Truth be told, Chinese cooking has never been my favorite. While I’ve occasionally eaten the exquisite Chinese meal (usually courtesy of my cousin, a Chinese scholar), far too often I find it greasy, thick with cornstarch, and surprisingly devoid of vegetables. Phoenix Claws and Jade Trees, by Kian Lam Kho, turne dout to be a great way of avoiding these negatives and re-awakening a new appreciation of this ancient cuisine. China is a huge country, with many different microclimates and cultures; this book details this in a deeply researched but engaging way, and in a similarly scholarly yet accessible vein, details the basic techniques associated with Chinese cooking–deep frying, stir-frying, braising, and the like. Once a technique is mastered, it’s easy to alter it by changing around the proteins, substituting seasonal vegetables, and so forth.
I eliminated at least half the recipes right off the bat. They either used vast amounts of oil (sometimes as much as 8 cups!), incendiary amounts of chiles, or ingredients like pig stomachs. But the ones I have chosen to cook are fantastic–attractive, reasonably easy to prepare, containing readily available ingredients, and most importantly, delicious. Reactions from my entire family were uniformly positive. My favorite new discovery was something called “red cooking”–a braising technique where cut up pieces of meat are cooked for a long time in an aromatic soy sauce mixture, then thickened at the end with a little tapioca. It’s a warm, comforting method of cooking, great for winter, and requires minimal attention once the braise is simmering on the stove. I tried one recipe with tofu, the other with beef, both excellent. The anise in the red-cooked beef reminded me of Vietnamese pho. both recipes can be augmented with additional vegetables.
I thought it would be fun to try MooGooGaiPan, a dish whose name rolls smoothly off the tongue but that I primarily associate with bad Chinese-American restaurants. As I suspected, when prepared with quality ingredients–free range chicken, organic broccoli, fresh shitake mushrooms, soy sauce infused with homegrown Thai basil–it bore no relationship to the mediocre glop I remembered. It was velvety and subtly flavored. Over two pounds of chicken disappeared in about a half hour. The MooGooGaiPan, being a stir fry, did require several steps, such as “velveting” the chicken by dipping it in a spiced egg white/tapioca mix and deep frying, as well as lots of chopping and the requisite prep bowls. But it was worth it!
I will be using this attractive, informative book for years to come.
wendy's opinion on just about everything 