Serves: 5
Compared to the myriad spices of the West, relatively few condiments are used by the Chinese. Those they do use are designed to bring out the natural flavors of foods, never to mask or overwhelm them. Chinese seasonings are used in various ways: in dips, dressings, marinades and sauces.
Although Chinese food is usually seasoned by the cook, a number of plain-cooked meat, poultry and seafood dishes call for the diner to perform this function. This he does by immersing morsels of food in various dips and mixtures. Some dips, such as soy sauce and hoisin sauce, can be purchased ready-made others, like hot mustard and pepper-salt mixes, are prepared at home. These at-the-table seasonings make for considerable culinary variety: a plain-cooked dish, served at various times with different dips, becomes in effect a series of different dishes.
The Chinese don't have raw salads as such, but they do toss briefly cooked vegetables in what are essentially salad dressings. (Cold cooked chicken, meat and shrimp are often prepared in a similar manner.) The ingredients of these dressings are few--mainly oil, vinegar, soy sauce, garlic and fresh ginger root--but their variations are many. The salad dressing is always added to the cold dish long enough before serving to flavor the food, but not so long before that it impairs the texture or discolors the brightness.
Marinades playa large and important part in Chinese cooking. These seasoned sauces or mixtures--in which meat, poultry and seafood are allowed to stand or marinate before being cooked--become partially absorbed and act both to flavor and to tenderize the food. Basic Chinese marinades include soy sauce, fresh ginger root, garlic, sugar, salt and pepper.
Chinese sauces are not as a rule superimposed on other ingredients, but created by the natural blending that occurs when vegetables, meat or fish and a few seasonings--such as soy sauce, sherry and salt--are cooked together. There are, however, some separately prepared sauces designed to enhance or enrich plain-cooked foods. These include vegetable sauces for deep-fried Peking chicken, piquant sauces for fish and seafood, meat sauces for noodles and rice, and soy sauce gravies for fried eggs and omelets.
There are also the sweet-and-pungent (or sweet-and-sour) sauces used to flavor cooked, particularly deep-fried foods, such as pork, shrimp, fish and chicken. The basic sweet-and-pungent ingredients are simply sugar and vinegar, to which soy sauce, fruit juices, cooked fruit and raw and pickled vegetables may be added. The sweetness of these sauces is largely a matter of personal taste and can be adjusted by the addition of either sugar or vinegar. In China, such preferences tend to be regional, with certain sections liking their sauces sweeter than others.
Sweet-and-pungent sauces may be prepared in advance, reheated at the last minute and added to the deep-fried food. Should the food have cooled slightly, it may be reheated in the sauce. Should the food have cooled considerably, it is better to reheat it briefly in the original deep-frying oil. (Otherwise, if warmed too long in the sweet-and-pungent sauce, it could lose its crispness.)
Another interesting Chinese sauce is the Master Sauce. This can be started with the gravy of any red-cooked meat or poultry dish. The gravy, however, is not served as a sauce with the dish that produced it. Instead, it is set aside and reserved as a cooking medium to be used again and again in the preparation of other red-cooked meats and poultry. The more this sauce is used in cooking subsequent dishes, the more subtle, rich and complex its flavor becomes. Master Sauces can be kept "alive" indefinitely if refrigerated in a covered container and either used--or brought to a boil--at least once a week. They must also be replenished, from time to time, with such seasonings as soy sauce, sherry and salt.
The Thousand Recipe Chinese Cookbook. ©1994 by Gloria Bley Miller.
This *Seasonings and Sauces recipe is from the Thousand Recipe Chinese Cookbook Cookbook. Download this Cookbook today.
"I must say this is the best recipe software I have ever owned."
-Rob
"Your DVO cookbook software saves me time and money!"
-Mary Ann
"Call it nutrition software, meal planning software, cooking software, recipe manager, or whatever you want. It is the software I use to stay healthy!"
-David
"Your software is the best recipe organizer and menu planner out there!"
-Toni
"Thank you so very much for creating such a wonderful cooking recipe program. I think this is the best recipe program there is!"
-Sarah
"I saw lots of recipe software for PC computers but I was having a hard time finding really good mac recipe software. I'm so glad I discovered Cook'n! It's so nice to have all my recipes in a computer recipe organizer. Cook'n has saved me so much time with meal planning and the recipe nutrition calculator is amazing!!!
-Jill
My favorite is the Cook'n Recipe App.
-Tom
