do you like chinese food?

whufee

hi, i am a chinese guy, studying in DBS as a full time student, cooking is my habit, there are a lot of chinese restaurants around country, i just wondering why people dont learn how to cook chinese dish themselves, it's very health food, cheap to buy ingredients, and easy to learn. so if you want, i can post some easy start recipes here, hope you like it. any suggestions?:D

xxdilemmaxx

Oooh I'd like to know how to cook chinese food!!! That would save me a small fortune.

House special kung po is my very favourite but would make an attempt at any recipe you post!

whiskeyman

Some nice dishes with chicken would be great. looking forward to these

olaola

I've always wanted to cook more Chinese food - just not really sure how to do it. I've started cooking stir-frys with some success, would love some more recipes from you!

Pigletlover

I too would love some chinese recipes, my fave dishes are szechuan/kung po/black bean chicken/beef whatever but I'd be willing to attempt nearly anything!

ambman

whufee wrote: »

hi, i am a chinese guy, studying in DBS as a full time student, cooking is my habit, there are a lot of chinese restaurants around country, i just wondering why people dont learn how to cook chinese dish themselves, it's very health food, cheap to buy ingredients, and easy to learn. so if you want, i can post some easy start recipes here, hope you like it. any suggestions?:D

3 recipes that are a must are chicken fried rice , chicken curry and most important how do you make curry sauce like you get in the takeaway's.

ooohhh i am getting hungry just thinking about them

olaola

ambman wrote: »

3 recipes that are a must are chicken fried rice , chicken curry and most important how do you make curry sauce like you get in the takeaway's.

You can get it in the oriental food shops. Mmm... long tray!

ambman

olaola wrote: »

You can get it in the oriental food shops. Mmm... long tray!

with fried rice MMMMMNNNNNN;)

I adore chinese food.
I do use my local chinese foodstore for things like rice, noodle, pak choi, sprouted soya beans, tofu. I'm so predictable the girl picks out my veg for me when I come into the shop.
Can you recommend any products, that I might be missing out because I don't know what they are?
I really only make satay sauce myself. Sweet sauces don't do it for me.

Have you you any tips for flavoring tofu?

Faith

I love chinese food. The thing is, the stuff you get in takeaways is usually stuffed full of MSGs to make it taste the way it does. If you make it yourself, it'll taste far different. It'd be much healthier though! I'd love some recipes too, OP. I chow mein.

whufee

thanks for all replies.
from now on, i will post some good recipes in here, and hope i can make friends as well, haha by the way, my english name is Edge,{a irish name haha}

but before we start, personal speaking i do not use MSGs at all, it is fact that chefs both in here and china use it to improve taste. but it is not nature, so my mum and dad never use MSGs at home. so do i, haha.

watna

I'm not a big fan of Chinese at all. I think it's the way it's made here though. I do love noodles, cooked simply (stir-fried etc) so if you hsve any recipes like that I'd give them a go!

I'm going to Malaysia in a few months and apparently the food there is lovely. lots of noodles etc so I'm looking forward to trying that to see do I like it more than asian food at home.

hottstuff

Yes.
Until it starts to digest!!!!:o

Minder

Where in China are you from? Does your family region have a big influence on your style of cooking?

whufee

Minder wrote: »

Where in China are you from? Does your family region have a big influence on your style of cooking?

a place call TaiYuan 太原, the capital of ShanXi province 山西省, try to google it, the noodles and vinegar in there are the best in the country.[ but not like here, noodles are not always use to stir fry. i will post pictures haha]
http://www.travelchinaguide.com/cityguides/shanxi/taiyuan/dining.htm

Minder

Great. Could you tell me how to prepare ad cook lotus root. I can get fresh in China town (London) but not sure what to look for and how to cook. Thanks

whufee

Minder wrote: »

Great. Could you tell me how to prepare ad cook lotus root. I can get fresh in China town (London) but not sure what to look for and how to cook. Thanks

i only know two dishes about cooking lotus root, here is a easy one for you, if you like cold dish. lotus root is the best and so easy to prepare.
1. skin off the root and slice it about 2mm thick.
2. blanching (put into the boiling water for 2 minutes, if cut is thicker then 3-5 minutes) the root and then washed by cold water.
3. fine-cut some garlic, ginger (say 5mg for 1lb lotus root) put them into a small bowl, add in white vinegar (if you dont have, just use normal one) a bit salt, sugar (depend on personal taste) sesame oil, 1 spoon of lite soy sauce and mix all ingredients together.
4.mix root with mixture

whufee

is there any chinese cookery school in ireland? i think the best way of learning is going to there.

dudara

I can recommend one very good cooking book which really helped me cook chinese food much better. It really opened my eyes to using good seasoning. It's called The Food of China and has some lovely descriptions of how duck is roasted and other famous chinese foodstuffs are prepared.

rubadub

I love cooking it, very fast and tasty. You will hear loads of people saying "oh takeaways are nothing like real chinese food" and some are only guessing.

I have been there several times and brought to good restaurants & open air markets etc by chinese people and a lot of dishes are similar to some here. Depends on region a bit, but I usually find there is no thick sauces on dishes there, so if you are making uncle ben sauces it will not be similar. It can be dry or have a very dilute soy based sauce.

Many peoples idea of "chinese" here is "chicken curry & fried rice" :rolleyes: or worse you see the scumbags eyeing the menu for 10minutes, "will I have the szechuan duck", and then trotting out the old "ah sure give use chicken balls, curry sauce, chips":D


If you look at a chinese takeaway menu there are loads of dishes, and most have only bothered trying a handful. And it just happens that many of the popular ones are the ones which are not like "real" ones, i.e. ones with thicker sauces tend to be more popular, they are usually bigger portions as the container is the same size and a sauce fills it fully, maybe this is why people go for them more. Many are put off by the simplistic names, like "chicken & beansprouts", as though you are only going to get what it says, chicken, beansprouts and nothing else. Also some dishes have no descriptions like "cantonese chicken" (gorgeous).

Just ask the guy behind the counter, some encourage it. I found treasures on the hill on stillorgan to be good, many customers are always questioning the dishes and ask for different specifics. I find the food there is always crisp and not stewed like some places.

gillybeans

I Love chow mein but iv found the meet does be soaked in something first and its very jelly like. I have asked a few takaways around my area would they just do the noodles with the chow mein sauce but they wont :mad: I have also tried buying chow mein sauce from the supermarket but it tastes nothing like the one from the take away. Would love to know how they make it!!!

whufee

gillybeans wrote: »

I Love chow mein but iv found the meet does be soaked in something first and its very jelly like. I have asked a few takaways around my area would they just do the noodles with the chow mein sauce but they wont :mad: I have also tried buying chow mein sauce from the supermarket but it tastes nothing like the one from the take away. Would love to know how they make it!!!

depend on what kind of chao mian [=CHow mein, but this is the real words for it] you r lookin for? And to be honest, real chinese food do not have any particular sauce for cooking chaomian only. so tell me what it likes, and then i can figure out for you, bud!

antoniosicily

whufee wrote: »

depend on what kind of chao mian [=CHow mein, but this is the real words for it] you r lookin for? And to be honest, real chinese food do not have any particular sauce for cooking chaomian only. so tell me what it likes, and then i can figure out for you, bud!

I like chinese food, it's particularly tasty. What do you think of the way the food is cooked in chinese restaurants in Dublin? As far as I know the chinese food outside China is pretty different from the one inside; that's normal because the european taste is different but I'd like to know what you think.

CJhaughey

I met a guy from Killybegs one time, he had just come back from China on a business trip.
I asked him what he thought of the food and he exclaimed that the food wasn't as good as the chinese takeaway in Killybegs!
Any country with over a billion people is going to have some range of foods. from the cantonese style that is common in takeaways here to the north of China where there is more wheat based food types.
One thing that I really like and that is not at all common here is a steamboat, it is basically a hot broth in the centre of the table, on the table are lots of different types of meat, veg, and seafood.
The food is cooked in small metal baskets that are placed in the broth and removed when cooked, great fun and very social.

LivingDeadGirl

I have a question(for everyone really!), I hate sweet sauce on food(save sugar for desert ffs) and I always wanna try new stuff but this makes it very difficult! Could anyone tell me which chinese dishes to avoid?

The Sweeper

Avoid anything with sweet in the title obviously, and anything with honey in it.

I'd love a decent lemon chicken recipe. Most of the lemon chicken you get in takeaways is composed of a battered, fried chicken breast which is then sliced, and served with a sauce that looks all the world like lemon curd.

When I make it myself, I beat one egg with a teaspoon of cornflour, slice a chicken breast, dip the slices in the egg and flour mixture, then flash fry them in a wok and put them to one side. Cut them very thin, so they'll be cooked through when fried.

The sauce is usually a combination of chicken stock, soy sauce, rice wine (or sherry), a tsp of thick brown sugar, a big slug of chili sauce (because I like chili), and a couple of tablespoons of lemon juice. The sugar doesn't make it sweet, it just offsets the lemon.

Put all of the sauce ingredients in a jug or bowl. Mix them up. Pour them into the hot wok after the chicken pieces have been fried (remove the oil first, depending how much you used for the chicken). Stir the sauce around to heat it through. You can add a mixture of 1tsp cornflour and a touch water and whisk it in - it will immediatley start to thicken the sauce and make it glossy. Then I return the chicken to the sauce for a minute to heat through. (Hence why the thin slices that cook quickly - if you leave it in the sauce for too long the chicken coating becomes soggy).

I serve that with rice noodles and sliced cucumber, and grate a little lemon zest over the chicken to serve, but it could go with anything really. The rice wine adds a very piquant edge to the sauce that steals the show.

I'm well open to any other lemon chicken recipes though, there seem to be a lot of them... (and we have a lemon tree in the back garden, if I'm honest.)

Rhiannon14

Recipes! Gimmie gimmie gimmie! I love anything savoury and especially noodley *nods*

dudara

My lemon chicken recipe is similar to yours

lemon juice
sesame oil
shao xing wine (not sure of the spelling)
a little salt and sugar

I mix this up and then flash fry the pre-cooked chicken in it. To thicken it, I use a tiny bit of cornflour mixed with a tiny amount of water.

whufee

antoniosicily wrote: »

I like chinese food, it's particularly tasty. What do you think of the way the food is cooked in chinese restaurants in Dublin? As far as I know the chinese food outside China is pretty different from the one inside; that's normal because the european taste is different but I'd like to know what you think.

you are absolutly right !!!!
i think it is no good, where the same restaurent has 2 types of menu, one for chinese, one for european, it is not right, cuz there are actually two different food !!![however we have to pay a bit more, but taste is much better] but i have to say, the proper food you may not like it at all. haha. all my irish friends know this,,,,

rubadub

CJhaughey wrote: »

I met a guy from Killybegs one time, he had just come back from China on a business trip.
I asked him what he thought of the food and he exclaimed that the food wasn't as good as the chinese takeaway in Killybegs!

He might be more used to it. Also the chinese cooks might have made it different thinking he would prefer it. When I was there people bringing me out were convinced I didnt like Chinese food, kept asking if I wanted to go to "western" restaurants. In some places there were menus with pictures, and and all the stuff in chinese looked great, the stuff in english didnt look great, had to ask the people I was with to translate the good looking stuff. I was also given bags of luke warm UHT milk, and tins of pate, thinking I would like it.

What was great was many places had the dishes in cabinets, so you could see exactly what you were going to get, i.e. they had one cold sample there on show, and obviously cooked fresh.

olaola

whufee wrote: »

you are absolutly right !!!!
i think it is no good, where the same restaurent has 2 types of menu, one for chinese, one for european, it is not right, cuz there are actually two different food !!![however we have to pay a bit more, but taste is much better] but i have to say, the proper food you may not like it at all. haha. all my irish friends know this,,,,

I'd love to know what to order from the 'proper' chinese menu!
You should tell us where to go & what to order!

Dave!

Any chicken curry recipes would be great Cheers

whufee

DaveMcG wrote: »

Any chicken curry recipes would be great Cheers

here is people goes wrong, i dont know why, western people[no offence] think any curry dishes belong to chinese cuisine, the answer is no. we[all chinese ppl]
think thats indian course, the only place you can find curry in china is an indian style restaurant. i have some curry recipes here, if you want to i can post in here, but im not sure it is better than indian curry.

carbsy

I've only just started cooking and would love to hear of any good chinese recipes in plain english for a beginner like myself.

The Sweeper

Personally if I want to make a chinese-style curry, I use Wing Yip Curry Sauce Concentrate in the 250g jar. Just add hot water - it turns into the stuff you get on a beef curry, or even the sauce for a curry chips.

whufee

whufee wrote: »

here is people goes wrong, i dont know why, western people[no offence] think any curry dishes belong to chinese cuisine, the answer is no. we[all chinese ppl]
think thats indian course, the only place you can find curry in china is an indian style restaurant. i have some curry recipes here, if you want to i can post in here, but im not sure it is better than indian curry.

I'm hungry where's my Chinese??

rubadub

whufee wrote: »

here is people goes wrong, i dont know why, western people[no offence] think any curry dishes belong to chinese cuisine, the answer is no. we[all chinese ppl]
think thats indian course, the only place you can find curry in china is an indian style restaurant. i have some curry recipes here, if you want to i can post in here, but im not sure it is better than indian curry.

I think Dave might have been joking, hence the

I was asking a guy about 30 in China if he had ever had a curry, every time we ate he was always getting extra spicy/hot food yet had never tasted a curry in his life. Dunnes do a own brand "chinese curry" sauce which tastes the most similar to chinese takeaway currys of all jars I have tried.

Minder

I remember eating a special noodle soup at the Jasmine House in Bray. It contained a mixture of meats, some water chestnut and bamboo shoot, bean sprouts, noodles and a couple of prawns. All in a broth. It had been nearly 20 years since I had it, but I tried to replicate it one night. Got pretty close. One thing missing - the braised red pork, thinly sliced. It has a halo of pink/red dye around the outside of the pork. Now a recipe for that would be good!!!

I have tried a few different packet marinades for a similar result, but they were Thai and not what I remember.

Whufee, any ideas?

tomcollins97

whufee wrote: »

hi, i am a chinese guy, studying in DBS as a full time student, cooking is my habit, there are a lot of chinese restaurants around country, i just wondering why people dont learn how to cook chinese dish themselves, it's very health food, cheap to buy ingredients, and easy to learn. so if you want, i can post some easy start recipes here, hope you like it. any suggestions?:D

Do you have a recipie for Kung Po Chicken?

Cheers,
Tom

MJOR

oh yummy! love it love iot love it

_feedback_

rubadub wrote: »

Dunnes do a own brand "chinese curry" sauce which tastes the most similar to chinese takeaway currys of all jars I have tried.

I tried this last night and really enjoyed it ! You're right, it's the most similar to the chinese takeaway curries I have tasted too

larko

I watched a program on BBC2 last night on how easy it is to cook Chinese food. The chef showed just how much fat/salt/sugar is in a portion of sweet and sour pork. I nearly died when I saw it.

I went to the Oriental market on Jervis at lunch time and bought my supplies. I have to say the price of things in there are very good. Ill be back for sure.

Ill be trying my hand at Beef in oyster sauce tonight.. yum. No more MSG for me.

Supercell

That would be http://www.bbc.co.uk/chinesefoodmadeeasy/

I watched it myself and thought it was pretty good, will be tuning in next week.
Just made her chicken chow mein (slightly modified) and my tongue entered taste heaven, without doubt the best tasting chow mein I've EVER eaten

Tomorrow I'm going to try the beef in oyster sauce recipe.

Supercell

Chinese Food Made Easy on in a few mins (20:30) on BBC2, highly recommend tuning in!

maninasia

I have lived in Taiwan for many years and real Chinese (or Taiwanese) food is quite different from the bland greasy stuff you get in takeaways in Ireland, which is more of a mix of fast food, sugar/salt, Indian curry and a few veggies thrown in (not all restaurants, I'm sure there are more and more authentic restaurants now). Visiting China on a business trip for a couple of weeks would be hard to actually get anything good sometimes or have the time to find the stuff you like. You would just be eating in hotels or what people think you might like to eat as an above poster mentioned, it's so different to the food of home that it takes a while to figure out what you like and don't like, plus you can't read/know how to order anything at the start.
A lot of people don't understand Chinese food has a vast array of different dishes and cooking styles as China is a very big place from the cold north (dumplings/noodles) to tropical south (spicy, rice based, western desert (bbq style) and eastern coastal seafood, and even this is a gross exaggeration.
What makes Chinese food so great are the fresh ingredients that are used and also the wide variety of ingredients. They also use a lot of fresh, dried, spicy and fermented foods which we wouldn't be used to in Ireland, while it takes a while to get used to these foods or subtle flavours (or not so subtle), they really bring you on a new flavour journey.
I don't believe there is anybody that could say 'I don't like Chinese food', the question should be, 'do you like dumplings'?, do you like hotpot? do you like cantonese? do you like szechuan spicy food? Do you like Chinese seafood? Do you like yunnan food? Do you like Hakka food... and on and on.

Ponster

whufee wrote: »

think thats indian course, the only place you can find curry in china is an indian style restaurant.

I know what you're saying but Japan does have some good curries also.

Ponster

whufee wrote: »

you are absolutly right !!!!
i think it is no good, where the same restaurent has 2 types of menu, one for chinese, one for european, it is not right, cuz there are actually two different food !!![however we have to pay a bit more, but taste is much better] but i have to say, the proper food you may not like it at all. haha. all my irish friends know this,,,,

Oriental food tends to be different not only from the country of origin but from European country to European country. A Chinese dish in Paris will look and taste nothing like one bought in Dublin (prob some exceptions I'm sure). The restaurant owners always have to alter what they serve for the local market so in Paris you don't often find chicken curry, almost never find black-bean sauce, and had to explain to a friend one say why it wasn't possible to get chips with her pork sweet 'n sour

In the same way that an Irish person visiting an 'Irish' restaurant in Paris would be surprised to see things like 'Boxty' and 'Colcannon' on the menu. And even then it'll have been altered slightly for the French market.

In saying that we do have 2 fine Chinatowns where the food is usually very authentic and therefore 'different' (less sauce, less meat) and I'm tempted to say 'more plain' but that would suggest that it wasn't tasty which IMO isn't the case.

maninasia

Ponster wrote: »

I know what you're saying but Japan does have some good curries also.

Yes agreed, Japanese curry can be good sometimes.
Actually GuangDong province which includes Hong Kong also has curry dishes and that is one of the major reasons you will find Chinese curry in Ireland because almost all the old Chinese restaurants were opened by immigrants from Hong Kong. Of course they also adapted the curry to local tastes as other poster mentioned, localization of food is a common phenomenom and the same things happens if you are ordering western food in Asia!