Home Cooking Parties forTM
The Story
My dad was a big fan of Chinese food. After eating steaks, chops and broiled chicken all week in his butcher shop, he enjoyed going out on Sunday to the local Chinese restaurant for the family style dinners, one from Column A, two from Column B and one from Column C. One of the items always had to be his favorite, Moo Goo Gai Pan. I think he just used to like saying the Moo Goo part of the name. We always ate Chinese food at the restaurant, no take out, with the lone exception being the occasional heating of a can of Chun King Chow Mein by my mother for my sister and me. We never owned a wok.
My sister-in-law, Kathy, gave me a wok as a Christmas gift about 10 years ago. Instant Love. I cook everything in it, including Italian cuisine! Yesterday, I used it to make up syrup to glaze a peach pie. I love the fact that you can push cooked items up the sides to stay warm while you saute new items in the hot flat bottom. What a great gift, but alas, I know not everyone has one of these miracle pans, so I have chosen Chinese foods that can be prepared by your dinner party chefs without the wok. If by some stroke of luck, you have a wok, use it where I call for pan stir frying, sauteing or deep frying. Otherwise, any pan will do.
On my visits to China, I have had the rare pleasure of eating snake, bugs (unwittingly) and all sorts of strange animals. One restaurant I visited in the Jiangsu Provence had a wall of cages with live animals to select from to assure freshness. Kind of like picking your own live lobster out of a tank at a pricey US restaurant, only these were furry little creatures. Fortunately there was Becks beer to wash down the bad feelings. There will be neither snakes nor bugs in this meal, but we will draw from the world famous Cantonese cuisine of Guangzhou, China and other Chinese provinces. We will even have some items, not Chinese, but popular in Chinese restaurants in the USA today.
Enjoy!
Chinese without the WOK
|