Books We Love...The Chinese Menu Cookbook...

A few nights ago, we made Chicken Peking....a recipe from "The Chinese Menu Cookbook" by Joanne Hush and Peter Wong.

This cookbook was published in 1976, and I believe it was a gift from my sister.  The pages are torn and stained, and I have made more than 25 recipes from it since I was gifted it almost 40 years ago.  This is the cookbook that my son, Patrick Deiss, first learned to cook Chinese food from; here's a page I marked up for him almost 25 years ago, telling him to where to find the ingredients for Kung Pao Chicken with Peanuts.

The beauty of this book is that is was the first Chinese cookbook that I was exposed to that encompasses a host of regional Chinese recipes that I hadn't seen in American cookbooks.  Now we taken Szchechuan, Hunan, and other regional Chinese food for granted, but I remember eating at traditional Chinese/American restaurants where Chop Suey, Egg Foo Yung, Chow Mein, and similar "Americanized" dishes dominated the menu.

From these pages, I have learned how to make the simplest dishes like Egg Drop Soup, how to make Chinese accompaniments like Sweet and Sour Cucumbers, and Spicy Green Beans with Black Bean Sauce, There is an entire chapter devoted to pork, shrimp and bean sprout deep-fried egg rolls, and the book progresses from simple menus to multi-course feasts. Lemon Chicken, Kung Pao Chicken with Peanuts, Spicy Shredded Garlic Beef, and Beef with Broccoli are other favorites.,   

This book opened up the mysteries of the Chinese kitchen to me. The instructions are impeccable, the cooking of the ingredients is quite simple and straightforward, and the end result has always been just about what I imagined it would be.  So, let me share the development of Chicken Peking with you.

Every great cuisine requires a "mise en place"....have your ingredients chopped, sorted, measured, and in place for you to cook with.

Here, we're cooking pork and scallion Chinese dumplings in hot oil; they will be steamed for 9 minutes, before the final browning and served with a spicy dumpling sauce as an appetizer.

My Sanyo Rice Cooker is a great appliance!

The chicken is partially stir-fried first after being marinated in a cornstarch/sherry/soy slurry

Here is the cubed chicken, almost ready to come out.

Next, the aromatics (garlic, ginger, and scallion) goes in for 30 seconds

Sweet peppers, mushrooms, and carrots sauted for 1 minute

Chicken is added back in along with a sherry/soy/hoisin/chicken broth sauce

Time to Eat!

There are many other wonderful Chinese cookbooks available, and I have a lot of them.  But "The Chinese Menu Cookbook occupies a special place in my kitchen.  By teaching me the basics of Chinese cooking in a very simple, progresssively difficult series of menus, it made me comfortable with the Chinese kitchen.  Now I can throw together a lot of different stir-fries, just because I understand the principles and elements of preparation and sauces.

Do you have a favorite Chinese cookbook?  I'd love to hear about it.

Talk to you soon,

Kathy

The Inn on Beaver Lane....A Place to Share Thoughts on Food and Cooking, Cookbooks We Love, and Other Random Musings

As many of you may know, I've been blogging (albeit erratically), since 2009, first on the Valley Thoughts and Ruminations blog, and subsequently on our Quilted Solutions blog, which I set up when we started our long-arm quilting business almost 6 years ago.

As enjoyable as that has been, I have found myself blogging less and less about quilts and quilting, and posting more frequently on Facebook and Instagram about our travels, food, and cooking.  My hashtag on Instagram is #The Inn on Beaver Lane, and many of my friends want more information about what we are up to than I can include on a small post (or bore many with on Facebook).

So, here is The Inn on Beaver Lane blog.  I hope to fill the blog with tidbits about the foods we like, the cookbooks we cook from, the restaurants and places that we travel to, and our everyday life here in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley.  I'll share my favorite food-related blogs with you, too, once I remember how to add the links (yes, it has been a while since I did any blog design.......).

I hope you will travel along with me on my continuing journey to enjoy the fellowship and fun I derive from my food-related activities. Meanwhile, here are a few photos from our weekend.

Top Sirloin and Mushroom Ragout with Baked Potatoes and Fennel/Apple Salad

My out-of-this-world Crab Au Gratin at Fisherman's Inn on Kent Island, MD

Guy's Fried Rockfish "Tidewater" style...with corn, ham, crab and cream sauce

First of the fall oysters: briny, sweet, and with real horseradish.....

Talk to you soon,

Chatty Kathy