Chinese Cuisine

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Now-a-days Chinese Cuisine is becoming very popular all over the world. In some ways Chinese cuisine is very close to Thai cuisine.

When an Indian friend of ours had a chance to visit China; he was over enthusiastic to experience all those delicious vegetarian Chinese food which he used to have in India. To his surprise, in China, there was hardly anything in the menu he could recognize ….

In Chinese cooking, most of the vegetables are diced, shredded or sliced because small pieces cook faster than larger pieces. Stir frying is a main technique in Chinese cuisine, and it was developed to retain the nutritional values, flavor and color of the food. Some tips to follow while you are making stir fries...

  1. Keep all your vegetables ready for frying. All cutting, chopping, and measurement of the ingredients needs to be completed beforehand.
  2. Fry 'tougher' vegetables such as carrots and broccoli before frying the softer and leafy vegetables such as cabbage.
  3. Since frying is done on a high heat, stir continuously or else vegetables may burn!

In this section, I will be writing some authentic Chinese recipes, while others are Indo Chinese Recipes. By Indo Chinese I means those recipes which are half way Chinese and half way Indian, as they have been modified to please Indian palates.

Before we start, I would suggest you to check your pantry for some Chinese Ingredients which are essential to start.

Soy sauce– This sauce is made out of soy beans, by fermenting the soy beans with Aspergillus ( kind of fungus). This is a key ingredient for Chinese cooking .

Tofu– Tofu is made from soyabeans and is very rich in protein and calcium. It is highly nutritious as well as delicious. In some ways it looks like paneer though the tastes little different. This is one of the important ingredients for Chinese cuisine.

Bamboo Shoots– As the name shows they are the very young shoots of bamboos. The fresh bamboo shoots are hard to find in western word though canned, sliced shoots are easily available in supermarkets. Canned shoots are usually preboiled so just wash them thoroughly and use as required.

There is an ingredient, Ajinomoto (sodium mono glutamate), which is usually used in Indo Chinese preparation but I do not use it in my preparations, because it may cause some health problems....