Ching’s Fast Food: 110 Quick and Healthy Chinese Favourites. Ching-He Huang
a tight-fitting lid on the pan and allow to simmer, stirring occasionally to make sure the rice does not stick to the side and bottom of the pan.
2. After the rice has been cooking for 45 minutes, add the duck egg pieces and continue to cook for a further 20 minutes.
3. Meanwhile, heat a wok over a high heat until it starts to smoke. Add the groundnut oil and ginger slices and stir-fry for a few seconds, then add the pork slices and stir for 1 minute or until they start to turn brown. Add the rice wine (or sherry or vegetable stock) and cook for a further minute, then tip in the mushrooms and season with the soy sauce.
4. Add the pork stir-fry to the cooked congee and stir in well. Season, add a dash of sesame oil, if you like, and sprinkle over the sliced spring onions. Serve immediately with chunks of you-tiao (fried bread sticks), if you have any, for a truly traditional Chinese breakfast.
Big bowl of oat congee and accompaniments – ‘The Works’
This is not for the faint-hearted – like eating ‘smelly porridge’, as my other half describes it. But if you are a fan of durian, stinky dofu and century eggs, then you will love the complex flavours of this dish. The fermented bean curd blends in with the sweetness of the seaweed paste and picks up the fiery pungency of the pickled bamboo shoots, while the pickled lettuce delivers a refreshingly vinegary sweetness that cuts through the richness of all the other ingredients.
This dish brings back memories and instantly I am transported to my grandmother’s farm, where daily breakfast treats would be a rotation of these ingredients, along with a small bowl of hot steaming congee (or rice porridge). Rice porridge takes too long for me to make in the morning, so I now have oat porridge instead. When I prepare this, assembling all the ingredients, it is like a meditation process and nostalgia trip rolled into one. Nothing can get in the way and I feel depressed when I run out of any of the components. You may be surprised and perhaps even disgusted by this strange obsession of mine, but I invite you to try the dish with courage and an open mind.
PREP TIME: 5 minutes
100g (3½oz) rolled oats
1 tbsp of groundnut oil
2 eggs
5–6 chives or 1 spring onion, finely chopped (optional)
1 tbsp of light soy sauce
FOR THE ACCOMPANIMENTS
4–5 pickled soy lettuce stems
1 tsp of momoya (Japanese seaweed paste)
1 tbsp of salted roasted peanuts
1 tbsp of pickled bamboo shoots in chilli oil
2 tbsps of dried pork floss
½ small cube of dofu (fermented bean curd)
1. Place the oats in a saucepan with 200ml (7fl oz) of water and bring to the boil, then reduce the heat and cook for 3–4 minutes, stirring frequently, or until the mixture has thickened.
2. Meanwhile, heat a small wok or frying pan over a medium heat until it starts to smoke and then add the groundnut oil. Crack in the eggs, sprinkle over the chopped chives or spring onion (if using) and fry the eggs to your liking.
3. Transfer to a plate and drizzle over the soy sauce. Pour the porridge into a bowl, arrange all your accompaniments on top (like the different colours on a painter’s palette) and then mix and eat straight away with the eggs.
Soups
Iadore Chinese soups – the classic takeaway offerings and the more exotic ones. The nourishing soups my grandmother used to make for me using Chinese herbs like cassia twigs, red dates, Angelica sinensis, rhizome of rehmannia and others that I cannot pronounce were a staple in my family kitchen. Both my mother and grandmother insisted that we have these herbal broths, often cooked with a little meat, such as lao-ji (old organic chicken) or pai-gu (pork ribs). This was based on the belief that these traditional Chinese herbs replenish the ‘yang’ chi (energy) thought to be good for a woman’s ‘system’, keeping her fertile and youthful. My grandmother especially loved stewing these herbal concoctions and the meat she typically included would be pig’s trotters or chicken’s feet, believing that their gelatinous texture would help keep skin plump and beautiful – and I believe her, because grandmothers always know best. I never argued with my grandmother when it came to food; she was the food royalty in my family, the queen bee, and her opinion was always the final word on the subject.
I grew up not turning my nose up at such dishes because this was the norm in my family. I only realised that these treasured family recipes were ‘different’ when my school friend Lina came over for dinner one Saturday night. I had recently moved from South Africa to London and had just started secondary school. Lina, of Lebanese origin, was the bubbliest girl at school and one of the most popular, so I was excited that she was coming round. My mother went to a Chinese supermarket and brought back the freshest ingredients. When asked what we were having for dinner, my mother pointed to a shiny red bucket with a bamboo steamer lid over it. We both took a peek and, to Lina’s horror, were greeted by two fat river eels writhing about in the water and staring up at us. My mum was planning to cook her herbal eel soup for us. I will never forget the look on Lina’s face! Needless to say, she didn’t stay for dinner and didn’t come round again for a very long time, let alone for dinner. When she eventually invited me to her house, I was greatly relieved that the ‘eel experience’ had not damaged our friendship.
Her family were so welcoming. It was a treat to watch her mother make houmous from scratch, her tete (grandmother) make the flatbread and tabouleh, and her father orchestrate the cooking of shish taouk and lamb shawarmas on their gigantic home-built barbecue. Everything smelt wonderful. We all sat around a large table and feasted together. Her father, a proud, eccentric man, made sure I had plenty to eat and my plate stayed full. I was enjoying everything until he winked at me to try a dish of what looked like very small sausages … so I did. The whole room exploded in laughter; her brother patted me on my back and declared, ‘How were the sheep’s testicles, Ching?!’ Wide-eyed, I turned to look at him and nearly spat the piece of ‘sausage’ in his face. So Lina and I were quits, and neither episode was ever mentioned again.
Lina and I continued to have many more culinary adventures together as our friendship developed. I once tried making her and some other schoolfriends chicken and sweetcorn soup, which was far too watery because it was the first large-batch cooking I had ever attempted. When we reached sixth form, sometimes we had no classes after lunch, so we would hitch the 240 bus from Mill Hill to Golders Green in search of satisfying our cravings for wonton soup or beef and black bean soup with ho fun noodles. Our destination was the Water Margin in Golders Green, where we would gossip about school or pour our hearts out over boys we fancied while sipping from a bowl of crabmeat and sweetcorn soup or hot and sour soup, dishes that comforted us and seemed to echo the sour-sweet times as teenagers living in London and trying to fit in. We fought to fit in at school, struggling with our cultural differences and desperate to find our identity, but food connected us.
My mother’s herbal eel soup may have tested my friendship with Lina, but it will always remind me of who I am and where I come from. I believe the strongest relationships are built on such experiences. I once overheard my mother on the phone to her friend; they were talking about a lady within the Chinese community whose English husband was apparently filing for divorce because he had caught her eating fish-head soup! The lesson I learned was that if those close