning experience.

Through the literature above, I learned about Chinese culture-Chinese food.

Plain Steamed Buns

Steamed Buns-PaoTzu

I will be sharing recipes of Chinese cooking soon.  Because I live in Australia, I will emphasise Chinese Food Abroad.

Essential Dishes of Chinese Restaurants Abroad:

A few examples of the most popular dishes

1. Chopsuey
2. Chow Mein
3. Fried Rice
4. Cha Shao Pork
5. Egg Fu-Yung
6. Pancake Roll
7. Crispy Meat Balls
8. Chicken with Almond
9. Wuntun soup
10. Fried Pacific Prawns in Batter.

For the next posting of Chinese food, I will be sharing the recipe of Chopsuey.  I do need a lot of very fresh bean sprouts.  Living in the country is not easy to get some of the ingredients, especially the crunchy fresh bean sprouts.  I am sure on a weekday I could go to the Market to get the raw fresh ingredients.




Until next time.
Susy