Cuisines
Chinese recipes
Wok heat, texture, and regional depth.
Chinese cooking covers a landmass and eight major regional traditions, and the differences between them are larger than the differences between French and Italian. Sichuan is numbing and hot; Cantonese is delicate and steam-led; the north eats wheat rather than rice. What travels across all of it is a set of techniques rather than a set of flavours — the control of heat in a wok, the ordering of ingredients so that everything finishes at once, and the practice of velveting meat so that it stays tender under high heat. The recipes here name their region and explain the technique rather than assuming it, because most of what goes wrong with home Chinese cooking is a domestic hob that cannot get hot enough and a pan that is too full.
10 recipes
Steamed Sea Bass with Ginger and Spring Onion
A whole fish steamed plain, dressed with soy, and finished by pouring smoking oil over raw ginger and spring onion.
Smashed Cucumber Salad
Cucumbers smashed rather than sliced so the torn faces grip a soy, vinegar and sesame dressing instead of shedding it.
Kung Pao Chicken
Diced chicken stir-fried fast with dried chillies and peanuts in a sauce that is sour, sweet and salty in that order.
Hot and Sour Soup
A brothy Sichuan-style soup thickened with a cornflour slurry and finished with vinegar and beaten egg off the heat, so both stay sharp.
Red-Braised Pork Belly
Pork belly caramelised in sugar and braised in soy and wine until the fat turns to jelly and the sauce to lacquer.
Egg Fried Rice
Yesterday's rice broken up cold and fried hard in a wide pan, so the grains stay separate and toast instead of steaming to paste.
Beef Chow Mein
Beef coated in cornflour and seared in batches in a pan hot enough to smoke, with the sauce going in only at the very end.
Mapo Tofu
Silken tofu in a fierce red sauce of fermented bean paste and Sichuan pepper, with just enough pork to season it.
Dan Dan Noodles
Noodles over a pool of chilli oil, sesame paste and vinegar, topped with crisp fried pork and preserved vegetable.
Chicken Congee
Rice simmered in eight times its weight of stock until the grains collapse, into a savoury porridge finished in the bowl.