Easy Chinese Recipes. Bee Yinn Low
that you’re holding this cookbook, because that means you’ll be discovering the secrets to authentic Chinese home cooking. I’m also delighted because you’ll have a chance to get to know one of my very favorite “blog-sisters,” Bee Yinn Low, and her kitchen stories. Bee and I first met just about four years ago, when I first started blogging at SteamyKitchen.com. Back then we were a little shy online (and a little cautious), keeping our real names on the back-burner. Everyone called her “Rasa” and I was “Steamy” and you can imagine the funny looks we would get when inadvertently referring to ourselves by our blog names in real life situations.
The anonymity soon gave way to the discovery of our mutual passions, not just for Asian cuisine, but figuring out how to turn a fun, little hobby blog into a successful business and making it the best job ever.
We’d spent late nights on the phone talking SEO, Wordpress, CSS and HTML. There was so much to share and learn, and if you can imagine two grown women giggling about a new plugin, well, you can pretty much call us soul sisters.
We started trickling family stories into our conversations and it wasn’t before long that I realized that I knew more about Bee and her family than I did some of my neighbors, even though she was in California and I was in Florida, and we had never met in person. At our first meeting we were like little chatty, giggly schoolgirls, it was non-stop talking. Bee is like a sister to me, she’s the first person I turn to when I have a cooking question about Chinese food or when my blog breaks down.
She’s a generous, happy spirit, and I think you’ll experience that on each and every page of this book.
Happy Cooking,
Jaden Hair, author of The Steamy Kitchen Cookbook
Author's Preface
Words can’t begin to describe how elated I am to be the author of this book. Writing a cookbook has always been a dream of mine, and I can’t help but feel utterly blessed, humbled, and above all, thankful, to have such a wonderful opportunity.
This cookbook has been a labor of love. I worked on it during the pregnancy of my beloved son—one of the most exhilarating and life-changing phases of my life. What you are holding now is indeed my other baby—my culinary baby—one that I had carried alongside my adorable baby G.
This cookbook is a compilation of my favorite recipes: Chinese classics, all-time favorites, dim sum, dumplings, and more. Some recipes reflect my many travels in Asia, especially in China and Hong Kong. Others are my interpretation of popular Chinese dishes, perfected through years of preparing them at home. A selected few were passed on to me by my friends, who firmly believe that great recipes are to be shared and enjoyed.
Reading through this beautiful cookbook, I know that my family—G, baby G, my aunt, uncle, siblings and the entire family back home in Malaysia—and my beloved ones, dear friends, loyal fans and readers of Rasa Malaysia (http://rasamalaysia.com) will be exceedingly proud of me and this accomplishment.
Thank you ever so much for your support. I hope you use and enjoy the recipes in this cookbook and I wish you all “Happy Cooking!”
Bee Yinn Low
Growing Up in a Chinese Family
Someone once asked me: What is your favorite sound in the world?
“The sizzling sound of Chinese food, when the ingredients are added into a hot wok and that distinct aroma fills the kitchen.”
I grew up listening to the musical rhythms of Chinese cooking in my home. Even though I was born in Penang, Malaysia, with a Nyonya (local Chinese in the Malay Peninsula who have adopted local traditions) grandmother, I am, ultimately, Chinese. I grew up eating mostly Chinese food, speaking a Chinese dialect as my mother tongue, and attending Chinese school until college. My late mother was the designated cook in our family; watching her cook was a significant part of my childhood. As a little girl, there was something inherently attractive about what was going on in the kitchen.
Every morning, my mother headed out to the local market, scouring the stands and vendors for the freshest ingredients. Upon her return, she would be busy with the preparation work: shelling shrimp, cleaning fish, cutting vegetables, chopping chicken, or slicing meat. I would always stand beside my mother, sometimes on tiptoe, watching silently and curiously as she proceeded with her daily kitchen chores. The motions and sequences danced in front of my eyes—I was mesmerized.
The first round of cooking would always start just after 11 a.m., when my mother would fire up her dark, well-seasoned Chinese wok on the propane stovetop. As soon as a swirl of white smoke began to appear from the edges of the wok, she would pour in some peanut oil. Then the nutty aroma of peanut oil started wafting out of the wok. Chopped garlic or ginger (depending on the dish she was making) and the main ingredient would be added into the wok, and that was when the loud and lively sizzling sound of the wok started to sound like a seductive song. Then the unforgettable fragrance of Chinese cooking permeated our home.
This is how I learned to love Chinese food.
Learning to Cook Chinese
While I was an ardent observer of my mother’s cooking, I never had a chance to actually practice the cooking part because my mother wouldn’t allow it.
“You don’t know how to cook. You would just spoil everything,” she would say in a disapproving tone.
I was allowed to help her with the prepping of the ingredients, such as the mundane chore of removing roots from heaps of fresh bean sprouts, but my opportunity to create these dishes wouldn’t come until later. In fact, it was not until I left home to attend college in Kuala Lumpur—the capital of Malaysia—that I had my first real opportunity to cook: a potluck party hosted by me. The menu I planned was a classic array of Chinese dishes: stir-fry vegetables, soup, shrimp, and chicken—guaranteed to impress…so I thought.
After years of observation, I was convinced that Chinese cooking was easy. Instead, my stir-fried vegetables turned a horrid purple due to over-cooking; the soup was bland and dull; the shrimp didn’t taste good; and the chicken was salty and rubbery. Still, dinner had to be served and so everyone sat around the table silently eating, and then someone sighed (in relief, I think), “I am so glad that dinner’s over!”
I was thoroughly embarrassed, but it was true, I was a TERRIBLE cook. I thought I had “training” while growing up, but my lack of experience was obvious. Watching my mother cook hadn’t created cooking skills, I learned that good cooking needs to be cultivated and earned—a cook’s journey that I had to undertake for myself.
Soon after that I got a hold of my first Chinese “cookbook,” a recipe booklet, distributed with the purchase of a bottle of oyster sauce. This booklet covered the fundamentals of Chinese