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* All pages double-side coated for easy removing of any stains (Hardcover)
You don't have to take lessons from a professional teacher to learn the art of Chinese cooking if all you want to do is to entertain your friends or cook for your family. Almost without exception, Chinese women learn this skill by watching and working together with their mothers or grandmothers. After they become wives or mothers themselves, the most diligent among them will try to improve their techniques by consulting cook books and exchanging experiences with their neighbors. In this way they eventually become as skilled as the best chefs in established restaurants. It should be noted, of course, that most of the well-known chefs in famous restaurants are men because many men in Chinese homes are just as good at the art of cooking as their wives.
This book in the Learn to Cook Chinese Dishes series has been compiled by master chefs. They have used simple explanations to introduce the ingredients, the ways of cutting, and the cooking procedures for each Chinese recipe. Readers who follow the directions will before long become skilled in the art of Chinese cooking. The entire set consists of nine volumes, covering freshwater and seafood dishes, meat dishes, vegetable dishes, courses made from soy beans, soups, cold dishes, pastries, dishes of eggs and poultry, and recipes for family feasts. This particular volume presents forty different foods prepared with bean curd.
China is the home country of soy beans and the Chinese people began to process beans for food in the form of various types of bean curd 3, 000 years ago. This has been a great contribution to the food industry of the world. Today, bean curd and other bean products remain a popular type of food in China and provide ingredients for a wide range of dishes.
Food made from beans comes in many forms including the soft bean curd, ordinary bean curd, fluffy bean curd, dried bean curd, bean curd leaves, bean curd peels, fried bean curd, dried bean curd cream in tight rolls and "meatless chicken" -- a kind of bean curd with a texture like that of chicken meat.
All bean products used for food are prepared by first soaking the beans in water. After the beans rise, wash them clean, grind them, and filter off the residue to make bean curd milk. Heat this and then soak a certain amount of editable plaster in water to mix with the boiling bean curd milk. When the mixture solidifies, bean curd is made.
Soft bean curd is distinguished from other kinds of bean curd in containing more water. It is so soft that it cannot be shaped into any solid form and has to be kept in water in a container, thus known as jellied bean curd. Ordinary bean curd has less water content. "Meatless chicken" is made by placing multiple layers of flat sheets of bean curd tightly together. When bean curd is cut into small pieces and deep-fried until it is golden yellow in color and very soft inside, it is known as fried bean curd. When boiled bean curd milk cools off, lift the layer of oily bean curd cream that forms on the top and let it dry to become bean curd peel. When bean curd peels are rolled up, they become known as dried bean curd cream in tight rolls. If soy beans or green beans are soaked in water and kept at the right temperature for three to five days, bean sprouts will grow.
None of these bean products need to be made by individual cooks at home since they are readily available in Chinese grocery stores. Different kinds of bean curd products require different kinds of cooking skills as outlined in this book.
The ways of cooking bean curd are many and easy to accomplish. They can be modified according to the desire of individual cooks. Bean curd can be prepared to look like real meat and can be given meat dish names. Bean curd dishes also make good combinations for meals with meat dishes. The basic methods for cooking bean curd dishes include quick-boiling, stewing, precooking before stewing, braising, boiling, stir-frying, quick-frying, deep-frying, deep-frying before stir-frying, raw stir-frying, steaming, and roasting.
No matter what method you employ, make sure to remove the undesirable special smell of bean curd before cooking. To achieve this, you may do the following: (1) Boil the bean curd in hot water; (2) Steam well in a steamer; (3) Simmer over a low fire; and (4) Cut the bean curd into dices and quickly run them through boiling water.
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